Navigating Healthcare Pt V - Health

Keeping You Away from the Doctor: A Better Model for Health

Most people don’t want to spend all day at the doctor’s office—and they shouldn’t have to. Every hour spent in a waiting room or exam room is time not spent doing the things you value. The ultimate goal of my practice is simple: keep people the hell away from me. If all goes well, you might only need to see me once or twice a year. That might sound crazy, but in my world, it's a sign of success.

Accountability Matters

That said, there’s value in having a third-party guide. An accountability partner—a nonjudgmental, objective presence in your life—can help you stay on track. They act as a mirror, holding up your stated values against your actual behavior. Are they aligned? If not, what needs to change?

A strong accountability partner does more than reflect; they mentor. They offer alternative strategies when you're stuck in patterns of thought you can’t break alone. This is especially crucial when we spiral into rumination—those sleepless nights spent stewing over problems. The answer isn’t to ignore them but to form a plan and move forward.

Health and the Human Condition

When I see a new patient, my first question is simple: Is this person sick, or not? Many religious and philosophical traditions have long-standing frameworks for this. In Buddhism, life is defined by dukkha (suffering). In Christianity, all are sinners. Different words, same truth: suffering, sickness, and sin all stem from deviation from "the way."

Whether you call it sin, imbalance, or disorder, the solution is often the same: realignment with values. Most of us don’t need long-term fixes for short-term problems. What we need is short-term discomfort for long-term transformation: education, honest conversation, exercise, living within our means, and eating real food.

Pain, discomfort, and fatigue are messages. Pain signals something isn’t right. Discomfort is tolerable and recoverable; pain, especially chronic or severe, may not be. Whether it's a mental spiral or a physical injury, unresolved pain drains energy and hope.

Defining Health

Health is flexibility. It’s the ability to respond appropriately to the moment:

• Rest when it's time to rest.

• Fight when it's time to fight.

• Be metabolically efficient with whatever food is available.

• Focus inward when necessary, and focus outward when needed.

Health is a surplus of fitness. In biology, fitness is defined as the ability to survive, reproduce, and pass on your genes. Optimal health means more than survival—it means thriving, enjoying life, and transmitting wisdom.

Most people tend to double down on their strengths. Overachievers, over-workers, over-thinkers. But healing often comes from doing the opposite. Rest if you’ve overexerted. Get moving if you’ve been stagnant. Focus on others if you’ve been self-absorbed. Focus on yourself if you've neglected your needs.

True balance requires cycling through all facets of health and refining your life to walk the narrow path.

The 5 Rs Framework for Healing

1. Reduce Pain

"Pain, suffering, sickness, sin. They're all expressions of the same thing." Pain leads to fatigue, apathy, and eventually hopelessness. Before anything else, we must reduce pain enough to restore belief that healing is possible.

2. Replace Micronutrient Deficiencies

Healing requires resources. Many of those resources are micronutrients that our bodies no longer get in adequate amounts from food alone. Whether through food, supplements, or medication, restoring biological function starts at the molecular level.

3. Repair an Unhealthy Lifestyle

Unhealthy living creates debt: physical, emotional, financial, and spiritual. Debt must be repaid. That means building better habits, modeling wellness for others, and undoing years of damage one day at a time.

4. Remove Exogenous Inputs

Once balance is restored, eliminate anything that no longer serves you—including medications, supplements, or habits that were once helpful but are now unnecessary. Return to simplicity.

5. Rebalance: People Change

Your values evolve. Life has chapters. You must continually update your behaviors to reflect your current goals. This process never ends. It requires self-reflection and outside accountability. What got you here won’t get you there.

Closing Thought

Listen to your body. Listen to life. Pain is not your enemy. It is a messenger. And the path back to health is not a mystery—you just need to be brave enough to walk it.