don's report archive

by Donald B. Ardell, Ph. D.

Wellness in the Headlines
(Don's Report to the World)

You deserve a second opinion. What’s more, depending upon the nature of the FIRST opinion you received and from whom you received it, you may need a third, fourth and fifth opinion -- but, only if the second opinion did not do the job. What job? The job of convincing you that while appropriate medical diagnosis is vital to an awareness of your current health status by yourself and your doctor, the decisions you make, day after day of a lifestyle nature are what matters most to the quality of your life and level of good health. In other words, modern medicine is a wonderful thing but there are two problems: people expect too much of it and too little of themselves. Expect great things regarding what you can do for your own physical and mental well-being with a proactive, ambitious lifestyle.

Consider this essay a BONUS second opinion -- one that is somewhat different but complementary to the supplementary opinions that you might want to explore any time you feel the need for additional professional counsel about a test, a procedure, a medication or a course of action. Whatever you do of a health care nature, complement that action with a conscious decision to chose a self-managing lifestyle, and be sure to put that decision into reality every day with healthy choices in the many self-management skill areas of wellness-based living. Where better to begin but with a renewed appreciation for the importance of daily exercise and fitness? This is vital for anyone planning to adapt well to the challenge of aging -- and can you imagine anyone who does not need to do that?!

A new study at Johns Hopkins, reported at this year’s annual meeting of the American College of Sports Medicine, gave more support to the well-established belief that older people with less body fat and more fitness than their average peers are not only slimmer, more mobile and more energetic but, MORE significantly, have better outlooks on life! That is a second opinion that every doctor should pass along to patients over the age of, oh, maybe thirty! (This particular study applied to folks fifty and over.) Do you agree?

Kerry J. Stewart, Ed.D., the senior author of the study and director of cardiac rehabilitation and clinical exercise physiology at Hopkins, said, “It is well known that being more fit and more lean is associated with better physical health. In this study of older men and women, we showed that being more fit and having less fat also is associated with better mental health and mood."

The study subjects had mild hypertension. Now imagine if the second opinion for this condition were simply to try this drug rather than that drug, or take this imaging test or that scan, ultrasound or x-ray but the opinion overlooked the importance of exercise. This would be an especially egregious omission, in my view, particularly for those patients who presented with evident weight problems likely caused by sedentary lifestyles combined with poor nutritional practices. This is why I maintain that the best complementary or bonus second opinion most patients could get would be from doctors and other health care professionals who added to the standard medical advice a strong suggestion that conscious decisions be made to chose self-managing lifestyles.

Whatever your ailment or concern, it is well established that being fit, with or without a disease, will help you, paraphrasing the study authors at Hopkins, to be less tired, less depressed, less angry, less tense and in an overall better mood than those not habituated to healthy, self-managing lifestyles. Participants in the latter category who tested as having higher percentages of body fat in the Hopkins study were “more depressed, more angry, more tense and not as happy.”

Dr. Stewart concluded his report by saying, "We encourage all older people to increase their levels of fitness and maintain a healthy body weight not only for their physical health but also for their mental well-being." So do I -- and I hope you will consider this as my (free, no strings attached) second opinion.

Be well. Look on the bright side.

(Note: This essay will be filed in the archives in the MENTAL DOMAIN under the skill area of factual knowledge. Additional articles related to this theme may be found there.)

(Ed. Note: Views expressed in this and other columns are those of the author and not necessarily those of the SeekWellness Editorial Board.)

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