Throughout medical school at some point in time, I started wondering if I was going crazy and becoming a hypochondriac (a person who is abnormally anxious about his/her health) or as my fellow colleagues quite amusingly referred to it as having “med student syndrome”.
It felt like every semester I was battling one or more illnesses which really affected my productivity. If it wasn’t irritable bowel syndrome, it was overactive bladder, or an infection or a “heart attack”.
The truth is some of these diagnoses where confirmed but after so many doctors’ visits, medical tests and not finding the cause or solution for some of the troubling symptoms I was having, I started questioning myself.
“Could there be a connection with the things I was experiencing in my life spiritually, emotionally and mentally? Could it be the anxiety and depression that I was battling with, plaguing my body too?” Maybe the stress of life and medical school was affecting my body like this? Or maybe my poor eating habits were catching up with me?“ Just maybe…
The World Health Organization (WHO) defines health as a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.
Whereas, the Cambridge dictionary defined the term holistic as dealing with or treating the whole of something or someone and not just a part.
Health takes into consideration the whole person.
Studies have shown that patient attitudes such as faith and hope may be of considerable importance in the course and outcome of illness.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Other studies done revealed that depression has been associated with an increased risk of coronary heart disease.
www.mentalhealth.org.uk
The body affects the mind and vice versa and our relationships, environment and belief systems can also affect our health.
So why is it that so many of us just focus on one area of our health and neglect the rest? We eat our fruits and vegetables, go to the gym and take our vitamins but our relationships are in shambles. Or we go to church three times a week, read our Bible and pray but we eat fast food five times a week and over indulge in desserts. Or we appear to be thriving in our chosen profession but every day we participate in unhealthy coping strategies and cry ourselves to sleep.
Are we really healthy? Or are we making ourselves sick? These questions go through my mind daily and I want others to ponder them too.
The holistic healthy lifestyle is about getting healthy in ALL areas of our lives.
I’m no expert but I’m learning and growing just like you and I just hope to share what I’ve learnt (and continue to learn) so that we can all start to live the life we were meant to live- healthy, happy and whole!
So will you join me on this journey to complete spiritual, mental, emotional, physical and financial healing? I sure hope you do.
Yours truly,
Dr. Esther J Trotman (M.B.B.S)
“Don’t you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God?” (1 Corinthians 6:19)
References
https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/a-to-z/p/physical-health-and-mental-health
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1273970/?page=3
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