The Three Personalities Of Chronic Disease And How To Change Them

Let's be honest, most of us don’t care a huge amount about our health until we don’t feel well.
I hate to break it to you, but most of us have so little understanding of what “feeling well” means that we have been languishing in not being well for a long time before we pay attention. Consequently, too often we hear stories about people who “were so healthy” or “so vital and always seemed so well” followed by some story of how that changed seemingly in an instant.

Here’s the deal, there are a lot of warning indicators of future illness, but no one has taught you to pay attention.  I suppose the most feared “silent” health crisis are heart disease or more specifically a heart attack, cancer and now a growing concern for cognitive decline issues like Alzheimer's. I know, in my practice the fear of these is prevalent and common.

But what if I told you these aren't really silent conditions after all?  What if there were in fact 3 common personality traits that can predispose us to these events?  Traits that we tend to pass off as "normal" and in many cases even signs of a really successful productive person?

Well, this is exactly true. There are three indicators that will tell me if the person I am talking to may, in fact, be facing more dire situations in their future.  What’s key here is: these indicators have nothing to do with common lab values and therefore will be overlooked in almost every case.  But the good news is: addressing the root effect these persona elements have had on the body can, in fact, reverse the risk and give you great certainty about your health and future.

So, here they are:

1. The “faking it persona”
2. The “resting but not resting persona”
3. The “that’s just part of aging or stress persona”

Okay, so the “faking it persona” these are the people who have a strong will, they are able to silence the effects of exhaustion, stress, lack of adequate sleep and overwhelm by tapping into their sheer drive and resolve.  These people present to the world with it altogether, they meet their social obligations even when they really don’t want to and do it with a smile.
They are driven, committed and high achieving.  But this faking comes at a cost. In the background of all this, they are like many others: worn out, worn down, and exhausted,  but refuse to give in to that under the guise of commitment to life obligation. However, doing this steadily depletes body resources, drawing down vital energy, nutrients and hormones and putting the body in a tough position because it literally has to choose to divert energy from basic life support activities like moderating the heart and lungs and digestive system to keeping going long after rest was due.  The consequence of this is a steady shut down of body systems until one day there isn’t enough resource to run everything efficiently and something dire takes place.

The second persona, the “resting but not resting” persona is literally the definition of our modern life.  In this case, rest has come to mean: looking at your phone, perusing Facebook, planning meals, watching YouTube videos, reading blog posts, and collecting information on things you find interesting. In essence, defining rest as time we are still but also engaged. You may be thinking, what’s wrong with that?  Well, you may believe yourself to be recharging, but what is actually happening, is your nervous system believes you to be on task, and as a result, you are triggering all the messages and actions associated with being on task.
In, fact, I postulate that our obsession with staying engaged is actually an offshoot of truly being exhausted and drawn down to the point that if we do not stay engaged, we will, in fact, find ourselves so tired that we won’t be able to function and that scares the shit out of us.

The third persona the “that’s just part of aging or life stress” is another common trap we fall into.  It looks something like this: we begin to have chronic neck tension, our shoulders feel tight and drawn up, it causes headaches and pain but we pass it off as a long day, too much time at the computer, and move on.  Other examples of this are: joint pain, low back pain, digestive disturbances, skin issues, sleep disorders, anger, depression, anxiety and so on.  Sadly, these indicators of HUGE disruption in the body have come to be so common, we think they are just isolated presentations of what we regard as normal aging and stress, when in fact they are anything but.  All of them show that inflammation is gathering, growing and becoming harder to control and as a result, systems are breaking down, losing energy, and headed toward decline.

So, if you find yourself living as one or more of these personas, it is time to take action.  Simply put, the solution is to restore body systems by identifying exactly how they have been affected by our actions, giving the body back what it needs, supporting the weakened elements and learning how to moderate lifestyle and stress in more efficient ways.

Chronic illnesses or sudden events do not have to be part of our future, but if statistics tell us anything, we haven’t quite learned that lesson yet. Don’t sit back and wait, not only can the effects be reversed but these systems can be repaired and restored in ways you cannot even imagine.

Blessings,

Dr. Julie