Category Archives: Mindfulness

Your Health is in Your Heart

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Good morning, and happy Sunday. Today I am sharing a conversation I had with a patient once some years ago. She was someone I had never met before, and was, like many before her, completely flummoxed about what to try next. With a personal goal of weight loss, she had already done everything she could think of, and then some. I know you know this story. I myself have told it many times before. There is a good chance you may even have experienced it yourself. Maybe you have experimented with practically every diet, including the dreaded cabbage soup diet, denied yourself your favorite foods, carved out time you didn’t really have to get more exercise than was comfortable at the time. Of course none of this is sustainable. You can’t eat cabbage soup for breakfast forever. So what comes next? 

Next comes balance.

When I began writing this blog in 2009, it did not yet have a name. I knew that I wanted to talk about food and health, but that was as far as I’d gotten. I had posted one or two blogs, but I still did not have a name in mind. Then, on the same day my op-ed on doctoring was published in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, my husband and I happened to attend a wedding and have the good fortune to be seated next to an elderly aunt of the bride, a Russian immigrant with a distinct accent and distinctive wit to match. I was in rare form that night, blabbing happily about the bride and groom, the newspaper piece, my new blog. She listened with interest, interrupting my proud gushing between bites of salad with the occasional question until finally she blurted out, “You know, there is a saying in my country: Your health is on your plate.” I stopped talking. She had really heard me. And I stopped talking, too, because the moment she said it, I knew I had just heard the name of my new blog. Your health is on your plate. It was perfect. 

Of course, good health is not just about our food. It’s also about movement, and about rest and relaxation. And most importantly, it’s about the synergy among the three: Go for a great walk and you sleep better; get a lousy night’s sleep and you circle the vending machine (or refrigerator) all day, eat too much and you don’t feel like moving. Everything is connected, which is why small improvements on all fronts can translate into major changes in health. In this country, we tend to put all our eggs in the “diet and exercise” buckets. But there can be no synergy unless you add in being kind to yourself. Rest is not optional. Relaxation is not optional. Self-respect is not up for grabs.

Where am I going with this? Well, I’ve learned something along the way. It turns out that while, sure, your health is on your plate, it’s not only on your plate. Your health is on your pillow. It’s on your yoga mat. It’s on your couch. It’s on massage tables. It’s on a hill at sunrise. It’s on a hike in the mountains. Your health is on a picnic blanket in the park, at a ball game with your friends, in your running shoes, in a soaking bath and under a waterfall. Your health is definitely in your garden. But it’s also everywhere else that brings you joy, comfort, inspiration, and peace. 

You can hear it in your words when you talk about nourishing yourself with gratitude. Nurture your soul with love, kindness, music, nature, and whatever else your heart desires. Your health will respond to it.

Just one more thing. Last month I passed the thousand-post-mark on this blog. Yes, you read that right. One at a time, I have shared over one thousand (1000!) posts with you. The conversation I had with the woman who named my blog happened more than a thousand posts ago. If you had told me then what the future held, I would never have believed you. But here it is. And I would just like to take this opportunity to thank all of you for reading YHIOYP, for your kindness, for your encouraging words, and for continuing to take the time. It means a great deal to me.

Old-Fashioned Gratitude

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Many years ago, when I was eleven years old, my parents bought a Corning Cooktop stove, a fancy new appliance whose coils remained white even when they were hot. You simply had to take it on faith — or not. No matter how long I stared at that new stovetop, I could not convince myself that the white coils were hot. And that is why I still remember so clearly, this many years later, the perfectly oval burn on the tip of my right index finger. I touched it only once, but that was enough. It was all it took. I couldn’t take anyone else’s word for it.  Continue reading →

There Is So Much You Can Do To Make It Better

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Sometimes I think this blog should have a category called “It’s worse than you think” or “I’m really not exaggerating,” or maybe just “More scary news.” Sometimes I even get the feeling that people think I may be overstating the urgency of the diabetes epidemic. So I gathered together a few statistics for you. Continue reading →

Strategies for Improving Your Blood Sugars

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This week I’d like to talk about the concept of diet-controlled diabetes. Sometimes, when a patient’s most recent bloodwork demonstrates a mild elevation in their blood sugars, their doctor offers them an opportunity to try to improve their sugars without medication. If the patient is able to bring their blood sugars into the normal range through changes in the way they eat, perhaps along with increasing their activity levels to some extent, the doctor diagnoses this patient with what they term “diet-controlled diabetes.”  Continue reading →

Mindfulness

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Mindfulness is my own personal word-of-the-decade. Mindfulness is the polar opposite of multitasking, which is not at all what it sounds like. Despite popular opinion, multitasking does not enable you to get a whole bunch of different things done all at once. When you multitask, what you are actually doing is switching your attention incessantly from one focus to another, and giving none your full consideration. To multitask is to invest heavily in attention-switching at the expense of learning. A waste of your precious energy, multitasking frazzles your nerves and impairs your ability to focus. 

The antidote to multitasking is mindfulness. Continue reading →

Meditation is My Happy Place

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Last week I said a few words about my own meditation practice, how I started with an approach that I call one-minute meditation, and how I had no idea where it might lead. I just knew that I liked listening to what regulator meditators said about their own experiences. So I thought I would try it out. One-minute meditation is just what it sounds like. It’s great for starters. It’s hardly much of a commitment. I mean, it’s one minute. You won’t be late for the sake of a single minute. Continue reading →

Words of Thich Nhat Hanh

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I have had a daily meditation practice for just over six years now. I started with one-minute meditation, which I have taught to many people over the years. I like to think of it as a good way to start. One minute is not very much time, and I have generally found that just about everyone is willing to dedicate a single minute to meditating. It’s really just a minute: you breathe in for 5 seconds, and then breathe out for 5 seconds. That’s your warmup; now do it 5 more times. That’s it. One minute. You’re done.

When I first started meditating, I did not really know the reason or the purpose. I just did it to see what would happen. I only knew that I liked listening to what people who meditated regularly said about their experience. So I thought I’d try it for myself. I don’t know what I expected. Next time I’ll talk more about how those first years went. This week I want to talk about the words of a man named Thich Nhat Hanh. Continue reading →

Remembering What You Want

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In the weeks prior to starting medical school, my brother-in-law gave me a small card with a calligraphied message: Discipline is remembering what you want. I soon affixed it to the wall of my new study carrel, where it remained for a long time until, years later, I passed it along to a friend who needed it more than I.

Continue reading →

Your Health is Where You Want it to Be

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Good morning, and happy Sunday! I want to tell you about a conversation I had with a patient this week. She was someone I’d never met before, and, like many before her, she was absolutely flummoxed about what to try next. She had already done everything she could think of to lose weight. I think you know this story. I’ve told it many times before, and you may even have experienced it yourself. Maybe you’ve been on practically every diet, eaten cabbage soup, denied yourself your favorite foods, carved out time you didn’t really have to get more exercise than was comfortable at the time. Of course none of this was sustainable. You can’t eat cabbage soup for breakfast forever. So what’s next? Next comes balance. Continue reading →

How to Make a Life

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Connie and her husband Duane were my parents’ closest of friends for upwards of 40 years. They drove to Cleveland from their home in the hills of northwest New Jersey to crawl into bed with my father in his last days, to whisper their love for him, to share some memories, and to be, as always, the best friends they could be. My parents shared thousands and thousands and thousands of memories with Connie and Duane throughout the years. Their shared love for their Afghan hounds and Belgian sheepdogs, their joyful July 4th celebrations, hundreds and hundreds of weekly Sunday dinners, restaurant meals, New Years Eve parties, Thanksgiving graces, glasses of light red Beaujolais, local and national dog shows, chaffeuring one other, Zooming together, housesitting, and endless games of Trivial Pursuit. How do you make a life? How do friends and neighbors become transformed into family? This is how. Continue reading →