I Hate To Break It To Myself, But…

…..I have felt crummy for quite some time. That doesn’t mean I haven’t been living a great life and enjoying things. I still have fun because life’s too short. But I’ve been dragging my backside around through the muck and taking care of business with very little spring in my step. And at night, I can barely get through feeding the pig and the dogs before collapsing in a heap somewhere soft.

You know you’ve had it when you buy a wrap at the store and eat it in the car on the way home because you’re too tired to prepare anything, even yogurt and fruit, and you’re starving. You know it’s bad when you aren’t sure you have the energy to drive home after work, so you sit in your office for forty-five minutes, feeling tired and drained before you can face transportation. And when you can’t make it up the stairs to your bedroom and decide instead to pee in a jar and sleep on the couch….something is definitely off.

I can tell by the rumblings of some of my friends, and by the kids coming into my practice that fatigue and brain fog are at an all time high.

I can also tell you that I’ve lost patience with feeling crummy. I’ve lost patience enough that I’m willing to do the work to feel better. I’m also interested in sharing my story because I think I’m on the cusp of a breakthrough, and everyone needs to hear this.

We are breaking down. Not all of us. Some have found health, vitality and balance and others are constitutionally strong enough to handle the abuse. I’m strong as an ox. I’ve made it through all kinds of self-battery and assault and have always been able to rally and go, go, go….through partying in high school, all-nighters in college, medical school and residency training that encouraged us to push through exhaustion, raising kids, and through the belief that any kind of extreme self-care was thoroughly selfish and unnecessary. I believed our bodies were designed to handle everything I was throwing at mine, and any problems only meant I wasn’t pushing myself hard enough. I was ram tough and proud of it…..

…..until I couldn’t do it anymore.

Breaking down and having nothing left in the tank is the end result of days, and months or even years and decades of poor self-care and disordered living….and it is now an epidemic that is hitting people of all ages and all walks of life.

Theoretically, my training should have taught me how to fix people who don’t feel well. I’m also supposed to know a thing or two about staying healthy. I’ve mastered a few tricks, like how to pop in a nursemaid’s elbow and the diagnosis and treatment of strep throat but these days, it’s not enough.

General advice to eat well, drop a few vitamins and get enough sleep mean nothing in a world so out of whack that just about every industrial machine is working against us.

How bad is it? Really???

Well it’s bad enough that it’s no longer a question of if we’ll fall apart, but when. And the when is becoming – at younger and younger ages. As a pediatrician I can’t escape the sad fact and awareness that young children are hitting walls left and right. Middle schoolers and high schoolers are in crisis. Parents are at a loss and fatigued themselves. And when we come up for air, we vow to make changes that don’t always stick and rarely change the outlook much.

Many people talk about their health journey, and while it’s tempting to rush through it all here in one giant post chock full of pearls and what I consider to be straight up wisdom there are two problems with that.

The first is that you won’t probably hear me. You might say – oh yeah – but there won’t be much of an impact, and I really do want us all to feel better.

And the other is that I’m not 100 percent there yet.

I may not be able to evaluate some interventions well enough to even recommend them for a year or more. But I definitely have lift off.

The categories I have come to believe we need to consider for optimal health and well-being are:

1. Sleep, rest and restoration.
2. Food as medicine
3. Body movement: flexibility, strength and endurance
4. Rhythm, pace, attention and focus
5. Art, creativity and flow
6. Community, friendship, love and connection
7. Purpose, productivity and contribution.

As you move down the list, it starts with self care in the most basic sense. The lower categories are without a doubt key measures of living well, but it’s very hard to live there without a foundation of good health. And, as we are learning and can no longer escape: all of these categories are interdependent. Numbers 1-3 are necessary to get to 4-7, but 4-7 support good physical health and magnify the impact of 1-3.

Nothing I’m saying here is new. But what is new to me is that once you break down and fall apart, you need it all to be optimized in order to feel well; you can’t pick and choose. That’s why “trying” one new health recommendation is doomed to fail. One new thing is unlikely to give you rewards beyond the honeymoon phase.

It’s why medications have become crutches for so many, myself included. I don’t hesitate to help out with the right prescription. And I’m not against taking pills. Better living through chemistry is a thing. But so is better living through better living.

The first thing I need to say is not very nice but it’s true: no one is actually looking out for your health but you. Food manufacturers only care that you eat and drink as much of their product as possible. For pharmaceutical companies, disease represents an opportunity for profit. Your doctor is trained to treat illness, not to prevent it. And health care workers are spread ridiculously thin themselves. How could they know the first thing about living well? Teachers are teaching metrics to sleep deprived classrooms of kids nourished on sugar and artificial foods stripped of their nutritional content. Brains need proper fuel, not an excess of calories. Social media isn’t interested in real-life connection, and time outdoors has been reduced for children to short recesses and scheduled soccer games. The world is noisy, full of unwelcome distraction and it’s moving quickly. Rest is hard to come by, and feeling refreshed after sleep is for many a distant pipe dream.

Some of you have cracked the code and I’m all ears. What have you learned?

I’m emerging from my Covid cocoon ready to make what’s left of this life the best I can make it. That’s everyone’s goal whether we have the energy to go for it or not. I’m going to share as I figure this out and I’ll start with a book and a few housekeeping items.

Read this book:

Commit to eating only whole, fresh foods, in moderation and with minimal sugar and refined carbohydrate:

Spend time with people you love outside:

More, tomorrow because….

It’s time to enjoy this beautiful day!