There are times when the unexpected happens. An unanticipated opportunity occurs, and we instinctively know it’s perfect for what’s happening in our lives at that moment. Because it’s an ideal match to new directions in my life, I’m thrilled to write this new NorthBay biz Executive Wellness column. In this first piece, I’ll introduce you to some of the background and experience I bring and present some of the ideas to be explored in coming issues.
My educational history is lengthy enough that a detailed recitation would exceed my column’s word limit. Suffice to say that, by the time I began my medical practice at age 42, I’d spent close to two-thirds of my life in classrooms. Fortunately, a number of instructive side-trips into normal employment compelled reality testing of any lingering scholarly naïveté and included jobs like cab driver, factory worker, dishwasher, librarian, lifeguard, mason’s assistant, Navy officer, field biologist, grant writer and hospital administrator. I was fortunate to attend excellent schools, culminating in medical training that spanned U.C. Berkeley, U.C.S.F., University of Washington and Stanford.
The best of my education, however, was obtained at a small Midwestern liberal arts school (Beloit College), which sagely insisted (and made it a graduation requirement) that students demonstrate an ability to integrate knowledge from different disciplines and apply the result to real-world problems. This turned me into a life-long student of human behavior and social processes and gave me the core preparation for my later medical work.
To have lived in California these past 30 years is to have lived a lifestyle shaped in significant part by health and wellness consciousness. I was both witness and participant in the wellness movement’s birth in the Bay Area during the 1970s. As director of a rural health clinic, I helped put in place a philosophy and service plan that incorporated the core tenets of health maintenance and wellness. For years before I entered medical school, I devoted much time to study and experience with body energy (chi or qi gong) through martial arts and acupuncture, somatic (massage and manipulation) therapies, meditative techniques, herbal medicine, homeopathy and psychotherapy. The evolution and structure of the mind, and how it symbiotically shapes the body that contains it, have long been a particular fascination of mine. At the U.C. Berkeley-U.C. San Francisco Joint Medical Program, I learned about the psychosocial aspects of health and illness, medical socio-economics and leading-edge concepts of the mind-body connection.
After a residency in anesthesiology, I became one of the first physicians in America to complete a post-graduate fellowship in pain management. To be effective at pain care, as with health maintenance and wellness promotion, a doctor needs to understand how biological, psychological and social factors influence health. Fifteen years of clinical experience in this cross-disciplinary field have convinced me that the heart and soul must be included in efforts to heal the mind and the body. This is also fundamental to the art of teaching and promoting wellness. At the same time, there is a need to objectively assess what actually works in the fuzzy world of health and healing. This is where an informed grounding in scientific medicine—and a healthy sense of its limitations—can contribute to a reasonable, informed, open-minded skepticism toward the confusing array of methods, modalities and technology currently purveyed as “wellness-enhancing.”
While writing this column, I want to help you understand that health and wellness are not the same thing. Health is merely the absence of known disease or other malfunction. Wellness implies a higher level of being. It’s when you’ve reached a state that is optimal for your unique, individual set of circumstances, needs and physical/mental capacity. The point of wellness is not the same as the images of physical attractiveness that are used to popularize and sell the idea of health as a product. Essentially, wellness is learning how to remain free of avoidable disease and to function as well as possible in the role and path you’ve chosen and achieved in this life.
Why should people who play executive roles require any different coverage of wellness? The first answer is that executives and the self-employed have special circumstances that are different from wage earners. The bottom line is they’re the social and economic driving engines that draw the lives and well-being of many other people. They take on risks that others eschew. Heavy responsibilities are routine. Stressful litigation and business failures are not uncommon. They face, arguably, special pressures, excessive time demands and a lack of well-defined boundaries between work and the rest of life. So it stands to reason that special maps may be required for people to navigate from Executiveland to Wellville.
In future columns, I’ll examine the “inner game” that’s specific to the executive quest for wellness. Executive health rests upon more than merely maintaining the biological basics of a good diet, regular exercise, healthful habits and relaxation. Executive wellness will be elusive unless due regard is paid to essential psycho-emotional skills like effective leadership, non-stressful personal productivity, self-organization and emotional and spiritual centering. Moreover, it’s unlikely if the workplace is dysfunctional or toxic. The social dimension of executive wellness must include skills that form and maintain a peaceful and productive workplace environment that supports and promotes focus on business development and success.
The future will also bring reviews of regional resources for executive health and medical care. “Executive wellness” and “executive medical care” is a brand new and, it must be said, sometimes opportunistic marketing sector of the health industry. At the premium prices levied for elite and super-premium healthcare services, this column can help business and professional leaders become better comparison shoppers.
Finally, though I do not intend to pen a medical advice column, readers’ feedback, questions and tales about their search for wellness are cordially invited and will be very much appreciated. Sharing your experiences will certainly enrich this column and its value to all who read it.
Dr. Allen Gruber is a pain management specialist and anesthesiologist. He lives in the Russian River Valley. You can reach him at agruber@northbaybiz.com.
