Achieving "Wellness"

4 Things Your Body Wants You to Know

by Julia Westbrook.

Wellness is well within your grasp, as long as you know what you’re looking for.

“Wellness” is always the goal when it comes to health: Boost your mental well-being; feel great every day; relieve pain, symptoms, and stress! While the idea of wellness paints a pretty picture, for many it seems like nothing but a dream without a concrete path for achievement.

However, there’s good news: Wellness isn’t a myth. You just need the right definition and the right tools. We sat down with Gary Kaplan, DO, author of Total Recovery, and speaker at Prevention Magazine’s R3 Summit for wellness to learn how many of us are missing the boat when it comes to our health and what we can do to fix that.

Defining ‘Wellness’

Dr. Kaplan has a clear understanding of wellness, one that considers your unique situation, abilities, and disabilities. “Optimal wellness is about being able to engage in life fully,” says Dr. Kaplan.

“And you may still have some disability and you may still have some pain problems, but the fact is, you are at the absolute best health you can be, even with these things — so that you’re doing things that have meaning for you in life.”

Why Do We Miss the Boat?

When including our individual limitations, Dr. Kaplan creates a picture of wellness that is attainable. For instance, if running is meaningful to a person with arthritis, he or she can achieve the wellness to do so — but only with a plan that addresses, not ignores, his or her pain.

Dr. Kaplan explains that ignoring the signals that our bodies send out is the reason many people don’t hit their personal bests, even though the definition of wellness already includes our shortcomings. “So you’re taking lots of anti-inflammatory medications in order to push through an activity. When you’re doing that, you’re not listening to your body, and the other thing is you’re actually harming your body because regular use of the anti-inflammatory medications actually results in ulcers in the small intestine.”

“It’s about not pushing through,” he explains, “but paying attention.”

The No. 1 Thing You Can Do Today

The simple solution is then obvious, he says: Listen to your body. “We can step back and really design our lives such that we’re respectful of what we need and who we are.”

Of course, many of us are really bad at doing that. Dr. Kaplan blames a lifestyle that keeps us constantly bombarded with demands. “We’re connected 24/7,” he says. “One of the things I have people do is move their phones out of their bedroom so that bedtime is for sleep. Simple, easy. Recharge that phone in the hall, but not in the bedroom.”

Shutting off the bells and whistles gives you the opportunity to check in with yourself and your loved ones, strengthening your health and your relationships. “It’s a matter of unplugging and taking some time for quiet; taking some time to have a real connection time with your family and friends. We don’t do enough of that because we’re rushing around too much.” Without the pressures and distractions, you may finally hear what your body is trying to tell you.

Four Things Your Body Wants You to Know

Dr. Kaplan is a speaker at Prevention’s R3 Summit, a wellness weekend designed to help people revive, refresh, and reinvent their lives and their health.

“I’m really privileged and very excited to be attending the R3 program,” says Dr. Kaplan. “Most of my work is with people who have end-stage disease and have been sick for a very long time. I’m glad for the opportunity to explain to people that it doesn’t have to be this way: We can prevent many of the illnesses that we suffer from happening. So being able to get to people and keep them healthy is really a very exciting prospect for me.”

The R3 summit revolves around six pillars for wellness — Healthy Epicurean, Health, Beauty, Peak Performance, Mind-Body, and Happiness — four of which Dr. Kaplan stresses in his own practice and shared with us.

Peak Performance

“The thing you want to make sure you’re guarding is your sleep,” Dr. Kaplan says. “People think that they can get by on six hours of sleep. People can’t get by on six hours of sleep.”

He cites a study that reduced people’s sleep schedules from eight hours to six hours. “At the end of two weeks, everyone will tell you that they’re getting enough sleep,” he says. “However, if you measure performance in the people who are only getting six hours, their ability to focus, concentrate, their motor skills, reaction times are decreasing to the point that they’re actually performing at the level of being drunk.”

Mind-Body

“Meditation is not simply about relaxation; it’s really about brain rejuvenation,” Dr. Kaplan explains. “It helps improve resilience in the brain.”

It’s not just your yoga teacher who’s interested in meditation. Dr. Kaplan points out that the military is researching this age-old practice. “The military has been looking into this to see if they can improve decision making in the field and also prevent the occurrence of post-traumatic stress syndrome. This is hard science.”

Healthy Epicurean

Dr. Kaplan circles back on the idea that we’re not listening to ourselves, especially when it comes to what we eat. “If you’re eating foods that you shouldn’t be eating and you’re putting up with gas, bloating — this kind of low-grade discomfort — it’s telling us that there’s stuff brewing that needs to be addressed.”

“Helping people clean up their diets and address these early warning signs becomes extremely important. Pay attention to ourselves, listen to ourselves, and help us restore our health before we get to the point of being really sick.” (The first step? Embark on an elimination diet to find out what’s really bothering you.)

Health

You might want to think of weight loss as a secondary benefit of exercising because it’s your brain that really gets a workout. “Inflammation occurs in the brain anytime that there has been damage to nerve cells in the brain, and there is a wide range of things that can cause that damage,” he explains. “So focusing on the repair process, we know that exercise down-regulates the inflammatory cells of the central nervous system and actually helps regenerate brain tissue.”

Published date: October 7, 2014

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