Health Matters: 8 Steps That Can Save Your Life - And Your Family's Health - Softcover

Grant, Taylor

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0470045728 ISBN 13: 9780470045725

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 2007

Synopsis

"If you are looking for direction and focus in becoming a health advocate for you or your family, search no more. A must read. . . . This wise book will help many realize the power of taking charge of their own health and will undoubtedly save lives in the process."
-Ann Louise Gittleman, Ph.D., author of the New York Times bestselling The Fat Flush Plan

"Health Matters is an extremely accessible resource for being proactive in our healthcare. It's a must for anyone who wants to feel empowered, not intimidated, when dealing with his or her health."
-Connie Guttersen, R.D., Ph.D., author of the New York Times bestselling The Sonoma Diet

"Taylor Grant delivers a great guide to pursuing proactive health. We strongly urge you to put her recommendations into action."
-Dr. Richard and Cindy Becker, hosts of the nationally syndicated television program Your Health

Do you have the right doctors? What puts your family's health most at risk? Should you really worry about the latest pandemic scare? Navigating the maze of today's healthcare system can be a daunting challenge. Health Matters gives you the information, support, and savvy advice you need to make choices and take actions that contribute to a long and healthy life for you and your family.

Through 8 Prescriptions for Life, you'll discover why we avoid dealing with our health, the essentials to understanding your body, and how to harness your Health Power to get great medicalcare. You'll also learn easy ways to make positive changes in your life and protect your family.

Health Matters is packed with useful tools, including:
*

Handy checklists to help you get organized and take action on your health
*

A Healthy Life Plan that reveals how to have great health at any age
*

5-Minute Clinics filled with quick tips for protecting yourself and staying healthy
*

A 52 Weeks of Health section that gives you an easy way to have your healthiest year ever

About this title

About the Author

Taylor Grant is the founder of Taylor Your Health, an advocacy company that provides education programs to organizations, consumers, and companies to motivate people to feel better about their health and discover easy ways to live their healthiest life. Taylor Your Health has sold over 3 million self-published books and guides that inspire people to take charge of their health and their life.

From the Back Cover

"If you are looking for direction and focus in becoming a health advocate for you or your family, search no more. A must read. . . . This wise book will help many realize the power of taking charge of their own health and will undoubtedly save lives in the process."
?Ann Louise Gittleman, Ph.D., author of the New York Times bestselling The Fat Flush Plan

"Health Matters is an extremely accessible resource for being proactive in our healthcare. It's a must for anyone who wants to feel empowered, not intimidated, when dealing with his or her health."
?Connie Guttersen, R.D., Ph.D., author of the New York Times bestselling The Sonoma Diet

"Taylor Grant delivers a great guide to pursuing proactive health. We strongly urge you to put her recommendations into action."
?Dr. Richard and Cindy Becker, hosts of the nationally syndicated television program Your Health

Do you have the right doctors? What puts your family's health most at risk? Should you really worry about the latest pandemic scare? Navigating the maze of today's healthcare system can be a daunting challenge. Health Matters gives you the information, support, and savvy advice you need to make choices and take actions that contribute to a long and healthy life for you and your family.

Through 8 Prescriptions for Life, you'll discover why we avoid dealing with our health, the essentials to understanding your body, and how to harness your Health Power to get great medicalcare. You'll also learn easy ways to make positive changes in your life and protect your family.

Health Matters is packed with useful tools, including:

• Handy checklists to help you get organized and take action on your health

• A Healthy Life Plan that reveals how to have great health at any age

• 5-Minute Clinics filled with quick tips for protecting yourself and staying healthy

• A 52 Weeks of Health section that gives you an easy way to have your healthiest year ever

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Health Matters

8 Steps That Can Save Your Life-and Your Family's HealthBy Taylor Grant

John Wiley & Sons

Copyright © 2007 Taylor Grant
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-470-04572-5

Chapter One

Conquer Your Fears

The Beginning of the End

Many books show you how to begin something: a diet, a business, a financial plan. This book is about ending something: ending a passive approach to your most valuable asset-your health; ending the frustration you feel when dealing with doctors or anyone in our health care system; ending the fear that somewhere inside a disease is lurking, waiting to claim your well-being, your peace of mind, or your life, and you are powerless against it.

By picking up this book, you've made a life-changing decision. You've realized that your health is too important to leave up to somebody else. You know that in order to live the longest life you can, you've got to understand your own health, have a plan to protect yourself, and take charge of your health and your life.

The National Center for Educational Statistics says that five out of six people have only intermediate health literacy skills-the ability to understand health information and use that information to make decisions about our health and our life. Their study shows that very few of us are proficient when it comes to understanding our health. And these results don't seem to have much to do with our reading literacy or educational levels. We're all stumped. The health information we're given is too technical and filled with too much jargon. For example, to help us eat less salt, we have to scour the ingredients list on a can of green beans to find the sodium content. While we hear story after story filled with health scares, warnings, and advice, we have virtually no training, experience, or help on how all of this information can be used in our own lives to make us feel better and stay healthy. It's this ignorance that keeps us from doing what we should to be healthier and traps us in the darkness of fear about our health rather than the power of enlightenment.

Dave, a man who successfully battled cancer, described to me the effect this ignorance, early in his diagnosis and treatment, had on both his body and his mind:

The worst part, truly the worst-more than the nausea, losing my hair, fearing death-was not knowing, not understanding what was happening to me. Each time the doctor ordered a test or treatment, I'd spend the night before with cold sweats, dreading not only the procedure itself, but even getting the results. And most of the time I didn't even know why I was having the test at all. Once I decided to stop being ignorant and get information so I could understand everything that was happening to me-before it happened-most of my fear just evaporated. Just knowing, understanding, asking questions and getting answers, empowered me in a way I never thought was possible. I felt better, more in control. I'm convinced it's what made me get better. That fear of the unknown was eating at me, almost making me feel like just letting the cancer win.

Face Your Fears

Everyone has fears about their health-we just don't talk about them very often. Like all fears, they make us uncomfortable. They come from the dark recesses of our childhood and touch on topics that get at our very core: pain, suffering, loss of control, loss of loved ones, death.

It's normal to feel uncomfortable talking about a health condition with someone who's battling an illness. What do you say? What's too personal? How do you show you really care and want to help? Thankfully, we've moved away from the days when we would discuss someone's condition with whispers and nods. But while we talk about the treatments and the trips to the doctor, we still tiptoe around the subject of our fears and our feelings. The Health Fears Appraisal, beginning on page 20, will help you examine your health fears in five key areas: your health, your family, your work, your health care team, and your financial matters. Answer these questions honestly to help you understand where your fears may be holding you back from living your healthiest, longest life.

I'm going to help you put an end to the fears and behaviors that keep you from feeling your best and may even shorten your life. You'll learn to pull back the shutters on your fears, bring them out into the light, and separate what's irrational from what's real. I'll give you simple steps you can take to be in control of your health. And most importantly, you'll start breaking those bonds of ignorance, taking off the blinders, and finding the power to become an expert on your own health. Together, we'll examine feelings about

fears about your health matters

your health power and perceptions

your doctors

your family's health

your commitment to a healthy life

You'll learn how to harness the positive power of those feelings to build a real-life plan you can use to begin your journey toward health, wellness, and happiness.

The Monster in Your Closet

Ignoring your health doesn't mean that you don't think about it. As you probably learned when you scored your Health Fears Appraisal, we have a complicated relationship with our health. In many ways we obsess about it-there are thousands of health stories every day on the Internet, in the newspaper, and on television. Drugstore shelves are packed with remedies, cures, vitamins, and medicines. We talk about our health, think about it, and fret about it. But at the same time, in many important ways, we neglect it, figuring we'll do something about it tomorrow.

I like to call our health the monster hiding in the closet. You know it's there, but as long as you don't open the door, you'll be okay, right? You get up, you go to work, and you feel okay. That monster's asleep in the closet and everything's fine. But then ... you feel a lump in your breast ... you wake up on the floor and can't remember how you got there ... you see blood where blood shouldn't be. That monster's awake now, and he's a bigger beast than you ever imagined. You're scared.

Shutting that monster in the closet isn't just a bad plan, it's a deadly one. But too often, it's the way we deal with our health. Why, when we know the monster's in there? We're too busy, too distracted, or have better ways to use our time-and often it's because that little monster can be pretty darn scary.

In this age of sometimes excruciating self-exploration and self-revelation, celebrities and just regular Joes alike line up on Oprah, Dr. Phil, Larry King, and-heaven help us-Howard Stern to reveal their deepest, darkest secrets. We talk about everything-it seems nothing is off-limits anymore. Facing Your Inner Child; Overcoming Your Fear of Success; I'm Okay, How Come You're Not?-we're willing to look our inner selves in the mirror and say, "Ha! Fear doesn't live here anymore!" Except, it seems, when it comes to our health. It's one of the last fears we seem reluctant to conquer. Why is health something most of us just want to avoid?

The health headlines you hear on the nightly news or read on the Internet can be downright frightening. They're intended to scare you into listening or reading (and keep you from clicking off to somewhere else). And many folks in the media, government, and our health care system think that hearing frightening statistics might scare you into action. Get that prostate exam or die! They mean well, but in fact, studies have shown that most people are on overload. Daily reports on health risks and scares have stuffed our closets full of monsters in every size, shape, and color, and we've decided it's easier to just slam that door shut than figure out what to do. Vague threats are announced without specifics to help us understand who is at risk and how real a threat is. Take breast cancer, for example. You don't often hear it reported that 70 percent of women who get it don't die from it. And if women took advantage of early screenings and treatment, more than 95 percent could survive. Elaine Ratner, author of The Feisty Woman's Breast Cancer Book, says that the publicity given to breast cancer in an effort to drive women toward prevention and detection has created a false impression that breast cancer is far more common than it is. Ratner believes that this fear has actually had the opposite effect, making women avoid tests and examinations that could save their lives.

Jessie Gruman, president of the Center for Advancement of Health, says that the media plays a big part in stoking these fears. "The problem is that mass media fly on news, meaning information has to be tarted up to be used. This plants the seeds of fear instead of education."

But health scares are not reserved just for today's twenty-four-hour cable news channels. America has a rich heritage of hysteria and hype when it comes to health. Let's take a look at some infamous health scares of our past and present.

Famous Health Scares in History

Lethal Tomatoes

Scare April 1812: Tomatoes are poisonous and will kill you.

Fact Although Italians had been growing and eating tomatoes since 1550, Americans didn't start eating them until around 1830 because they were widely thought to be poisonous. Legend has it that Colonel Robert Gibbon Johnson introduced the tomato to Salem, Massachusetts, by publicly eating a basket of tomatoes in the town square. He drew quite a crowd of gawkers, who expected to watch him die.

Result Can you imagine food without tomatoes? Pizza Hut might be called Flat Bread Cheese Shack.

Don't Pass the Cranberry Sauce

Scare November 1959: U.S. Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare Arthur Fleming announced that a shipment of cranberries examined in San Francisco had traces of aminotriazole, a pesticide that hadn't yet been evaluated by the government but hadn't shown any danger. He casually warned, just fifteen days before Thanks-giving, that to be safe Americans probably shouldn't buy cranberries at all until the chemical could be tested further.

Fact The pesticide affected only a small portion of the total U.S. crop and wasn't found to be dangerous. For a person to ingest the same amount of the chemical that lab animals received in testing, he would have to eat 15,000 pounds of cranberries every day for years.

Result Secretary Fleming's offhand comment caused a panic about cranberries. The risk to humans from consuming cranberries was infinitesimal. On the campaign trail for the 1960 presidential election, Vice President Richard Nixon and Senator John Kennedy both consumed cranberries to show Americans that there was no danger.

Swine Flu Is Coming

Scare March 1976: A soldier at Fort Dix in New Jersey died from the "killer flu." Americans were whipped into a frenzy by reports that an epidemic was about to hit the United States. President Ford authorized a $135 million immunization program, and about 40 million Americans received shots.

Fact The soldier was the only person to die from the virus, and no epidemic developed. In a tragic irony, the vaccine itself caused an adverse reaction in some people, sickening hundreds and killing twenty-five-more than the disease itself.

Result This is probably the biggest overreaction to a health scare in our history and highlighted the power of the modern media to generate health hysteria. What's referred to by many health experts as the "Swine Flu Fiasco" is said to have diminished Americans' faith in health pronouncements from the government and rocked our confidence in the government to respond prudently to a potential large-scale contagious outbreak.

Coffee Causes Cancer

Scare February 1981: A study claimed that drinking two cups of coffee per day doubles your chances of getting pancreatic cancer, while drinking five cups per day triples your risk.

Fact The flawed study was published by a Harvard doctor whose findings could never be reproduced. There has not been any evidence since to suggest that coffee causes cancer.

Result Unbelievably, coffee sales were not affected by the study. This illustrates the danger that can come from putting too much emphasis on the results of a single study.

Can You Heal Me Now? Cell Phones and Brain Tumors

Scare 1990: An urban legend circulated and was picked up by the media that magnetic fields produced by a cell phone will cause brain tumors.

Fact While it is not possible to prove that electromagnetic fields (EMF) are safe, they have never been clearly linked with cancer.

Result Incidence of brain tumors has risen slightly in recent years, but not in proportion with the increase of cell phone use. The real danger of cell phones is using them while driving. Drivers using cell phones are four times as likely to have an accident as nonusers.

Bird Flu Pandemic

Scare Summer 2005: Fear spread that a lethal strain of flu would migrate from birds (no pun intended) to humans, causing a worldwide pandemic and killing millions of people.

Fact Common flu strains often go from birds to humans and are not necessarily life-threatening. The most recent bird flu strain causing concern, H5N1, has been linked to the deaths of slightly over a hundred people who came into direct contact with poultry, primarily in Asian and Eastern European countries. While scientists are concerned that the virus may gain the rare ability to be transmitted from human to human, which might cause a widespread flu epidemic, there is currently no evidence that this has occurred.

Result Being prepared for an epidemic of any kind is a challenge for the health care system in every country. The difficulty comes in deciding how much money and resources to direct toward a health problem that in all probability will never materialize, when at the same time millions of people aren't being treated for conditions like heart disease, diabetes, and asthma-conditions that are killing people every day.

You vs. the Monster

With all the scary news that you are bombarded with every day, battling the monster in your closet can be hard, partly because some health fears do contain a kernel of truth. No one can promise you that you won't get cancer or that you'll never have a heart attack. Your doctor can't guarantee "Disease-free or your money back!"

What's Your Real Risk?

What's interesting is that many of the things that seem to get the most press and invade our thoughts are things that, statistically, we have a very low risk of falling victim to (such as a terrorist attack, a plane crash, an epidemic). By contrast, some of the health issues that should get our attention (including heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and car accidents) don't seem to generate as much fear and, as a result, not much action to prevent and treat.

The Health Fear or Health Fiction checklist will help you evaluate whether a risk is something you should take seriously or one that just merits some interested watching. On page 30, you can see a sample I've done for a current health threat-bird flu-that's getting lots of news coverage. Be sure to evaluate the actual threat, not the "what if" scenario that usually gets the most attention. For example, you might say, "Hey, isn't the bird flu contagious-why did you answer 'no' to number two?" The fact is that as of this writing, the bird flu has been transmitted only from bird to human (and even then on a very limited basis) and not from human to human. Every threat in the world has the potential to morph into something deadly; what you want to evaluate is the actual threat to you today. You can even use this list for conditions like diabetes and heart disease. While it is just a general guide, it can help you decide when your worries are worthy and when it's better to watch and wait.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Health Mattersby Taylor Grant Copyright © 2007 by Taylor Grant. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Edition details

• Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Ltd
• Publication date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0470045728
• ISBN 13: 9780470045725
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288