I Don't Have Time to Get Healthy!

Have you ever felt like you just don’t have enough time? Do you stress about getting where you need to go in the day and keep feeling like you are never going to get done? Its not uncommon for us to feel that way, especially in these times where things seem to be moving faster and faster.

 When we feel rushed for time, we often think we can’t do the things that will help us take care of ourselves. Of course time stress is one of the things that throws us off and increases our overall sensation of stress. Making it harder for us to feel well. It becomes a vicious circle. So many people I see tell me that they don’t have time to eat well or exercise regularly because they’re just too busy.

 In the world of financial advisors, you are often advised to “pay yourself first”. It means to give money to yourself before you give it to others. The standard advice is to take 10% of your income off the top in order to create a savings account. In my experience, time management works much like money management; you have to give yourself time first.

 In that light, today I’m suggesting some time management tips so that you will be able to take care of your health, which will in turn help you feel less stressed. As with money management, you need to set aside time in each day to take care of yourself. As you review your plans for any given day, or better yet, the week. Look at your schedule and find time for exercise and healthy eating. Put those times down in your calendar, in ink. Don’t let anything else interrupt that part of your schedule.

 If you have to get up a half hour earlier to do half an hour of exercise, do that and get the exercise out of the way for the day. I usually have to get up earlier to get my writing in or I won’t do it.

 Other suggestions for time management include:

Evaluate how you’re spending your time – keep a diary for three days of everything you do, including time for shower, brushing your teeth, getting ready for bed, cooking your meals, and sitting in front of the TV. At the end of those three days, see how you’re spending you time and evaluate to see if you’re getting what you want out of your days. Perhaps a half hour less TV might give you the time you need to do everything.

Keep a daily schedule – this should include your workout and eating times, and other things that have to be done

Prioritize your tasks – make sure you have time for the most important things you need to do by setting them in order of priority.

Delegate what you can – if you have things you can delegate to someone else, do that.

Take the time you need to do a good job – when you have an important job, make sure that you give it enough time to make sure you do it well.

Break large tasks into smaller chunks of time – if you have a big job, schedule it into your days in smaller amounts of time.

Take a break when you need it – if you know that you need breaks, schedule them into your day. Schedule some breaks where you step away from your tasks and take deep breaths, look outside, or even stretch so that you can continue your work in a better way.

 When you allow yourself the time to relax, your day will flow more smoothly and you will actually feel like you’re getting more done. My mom used to joke about expanding time when we were driving somewhere and we were late. She’d say “lets expand time now so that we’ll get there.” Oddly enough, it always worked; we’d end up being on time for our appointments without her having to drive faster! Of course that didn't stop her from speeding anyway.

Winter Blues

"Does the rain have you feeling down?"

 According to the Sacramento Bee, “The Northern Sierra Nevada, a region critical to statewide water supplies, experienced its third driest December since record keeping began in 1920.” While Californians recognize this year's dry winter season, many can’t help but to mourn the sights of the much needed recent showers.

 How many of you find the weather getting to you at this time of year? Generally I love the winter weather, but endless gray skies begin to get to my usually sunny nature.

 SAD (seasonal affective disorder) affects many people. People become more tired, cranky, moody and unhappy than usual due to the lack of sun in their lives. Symptoms of SAD include sleepiness, depression, overeating and carbohydrate cravings, lack of sociability, loss of libido, and mood changes. It is natural for most people to have some of these symptoms in winter, being that we respond to nature. The diagnosis of SAD occurs when the depression becomes so severe that a person has a hard time functioning.

 SAD is due to the lack of sunlight during the day and even though we are having an unusually sunny winter, it is also the length of daylight hours that affect our mood. Many people – 85 percent – respond to treatment of SAD using a light box. The duration of recommended usage per day varies depending on the strength of light from the box. A 10,000 lux box available for $169 only needs to be used a half-hour per day, whereas a 2,500 lux box requires four hours of exposure. It should be used daily and is usually effective within 3-4 days. You can sit in front of it and do any normal activity such as reading or writing or working at your desk.

 There are other treatments for SAD. One of the best mood elevators is doing fun things with your favorite people. In addition, exercising keeps your energy up and increases circulating endorphins that are good for the mood. In terms of nutrition, a low carbohydrate diet helps the blood sugar remain steady, preventing ups and downs.

 People who get severely depressed sometimes need antidepressants to get them through the season. If that is the case, it is best to begin medications in the autumn before symptoms get really bad. Drugs like Prozac, Wellbutrin, and Effexor tend to help people be more alert and active.

 If you are against using these kinds of medications there are many herbs and supplements that can help support the mood. If you have a doctor who understands how to use herbs, you can get a supplement that is personalized to your particular symptoms. 5 HTP, SAM-e, St John’s Wort, Shizandra and B-vitamins are among just a few. An Ayurvedic herb called “holy basil” is remarkably effective at calming the adrenal glands and anxiety without a drug effect.

 Winter is a wonderful time to focus on your inner self and do things that you wouldn’t do at other times of the year. Invest in your happiness and take time to do things that you love this season. Or, if you feel so inclined, just hibernate!

A Plan for Health

Have a Plan for Health

 When I was a young physician and began making money for the first time in my life, someone came up to me and said that it was time for me to have a “financial plan”. Ooooh! I had no idea at the time what that meant. Of course, that same person quickly began to educate me, being a financial planner.

 As most of you know, a financial plan is a system of making sure that your money is working for you so you can begin to make more than you need for immediate survival. Within that framework of taking care of your finances, you are often encouraged to invest in large insurance policies that will cover you “just in case”.  Often the “just in case” is a bad thing that happens to your health. But no one ever talks to you about having a plan for your health.

 Why not have a plan for your health? Doesn’t it make sense to figure out what your health needs might be and to take care of them so that you don’t need to worry about illness? Most people think that their health insurance is their health plan, but it isn’t really. Health insurance covers you when you are sick with something and allows for you to have tests that will be paid by insurance, only if you have evidence that you need those tests.

Our insurance culture is designed around waiting for us to get a serious illness. It doesn’t cover planning for us to remain healthy so that we can do what we want for as long as we like.

 I propose that everyone should have a Health Plan, which involves an understanding of what health means to you, and a plan for sustaining your health. It should be reviewed annually, and acted upon with the intention of being able to enjoy your favorite activities and have fun as much as possible.

 A good health plan should involve a review of your lifestyle, including how you eat, sleep, work, exercise, attitudes, and whether you are enjoying your life, a physical exam, and a discussion of your desires for your health. Together you and your practitioner should then create a plan for how you will achieve your desires for health in the coming year.

The Real Gift of Christmas

Its beginning to look a lot like Christmas, every where I go. I hear music, smell cookies baking, see big groups of people gathered for celebrations, and best of all, lights all over the neighborhoods.

I love this time of year for so many reasons. The music, the parties, dressing up, sharing meals with friends, and focusing on sharing time with my closest friends. It wasn’t always one of my favorite holidays. I would be anxiously figuring out what gifts to get for everyone on my list, trying to create an impressive meal for whoever was coming over, and during my years as an Emergency Doctor, often I’d be working in the ER seeing drunk, unhappy people.

I could always count on someone in my family having a fight or getting upset about something. Rarely did I experience a Christmas where things were peaceful without drama and people got and gave gifts that they loved.

Somehow I decided that Christmas gifts should mean something special at a young age. It shouldn’t just be about buying expensive gifts for people that you didn’t care about. Every year, I spent a lot of energy thinking about what gifts I would give to my friends and family, in order to make sure they were happy. My way of doing that was to make something. One year I made quilts, another I knit sweaters. Every year, I had some hobby that I inflicted on my friends and family, thinking because I’d made it myself, it should be special. I remember the year that I made my mom a big orange red and yellow quilt for her bed. The look on her face told me that she didn’t love it, but she was pretending to. She had bought me a brown leather purse that I just hated, and pretended that I loved. The whole event had an emptiness that was painful to experience.

20 years ago, I decided that I didn’t want to have unhappy stressful Christmas times any more. I wanted to enjoy myself as much as possible and bring joy to those around me. I set about trying to figure out how to do that. I called my friends and family and asked them if it would be all right with them if I didn’t do presents this year. They all agreed it would be fine. That was the first year I felt somewhat relaxed during the holidays. I had no expectations, no worries about whether someone would like their gifts or not and I didn’t have to worry about acting like I enjoyed whatever things someone else gave me.

Since then, as the holidays approach, I’ve had a conversation with whoever was going to be participating about how we want to spend our time this year. Do we want to do gifts, where do we want to go, who do we want to be with. We never do gifts, which removes a lot of stress from the occasion. For years, we did a holiday party at my office every December, starting the season out in the mood. I hadn’t done that for a few years and decided to start doing them again this year. It really put me in the mood for the holidays. 

I want to invite you to have a different holiday season this year. Even if you decide you want to do gifts and big feasts, think about changing the focus of the holiday to make it more about the love and friendship in your life. Find special ways to enjoy the people you love. Sit down with everyone who will be involved in the holidays and have a discussion. How do you all want to spend the days? Do you want to share the same meal you usually do? Whose house will it be at? If there’s a lot of travel involved, do you want to save the travel for another time of year, when its easier? Ask each other how you can create the most love, fun, joy, and pleasure during this special time of year.

Peace and Happiness in your home

The other day I was in the grocery store and saw a family shopping. The wife was abusive toward her husband in front of their child. He seemed to tolerate her behavior but I saw the anger in his face.

We often take our daily stress out on the people who are closest to us for any number of reasons. We might be angry about something else. Old childhood patterns play a role in making us see our partners according to a bygone experience rather than how they really are.

Perhaps we think that dumping on our loved ones is natural or okay to do because that’s what we learned as children. We create more problems when we do. He may not act on it right away but eventually the man I saw in the store will release his anger. Abuse increases stress in the home. Suppressing our feelings brings health problems later. This man might later have heart disease and never know that it had to do with his suppressed anger.

Ideally our home should be a haven from the rest of the world. Whatever stress is going on in our lives, coming home should feel good, and the loved ones we live with should feel like they are supporting us.

 How can you create a haven for yourself? Recognize that whatever your life is like, you made the choice to be there. Find a way to forgive your past. Drop the need to be right. I was eavesdropping in the gym one day when a woman was griping about her husband. She was determined to continue battling with him until he got that she was right. Being right was more important than whatever love she had for him. Rather than getting caught up with being right when you have a conflict, determine that you want to find a solution to the problem together. If you set your mind to finding loving solutions, your behaviors and responses will automatically change.

When you’re having a stressful time in your life, try to see your mate as your ally instead of as the enemy. Try your best not to take it out on him/her even if the stress looks like its related to something he’s doing.  You can become closer because of your willingness not to blame each other if you can wait it out. Your outside stresses can become easier to bear if you remember the love you have. It helps to remember that your mate or children are usually not the cause of your stress. Use them to help you feel better rather than worse. Work at creating friendship in your home.

There are many ways to begin creating your haven. Some friends of mine keep a little box in a central part of their house for love notes. When things are going well, they write nice notes to each other and put them in the box. During hard times they take the notes out and read them to each other.

Try to find something to laugh about together every day-or at least once a week. One man I know takes songs and changes the words to make a silly expression of how he feels about things. He sings them to his wife and makes her laugh. Make a date night at least once a month, preferably more often, try to do something that shows your partner you love and appreciate her.

No matter what is going wrong, there’s always something to be grateful for. We are often told that successful people know how to be grateful. Try practicing gratitude every day even if all you can think of is to be happy that you don’t live in Afghanistan.

As the holidays approach this year, think of something fun and loving to do that’s completely different than the usual annual ritual you have. Not that you have to change your ritual, just add something new, fun, and personal into the mix.