Reset expectations of perfect health

Reading wellness websites leads me to believe that each one of us has the potential to have perfect, disease-free health if only we ate nutritiously, exercised daily, and practiced a stress-reduction routine. The fountain of youth is available to us, if only we tried harder at healthy living practices, they say.

I, too, am guilty of sometimes boasting the “if only” approach but as I’ve observed people who follow quite healthy lives and still succumb to the fates of aging and illness, my understanding of the limits of health and wellness have become more realistic.

A misguided belief

Personal experiences of healing myself of chronic reflux and a herniated spinal disc—after many procedures from multiple physicians failed to solve my misery—skewed my perception of modern medicine and its capabilities.

This astonishing relief without medical intervention convinced me that everyone could achieve similar freedom from their ailments and strive towards near perfect health if only they properly adhered to better lifestyle choices.

Feeling like real healing was missing in the healthcare system, my interests shifted to more anecdotal, personal reports of how lifestyle fixes changed other people’s lives. Websites like MindBodyGreen became a frequent source of inspiration for me, all highlighting which foods and activities are best to make you happier and healthier.

Despite years of education scrutinizing health information, I bought into these fantastical messages because I wanted to know what actually worked for people. Scientific publications provide robust data but they lack the real, personal emotion and feelings. This was what I needed.

Scrolling through these sites gave me a surreal sense that we could all be doing handstand yoga poses in a blissfully serene landscape, if only we followed their 9 new tips of the week.

With an expanding belief that everyone could be disease-free “if only”, I too jumped on the bandwagon, trying to convince others of the possibilities of healthy living by being an example of perfect health through my impeccable diet, exercise, and wellness habits—hence the birth of The Healthy Pharmacist.

But now, after over 5 years of pushing this idealistic message and championing health, I’m beginning to realize my own humanity and the limitations of these messages.

An inescapable fate

I’m still relatively young but the effects of aging have been far from quiescent. My hairline continues to recede, brown skin spots are coming more frequently, and sometimes my knees hurt regardless of the amount of antiinflammatory omega-3 fats I consume.

My attempt to defy the aging process and live free from illness has been met with the inescapable reality of life: some ailments  and continued aging cannot be prevented. No amount of supplementation, superfoods, or yoga can stop the basic evolutionary process of life and the inevitability of illness.

With the realization that we will likely succumb to different individual circumstances, disease, and disability despite our best attempts to live well, I now acknowledge that the way health is presented by certain websites and writers, and even myself, may be misleading. Instead, health should be communicated as a changing, fluid goal, unique to each person’s situation and stage of life.

Perfect health is not about stress-free sunshine filled with frolicking in flower fields. For some, health means having the stamina to stand up in a daughter’s wedding or waking up each day with an eager motivation to rise out of bed.

Wellness websites and bloggers sometimes paint a picture of a single Utopian health we all can experience if only we follow the latest fad and their exclusive tips. This provides an unreal expectation and false hope to their readers of what healthy living can and cannot do. Better health is best represented as a continuum that can be achieved incrementally and individually, regardless of circumstance.

Bring health back to reality

For example, many young girls idolize supermodels and though they may attempt to look like them, few will be able to achieve their genetically unique physique, no matter how hard they try. That should not mean they dismiss looking and feeling good about themselves. Instead, this superficial beauty needs to be reset and refocused to different aspects of beauty as they gain comfort and confidence in who they are and who they can become.

Individual health is similar. Some of us will have envious health while others will be stricken with disease, no matter how well we eat or how long we exercise. While we may not be one of the lucky few with superior genes, we should not throw out the benefits healthy habits can bring. We too should reset our expectations of health and know that improvements can be made at any state throughout the continuum.

However severe or frustrating my back pain became, I believed I could alter my situation for the better. A cure was seemingly out of reach and ‘perfect’ health was not the goal, rather my best health was to walk pain-free without the need from drugs.

Setting a realistic expectation of improvement should be a greater focus when discussing health and wellness. Everyone can achieve small wins in health with better lifestyle habits. To do this, the way we promote health and healthy behaviors needs to change.

Misguided information touting the endless curative potential of lifestyle changes gives anticipation of an expected benefit when none may actually come.  The resulting disappointment can turn people away from wellness, furthering their chances of any benefit in either sickness or health.

Rather than conjuring images of perfect health free of disease or injury, the messages need to be realistic about what lifestyle habits can do at each life state.

By bringing health back to reality, hope-inducing nonsense from websites like Goop can effectively be countered and mitigated.