Like many doctors just out of residency, I found myself looking for moonlighting jobs when I entered private practice. Educational loans and rent wouldn’t wait for the world to beat a path to my door. A friend told me about a job assessing disability claims, good pay and no patient responsibility. I was offered an interview, over lunch, and I was happy to oblige.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Wellness represents the convergence of several trends. The ghosts of Adele Davis, Nathan Pritikin, the Rodales, father and son, and even Jack LaLanne whisper through the nutrition and fitness chapters, “I told you so.” The pugnacious self-reliance of the women’s health movement is echoed in the editorial tone. “It is becoming increasingly clear that the promotion of health and the prevention of disease is an interactive process involving the development of public policy and governmental actions and the empowerment of individuals to take control of their own well-being.” Norman Cousins, Hans Selye, the human potential movement, and transcendental meditation stand behind the discussions of stress and mind-body interaction. The triumph of the Wellness Letter over the years has been the editors’ willingness to examine practices that fall out of the mainstream, evaluate them with common sense as well as science, and offer recommendations as to their usefulness.
Not much exhorting or condemning, either. The tone is pleasantly conversational, like a good friend with no ax to grind. The scope of the material is impressive. A large-format book of over 500 pages, The Wellness Encyclopedia is divided into five major sections: Nutrition, Exercise, Self-Care, and Environment and Safety in addition to Longevity. The editors stop short of providing recipes, but practical advice in choosing individual foods complements the more general treatment of nutrients. There are tables comparing the nutritional content of breads and the difference in fat content between choice and select beef.
Every health care provider has educational materials for patients, but information is not enough to foster wellness. I think of the time I tried to demonstrate stretching exercises to a bus driver who was complaining of neck stiffness. She looked at me coolly and said, “I’m not doing anything else for those people.” To practice wellness behavior, people have to believe that they have the power to change their fate. Empowerment doesn’t just happen; it must be nurtured in the child and reinforced in the adult. There is a parallel here with the crisis in education, where public schools are foundering and private schools prospering. We are slowly learning that in order to educate those who perceive themselves to be disenfranchised, we must directly address self-esteem and family life, tasks that lie outside the strict boundaries of instruction. Similarly, teaching wellness would surely involve social strategies beyond handing out pamphlets. But in today’s economic climate, where 37 million Americans lack access to medical care, there is little emphasis on long-term planning for wellness.
