What Is This Wellness That Everyone Talks About?

I notice that the "thrust" of my practice is changing ever so subtly in recent months...I'm having more and more discussions with patients about their nutrition, exercise, and lifestyle choices ~ their wellness care....... while I see fewer and fewer patients in acute pain.  I like this trend ~ it's exactly the direction that the healthcare practice of the future should be taking in my opinion.  I have, however, been challenged in knowing how best to talk about wellness care.

What is this wellness that everyone talks about?

It's not an easy topic ~ much too abstract for most people.

As a practitioner, I've found it easiest to discuss wellness by creating a metaphor for it in more concrete terms.  It's an imperfect plan.  I can usually make my point, but an awful lot is lost in the translation.

I most often compare a patient's wellness/health to some machine or other.  What makes this an attractive metaphor is that we're all surrounded by machines.......we can't live without our machines, and we know all too well what happens when they break down due to inattention or poor care.

The broken-machine approach understandably works best when I'm talking with my male patients.  They completely get it when I ask them how in the world they'd expect their car/motorcycle/boat/jet ski/bicycle to continue to serve them 10 or 20 or 30 years from now if they never did any upkeep on it.  Why then should their bodies be above needing some upkeep?

My discussions with female patients generally take on a somewhat more personal flavor......."You wash your face or brush your teeth regularly no matter how they look or feel, because you know that they need it.  These are parts of the overall care of your body.  The care of your spine, your nutrition, and your exercise should be equally as important...and equally as second-nature if you're interested in real wellness."

Like I said.......imperfect.

A friend of mine who has spent more than 20 years as a chiropractic advocate and coach recently introduced me to a new metaphor.

Try this one on:

Think of your health as a checking account.  If you are either uneducated about or wreckless with your health you can experience all kinds of painful lessons, which are like overdraft charges.   Think of managing your health in much the same way as you manage your money.  Miscalculations, short-sightedness, and short cuts will ultimately lead to big losses.

Those headaches, that heart burn, your plantar fascitis, a weak immune system, the crushing fatigue ~ they're all overdraft charges that your body is sending you.

You'll have some work to do to clear up the months or years of abuse of this account before you'll "get out of the hole."  This is Relief Care.

What follows is Corrective Care.  During this phase of care you'll discover, with the help of your wellness coaches, how best to balance your health checkbook, and keep yourself out of the red in the future.

Next, you'll most likely want to set up some kind of overdraft protection.  The most effective protection for your future health is Maintenance Care.  This is the care that you get even when you're feeling fine, because you know that you need it.

Staying well is so much more fun and inexpensive than getting well, and won't it be great not to get those annoying and uncomfortable overdraft notices from your body?

Make an investment in yourself today!

My thanks to Bill Esteb for his tireless support of the profession that I love so much.