Health plans

Most people are looking for a magic formula that will be the solution for all of their problems. Yet life just doesn’t work that way. Just like nothing in nature is identical, us humans are all unique and we all have a unique build-up of our health and the way we respond to any changes. Even in the medical world, where we are taught to believe there’s a prescription for every illness, it’s clear that the standard protocol won’t work for every individual. The science behind medicine is based on large patient samples and therefore only demonstrating what the chances are for those large samples, and not the individual, per definition. Take something simple as a painkiller – if we give 10 people with a headache the same painkiller, some of them will feel a relief of their pain, some will have no benefit at all, and some will show symptoms like a stomach ache or even damage to the intestines (we call those symptoms ‘side effects’, which is a funny term on an individual level – but I’ll keep that discussion for another time).

The same goes for influencing your health. First of all, “optimizing your health” will mean something completely different from person to person. One may want to increase their stamina and energy, for someone else it may mean losing weight, for another it’s feeling more emotionally balanced or able to focus. And even if there is a similar goal, the best approach will still be individually determined. There’s simply no one-size-fits-all approach, and anyone trying to let you believe there is, with their “discovery”, “magic pill”, “perfect diet”, or other “revolutionary breakthrough” that will work for everyone, is simply wrong and is probably jumping in to try and make a lot of money off of you.

Of course there are insights from science that are useful for most people and that can be used to build up your personal plan. For example, it’s extremely likely that smoking cigarettes will compromise your personal health, and that regular movement will help improving it. At the same time, again, we see plenty of examples of individuals who seem to live a relatively healthy long life chain smoking and not moving more than just turning to the other side in bed. For all clarity: no, this does not mean I’m a proponent of smoking or telling you to cancel your gym membership 😀 What I am saying is that we need to look at what works for YOU.

Let’s start with examining different aspects of health optimization.