Skip to main content

Wellbeing, is mind, body and spirit at its best! Time for guided self-care.

 


Is wellbeing the ultimate goal for all of us? Pause! Think about it. Are we actually working against achieving it? Reasons: no time! Busy! Can’t help it! Who are we giving this excuse?

It’s time to turn around and make some drastic decision on disciplining ourselves, and taking care of our body, mind and spirit. Why hesitate to know more about self? Little more than what we did all this while.

Of the attention we give to know more about the technology and improve our personality and communication, a small percentage of time if we had given to the health of our body-mind, today the increasing statistics of lifestyle problems such as diabetes, hypertension, thyroid, high cholesterol, etc. would not have been so alarming.

For instance, Diabetes has already gained the status of a potential epidemic in India with more than 62 million diabetic individuals currently diagnosed with the disease. In 2000, India (31.7 million) topped the world with the highest number of people with diabetes mellitus followed by China (20.8 million) and the United States (17.7 million) in second and third place respectively. This trend shows more and more youngsters are becoming prey to these problems. Unless we build awareness and promote prevention at all levels - schools, colleges, corporate, among public, the concern will continue to be less addressed. Government, Community / associations, Corporate, health care sectors and education centres, all have to support this cause to strongly influence the behavioral changing process among people. Then, is the doctor responsible for health or illness?

Today, changing habit is no more an option. Every youngster is a potential customer to lifestyle disorders. Ideally for every one step taken forward, one has to take two steps backward...think...and progress. IQ is increasing EQ is diminishing. Most often, every development comes with a baggage of its negative impact. Technology, communication, transportation and development, each of these has its own impact on the health - mind, body and energy levels among people. Then who should be responsible for restoring health? Is it only health care providers?

In the name of convenience, we have conveniently ignored the basic need to know about ourselves better - lack of understanding the science of eating, science behind fitness / movement, power of sub conscious mind, etc. In our country, these were always a 'way of life' in the past. It was in our tradition. It was in our culture. Today, we are relearning these in the name of SCIENCE, EVIDENCE base or RATIONALE. We need proof to justify those that were practiced for thousands of years. Traditional science had lot of values that probably were lost eventually in the education system. Modern science has paved new path. If that's the only path people can relate to, then why not teach old science in modern style?

Government of India has pronounced formulation of National Policy on Integrative Medicine with a vision of taking up a leadership position in the global platform in this endeavour. This step has large applicability to lifestyle disorders like diabetes, hypertension, thyroid, PCOD, overweight, etc where medicine along with professionally guided lifestyle modification go hand in hand to find a long term solution. With this attempt, the better of two worlds (modern system of medicine and Eastern system of medicine) comes together for a long-lasting solution. This, largely provides benefits in reducing the dependency of long-term medication, reducing the iatrogenic deaths and reducing progression of risks and complications. How many of us love to live on medication -life long?

Time to wake up! Gear up! Bring in a difference to self and others! For every constructive development, let us be aware and alert on its destructive impact, be it technology, education or health care. While we focus on sustainable environment, sustainable energy, let's work towards sustainable health. Let us make our body a better place to live. Ultimately it’s our wellbeing, the only that matters.

-          -By Dr. Roopa Lakshmi (h.c), MD, WELLBEEING, Integrated Health Center, Bangalore

website: www.wellbeeing.in

 

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Do we need to go back to getting dirty and having fun for better Immunity?

International Overdoes Awareness.  Is over caring taking us away from our body's own immunity power?   The concept of immunity in traditional medicine came from the fact that human beings are born with a basic immune system which may be weak or strong. Through constant interaction with the microbes in our environment, and within our gut, we learn to fight against new microbes. This helps to strengthen the immune system. Over time, in the name of hygiene the excessive usage of insecticide, microbicidal agents, and lack of interaction with nature (plants, soil and external organisms) has gradually made our immune system weaker. Immunity, as we understand through modern medicine is the function of certain cells, enzymes and immunomodulatory chemicals that attack pathogens preventing them from disease creation. This concept of invasion from microorganisms on the biological defense system led to the development of antibiotics and vaccines. However, with the developments of auto-i...
Post a Comment
Read more

An Integrated approach for hypothyroidism: Is this approach a solution to avoid long-term medication?

  A case at WELLBEEING© Integrated Health Centre was promising to study further the synergistic effect of working together at the body-mind levels of an individual, rather than depending only on long-term thyroxine drug. This person had been diagnosed with primary hypothyroidism by independent medical and lab assessment, of which conservative management had failed to normalize the TSH, which showed a continued upward trend; this individual could not lose weight by conventional methods. The patient underwent the lifestyle modification with hypothyroid management program  at WELLBEEING. His weight was regularly checked, stress was relieved, and the TSH was done at the end of 6 weeks, both of which showed significant improvement. This report demonstrates that integrated management as an approach has shown to be effective in a case of autoimmune thyroiditis, and hopefully will reduce the dependency on the medications as well. However, this has encouraged the team to research fur...
Post a Comment
Read more

Even a single Doctor Transformation, means a lot to our mission! Happy Doctors Day!

Doctor's day! A good doctor’s comforting and reassuring words are sometimes more powerful than medicines.  A message from an Intern who did her dissertation at WELLBEEING during this Covid-19 lockdown...   - By Dr. Shreeka Prakash, MBBS, PGDHM (pursuing) After having completed my 5-year long MBBS along with a strenuous year of internship, I was inclined towards pursuing a specialization and continuing with my further studies. However there still existed some hesitancy to follow the conventional path that most of my fellow peers chose, considering the many issues faced by the post-graduates working in hospitals across the country. I was driven into the field of medicine due to the sheer love of learning how the human body functions. Though the basic human sciences and how various pathologies worked were well established for most of the human diseases; the treatment protocols undergo regular alterations to this date and some medications are still unconvincing. Indeed,...
Post a Comment
Read more