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Physicians need to take care of themselves first
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Here we are — the end of summer. Labor Day has come and gone. It is time to put away your sandals and white bucks and hang up your bathing suits for another year.
Darrell E. White
Speaking of bathing suits, what have you been doing to not only keep yourself in bathing suit shape, but also to keep yourself healthy? There are an awful lot of patients out there who depend on you. In addition to setting a good example for your patients, if you are not taking care of your own health, you might not be able to take care of them as well as you might.
Exercise
Some of this is pretty simple and basic. My friend Greg Glassman, the founder of CrossFit, is on record as saying that health is nothing more than “[physical] fitness over time.” While I think this may be a little simplistic (as I will discuss in a moment), there is a lot of truth to this. Can your body move well? Are you strong? Do you have cardiovascular endurance? Whether we are in the clinic seeing patients or in the OR doing surgery, each one of us is basically pushing a desk. Not only that, the body positions we assume in the office and the OR are stressful on our joints, especially our backs and necks. Being physically fit inoculates us against some of the physical dangers inherent in having a sedentary occupation. My program of choice is CrossFit, but it does not matter whether you exercise in a CrossFit box, yoga studio, martial arts dojo or huge commercial fitness chain. What does matter is that you exercise. Start today.
Nutrition
We learn more and more every day about how important nutrition is when it comes to health. I like the word “nutrition” better than “diet” because nutrition is part of a strategy for health, whereas diet allows for the assumption that you will someday be done dieting. Nutrition forms the base of any pyramid of health. Again, Greg Glassman: “Keep [food] intake to levels that will support exercise but not body fat.” How do you determine if your present nutritional strategy is working? While body mass index (BMI) is in common use, a more accurate and actionable test is body fat percentage. If you are short and muscular, BMI will inaccurately peg you as unhealthy; in a similar fashion, if you are thin but not muscular, your body fat percentage may be quite high, and the low BMI may give you a false sense of security. Emerging thought on health points to body fat percentage as being a better predictor for health and health risk. Find out what yours is.
There are numerous types of nutritional programs that fulfill Glassman’s goal of supporting physical activity but not fat deposition. You are an eye doctor and a scientist. There is a program that will work for you, and there are probably ones that do not work as well. Pick one and get started. Give yourself a set period of time to evaluate your strategy and then adjust if you are not seeing results (a stronger, leaner, more energetic you). Start tonight at dinner.
Health predictors
It turns out that our medical colleagues are still pretty smart when it comes to keeping us healthy, if we give them a chance. Start with your family history. Is there something there that puts you at an increased risk for a medical calamity in your future? There are reasonable screening tests that can be used in an appropriate population. Do you have relatives who have had colon cancer? Get a colonoscopy. Breast cancer? Get regular mammograms and consider having genetic testing done to determine if you have a particularly dangerous gene. Whether or not there is a positive family history for heart disease, everyone should probably know the results of their lipid profile and C-reactive protein and seek an appropriate response with the help of their personal physician. Heck, you might even have dry eye syndrome, which is no fun. Have one of your colleagues take a look at your eyes. Get on the phone and make your appointments.
Overall well-being
Lastly, being healthy involves more than being lean and physically fit and having an enviable lab profile. A true definition of health includes well-being, being both emotionally and mentally healthy as well. It is critically important to identify and then seek out stuff that makes you happy. Activities that you cannot wait to get to (such as CrossFit for me) and people who make it impossible not to smile when you are with them — find these things. This is a problem for the medical community. The suicide rate among physicians is three or four times that of the lay population. Face it: We have stressful jobs, and the administrative burdens heaped upon us, as well as the “guilty until proven innocent” approach taken toward us by all regulatory agencies, are not making our professional lives any happier. If you are unable to find happiness in your life or if the thought of another day in practice fills you with dread, find someone to share that with. Programs such as “Taking Care of Our Own” at the University of North Carolina are there for just this kind of thing. Please do not ignore this and do not go it alone.
Here is the bottom line: You are important and special. You have a tough job and a lot of people depend on you to be at your best. Take the time to take care of yourself and to get and stay healthy. Practice purposeful nutrition. Go to the gym. Re-introduce yourself to your own doc and get in front of any medical risks you may have. Spend time with people who make you smile doing stuff that makes you happy.
Darrell E. White, MD, can be reached at SkyVision Centers, 2237 Crocker Road, Suite 100, Westlake, OH 44145; 440-892-3931; email: dwhite2@skyvisioncenters.com.
Disclosure: White is a consultant for Bausch + Lomb, Allergan, Nicox and Eyemaginations. He is on the speakers board for Bausch + Lomb and Allergan.