Improving your health management style
In order to be healthy, you need:
- a) At least 20 minutes of aerobic exercise at 80% of your heart rate each day
- b) 60 minutes three times a week of low intensity exercise
- c) 30 minutes daily of moderate activity
- d) Three 10 minute segments of any kind of activity daily
- e) To relax and get a life
Micromanaging our health has become a national pastime as scientific studies are translated into detailed rules and regulations about diet and exercise. We fret about how many servings we need of what kinds of food in combination with what amounts of essential added vitamin supplements. We ponder how much exercise will forestall disease and decay, scurrying to keep up with the varying recommendations that reflect the latest scientific findings. We worry about foods that will clog our arteries, but are unaware that our minds have been clogged with ever-shifting health recommendations.
Children’s activity levels were the latest area to experience the whiplash of changing scientific opinion. By examining various studies that put heart monitors on 1800 children from 3 to 17 years old, researchers found that around the world, even in the United States, the average child gets at least 90 minutes of exercise each day. This seemed to be a happy surprise for scientists who thought that today's children were in danger of setting up like cement in front of TVs and video games.
However, responsible parents were warned that this good news does not mean they should stop trying to micromanage their child’s health. "There’s no guarantee that your child is one of the fit ones," admonished the experts, who recommend you stay vigilant. In fact, James Roemmich, one of the study’s authors, suggests that medical experts use the research findings to boost the daily-recommended amount of activity for kids to reflect how much exercise the study showed they’re getting. "While many experts recommend only 30 minutes a day of exercise," he noted, "We need to think about recommendations of 60 to 120 minutes of activity per day for children."
Health by the numbers
Anyone who seriously believes this is a workable approach to children’s—or adult’s—health is not getting the daily-recommended amount of reality checks. It doesn’t take a scientific study to show that we’re not being nourished by swallowing these servings of conflicting advice, nor are we getting adequate exercise by running after every new health fad. But as a culture, we seem to have slipped a cog or two a few decades back and made health into a numbers game.
Our adoration of science is partly to blame. Scientists see the body as a machine that will run properly only if all the details are managed deliberately and diligently. Since the culture regards science as the arbiter of truth, we tend toward unquestioning acceptance of anything billed as "scientific data." When scientists run in a pack following fashionable theories, as is the norm, their studies produce reams of similar "information." This leads us even farther astray from a realistic approach to health, as we succumb to the "how could so many people be wrong?" syndrome.
Micromanaging health also appeals to anyone who feels worried. Both the media and companies selling anything health-related have done their utmost to keep us anxious about health. It’s hard to think clearly when you’ve allowed your mind to be pre-empted by programming that has nothing to do with health and everything to do with getting you to buy something.
Worried people buy health products that were created to assuage worries that were deliberately inflamed by the products’ marketing departments. "What if it’s true? What if I’m not taking care of myself right? What can I do to keep myself and my family safe?" This is not a line of reasoning; it’s the sound of lemmings with money to spend being herded over a cliff by clever advertising campaigns. We have been purposefully sold on the erroneous idea that we must micromanage our health or face dire consequences.
The vision thing
In a business setting, micromanagement is a recipe for disaster, just as it is in health. The micromanager is afraid something will go wrong, as is the worried consumer of health advice. Instead of focusing on the big picture, setting the direction for his employees, and relying on their competence to get the work done, the micromanager obstructs progress toward the goal with constant interference, afraid to trust his workers to do their jobs.
In order to stop micromanaging health, we need a big picture view of what we’re trying to do and how best to accomplish it. The big picture is that health is an inside job, the result of how we think and react to life. Physical health is best pursued by cultivating mental health: by developing optimistic thinking styles, learning to adapt flexibly to stressful situations, and becoming aware of and altering limiting and negative beliefs that interfere with optimum functioning.
Attempting to micromanage your health is neurotic, maladaptive behavior that comes from buying into the stress-inducing concept that your body is delicately balanced machinery that requires vigilant overseeing. Our bodies are not machines. Attempting to manage them like machines is, ultimately, a waste of time and energy, and the antithesis of health.
As manager your job is to promote good working conditions. This doesn’t come from health by the numbers, but from cultivating mental qualities like relaxation, confidence, and optimism. If you do your job, the workers in your body can be counted on to do theirs.