You have probably read by now that stress-related diseases and conditions rank among the top contributors to our country’s healthcare expenses. Many sources suggest that up to 85 percent of all doctor’s-office visits are in some way tied to stress.

One reason for that: Most people don’t really understand the powerful ability stress has to decimate their health, or by what mechanisms, or what they can do about it.

Nobody teaches us that stuff. Which means that most of us have to learn it for ourselves — the hard way.

That was certainly true for me.  I’ve written at length about some of my more salient stress lessons: The time my eyelashes fell out; the time I got a stubborn rash on my face; the time I broke my own foot stomping in frustration; the countless times I struggled to sleep, or felt my inner taskmaster turn into a bullying abuser of every biochemical and neurological system it could lay its nasty hands on.

I’ve also written quite a bit about the strategies I’ve used (and still rely on constantly) to reduce, manage, and offset stress. I’ll share some of those with you in a moment. But first, I want to talk about juju.

“Juju” is not a scientific term. It’s a word (of West African origin) that refers to a special sort of magic — a power believed to be associated with certain objects and conferred upon those who own or touch them.

[callout]Good juju breeds more good juju. This multichallenged world can never have too much of that.[/callout]

According to the shamanistic traditions that believe in such things, there’s good juju and bad juju. You definitely want the good kind, which is thought to be protective, energizing, and happiness-bringing. The bad kind, well, it’s bad. So let’s stick with the good kind for now.

In modern-day slang, “juju” has taken on a broader, more secular meaning. It typically refers to a sort of positive, ineffable, magnetic power — an energy, feeling, or vibe that any of us can create, give off, or experience (in some cases without even realizing it). But when it’s not there, or when bad juju is present, we tend to feel drained. We sense that things are off.

Here’s what I’ve noticed about juju, healthwise: A decline in good juju both signals and compounds the decline of resiliency, as well as the onset of body-damaging stress.

When you are stressed out, your juju is one of the first things to go. You feel less positive and energetic. You are less open and receptive, more reactive and critical about everything around you. And the less good juju you have, the more vulnerable you become to stress’s physiological effects.

[callout]The less good juju you have, the more vulnerable you become to stress’s physiological effects.[/callout]

Feeling stressed out and run down leaves you at the mercy of cravings, temptation, and bad decisions — about what you eat and drink, whether or not you exercise, how much TV you watch, when (or if) you leave work, when you go to bed, and so on.

On the one hand, we’re inclined to think we deserve indulgent and unhealthy things as “rewards” or consolation for what we are enduring (or as an antidote to what we are feeling), even when those things (sugar, fried foods, alcohol, late nights, serial-TV binges) tend to make things much harder on our bodies and minds.

And on the other hand, we may feel that we deserve punishment for somehow not being good enough (because if only we and our lives were perfect, we wouldn’t be having all these challenges, right?).

Carrying this sense of shame can lead us to deny ourselves access to good nutrition, activity, rest, breaks, connection, sleep, sacred space, and self-care of any kind.

Meanwhile, a distracted, reactive, or urgent state of mind can also lead to rushing, carelessness, reduced body consciousness, tunnel vision, and accidents. It’s when you’re most stressed out and moving too fast that you’re also most likely to stub your toe, trip and fall, strain your back, break a glass, slam your finger in a drawer, cut yourself shaving, or pull out into traffic without looking.

Perhaps worst of all, feeling freaked out can lead us to distance ourselves from, snap at, or avoid the very people who might otherwise help us access the perspective, support, and comfort we need to recognize and break out of our stress cycle. We steer clear of precisely the people who might encourage us to pause, who might remind us what really matters, who might empower us to feel better.

As noted, all of these problem dynamics tend to be the cause as well as the result of a reduction in good juju, and thus, instigators of a vicious cycle in which your juju is continuously depleted.

So, how can you turn things around? How can you reclaim your healthy juju and get your vitality back on track?

• First, know what breaks you down. Lack of rest and sleep; lack of nutrition and hydration; lack of movement; lack of exposure to nature and sunshine; lack of connection to loved ones; lack of recovery time and margins in your schedule; lack of purpose-centered decision-making. All these things are powerful juju killers, and in combination, they are particularly devastating.
• Second, recognize that a state of chronic stress and reactivity breeds body problems. The cortisol and adrenaline overload triggered by low-juju living overstimulates the sympathetic nervous system, producing inflammation, hormone imbalances, digestive troubles, skin eruptions, tooth grinding, headaches, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and more.  A lack of rest, relaxation, laughter, human connection, physical touch, and healthy pleasures further depresses the parasympathetic nervous system, undermining our immune and healing response, reducing the release of anti-aging sex hormones and feel-good neurotransmitters, and leaving us vulnerable to depression.
• Third, decide that you will make juju defense a priority. That means learning to see self-destructive tendencies when they crop up, and before they take you down. It means noticing when your juju is running low. It also means regarding certain daily, self-sustaining acts — such as eating healthy meals, drinking water, taking your vitamins, bonding with your partner, meditating, and getting enough activity and sleep — to be inalienable rights.
• Fourth, accept that you, and only you, can be responsible for your well-being. Other people’s expectations of you may always be something other than what you feel inspired to give, or capable of sustainably giving. And that tension can be the root of so much miserable self-shredding. If you feel you can’t possibly do, deliver, or produce what others are needing or wanting of you, learn to challenge your thoughts (Byron Katie is my favorite expert on that topic). Challenge your shame (reading Brene Brown’s Daring Greatly was hugely helpful for me). Become a steward of your juju, and a student of juju-related science and psychology.

Above all, know that your juju matters — not just to you, but to everybody around you. Because good juju breeds more good juju. And this multichallenged world of ours can never have too much of that.

I finally got around to filming this little video while spending the weekend with my pal Jacque Fletcher at her family cabin (so fun!).

I was getting ready to show her the magic of my “Quick-Trick-Snack-Stack” solution for breakfast anyway, and we figured: Why not preserve it for posterity and share it with the world?

I love that Jacque is still rocking her PJs and I have a serious case of bed-head.

You can get a more detailed set of recipe instructions for this meal in the slide show that accompanies my Huffington Post blog on the same topic (last I checked, it had gotten close to a half-million page views there). But you’ll definitely get the gist just from watching this video, too.

Hope you find it helpful. Please share if you do!

We’ll be filming a more “pro” version of this for Experience Life magazine soon (it’s included as a “Learn This Skill” item in our April issue). But if you don’t mind quick-and-dirty production values, this video will serve.

Founding editor Pilar Gerasimo invented this speedy-meal solution (a great gluten-free breakfast or mini-meal) ages ago, then shared it as a slideshow while she was at Huffington Post. It got more than 300,000 page views in the course of a couple weeks. She thinks that’s because so many people are desperate for healthy, whole-food meal and snack solutions, especially for busy mornings.

The “quick trick” name references the stackable containers that make it fast and easy to assemble — and also cribs a fave line from Dr. Seuss’s Fox In Sox. You can use any combo of fruit/berries, nuts and seeds and milk substance you like (see the slideshow copy for copious suggestions and step-by-step how-tos). Pilar likes to switch up my ingredients based on mood and season.

Get the Recipe >>

So, the guy says to his doctor, “Doc, it hurts when I do this.” And the doctor says to the guy, “Then don’t do that.” 

OK, it’s silly, old-fashioned humor (attributed alternately to Henny Youngman and to the 1920s vaudeville duo Smith and Dale). But you know what’s even sillier, and arguably more old-fashioned? The exchanges that happen in many real-life doctors’ offices today.

Too often, in response to all sorts of health complaints, we’re likely to be given the same pat advice: “Take this drug. Carry on as usual, and then come back when it gets worse.”

The result? According to a 2013 Mayo Clinic report, about 70 percent of Americans are on at least one prescription drug. More than half take two. And 20 percent of patients take five or more.

The vast majority of those pre-scriptions are for antidepressants, painkillers, antacids, antibiotics, and cholesterol- and blood-pressure-lowering medications.

Most are designed to alleviate the symptoms of lifestyle-related conditions, but don’t in any way address their causes, or effectively offset their damage.

Our doctors are not the only ones to blame for our overmedication. As consumers, we’ve been trained by pharmaceutical advertising to go looking for symptom-suppressing drugs, and even to insist on them, rather than taking ownership of our bodies’ well-being.

We’ve been taught to think of a great many maladies (from dry eyes to social anxiety) as “diseases.”

We’ve bought into the idea that popping a pill will return us to health — or at least allow us to continue living pretty much the way we have been, but without quite as much discomfort.

To some extent, this is understandable. None of us likes to suffer. None of us likes to worry. Most of us dread having to significantly change our lives.

So if a medication can mask our symptoms, ease our pain, or take our troublesome cholesterol or blood-pressure reading down a notch, it’s hard not to think that’s a pretty good idea.

The problem is, just because a symptom fades doesn’t mean that its underlying cause has vanished.

Think about what happens when you burn something in the oven. Your kitchen smoke alarm goes off. It is painfully loud and very annoying. So you disconnect the alarm. The infernal beeping stops.

But that doesn’t mean the problem is handled, right? So the very next thing you do, presumably, is to turn off the oven and deal with the charred pizza, or whatever’s smoking away in there.

As you’re opening the windows and clearing the burnt-food fumes out of your kitchen, you might also take a moment to contemplate what went wrong. Maybe you set the oven for the wrong temperature? You forgot to set the timer? You overloaded the pizza with cheese?

Once you know the source of the problem, you might make an effort to avoid repeating it in the future. If you’re really savvy, after the soot clears, you might also take a moment to reconnect your smoke alarm.

This is how we’d do well to relate to a lot more of our health complaints. A symptom would draw our attention to an underlying problem (e.g., an imbalance, weakness, or source of inflammation). We’d be eager to investigate and address that problem right away. And if we chose to take a symptom-quieting drug, we’d do so with the goal of muting the “alarm” just long enough to take care of whatever underlying issue had triggered it in the first place.

But in reality, that’s rarely the way things work. Instead, we experience a symptom, suppress it as quickly as possible, and then forge along for years with our ovens going full blast and acrid smoke filling up our homes.

As more alarms go off, we just keep getting more prescriptions. Maybe we don an industrial-strength gas mask and earplugs so we can tolerate the noise and stench.

This takes some of the fun out of our lives. We experience side effects, interactions, a loss of pleasure and vitality. Meanwhile, it’s causing some real damage to our bodily homes. And if another fire were to start, say in the basement or attic, we might not even know about it until it was too late.

Obviously, that’s not a great plan. So, what’s a healthier way of relating to our symptoms as they pop up?

• Recognize that your body’s symptom-creation strategy is pretty brilliant. It tends to proceed from minor alarms (rashes, fatigue, irritation, discomfort, slightly out-of-range lab-test results) to major ones (debilitating pain, alarm-ing readings, systemic dysfunction, tissue damage, loss of function, organ failure). The sooner you choose to pay attention to the small warning signs, the less need your body will have to pull out its bigger guns.
• Stop playing “whack-a-mole.” Know that a symptom occurring in one area of the body (e.g., your lungs, joints, or skin) might well be originating with a disturbance elsewhere (e.g., your gastrointestinal system). Unless the underlying challenge is addressed, suppressing a given symptom may simply result in new and different symptoms popping up in new and different locations.
• Get into the habit of asking why. Why is your digestion not working right? Why is your skin acting up? Why are you experiencing pain or fatigue? Why are your labs off? Chances are good it has something to do with the way you are living — your nutrition, activity, sleep, stress, environment, or sense of connection. And most prescription meds are not going to address those core issues. So if your doctor isn’t willing or able to help you sort out the root causes of your maladies, find another health professional who is. If you aren’t willing to consider how lifestyle factors are playing into your problems, recognize that you are playing fast and loose with your health.
• Investigate the prescriptions you are taking now. Find out how they work, and what normal bodily mechanisms they interrupt. Statins, for example, force cholesterol down, but they don’t address the reasons the body is overproducing cholesterol in the first place (typically, chronic inflammation caused by lifestyle factors). Plus, they can have a range of health-and-fitness-sacrificing side effects. The same is true of a great many prescription medications. Make a point of knowing yours.

There are certainly good reasons to take prescription medications now and then. They can help knock back infections, spare us misery, and buy us time and focus for dealing with underlying health issues.

But, when relied on excessively and over the long haul, symptom-suppressing strategies can do more harm than good, triggering new disorders and depleting our overall health and resilience in the process.

Whenever we go to the doctor with a lifestyle-related symptom, what we’re really saying is this: Doc, it hurts when I live this way. And the solution, while not quite as simple as the old-joke punch line, is just about as straightforward.

It is fitting, perhaps, that one of Experience Life’s most popular departments — a section dedicated to real-life healthy transformations — has reinvented itself a few times over the years.

For a long time, it was called “Success Stories.” Next (taking on an empowered, first-person voice), it became “How I Did It.” Then, for a brief period, it adopted a shift to the continuative tense, becoming “How I’m Doing It” — a moniker that put a nice emphasis on process versus outcome, but that always struck me as a bit . . . awkward.

So last spring, I invited the team to come up with some new alternatives. We finally settled on “My Turnaround”. It’s a title that reflects the power of a decision point — not as a final destination, but as the conclusion of one leg of a journey and the beginning of a new one.

[callout]Change happens when people are willing to embrace it.[/callout]

For all its title changes, one thing I have consistently loved about this section is its ability to translate some underbroadcasted truths about healthy lifestyle change. Here are a few:

• Change happens when people are willing to embrace it. In many cases, this is only after decades of pain, discomfort, and denial — which may in turn be followed by equally long periods of thinking about it, preparing, and “trying.” While it’s possible to inspire others to consider change, or to nudge them forward by creative and supportive means, it is generally not possible to nag or shame somebody into making change until he or she is good and ready. That readiness is produced by intensely personal factors — factors that are difficult to control, manufacture, or predict.
• Change is rarely a linear process. We are prone to lurching forward and falling back. As psychologist James O. Prochaska, PhD, explains, even after we have begun a phase of committed action, any of us can easily cycle back into a “contemplation” or “preparation” phase, particularly if we experience some kind of trauma, or run short of energy, encouragement, or resources. (For more on all that, see our feature “The Stages of Change”.)
• Readiness to change is often triggered by notable experiences or events. Sometimes these are catastrophes: medical emergencies, socially painful “rock bottom” moments, or profound personal losses. Other times, they are positive catalysts: latching onto inspiring role models or enticing new goals; connecting with a deeper sense of purpose; wanting to be a better partner or parent; being offered the gift of helpful information or support at just the moment it is needed.
• There are many gateways to healthy change. For some people, a newfound love of activity inspires healthy changes in eating. For others, a change in eating delivers the energy that allows them to become more active. For others, a reduction in stress or improvement in sleep allows them to reclaim more conscious choices and healthier patterns in many other areas of their lives. For others, a big “aha” about something completely unrelated to health — their career, their relationship, their home situation — results in a whole-life overhaul. It almost doesn’t matter where you begin. All these roads lead to the same destination: a healthier, happier life.

That brings me to one of the other fascinating things about change: One positive shift almost inevitably begets others. And not just for us as individuals. Each time one of us experiences a breakthrough, those around us benefit — or at least find ourselves triggered to grow in new ways.

The truth is, change doesn’t always feel great. It can be scary, intense, challenging. It can strain relationships. It can upset stasis and equilibrium. It can invite criticism and complaint.

Ultimately, though, when any of us grows in the direction of our dreams, we fulfill a sacred contract. We rise to a Hero’s Journey challenge. That may mean confronting dark forests and dragons. It may mean doing things that family, friends, and colleagues don’t approve of, or even understand. It may mean traveling unmarked paths — the kind that are “less traveled,” primarily because they aren’t, at first glance, terribly appealing.

And that’s a big part of why I like to remind people: “Being Healthy Is a Revolutionary Act.” Healthy self-change is a powerful thing. So if you’re embarking on it, or even thinking about it, give yourself some credit. Be cool with where you are. Take the next clear step. And just keep going.

When we think about “health basics,” we think about things like diet, exercise, and washing our hands after we sneeze.

Needless to say, there’s a bit more to it than that. Yes, nutrition, activity, and hygiene matter hugely. But so do stress, mental and emotional patterns, socio-economic and environmental factors, cultural norms, and a great deal more. Which is why Experience Life has always covered such a diverse range of topics (as evidenced by our “Game Changers”).

One often-overlooked subject that we’ve taken a particular interest in over the years is media literacy.

Wikipedia describes media literacy as “a repertoire of competencies that enable people to analyze, evaluate, and create messages in a wide variety of media modes, genres, and formats.”

Why does this matter to health seekers? Because as consumers of information, most of what we know about health — or think we know — we “read” (and watch, listen to, and experience) via a wide variety of media channels.

Research suggests that how we consume media can have a profound effect not just on our perceptions of reality, but also on our health, happiness, and general sense of well-being.

That’s why we’ve written, for example, about the value of consciously evaluating and refining your media intake (“Media-Diet Makeover,” April 2006).

It’s why we offered advice on making sense of the confounding science in popular news stories (“A Study In Confusion,” December 2007).

And this past May, it’s why we published a fascinating feature called “Decoding Health Media.” That feature explored, among other things, how profit-driven interests may skew scientific research and manipulate public opinion to their advantage. (If you ever want to know more about that, I encourage you to read John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton’s classic books: Toxic Sludge Is Good for You: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry; and Trust Us, We’re Experts: How Industry Manipulates Science and Gambles with Your Future.)

As our media landscape grows ever more complicated, of course, the competencies involved with media literacy do, too.

Today, we’re getting more of our health information digitally — not just from news and science outlets, but also from blogs, apps, social-media streams, and a wide assortment of minimally edited “content aggregators.”

[callout]Increasingly, we scan rather than read. We may “like,” share, and comment on media we’ve barely processed.[/callout]

Increasingly, we scan rather than read. We may “like,” share, and comment on media we’ve barely processed. And we may find ourselves overwhelmed by the conflicting data and opinions with which we’re bombarded on a daily basis.

With this in mind, the team here at Experience Life has developed a growing curiosity about the influence all these fast-morphing digital streams are having on our health-related perceptions.

Here are just a few of the questions we’ve been knocking around:

• To what extent does being a heavy user of social media affect our health, happiness, and general mindset?
• How do the opinions we see online affect our beliefs and behaviors? How do online forums and communities influence us, for better or for worse?
• How does the quest for “virality” and the fight for social traffic influence what gets reported and promoted online, and how?
• Given the ease with which online identities can be disguised, multiplied, and automated, how much confidence can we have that what appear to be social-media “movements” really are?
• How can consumers of digital health media know when they are being misled? How can we all make more discerning choices about what and whom to trust?

Our interest in all these questions was intensified recently, when we saw an unusual stream of social-media activity related to one of our covers. What we discovered was illuminating — and great fodder for an investigative feature we’ve now got under way. We look forward to sharing it in an upcoming issue.

Recently, I asked a friend about a little pink area on her shoulder. It looked like a rash.

“Oh, yuck,” she said, pulling at her shirt to cover the spot. “That’s my psoriasis. It’s awful. And it’s spreading.”

“Do you know what’s causing it?” I asked.

“No,” she said dejectedly. “They don’t know. But they say I’ll have it for the rest of my life, and it will probably just get worse. Eventually it could cover my whole body.”

“Yikes,” I said. “Can I see that spot again?”

She consented. After peering at it a minute, I said, “You know, that looks a lot like the weird spots I had on my torso when I had an overgrowth of candida. Has anybody checked you for anything like that yet?”

As it turned out, nobody had really checked her for anything. No labs had been run. There’d been no investigation of her other health complaints (like her itchy ears and throat, or her flaky scalp — all classic signs of yeast overgrowth). No evaluation of her health history, diet, or lifestyle.

Her doctors (she’d seen two) had just looked at the spot, diagnosed it as psoriasis, and proclaimed it incurable.

Then they had given her the bad “incurable” news and sent her home with a prescription for some cream to help sooth the symptoms. Other than that, they just couldn’t offer her much else in the way of help, or hope.

Now my friend had a half dozen of these little spots scattered across her upper body, and some itchy, raised flaky patches behind her ears. As her doctor had predicted, the problem seemed to be getting worse.

Her last doctor had told her that when it got bad enough, there were other drugs he could prescribe — immune-system suppressants like Humira and methotrexate. But because they carry life-threatening risks and serious side effects, he thought it would be better to wait.

Um . . . yeah.

I thought it might be better for her to go see a doctor who had more familiarity with how rashes express underlying inflammation and immune-system irritation in the body, and with how eliminating the root cause of that inflammation and irritation generally gets rid of the rash, too.

So she did. Her new doc did an in-depth investigation of her various health complaints and ran some labs to find out what else might be going on in her body. Those labs revealed she did, indeed, have an overgrowth of candida, among other imbalances in her microflora. She also had food intolerances and nutritional deficiencies.

Her doctor prescribed a round of antifungal medication, some dietary and lifestyle adjustments, supplemental fatty acids, and a probiotic to get her microbiome back in balance.

Within days, the rash was receding. Within two weeks, it was gone. No more “incurable lifelong psoriasis.”

Bonus: She felt better than she had in years.

Now, it’s important to point out that my friend’s rash could have been caused by all sorts of things. My lucky guess was less the result of my knowing “the answer” than my willingness to pursue a question — What might be causing this? — and believing that there was an answer.

I am not a doctor. I am not qualified to offer “medical” advice of any kind. But I am qualified to ask questions, to be both curious and knowledgeable about what is going on in my body, and to go in search of information that might help me better understand the dynamics behind my health concerns.

Revolutionary Act No. 7 — “Practice Medicine Without a License” — is not a suggestion to avoid seeking professional medical help, or to practice reckless acts of self-medication. It’s certainly not an expression of disrespect for the education, judgment, and practice of licensed medical professionals.

Rather, it’s an invitation into a mindset of root-cause inquiry. It’s an encouragement to advocate for your own health and well-being.

Here are some ways you can do that:

Regard any problematic symptoms you are experiencing as your body’s call for help and healthy change. Honor the powerful role you play in creating the conditions for your own health and healing.

• Make a list of all the symptoms you experience, noting when they came on and when they tend to get better and worse. Look for patterns and connections.
• Consider an elimination diet (removing and methodically reintroducing common food irritants) to identify potential food intolerances.
• Recognize that most physicians, while highly trained in dealing with infectious diseases and trauma, receive only limited training in the lifestyle-driven conditions that most frequently send us into their offices. Be prepared to seek out second or third opinions from health professionals who have received additional training.
• Know that diverse medical complaints — headaches, skin conditions, digestive distress — can all stem from a single root cause. A leaky or inflamed gut, for example, can provoke rashes, fatigue, asthma, mood imbalances, and more.
• Explore the biological dynamics and interconnected systems that drive inflammation, imbalance, and disease. I like Dr. Jeffrey Bland’s book The Disease Delusion, and Dr. Thomas Sult’s book, Just Be Well. Also see the “Revolutionary Reading” suggestions at right.
• Use discernment in researching your conditions online. Avoid pages that push a lot of products rather than offering thoughtful information and referencing scientific research. See “Web Resources for ‘Root-Cause’ Health Info” under “Revolutionary Reading” at right.
• Ask your doctor about lab testing (e.g., blood, urine, stool) for any unresolved conditions. Many labs are also now available on a direct-to-consumer basis. Ask a qualified health professional to help guide you in interpreting your results, and ask questions about anything you don’t understand.
• If you get overwhelmed or confused, refocus your efforts on the essential foundations of health: Eat a whole-foods diet with a balance of proteins, healthy fats, and brightly colored vegetables; drink a lot of pure water; minimize your intake of sugar, flour, alcohol, caffeine, and artificial sweeteners; avoid fast food, junk food, and processed foods as much as possible; create space for movement, sleep, and relaxation.

These steps alone will increase your body’s resilience and help you feel more empowered to take additional steps when you are ready.

Above all, remember that the most powerful tools for healing most chronic health problems lie not in magic-bullet treatments, but in the kinds of ongoing daily lifestyle “treatments” that only we, as individuals, can administer.

Knowledgeable health pros realize this. They are there to help us access the support we need — not just to quell current symptoms, but also to get and stay healthy for the long haul. That’s the kind of medicine we’d all do well to practice more often.

My job Has some sweet perks. A few weeks back, it gave me the opportunity to attend a fascinating weeklong symposium presented by the Institute for Functional Medicine: “Applying Functional Medicine in Clinical Practice.”

Imagine, if you will, close to 500 conventionally trained physicians (and me) packed into a huge conference room. Together, from morning to evening, we churned through a huge and illuminating curriculum — one that virtually no medical doctors (and even fewer of us comparative literature majors) ever learn in school.

It was all about the art and science of “upstream medicine” — medicine that addresses the root causes of common health conditions and diseases rather than simply treating their “downstream” symptoms. And it was announced at the outset of the conference that the Cleveland Clinic would, this fall, be opening a Center for Functional Medicine at its primary campus.

Over the course of the week, through lectures, case studies, and interactive exercises, we learned how to take a patient’s in-depth health history, map it onto a structured timeline, and then overlay their health challenges onto a matrix that included not just physical factors but also mental, emotional, social, and spiritual considerations.

The functional-medicine timeline helped us capture and connect the key antecedents, triggers, and mediators of various health issues — everything from genetics, birth experience, and antibiotic use to lifestyle factors, traumas, and toxic exposures.

Plotting all those events onto a visual continuum helped us understand the stories of patients’ lives, and coherently relate those stories back in a way that helped them better understand the likely evolution of their present-day complaints.

The functional-medicine matrix, meanwhile, helped reveal the key areas in which the patient’s health challenges were distributed. It helped us see how many apparently disconnected issues might in fact be related, and how they might be most effectively addressed.

What was fascinating to me, even as a non-doctor, was how looking at health complaints through this lens helped reveal the potential root causes of so many befuddling problems. Not just everyday complaints like low energy, digestive troubles, joint pain, and congestion, but also many scary, complex, and difficult-to-treat diseases like rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel, and Parkinson’s.

[callout]Looking at health complaints through this lens helped reveal the potential root causes of so many befuddling problems.[/callout]

We learned the underlying biochemical triggers and mechanisms by which such diseases establish and express themselves, and we learned about lifestyle and medical interventions that can ameliorate or eliminate them entirely.

Needless to say, I came home full of article ideas, and more lit up than ever about what we do here at Experience Life — namely, helping people make the kinds of changes that can transform not just their health, but their lives.

Speaking of which, I’m also very excited about another project we’re working on with renowned obesity expert David Ludwig, MD.

We’ve relied on Dr. Ludwig (a professor at both Harvard Medical School and Harvard School of Public Health) as an expert source for many years. And now we’re helping him recruit participants for a pilot program he’s doing.

It’s an evolution of the peer-reviewed research Dr. Ludwig has published in leading medical journals, and also an exploration of the hypothesis he outlined in a New York Times piece, “Always Hungry? Here’s Why” (May 16, 2014).

That piece, which went superviral, outlined emerging thinking on why it may not be overeating that makes us fat, but rather having “hungry fat”  (fat overstimulated by hormones) that makes us overeat. A sort of vicious cycle that’s hard to break on conventional, low-calorie diets.

The pilot program is focused on healthy, sustainable weight loss, and I’m happy to say that it’s nicely aligned with the whole-foods-based nutrition philosophies of Experience Life magazine and of our parent organization, Life Time — The Healthy Way of Life Company.

If you are interested in participating in the pilot program, check out “The Weight-Loss Project With Dr. David Ludwig” for more info.

In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this issue, and come away with lots of ideas for how you can refuel, reboot, and re-energize yourself for a healthy, happy winter season.

There’s something about illness and injury that messes not just with your body, but with your whole sense of identity. And the longer and more profoundly you’re oppressed by physical limitations, the more vulnerable and disempowered you can feel.

If you throw your back out or break your leg, you’ll immediately experience the reality shift that comes with significant physical limitation. And if you’ve ever suffered a high fever or a bout of food poisoning, you know that’s all it takes to turn a confident and competent adult into a helpless, whimpering child.

Any acute illness or injury can smack you down in ways that temporarily mess with your head. But with a chronic illness or condition — type 2 diabetes, heart disease, cancer, depression, irritable bowel, psoriasis, any autoimmune problem — the effect is more nuanced, and in some ways, more diabolical.

It’s like a dysmorphic disorder in which you come to see and feel yourself as altered, often in disturbing ways. Being ill can make you feel like damaged goods. It can limit your productivity and capacity to contribute and accomplish what you normally do. It can make you more vulnerable and dependent on others for help, support, and understanding.

In some very real ways, being even marginally unwell for a period of time — or just receiving a medical diagnosis — can radically change how you show up in the world.

But perhaps the bigger issue is that any illness requiring ongoing medical intervention can easily turn you from a person into a “patient.” And once you become a ward of the healthcare system, it takes a conscious effort to avoid being assimilated by it.

Suddenly, you are surrounded by busy and authoritative experts who relate to you primarily on the basis of “what’s wrong with you.” They dole out clinical descriptions, diagnoses, and prescriptions. They tell you where and when to show up for examinations and procedures. You get buried in paperwork, records, billing codes.

At best, it’s bewildering and exhausting. At worst, it’s dehumanizing.

If you’re lucky, you’ll get good counsel on how to minimize your symptoms, and perhaps even address their underlying cause (or causes).

And if you’re not so lucky? You may be told that there is no known cause, no known cure, and that you’ll just have to “live with your disease” for the rest of your life (which may or may not be true).

Either way, you may have to submit to ongoing appointment schedules, dosing regimens, even recurrent surgeries. You may wind up dealing with side effects and lifestyle limitations.

And you will almost certainly be faced with the challenge of retaining  your identity as a fundamentally vital and resilient person (who happens to be dealing with a health issue), rather than as a victim of your illness.

Last year, we did a piece (“A Healthier Way to Fight Cancer,” May 2013) that explained how progressive cancer experts are now putting their focus not just on eradicating tumors, but on adjusting the biological “terrain” that produced those tumors in the first place. They are also paying close attention to the lifestyle landscape in which healing and recovery will occur.

Even as these integrative physicians wage a conventional-medicine battle on cancerous growths, they also do everything in their power to optimize the health of their patients’ biochemistry, and to amplify the resilience of their organs, tissues, and immune systems.

I think that’s a helpful way of regarding not just cancer, but virtually all health challenges. Rather than simply attacking the evident “problem,” we can look at the underlying challenges and circumstances that might have allowed the problem to flourish, and explore multiple ways of encouraging it to retreat.

We can put attention on ourselves as whole people, not just as sufferers of a given condition. We can redefine our role from disempowered patient to proactive self-healer.

We can look for ways to not only recover from whatever currently ails us, but also to reclaim the highest level of vitality possible.

So, how do you do that? Here are a few essentials:

• Respect your body’s wisdom. Even in the face of a health crisis, consider how much within your body is still working remarkably well. Appreciate the intelligence of your innate signaling and healing systems. Ask your body what it’s trying to tell you, and then listen. Assume that your body very much wants to be healthy, that it is capable of healing, and that it is seeking your attention and collaboration in recovery. If your body is complaining about how you’re treating it, or resisting doing what you’re asking it to do, or simply shutting down certain systems for repairs, trust that it might very well have its reasons.
• Insist on a partnership with your healthcare team. Seek out experts who share your interest in optimal health and respect your role as the chief steward of it. Make sure they understand that while you need and respect their expertise, you intend to be a driver, not a passenger, on this voyage. Ask questions. Take notes. Seek out deeper information about the potential root causes or exacerbating triggers in your health challenges. Find out what you can do about them. Investigate your treatment options (see suggested resources at right), and explore how you can support conventional strategies with integrative- and functional-medicine modalities. If you are dealing with multiple healthcare professionals, make sure they know about each other, and ask them to help you coordinate your care.
• Be an active participant in your own well-being. Be willing to shift your lifestyle and make adjustments in your nutrition, stress, sleep, self-care, and daily rhythms. Even if those factors weren’t necessarily causal in your illness, recognize that they can be essential to your health reclamation. Healing does not happen in a vacuum. Your nutritional status, hormonal balance, body composition, organ reserves, and stress level can all make or break your body’s capacity to mount a solid immune and healing response. Be determined to do everything in your power to support your body’s resilience, and to come out the other side of your illness healthier than you were before. Whether you are dealing with a short-term flare-up or a lingering illness, your health challenge is, for now, a part of your life. It shapes your current reality. But it doesn’t have to define your identity. And it may not be all bad. Look for ways your present circumstances can amplify rather than diminish your commitment to your own well-being, and you may just discover a profound gift at the center of your health struggle.

It’s often said that we take our health for granted right up to the moment we become ill or injured. And I think that’s true. We humans are inclined to take a lot of important things for granted until they are threatened or lost.

What’s weird about our relationship with our health, though, is that almost as soon as it begins to falter (as the predictable result of neglect), we proceed directly from taking it for granted to simply rejecting our responsibility for it.

Rather than re-declaring our ownership and jumping into corrective action (“Gads, it appears I have left this valuable vessel unmaintained and on autopilot for far too long! I shall reclaim command of it at once!”), we wring our hands and proclaim helplessness (“Eek, this darn thing isn’t working right! Somebody, fix it, please!”).

I don’t mean to ridicule or blame the victim here. Certainly, there are illnesses and injuries that can come upon any of us, unbidden, and over which we have little or no control. And there are certainly people living in such desperate, entrenched conditions of poverty or violence that their choices are tragically limited.

So yes, in some cases, there really is little to do but manage a given health challenge or injury with as much consciousness and self-compassion as we can muster. But here in the United States, where chronic lifestyle-related conditions account for the vast majority of our medical interventions and expenses, such scenarios tend to be the exception, and not the rule.

The rule — the culturally defined norm — has been for us to chronically abuse our bodies. We simultaneously stuff and starve them with nutritionally devoid, metabolism-disrupting foods and beverages. We dump them onto chairs or sofas and forget about them for hours or days at a time. We flood them with stress-induced hormones and pro-inflammatory chemicals. We deny them any opportunity for rest, repair, and recovery. And then we expect all our systems to perform perfectly.

Not surprisingly, this does not pan out very well.

For a while, particularly while we are young, our bodies may appear to take all kinds of abuse (from 64-ounce sodas to 80-hour workweeks) with amazingly little complaint. At some point, though, our digestive, immune, biochemical, or neurological systems grow weary of all the mistreatment and begin to cry foul.

Little by little, our organs, skin, joints, and brains start raising subtle and not-so-subtle alert flags. Weird sensations, odd rashes, funky operational quirks, and annoying irregularities emerge. If we ignore those, our bodies may start clanging an increasingly loud series of nasty-symptom alarm bells. Eventually, when the symptoms get serious or numerous or painful enough, we get concerned.

Suddenly, we are no longer taking our health for granted. We’re now officially worried about it.

At this point, one of two things typically happens: 1) We place ourselves into the hands of the conventional medical system, where we are promptly given a diagnosis (official name) for our suffering, and offered some accompanying prescription medications or surgical treatments; or 2) we begin assiduously avoiding healthcare entirely.

We do the former because it’s the convenient, socially sanctioned solution or because we’re not aware of any better alternatives. We do the latter because we are afraid of getting bad news, because we suspect we won’t be able to afford the care we’ll be prescribed, or because we’ve seen enough of the conventional medical system in action that we don’t have a whole lot of confidence it’s actually going to help.

Some may also have a well-founded fear that seeking medical care could actually do them more harm than good. After all, medical errors and pharmaceutical side effects have long been ranked among this country’s leading causes of death (I’ll address this in more depth when I get to Revolutionary Acts No. 6, 7, and 8).

OK, so how does one begin to repossess one’s health? Here are my top-two suggestions:

1) Take an honest inventory of your daily choices. Are you eating primarily nutritious whole foods? Eating meals calmly and consciously? Drinking plenty of clean water? Getting some vigorous daily activity? Spending time outdoors? Managing, limiting, and offsetting stress; getting plenty of good sleep; building in time for relaxation, relationships, love, and fun? Are you carefully limiting your intake of sugar, flour, alcohol, caffeine, and other recreational drugs (including cigarettes)? Are you avoiding fast food and sweetened drinks (including diet sodas)? Are you 100 percent clear about the food intolerances, toxicities, and chemical sensitivities you’re vulnerable to? Do you prioritize your health and well-being when making decisions about your time, career, finances, relationships, and other life priorities?

Basically, are you doing at least a solid smattering of the 101 Revolutionary Ways to Be Healthy? If not, that’s probably why you — and 80 percent of other U.S. adults — aren’t feeling so great (or are destined to start feeling less than great before long).

Don’t judge yourself too harshly, though: In the society we live in, doing all of this stuff simultaneously is freakishly challenging and counterintuitive, particularly at first. The more you manage to do, the better you’ll feel, and the easier it will become.

2) Seek out more progressive, proactive healthcare (vs. sick-care). That might mean a physician or nurse practitioner with integrative training or a specialty in functional medicine (for more on that, see “Functional Medicine: A Science Whose Time Has Come”). It might be a nutritionally savvy chiropractor. It might be a naturopath, an osteopath, a practitioner of Traditional Chinese Medicine, a highly trained nutrition pro or health coach, or some combination of all of the above.

What you are looking for is someone who is interested in (and capable of) helping you sort out the root causes of chronic lifestyle-related problems, and then helping you make the changes necessary to get and stay healthy.

What you are not looking for is what functional-medicine pioneer Jeffrey Bland, PhD, refers to as “the tyranny of the diagnosis”: a pat naming of your problem or problems (e.g., “migraines,” “acid reflux,” “irritable bowel,” “psoriasis”) followed by your relegation to a future of ongoing sick-care that does little to reverse the root causes of your malaise.

Above all, know this: There’s no one surefire way to repossess your health, no single, dramatic act of reclamation. On the contrary, there are a thousand small, daily opportunities to take charge of your own well-being, to cease taking your health for granted, to start more fully appreciating the the miraculous and resilient human body within your command.