Q: What are the most important health or wellbeing resolutions you would recommend for your patients for 2008?
Dr. Jim Mumper: I think a wonderful resolution is to strive to be healthier by the end of 2008 than you currently are now. This can be done by rethinking how you eat and developing a healthy eating style that you can continue for the rest of your life. A good example is Phase Three of "The South Beach Diet." This will give you much better long term results than going on a "diet" for one month. Also, make exercise part of your daily routine and commit to exercising six days a week.You will be amazed as to how much better you feel and you will truly be healthier.
Dr. Virginia Kladder: I don't have a specific resolution that would apply to everyone. For some, it may be smoking cessation; for others, weight loss or more exercise. Others still may want to reduce the stress in their lives. Each person has a different set of challenges, and thus, a different response to those challenges. I can say, though, that resolutions can set you up for failure if they're unrealistic. Don't resolve to change your whole life to make up for past excess. Instead, try to return to basic, healthy lifestyle routines. Set smaller, more specific goals with a reasonable time frame. Choose only those resolutions that help you feel valuable and will have a lasting impact on your life.
Dr. Stuart Solan: I have three specific recommendations. First, for those who smoke, one of the most important things – if not the most important thing to improve health – is giving up cigarette smoking. There are so many diseases that occur at a greater frequency in smokers versus nonsmokers, it's hard to overestimate the potential health benefit of quitting. Not only is the risk of lung cancer greater in smokers, but so are a number of other cancers. Head and neck cancers are almost exclusively cancers of smokers. Pancreatic cancer, bladder cancer, colon cancer and even cervical cancer occur at higher rates in cigarette smokers. Smoking over time tends to destroy lung tissue leading to emphysema.
If someone were asked annually to take as deep a breath as possible and then blow out as much air as possible into an airtight bag, it would be discovered that a normal person loses about a tablespoon of air capacity per year. Smokers lose two or more tablespoons of air capacity per year. As soon as a cigarette smoker quits smoking, that person's loss of annual lung capacity becomes the same as a nonsmoker. However, what has been lost cannot be regained. The most common harm from cigarette smoking is acceleration of fatty plaque accumulation in such blood vessels as the coronary arteries, carotid and cerebral arteries, renal arteries and arteries in the legs and feet. The potential end result when plaque accumulation obstructs blood flow is heart attack, stroke, erectile dysfunction, secondary hypertension, limitation in ability to walk because of insufficient blood flow to leg muscles and – when very severe – death of tissues in the toes, feet or distal legs requiring an amputation.
My second recommendation is to know your Low Density Lipoprotein (LDL level). Small particles of LDL in the blood cause fatty plaque buildup between the lining of arteries and the arterial wall. Current recommendations are to have an LDL level of less than 100 mg/dL for the average person and less than 70 mg/dL for those with a high risk for heart attack based on such factors as a family history of coronary artery disease (heart attack and angina), cigarette smoking, hypertension and diabetes mellitus. There are other components of blood lipids that affect the risk of fatty plaque buildup in arteries (atherosclerosis), but knowing your LDL level is an important initial step. Lastly, get regular exercise. Aerobic exercise and even weight lifting have been shown to independently decrease the risk of heart attack and stroke beyond the effect that exercise has on weight reduction, blood pressure reduction and reduction of elevated blood sugars.
Dr. Leon Spiers: Just as we do for our personal, financial, and professional lives, the new year is a time to take stock of our health – namely, where we have been and where we seem to be headed. I recommend taking a look at one's current health needs and concerns as well as past goals, and see if objectives have been met. If so, congratulations and keep up the good work. If not, try to honestly assess where things went wrong or fell short, and why. If there are more than a few areas that need addressing, it can be overwhelming and frustrating to try to tackle all of them at once. Pick two or three of the most important issues – maybe a relatively easy one or two, and a particularly challenging one – and devise a plan of action. Your doctor, nurse, or other health care provider can help by offering a realistic timeline, a set of labs or other benchmarks by which to track progress and resources to help achieve success.
Personal resolutions are just that: personal. Good health is as much a journey as it is a destination. The important point, in my mind, is to make the effort, take the journey, try not to get frustrated and seek help when needed. The payoff may be down the road, but it is almost always positive.
Dr. Wu-Pong: I feel the most important health and well-being resolution I can recommend is for each of us to learn and implement those changes it would take for us to live at peace with ourselves and in our world. This resolution often begins with accepting ourselves honestly for whom and what we are. There can be a fine line between striving to be the best we can be, and expecting ourselves to be perfect. Many of us know we cannot actually be perfect in any area of our lives, but we then fail to truly forgive ourselves for the mistakes we do make. In this way, we often deny ourselves the same care and concern we would show our children, our spouse or our co-workers. Unfortunately, without acceptance and forgiveness, most of us find it very difficult to actually improve in the areas where we feel most ashamed or inadequate.