It was the summer of 1976, and I wanted to watch the Olympic sprinters in Montreal. I was in a hospital bed with an undiagnosed ill-ness that caused me to drop 60 pounds in less than a year.
Now, weighing
only 97 pounds, I was barely able to reach the switch for the TV and too weak
to turn it on. The nurse came in to help me. While watching the Olympic games,
I remembered the days when I was a national-class sprinter. And I wondered how
my health could so rap- idly deteriorate.
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| Defining Fitness and Health |
The road to
full recovery from that illness was long, and required that I learn more about
how my body works. In a sense I’m still on that road, continually and now
intuitively assessing my food, nutri-tion, physical activity and lifestyle in
order to stay healthy. By tuning in more closely to my body’s needs after my
illness I began to see the immediate benefits of improved health and also began
to feel well for the first time in several years. During this period I began
going for a walk every day. In April 1980, I found myself admiring the
finishers of the Boston Marathon, thinking that these runners must be really healthy
in order to run more than 26 miles. As I watched the marathoners finish I
developed a desire to test my own health. I had been walking regularly for more
than two years. The New York City Marathon was six months away and that seemed
like plenty of time to train for it. After all, I mused, I ran in high school
and in college.
It was a
cool, overcast morning as I began my journey to the New York City Marathon. The
race started with a cannon blast so loud it shook the Verrazano Bridge. The
crowd of 18,000 runners began to move and I was among them, ready to prove to
myself that I really was healthy. All went well through the first 10 miles. The
excitement swept me along at a slightly quicker pace than planned, yet I felt great.
As expected, by 15 miles I felt tired but was able to continue.
Within the
next couple of miles, however, I began to shiver. Despite drinking plenty of
water, I felt dehydrated. And I was craving cotton candy. At 18 miles, I
stopped to check my feet. They were numb, and I wanted to be sure they were
still there. “My hamstrings are cramping,” I said out loud. Suddenly I realized
I wasn’t thinking rationally and all I could remember was my goal to finish the
race and prove my health.
Alarmed by
how bad I looked, two paramedics tried to take me off the course. But I
wouldn’t stop. Somehow, I fought my way onward. I have very little memory of
those last few miles, but I’ll always remember the finale. A minor collision
with a TV camera in Central Park made me realize I was close to the end of the
race. As the pain became more intense, the crowds got louder, and I finally had
a clear view — the finish line.
A medal was
hung around my neck, and I cried. I thought the lesson was over, but would soon
be struck by a more meaningful one. The next moment I discovered myself in the
first-aid tent. It looked like a war zone. There were casualties all around me.
Doctors and nurses were running around. People on cots groaned in pain. Ambulances
came and went.
Looking
around I had to wonder: “Are these people really healthy?” I realized then that
running the marathon had not proven my health at all. I was fit enough to run
26.2 miles. But clearly fitness was something quite different from health. The
next morning, sore but happy, I pondered my new goal to improve my health.
Achieving this would not be so simple as running a marathon. Optimal health would
be something that I would continually strive to attain for the rest of my life.
The real
lesson from my marathon experience was not one of proving health, but rather
that I became fit enough to run a marathon. Clearly this had nothing to do with
my health. Fitness and health, though many think the terms are interchangeable,
are actually two different, but mutually dependent states.
Later, in
treating patients who were very athletic, I would see individuals who were very
fit but at the same time unhealthy; injuries, illness and other unhealthy
conditions often accompanied their quests to be faster or go farther. Clearly,
some athletes would be healthier had they stayed couch potatoes! On the other
hand, I saw many sedentary people who attempted to get healthy without an adequate
level of fitness — also a condition that was not ideal.
The main reason for the dysfunction in both
types of patient is an imbalance between fitness and health. Let us define
these two important terms as follows:
Fitness: The ability to perform physical activity. You define the limits of your fitness; you can walk a mile a day or train for the Ironman Triathlon.
Health: The optimal balance of all systems of the body — the nervous, muscular, skeletal, circulatory, digestive, lymphatic, hormonal and all other systems.
Improving
fitness is associated with physical activity. Only a couple of generations ago,
most people were naturally active, working hard physically to accomplish their
daily chores. Today, we have escalators, microwaves and remote controls. Some
people drive around a parking lot for 10 minutes to get a parking space closer
to the door.
Others wait
minutes for an elevator just to go to the first floor. We can fulfill most of
our needs literally at the push of a button. This radical change from a
vigorous to an inactive lifestyle has taken place, genetically speaking, in a
very short time frame. The human body can’t
adapt to such a major change without dire consequences. Our relative inactivity
has resulted in an overweight and obese society and an entire host of other
functional disorders from blood-sugar problems and overfat bodies, to fatigue
and low-back pain. This is followed by increased rates of diabetes, heart
disease, cancer and other diseases.
Dysfunction
and disease are, in large part, due to not taking care of the body.
Since most
of us have lost the natural tendency to be active like our very recent ancestors,
we must satisfy that need artificially, by exercising. Without some fitness
activity, you can’t improve your level of health. And don’t forget the issue of
balance; too much activity can also impair your health.
Steps to
improving your health may include eating real foods rather than processed,
obtaining real vitamins and other nutrients from foods rather than synthetic vitamin
supplements, and controlling stress. These and other specifics are discussed
throughout
With the
realization that fitness and health are different also came the conclusion that
these states are elements of an even larger concept
— human
performance. When health and fitness are balanced, the result is optimal human
performance. We often associate human performance with the fulfillment of some
athletic feat, like winning an Olympic gold medal. But in the true sense, human
performance pertains to all aspects of life, including personal, family, social
and work functions. Performance pertains to either physical or mental activities,
or both. The benefits of improved human performance include increased energy,
productivity, creativity, and better relationships with people. In my practice
I had the pleasure and excitement to actually see people improve their human
performance, and thus succeed at whatever their primary goal in life was at the
time. These goals included winning the Ironman Triathlon, achieving career
success, and being the best-possible parent. The secret to reaching any of
these goals is optimal human performance, and its foundation is balanced fitness
and health. Thus, we can define human performance as the optimal balance
between health and fitness that allows a person to achieve success in all areas
of life. Or, the simple equation:
Fitness + Health = Human Performance
This is a
relatively simple concept to understand, but it’s important to note that this
equation is not one-directional, as its effects are actually cyclical and
exponential. In other words, increased human performance can, in return, also bring
about even greater improvements in the foundational elements of fitness and
heath. Thus, as you improve your fitness and health, thereby improving your
human performance, this additional human performance can fuel even further improvements
in your fitness and health. There’s virtually no end to this cycle, meaning
that a person can achieve virtually unlimited physical and mental energy. It’s
really just a matter of how far you are willing to go to improve your fitness
and your health.
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