We need to prioritise holistic, personalised, preventative healthcare.

Over the last 200 years our lifespans have more than doubled (Karolinska Institutet, 2022), but the same can not be said for our health-spans (Peterson, 2017). We have a problem with over specialised medicine, ultra-processed food, an over reliance on pharmaceuticals, and a far more sedentary lifestyle than most previous generations.I work in a private clinic as a trainer, along with a team of therapists: naprapats, coaches, psychologists, and other trainers. We have been able to help people that have bounced around in the healthcare system for many years without improvement. Not everyone of course, but a significant proportion of those that come to us with chronic problems. We can take a more holistic overview of their health, and we do it in the most evidence-based way that we can.

I have enormous respect for the healthcare system here in sweden. and I am truly grateful that it is available to all who need it and at a price that is fair for all.
The current healthcare system is amazing if you have one problem, or an acute problem that needs fixing now. We are incredibly lucky to be living at a time where we have the ability to fix things that would have killed us just 80 years ago.

But the other side is, it’s not very good at fixing complex problems, or long term chronic problems. This is due to many factors. But loosely and broadly summarised it is due to money, time, and education of our healthcare workers.
I personally have worked in medical education, helping educate junior doctors for Kings College London. My memory was that they have only 18 hours of nutrition in their education, and even less for physical therapy. An article in Time magazine claims this figure to be closer to 11 hours on average.
The two things we do the most are eat and move, and the two things most important for our physical and mental health are food and movement. These are two things most lacking from a Doctors education, if they do not choose to specialise in them later.
To quote Stanford/Harvard Doctor Anthony Kaveh ”Traditionally, when we go to medical school, we are trained to deal with acute situations, which we do very, very well. We are not trained for wellness, for health optimisation, or for low-risk interventions”.

The other problem is western medicine specialises too much, and often at the detriment of the patient who has more than one thing wrong with them. The heart specialist has little to do with the liver specialist even though internally in the body those two are inextricably linked.
We need to change this paradigm. We need to give healthcare workers a more nuanced approach to helping us as well. Potentially a restructuring of the current systems, where your GP or another doctor is well informed about you and has oversight of your healthcare and collects information from the specialists you meet and brings it all together into a larger more holistic overview and decides on a healthcare plan based on the whole rather than the specific. This is how it is supposed to be now, but the lack of resources doesn’t seem to allow for this. Your GP is more of a gatekeeper to healthcare, rather than a guide for health.

A lot of the media we are exposed to sells quick fixes, black and white, buy this, do that.
This is very damaging for people looking for a solution, because the answer for long term health and wellbeing is rarely ever black and white, and nearly never quick.
As a trainer, and in my experience with all of my colleagues, and every healthcare worker who I have spoken to, all share this experience: People are very often looking for the easy answer, the quick fix that will allow them to carry on without making any changes to their life. Very rare are the people who have the capacity to make broad sweeping changes.
Anyone who has a job working with fixing things will tell you it is way easier to sell a solution to a problem, than it is to give advice on how to avoid the problem in the first place.

Here we come to the longest part, my true passion. Movement.
Movement is what we are built for. Complex movement. How we eat, how we communicate, how we reproduce, how we breathe even. All of it. Complex. So many systems have to work together in harmony in order to help us do anything, and frankly as far as my limited understanding goes, I find it a miracle that we and most of life on the planet continues to do it so brilliantly day after day. According to Neuroscientist Daniel Wolpert in his 2011 TEDtalk, the only reason we have brains is for complex movement, and he points to sea creatures that no longer need to move to eat: as soon as they find their place to root themselves they start reabsorbing their brain due to the high metabolic cost of having one. They are very costly if you’re not going to use them.
But by nature we are lazy creatures, and this is out of necessity. Look at any wild animal, when they are not struggling for food, or playing – to hone their skills to get more food, or for social cohesion, they are resting. We save energy because it is necessary for survival. Except we really don’t need to any more. Food is available in Sweden in ridiculous quantities and you barely have to step a foot outside your house to get it. You can order online delivery and the most amazing things turn up at your house in a matter of hours. There is no stress here for us. At the same we are moving to a far more sedentary, service based society where movement is not necessary. One where we sit still for hours in front of computers letting the body slowly “rust” through lack of use. We get more pain, we get weaker, and we suffer so many negative effects of this, and listing all the sources, articles and studies which show all the negative effects would probably take me days to do. But the most important source is our own bodies, they tell us quite well, the pain in the back and neck, the headache, the problems sleeping, the irritability, etc. A lot of us drown it out with painkillers and sleeping tablets. Instead of fixing the problem we sweep it under the carpet to be dealt with later, because changing anything takes more energy.
Movement is necessary and vitally important. The brain cannot be separated from the body, the brain is the body and both are “movement”. Complex and challenging movements are the best way to keep the body and brain healthy as long as possible. Most know the feeling of a good stretch, or the euphoria of accomplishing something physical that was a challenge, be it learning to juggle, lifting something heavy, or simply walking through the woods. I have yet to meet someone who told me they felt good and healthy from sitting in front of the computer 8+ hours a day. (I am sure they are out there, but I haven’t spoken to them yet).
The body as an organism has 2 main ways of communicating with it. Food and force. What you put in it, and what you do with it. And you can read that any way you please as it’s all relevant. But to keep the body and brain healthy, they require constant stress. Healthy, manageable stress that they have time to recover from. Muscles, bones, and tendons grow stronger, the brain stays sharp and the heart stays healthy, from use. We spend so much time in a sedentary environment that we have to invent ways to add this back into a day, like going to the gym, or walking on treadmills in the office.
I am not saying that we should all quit our jobs and live in the forest, but I am a major proponent of adding constant small low level movement to our days. Like a spice sprinkled over the meal. This is where you will get the most benefit. Not suffering 3 times a week for 45 minutes. The body is really good at responding to what you do with it for the majority of the time, and if 150 of your 168 hours a week are spent curled up on a sofa or hunched over a desk, your body is going to prioritise that as it continually rebuilds itself.
Like anything, prehab is the best thing you can do. Fix it before it breaks, keep it strong, maintain it. Rebuilding something after it breaks is always more costly and time consuming than the 5mins here and there it would take to keep it working. You know this, if you never service your car, replacing the engine is expensive, and totally unnecessary compared to replacing the oil and filter and spark plugs once in a while. If I have an athlete that follows my advice (and I have several professional athletes that do), they can compete season after season with nearly no missed matches or competitions because they do the necessary prehab work and do not get injured or they return faster, compared to some of their peers who miss months because they only rehab and rest the damage, and never fix the underlying reason for why it happens.

Finally and most importantly we need to start early with all our children, in schools and at home. To empower them to understand that they have choice and control with what they put in their bodies and how they move them. They need to understand that what they do will influence their health long term.
We also need to teach them to be critical of the information they are being given, and to follow it to the source.
For example sodas and other sugary snacks are not a part of a healthy or balanced diet, there is no health benefit for consuming them. There is only profit for those companies that sell it. We need to treat these things in the same way we treat smoking and alcohol, and certainly it shouldn’t be promoted in the the biggest brightest colours at the end of every shop enticing everyone to pick it up. The link between processed sugars and cancer, and any other disease that has its roots in inflammatory processes is undeniable (Harvard Health 2022), but it is not widely talked about because people like sugar, and there are massive multi national companies with profits at stake that resist regulatory efforts around the world.

There are no quick fixes, only small daily improvements. There are no pills that fix it all. There is no one exercise that can repair you. It requires constant maintenance. Like cleaning a house, if you stop doing it, it gets dirty quickly, and to use a bad analogy for food and exercise, if you use dirty water and a leaf blower you’re probably going to make it worse.
We need to show people that they have control over their health, that their wellbeing is in their hands, and that small long term improvements are the goal when it comes to movement and nutrition.
The best advice I can give anyone: walk in the woods often, dance or do martial arts, if it has more than one ingredient on the packet try to avoid it. and finally the mountains of research that show laughing daily, being kind to yourself, and finding positivity is the most scientifically proven way to stay healthy.

Sources:
Adedokun CA, Curles WG, DeMaio EL, Asif IM. Analysis of American Medical Students’ Knowledge of Physical Activity Recommendations. PRiMER. 2021 Jan 1;5:31. doi: 10.22454/PRiMER.2021.249084. PMID: 34841206; PMCID: PMC8612584. 2023-08-30

Harvard Health, “The sweet danger of sugar.” Harvard Health, 2022-01-06, https://www.health.harvard.edu/heart-health/the-sweet-danger-of-sugar. 2023-08-27.

Karolinska Institutet, och Ola Danielsson. “Nyfiken på livslängd.” Karolinska Institutet, 2022-06-07 https://ki.se/forskning/nyfiken-pa-livslangd. 2023-08-30.

Livsmedelsverket “Ultraprocessad mat.” Livsmedelsverket, 2023-04-24, https://www.livsmedelsverket.se/livsmedel-och-innehall/mat-och-dryck/ultraprocessad-mat#Vad_s%C3%A4ger_kostr%C3%A5den. 2023-08-27.

McKee J. Holistic health and the critique of Western medicine. Soc Sci Med. 1988;26(8):775-84. doi: 10.1016/0277-9536(88)90171-2. PMID: 3287633. 2023-08-30

Millard, Elizabeth. “How Nutrition Education for Doctors Is Evolving.” Time, 2023-05-23, https://time.com/6282404/nutrition-education-doctors/. 2023-08-27.

Moreau, Nathan. The paradox of overspecialization: can’t see the forest for the trees. J Oral Med Oral Surg 26 (1) E1 (2020) DOI: 10.1051/mbcb/2020005. 2023-08-30

Santanello, Peter, and Anthony Kaveh. “What’s Wrong With US Health Care? (Anthony Kaveh MD).” Youtube, 2021-06-27, https://youtu.be/IGuCJ5ntz5Q?t=501. 2023-08-27.

Tim Peterson & Harvey a. Friedman center for aging. “Healthspan is more important than lifespan, so why don’t more people know about it? | Institute for Public Health | Washington University in St. Louis.” Institute for Public Health, 2017-05-30, https://publichealth.wustl.edu/heatlhspan-is-more-important-than-lifespan-so-why-dont-more-people-know-about-it/. 2023-08-30.