Real Life Wellness: What is YOUR next Step?

By Bill Hemmer
After 30 years of practice, I know one thing for sure. Everybody wants to look better, feel better and live longer. The problem is, how do you do that?

Everybody is different. All the latest research in health continues to prove there is no such thing as “normal”. You can even test identical twins and one twin would lose weight on a specific diet while the other one would gain weight. The latest saying in functional health care is your genetics loads the gun, your environment pulls the trigger. This is crazy! So how are you supposed to reach your goal of living a healthy life?

You have to become your own doctor.

I know what you’re thinking. How in the world can you do that? It takes thousands of dollars and hours to become a doctor. Yep. You are right. Been there, done that. What I mean is that you have to learn enough about your health to be able to make informed decisions about what you need to do next to move your health forward.

Everybody has the capacity to learn how to eat better, have a better attitude, socialize and move more effectively. These are the only four things you need to learn to live a healthy happy life. Our healthcare system over the last 80 years has slowly but surely taken away our ability to know the good from the bad in all four of these areas. When healthcare became a for profit business, they wanted to control the playing field. These businesses have stockholders and owners to be held accountable to. If you were in control, they couldn’t control the profit as well.

I believe the timing is right for you to take your health back. With premiums, deductibles and co-pays continuing to rise, you have more control than ever where you are going to spend your hard-earned money. If you learn to take care of yourself in those four areas, your likelihood of getting a disabling chronic disease, like diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease or severe arthritis continues to decrease.

Even if you are suffering with any or all of these chronic diseases, by working to improve all four areas of your life will have a positive impact on your future. Health miracles occur when you take control back in these four areas. I have literally had the privilege of watching this happen thousands of times. It never gets old.

So how do figure out which of the four areas you need to work on? Instinctively, you know already. The good Lord put inside each of us the ability to heal ourselves. If you sit down and simply take a health inventory and grade yourself on each of these four areas, eating, attitude, community and movement, it will become apparent which of the four you need to focus on right now.

Next week, let’s talk about what to do once you figured out your next step.