Our whole existence depends on health and while we can learn to live with for instance chronic illness, it obviously takes a toll on our general well-being. In recent times, thanks to huge advances in the fields of medicine, science and technology, more of us have access to outstanding healthcare facilities and skills. What seems forgotten amidst all fancy equipment and procedures, however, is preventive medicine.
As a topic, that could very well belong in my other blog category, Medicine & Science, but the reason for my choosing to place at least my own health-related projects and commentary in this separate category is that I wish to put preventive medicine in people’s conscious minds. Not to be part of growing yet another fad, but out of genuine interest in actions that most of us can do in everyday life to improve our quality of life, of which our subjectively perceived health of body and mind is a key component.
First steps into preventive medicine
Preventive medicine sounds incredibly fancy and possibly very difficult to define. I have a blog post coming very soon about this branch of medicine in greater detail, but for now I’ll say that it encompasses many activities that we’re already doing. We just didn’t label them in a particular way.
Preventive insinuates prevention, stopping something from happening. There are a few different layers to preventive medicine, but at its simplest and most beautiful the purpose is to keep us from becoming ill, gaining unhealth.
As I’ve quoted Thomas Edison at the bottom of my About page, the doctor of the future engages in not treating diseases but preventing them from happening in the first place. There’s naturally a lot more to say, so I’ll leave it for the blog post to come, but this sort of thinking is innovative and bold, whilst refusing to settle for quick fixes in cases where we should go to the bottom, root cause, of a problem. Speaking of innovative, the irony didn’t escape me that Edison died in 1931, nearly 100 years ago. It also didn’t escape me that he was an inventor in business rather than a doctor.
My example when discussing this is sarcastic, but not without a grain of truth. We wouldn’t treat an open fracture with a bandaid, or send the patient home to do their own surgery, so why settle in some other situations? Why not dig deeper, even when it means we can’t choose the easy option, prescribing a medication of some sort or performing surgery just because? Why not shift focus from treatment of disease to disease prevention altogether, even when it shakes the foundation of for instance the pharmaceutical world completely?
My lifestyle change
If you think this applies to only one world within the world, think again please. There are so many situations in everyday life where quick fixes are preferred over what demands more effort from us, and I’m here to say that this website isn’t a place where we settle. We dig deeper and we face whatever pops up, boldly even when it may scare the crap out of us at first.
My own main activities within preventive medicine currently are running, yoga (all of it, not only asanas) and mindfulness, a slow but sure overhaul of my food intake, and efforts to improve sleep. Some of you might think of the expression lifestyle change, which is exactly what it is.
It goes so much deeper
Supporting actions to mention are improved productivity as well as being in control of tasks related to home maintenance, as for instance meal planning, while rather dry sounding, usually is the foundation of good food present in the fridge and pantry.
I’ll be discussing ideas to run a household in the blog category Simplify, and hopefully it is slowly becoming evident just how intertwined everything is. A healthy mind supports a healthy body, and vice versa, but so does a healthy home support a healthy person, and vice versa.
And then I didn’t yet throw into the mix an individual, who works from home and has to be very aware and focussed to avoid cleaning as procrastination. Add working as a solo entrepreneur, also called solopreneur, and you have a fine cocktail of demands on your person to stay on top of things.
If personal growth sounds boring, perhaps it would help to see the whole chain of stuff that is connected, very much dependant on the rest? And how about establishing habits, creating routines to guide energy to where it is needed the most? I really don’t like cleaning, but I love a lovely home. My soul rests in a lovely home, not surrounded by chaos, and as it happens I’m a solopreneur, who works from home. Some days can be surprisingly tough.
Be your own guru
This website is my channel of throwing my passion out into the world. I burn for the topic of personal balance, and what it means to create and maintain balance. I’m not you, so it’s impossible to share a “3 Steps to a Perfect Life with Eternal Happiness”, because the only person it would ever apply to perfectly is me. And frankly, nothing is perfect, not even I, bahaha. (I may or may not have been serious on that one.)
I’m saying this partly so you remember to take away from my thoughts only what works for you, then leave the rest, but also to recall that there is no guru, who has the special key to all the eternal something anything everything.
No matter which path you choose to follow, fact is you will still have to tweak advice at least a bit to fit your own life. For this reason, I’m about to start offering chances to think deeper and question what you thought was static, rather than give you directions to follow, a manual full of quick fixes.
Finding balance
I find quick fixes so horribly boring and mediocre to be honest, and that sort of mental laziness makes me want to cry. Why? Because it seems like there’s no pride in the outcome, the quality of one’s actions, nor an interest in following through by truly finishing the process.
Of course ambition can be excessive, too, but when it comes to your own person I think the only rational decision is to define health for yourself, then act upon it whether healthcare professionals are standing next to you or not.
If health, preventive medicine, the mind-body connection, personal balance and growth are topics close to your heart, too, I’d love to have you comment. Thanks for joining me here!
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