If you are on the road to changing your lifestyle by fixing your health and incorporating exercise into your life, you've found the right place. There are so many diseases that can be prevented when you change your lifestyle for the better. Take advantage of health optimization, and learn more about your mind, body, and soul.
Even with a baseline of health practices incorporated into your lifestyle, you can always do more. Learn how to gain more energy, brainpower (consider mental clarity here?), and strength. You can take certain things like supplements, but that also involves asking your doctor. Learn about the different (targeted) supplements that could offer you more benefits, (and help you reach your health goals).
Even if you have all these questions about your health, you are in the right direction. Once you have a baseline of good health, you can continue to optimize it. Now is the time to optimize your health and well-being.
We’re going to be addressing health optimization and alternative medicines. Learn why they are effective and how it ties into cellular health.
What is Health Optimization?
Health optimization is all about looking at your health with a new set of eyes. Think to yourself, "how can I make this better?". You would be looking for new ways to feel your best every day and achieve living a long healthy life. Look at all of these opportunities with a positive outlook, rather than assuming anything is wrong with you.
When you incorporate health optimization medicines into your life, you improve your life and think, "This is the best that I've ever felt." Practitioners (consider “physicians in health…..” here?) in health optimization medicine typically come from a more functional or integrative perspective. Still, they aren't specializing in a particular disease or even an area of health, like gut health, for example. If anything, health optimization doctors specialize in cellular health since they are looking for imbalances and deficiencies on a foundational level, such as vitamins and minerals, that, when corrected and optimized, can bring about full-body wellness.
Why We Need Health Optimization Medicine
Health optimization medicine represents a fundamental shift in the way we look at our health, especially in a Western context. The biggest focus is sustaining health rather than just treating or preventing illness.
As far as a mindset shift, it's an important distinction to make: aren't you much more likely to want to make choices that sustain your health, that make you feel good, instead of ones that prevent you from feeling bad or prevent some nameless possible condition in the future(consider instead, “just putting band-aids on symptoms”)?
And for those patients still struggling with chronic illness, health optimization medicine represents a shift in how we look at our bodies. When you have a chronic disease, it can be easy to get trapped in a mindset of the body becoming the enemy; life becomes about a war against illness, and the disease must be defeated, and beaten into submission. But that perspective rarely brings about lasting healing.
Health optimization sees the body as a partner in health, to be nourished, supported, and guided into its best possible state. This may represent a shift in perspective for chronic illness patients, leading to significant recovery and healing.
Health Optimization VS Preventative Health
Now that you know that health optimization focuses on sustaining health over preventing disease, let's talk about examples in practice.
There is a starting point to it all. Preventative medicine still starts with the outlook of ‘how do we prevent this disease?”. Someone could be taking all the precautionary measures of eating a healthy diet, exercising, and stress reduction; however, they could still be counting on the disease to come after all.
Some examples of preventative medicine are:
- Vaccination
- Reducing sugar consumption to prevent diabetes
- Lifting weights to prevent muscle loss
Now that you have examples of preventative medicine, you can take it a step further and venture into health optimization. Think about how to run your body at peak performance so that disease isn’t even an option. Prioritize your body’s fundamental needs and its optimal nutrient requirements. It is all about finding the right balance in your diet and exercise to prevent any disease from attacking your body.
Here are some further examples:
- Identifying vitamin and mineral insufficiencies and using diet and supplementation to correct them.
- Balancing hormones
- Seeing and treating health from a cellular perspective instead of an organ or systems perspective.
Health Optimization Focuses on Cellular Health
Health optimization thrives on the work of cellular health! With this thought process, health optimization medicine goes straight to the body's foundation, the cells. This contrasts the traditional and even functional medicine perspective of treating the body as a series of organs and systems. It's not that this perspective can't be useful; for example, gut health is a system to be wary of. However, going to the foundation of the cells is where health begins.
What do cells need to be healthy?
- Phospholipids
- Vitamins
- Minerals
- Hormones
- Fatty Acids
- Water
- Sunlight, Oxygen, etc.
A practitioner (consider “physician”) operating from a health optimization framework can help you identify and balance these nutrients so that your cells are running on all cylinders. Optimizing your health to its full potential.
How to Optimize Your Health
Now that you have a little more knowledge of how health optimization works, let’s dive into how you can implement it into your everyday lifestyle. This is your chance to prevent your life from disease.
Please note any treatment approaches mentioned are not intended and should not be considered, or used as a substitute for, medical advice, diagnosis or treatment and have not been evaluated by the FDA.
Figure Out Your Health Goals
The idea of health optimization is the way you think of things, especially when it comes to your health. Figure out the way you want to feel instead of having to defend everything after the fact. Do you want to have more energy? Brainpower, focus, creativity? We suggest you figure out what's important to you for this coming year. Physically write down your ideas and narrow your options to one or two main goals.
Create A Plan
When you are ready to put your ideas to work, you want to go to your doctor and figure out a good health plan. Working with a practitioner can help you figure out how to identify nutrients and healthy habits to work to the goals you put in place for yourself. They will also be able to help you optimize your environment and relationships with your health in mind.
Establish Healthy Habits
Optimizing your health to reach your goals will involve some habit changes. There's plenty of advice out there on changing your habits and developing new ones, but it comes down to how invested you are in reaching your goal.
There are a few different ways to put these healthy habits in place. If you are unsure of where to start, consider these helpful tips.
- Set up your environment
- Talk to an accountability partner
- Give yourself rewards
- Keep a journal or record
Incorporate Helpful Supplements and Nutrients
You probably need some extra nutritional and cellular support for optimal health depending on your goals. Here are some options to consider, but work with your provider to find what support is right for you.
Phosphatidylcholine: Your cells need PC to maintain their structure, function, and communication capabilities, which underlie the foundation of total body health.
Butyrate: In addition to supporting a healthy inflammation response in the gut and a healthy gut lining, it also supports blood sugar levels, immune response, healthy microbiome, brain function, and sleep.
Vitamin D: Vitamin D is essential for healthy immunity, neurotransmitter production, bone health, and many other aspects of your well-being. For the entire above section, I would avoid specific supplement recommendations, and rather highlight the value of using targeted supplement considerations, based on actually knowing your levels. We don’t offer blanket sweep suggestions, but rather frame those suggestions based on what is found as a need.
Optimize Your Health in 2022
Health optimization is about promoting health and longevity vs. treating disease and injury. It's about figuring out what imbalances can be corrected in the body to help you live and feel better every day. It can even extend to shaping your environment and your relationships to help you and your whole community thrive.
