Last week I invited you on a journey beyond disability. When we are young we do not expect to be disabled. When we see or hear of others becoming disabled, we think it cannot happen to us. Yet, one in five working aged Americans says they have a disability. Yet we do not prepare ourselves or our children for the possibility of becoming disabled. In raising our children do we prepare them for becoming disabled without knowing it?
When I was raising my children, I sought to make them competent adults capable of living in the world that they inherited from me. Even though I had been diagnosed with the disease that will eventually take my eyesight I did not contemplate my own disability or that my kids might become disabled. Instead I tried to instill in them those values skills and ethics that I thought would serve them best. It turns out that many of those skills are what we need to successfully journey through the storm of disability.
It seems that no sooner than we are aware of past and present, we become aware of the future. We also become aware that some events in life are pleasant and others unpleasant, good or bad. It is human nature to be optimistic. Psychological studies have shown this to be true even for pessimists. Yet, we don’t prepare ourselves for the bad.
How often do you see bicyclists not wearing helmets? We all know stories of bicyclists getting severe Head injuries. All cyclists know it is easy to take a spill. Usually we just get a good scrape sometimes a broken bone. Those injuries heal, and we return to cycling. Serious head injuries are another story. So why don’t more cyclists wear helmets? Those cyclists I have asked usually talk about comfort. I know people confined to wheelchairs and the like because of head injuries. Would a cyclist think that was comfortable?
I used to cycle and still hope to return. After my eyesight became poor I continued to cycle. One day while cycling, I swerved to allow a car to pass. My front tire went off the road into a ditch. I was thrown forward onto my shoulder and probably my head. I was wearing a helmet, so the worst I received was a separated shoulder. As I look back on it I am sure the helmet saved me from a more permanent injury…
On that occasion I had prepared for a bad outcome. But do we go through life preparing ourselves for possible bad things? Early in our lives we assume bad things will not occur. Later when we focus on bad things we find ourselves depressed. Are there ways to prepare ourselves for bad events that make us happy?
In recent year’s psychologist have found many ways to do just that. In fact a whole field of psychology has developed around that. It is called positive psychology. It is exactly what life coaches have been seeking to do. These techniques have been shown to be effective when taught in schools. They reduce bullying, truancy, teen suicides and criminal behaviors.
Studies have shown that people with better social and emotional skills handle adversity better. These skills can be learned and thus our ability to whether bad events can be improved. Adults can learn these as well.
The terms emotional intelligence and social intelligence are not well defined. Emotional intelligence generally refers to the ability to sense our own and others’ emotions, to use those emotions to express ourselves and understand the emotions of others. Social intelligence goes beyond that to understand the roles and norms of the social situation. Many authors have attempted to develop tools to measure these intelligences and to teach them.
I would love to know what social and emotional skills you would like to have in your toolkit. I am It is collecting as many of these tools as possible for the book I hope to write. The book will appear in early May.
Coach Dr. Dave [MD [
PS, most cats I know would have as little as possible to do with a dust buster.
Author of the upcoming book, “Recipes for Lemonade: Dr. Dave’s Recipe for Thriving through Disability”.


In today’s NY Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote “Insurance and Freedom” about how Americans are enslaved buy their “need” for health insurance.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/08/opinion/krugman-insurance-and-freedom.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130408&_r=0

I would reply that Obama Care will not free Americans, just change the way they are enslaved.

Paul,

You question if Health Insurance has enslaved Americans. I might suggest that the American Medical system has enslaved Americans. In the past thirty or so years American Medicine has gone from curing ills to “Preventing” them. It is true that the biggest improvement in health has come not from our ability to cure illnesses but in preventing them in the first place. Yet, doctors myself included has made a good living convincing people that if you lower your blood pressure, cholesterol and exercise you can prevent a heart attack or stroke. We have data showing that. However, heart attacks and strokes are still the leading causes of death for Americans. They just happen at older ages. So why does American Medicine continue the promote prevention?

American Medicine promotes prevention because it sells. It is hard to watch the evening news without seeing an ad for some sort of medication. It is usually a new and more expensive version of a current medication.  The drug companies spend millions on studies designed to show that their new drug is more effective than the older one.  Doctors make a good living prescribing and monitoring those medications. So why to doctors persist in this charade?

Doctors persist for several reasons not just the economic. We are taught that these drugs prevent deaths, but not in how to find the cost of preventing one death with method a or b. When I started in medicine decades ago, we believed that preventing PVC’s saved lives. We prescribed drugs that made our patients feel ill and dependent. We enslaved them to our care lest they drop dead of a heart arrhythmia. Then patients took charge and stopped the offending drug and felt better. Finally doc tors had the nerve to study the drugs more carefully and found that the drugs were actually killing more than they helped.  The FDA banned one of these drugs completely.

Would medicine better serve America by teaching people how to weather the storms of illness?  In the past couple of decades a new approach to psychology, called Positive Psychology has found ways to do just that. Several books are now available that document this. Some of the books have even made the NY Times best seller list.  Doctors and others can now teach people how to successfully whether the storms of life, including illness. These techniques have other benefits besides just lowering the risk for heart attacks and strokes; they can help people weather divorce, job loss and other trauma. By promoting social and emotional health we can free America from the slavery of ill-health.

David Moseman, MD, MPH, FACP (disabled)

Joy is more than its own reward.

Happy people are healthier.

Happy bodies fight infections better.

Happy brains think better.

We cannot always be happy. In fact life often makes us sad. Sadness can make life worse. When we are sad our faces droop. When we are sad our bodies droop. We have less interest in life and living. We might even have trouble getting out of bed.  When you see a sad person do you want to say hi, or avoid them? When others ignore you does that make you feel happier or sadder?  Thus, being sad can bring its own spiral of increasing sadness.