Disappointment and fatigue have inhabited us all a little more since we were asked to isolate ourselves once again during this usually festive time of the year. And yet, this is the time to bring together what remains of our motivation to plan and put our New Year’s resolutions into action.
I invite you to view 2022 as the best time to implement changes in your life that may spare you from needing the resources of a faltering health care system. A system that sees a breaking wave of which we do not yet know the extent and the damage it could cause.
Rather than settle for unpleasant measures to protect network personnel, why not help yourself by taking care of yourself.
You already know many of the health prevention messages that have become like repetitive advertisements that we no longer want to listen to, but studies, especially on smoking, have shown that repeating a message encouraging smoking cessation by several health professionals increased the rate of abstinence from tobacco. We may have you to wear …
Crush the cigarette
I will therefore not be original by starting by suggesting that we quit smoking.
Most of you are familiar with the possible damage smoking can have on the lungs, heart, and entire cardiovascular system. But patients who see me for their pain are often amazed to learn how smoking interferes with their ability to heal their wounds.
Surgical wounds heal less well, the rate of infection, non-healing or fracture healing times increase. When I repair a rotator cuff on my shoulder, the rate of postoperative tears doubles. If you have an old wound lying around and you put off the idea of quitting cigarettes for good, I hope you realize that nicotine is bad for your tissue healing.
Get some exercise
The message about physical activity can also become boring. It is regularly repeated by spokespersons, each more energetic than the other. But motivation is hard to find when one is overwhelmed with work and responsibilities. That our children have needs that cannot wait. Time is becoming a scarce commodity and it is difficult to fit exercise into a busy schedule when you feel like you have run out of gasoline in the tank.
So you will be amazed to learn that as little as six minutes of strenuous exercise a day results in measurable positive physiological changes. That the majority of studies of all health effects of exercise show that the greatest effects occur in those who switch from a sedentary state to a low level of physical activity. A level well below official recommendations.
So, if in spite of yourself, in the last few years, you have been inactive, the effects of a minimum of effort would be a game-changer.
Go out into nature
Put aside your screens that are only looking for your dopamine and get out into nature as suggested by Japanese researchers studying the benefits of forest walking.
And above all, be indulgent to yourself. By having goals that are too specific and often unrealizable, we too easily lose our motivation when we do not follow the plan we set for ourselves. We have to stop feeling guilty about having failed for a period of time, allowing ourselves to have 6/10 on our goals rather than giving up.
Life is not a sprint, it is a marathon.
I regularly see patients in my office who have understood this message, but who are limited by pain. A significant proportion of tendonitis, bursitis and other “ites” can be improved by learning to better use the stabilizing muscles of our skeleton.
Studies show that when it comes to knee problems, better control of the hip abductors and external rotators often has benefits. For the lumbar spine, the multifidus and the transverse abdomen are equally important. For shoulder pathologies, these are the serratus anterior and the lower trapezius.
These are not muscles that will be prominent and featured on an Instagram account, but they are muscles frequently deficient in connection with a sedentary lifestyle and prolonged work in a sitting position. It is often necessary to relearn how to solicit them and integrate them into our movements in order to be able to be active without hurting ourselves.
Some of you may be among the tens of thousands of patients waiting for orthopedic surgery. More than 5,500 patients have been waiting for more than a year for their orthopedic operation. For them, non-surgical options have not worked and it is despite themselves that they cannot be as active as they would like.
Meditate
Know that you don’t have to move to get significant benefits.
Measurable effects on your body and brain can be achieved simply through breathing exercises, mindfulness-type meditation (mindfulness) or the search for flow.
No matter what tool of the mind you use, you have the power to enhance your quality of life.
For many, this may seem esoteric, but the scientific evidence leaves no doubt about the extent of the benefits to treat anxiety, depression, sleep, chronic pain … Mindfulness meditation also contributes to memory and the ability to focus on a task.
The introspection that can accompany meditation can help us change bad habits, generate motivation, or get rid of overwhelming ruminations or anxieties.
On the food side, let’s keep it simple. Eat more vegetables and learn to cook them rather than eating processed foods.
Empathy
I would like to end by inviting all of us to become more tolerant of opinions different from our own. We all have a different experience which partly explains the distorting filters that our cognitive biases are. We already know our own opinions. We are much more likely to learn by listening to people who hold opinions different from our own than by just feeding on information sources that confirm our ideas.
Daniel Kahneman and several other great researchers have repeatedly demonstrated how our biases change our perceptions and that our opinions should therefore be expressed with more humility.
Let’s be empathetic to better understand what justifies the divergent ideas of our own. It will help us to better converge on compromises.
The pandemic is difficult for all of us to live with. It is better to listen to us than to divide us.
We will go through it more easily together.
And to help the health system staff who continue to hold their own, help yourselves by gradually adopting new lifestyles that may prevent you from overloading overflowing waiting lists.
Happy New Year everyone.