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Article Excerpt
Remember the adage "An apple a day keeps the doctor away"? Today, some diet and nutrition gurus are suggesting that we should skip the apple and enjoy a thick juicy steak and glass of wine instead. Somehow it just doesn't sound right: "A steak a day keeps the doctor away." Today we are dealing with a barrage of health information coming at us from all angles, and much of the advice is conflicting. How do we discern what is right and what is wrong?
Too Much Information?
Much of the sense of confusion about what is healthy and what is not stems from the enormous information overload on the Internet. "If you go to Yahoo Search on the World Wide Web and search 'heart disease,' there are 240,000 Web pages," said Boyd Lyles, M.D., cofounder of the Heart Health and Wellness Center in Dallas.
Lyles cautioned that although the Internet can be a tremendous resource for health information, you need to be sure that any information you rely on comes from a credible source. According to Lyles, credible sites include those published by the government, such as the Centers for Disease Control, the National Institutes of Health, and the Food and Drug Administration; medical schools, including Harvard, Berkeley, and the Cleveland Clinic; recognized associations such as the American Heart Association or the American Cancer Society; and recognized journals, such as the Journal of the American Medical Association or the New England Journal of Medicine. They "provide the most credible sources and rarely will they conflict," Lyles said.
Lyles advises his patients and the general public to make sure the information they obtain from the Internet is written by people with strong medical credentials. Unfortunately, there are all sorts of scams on the Internet involving products and procedures that promise to cure a variety of illnesses and symptoms. Many of the remedies are bogus, and yet some people swear by them. Lyles applies the "do no harm" test to conflicting medical philosophies. "It's a creed in medicine," he said, "but 'do no harm' is not always just not doing a technique or procedure that is harmful but also not taking up a person's time and money doing procedures and treatments that are not productive."
The best way to assess, maintain, and improve your health is through regular checkups with your physician, Lyles suggested. Your doctor can help you assess your individual risk factors for various conditions and diseases and, if you have not done so already, help you learn how to adopt a healthy lifestyle.
Wellness Exam or Checkup
As a part of an overall good health regimen, Lyles recommends that adults undergo an annual wellness exam, sort of like the annual inspection that you get on your automobile. The difference between a wellness exam and a checkup is the thoroughness of the exam, Lyles said. "A wellness exam is longer, and it focuses on lifestyles and habits," he said. "More is covered in a wellness exam than in a routine checkup. There are a lot of things that deal with overall well-being that we will cover in a wellness exam."
A wellness exam includes a detailed look at a person's health, rating everything from nutrition to sleep to stress levels to sex life satisfaction. There's a focus on ways to improve health, a prescription for such, and follow-up. "We don't just focus on the traditional issues of good health," Lyles explained. "Conclusions are made, and they don't just focus on medications. We like to accomplish lifestyle changes and, where possible, try to get our patients to do that. There's a focus on diet and nutrition, and there may be needs for certain supplementation, calcium for women for instance. A wellness exam is open to discussing those things."
Often, a wellness exam will reveal a potential health issue or discover a serious health condition. Through wellness exams patients may learn that they are diabetic or that they have risk factors that predispose them to a particular illness or condition. "Occasionally we will run across something serious," Lyles said. "We will then help the patient take the next steps in dealing with the problem."
What worries people most about their health? "It's all over the waterfront," said Lyles. "Things you would think of are heart disease and cancer. Quite often we have patients come in because they have a friend or family member who recently died from an illness. It makes them feel more vulnerable." It is often the aging process that gets people into the doctor's office. They celebrate a milestone birthday, perhaps age 40 or 50, and they decide it's time to take charge of their health.
As for the most common health complaints, Lyles said they usually have to do with fatigue, lack of energy, and muscle, joint, and back pain. "Pain is a big problem, but I would say fatigue is number one, the most common symptom for which I see people." People are tired of being tired, and they want to know what causes them to feel so listless. Through a wellness exam a doctor might be able to find out the cause of their symptoms. It could be something medical such as diabetes, a thyroid disorder, or depression. The medical profession has recognized chronic fatigue syndrome as a medical condition. Often, chronic fatigue is related to a sleeping disorder. According to the Centers for Disease Control, sleep physiology may be central to understanding chronic fatigue syndrome.
Whatever your health...
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