The Health Climate Survey is a simple tool for measuring your health, fitness and wellbeing

Here's what's happening to millions of people world-wide who are in bad physical and mental condition.

They come to work and put on a brave face, but underneath the surface they:

•    experience frequent headaches

•    are tired because they don't get a good night's sleep

•    lack energy and vitality

•    have a host of painful musculo-skeletal complaints

•    are not aerobically fit

•    have low libidos

•    have trousers and skirts that are uncomfortably tight

•    have all manner of digestive complaints

•    drink too much alcohol and caffeine

•    are anxious, apprehensive and depressed

•    feel they're under appreciated at work and at home.

It's not a pretty picture and it's common in just about all the organisations we've surveyed. It's a shocker.

If you don't measure it you don't have a clue what's happening and therefore won't do anything about it.

THE PROBLEM

Based on our experience administering the Health, Fitness and Wellbeing Profile to thousands of people, there are a number of causes of the body system dysfunctions that are manifested in the workplace, among them

Low levels of physical fitness

Particularly in the sit down professions, the effect of cooping people up in cages leads to all manner of hypo-kinetically induced mind and body system dysfunctions. It's difficult - in fact well nigh impossible - to stay healthy in a sedentary occupation without a regular and systematic aerobic fitness, strength and flexibility training program.

We've reached the point in time where organisations who don't provide staff with the greatest encouragement and incentive to maintain reasonable levels of fitness, are at great risk of  reduced levels of productivity due to absenteeism, presenteeism and worker's compensation.

In some organisations it's reached the point where the cost of giving some people some time off during the week to improve their strength and flexibility is dramatically less the cost of rehabilitation programs and worker's compensation.

An inappropriate diet

Too much junk food and too little good food

An inability to manage the stress of life and work

'Your difficulty is not contained, primarily, in the situation which gave rise to it, but in the mental state with which you regard that situation and which you bring to bear upon it.'  James Allen

Wrong job

Not being in the job that suits one's personality, intelligence strengths, training, passions and interests.

A significant proportion of people report that they are in the wrong job. Many don't know what they really want to do.

Poor workplace design

Relating particularly to repetitive work, whether it be on an assembly line or sitting in an office.

In our experience, call centers are the satanic mills of the 20th Century.

Inattentive and dismissive management

Particularly by an employee's immediate supervisor.

The number of people who feel under-appreciated at work is legion.

Lack of a satisfying home life

A life that's lacking meaning and purpose.

THE BODY AS AN ECOSYSTEM

The body is made up of trillions of cells, grouped in organ systems.

It's an ecosystem where all of the organ systems are connected, where the function of one part of the system is intimately connected with the function of another; so that if one of them becomes dysfunctional there is a good chance it affects the smooth operation of others. That’s why we all need to keep focused on the Lifestyle Prescription as a means of  keeping ourselves fit and healthy.

A Bill Clinton might have said, 'It's the system, stupid!

The Health Climate Survey is all about getting a picture, a snap shot of the health, fitness and wellbeing system and highlight the inter-relationship between the parts.

Or as John Donne might have said, 'No part of the body is an island entire of itself; every part is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a dysfunction appears in one part, the body as a whole is the lesser for it ...'

Tracking the underlying cause of any particular body system dysfunction is likely to uncover dysfunction in multiple parts of the system.

No more is this connection more strongly felt than in reference to the relationship between the way the mind and the other body systems function.

However, it’s not just the mind and the other body systems that are connected, it’s all the body systems that are connected. As I’ve said, dysfunction in one system can lead to dysfunction in others. The greatest of medical tragedies is the fact that the chance of the original, underlying dysfunction (lurking in the background) being detected is often quite remote.

METABOLIC HEALTH

A good example of this systemic approach to heath is the role the 'metabolic health engine', plays in delivering oxygen and fuel to every cell of the body and eliminates from the body the waste products of metabolism generated by every cell.

Just think about how many metabolic health problems (adult onset diabetes comes to mind) that are caused by a lack of aerobic exercise and a poor diet. Diabetes 2 is not caused by a lack of Metformin!

It is conventional wisdom of the medical/pharmaceutical industry which has us believe that the connection between organs and systems is not a particularly close one. That’s why when you go to most physicians with a particular complaint, you’re likely to come away with a prescription for a tablet, which masks the symptom in a particular organ rather than a multi-factorial prescription aimed at fixing the system.

With musculo-skeletal dysfunction, the cause of the pan is rarely at the site of the pain. e.g., most lower back pain is caused by tight muscles attached t the pelvis that take first the pelvis then the bones above (and below) it out of alignment. A back rub and a Voltarin tablet does nothing to loosen off tight hamstring and buttock muscles.

These days, it is unlikely that a tablet will treat the under-lying cause of a complaint - as in tablets for high blood pressure, diabetes, reflux, or headaches. That's because the cause of the dysfunction is probably not at the site where the dysfunction is manifest.

Plus it's highly likely that there is more than one cause.

You could count on the non-opposable digits of one hand the number of people who have gone to a doctor and come way with a scientifically-based aerobic fitness prescription, one that can be measured, managed and monitored automatically by a wearable, digital monitoring device.

In any case, there is unlikely to be a detailed search for the cause of the pain, the elimination of pain being seen to be the outcome of the visit to the doctor which has the highest priority. Both doctor and client collude to ensure the pain disappears in the shortest possible time, with the least amount effort on either part.

What's more the client, likely as not wants to get out of the surgery without paying anything for the doctor's trouble. Increasingly the hands of the dysfunctional are dipping into the pockets of the fit and healthy to pay for ineffective illhealth treatment. It's junk medicine at its best.

It’s increasingly unlikely that you’ll come away with a Lifestyle Prescription, a prescription which seeks to stimulate the body’s own recuperative power through things like exercise, a good diet, the ability to manage the stress of one's life and one's work and meditation.

One of the great tragedies of modern, pharmaceutical medicine is that we’ve stopped treating metabolically induced body system problems with metabolic solutions. For instance, if you have high blood pressure you could come away with a diuretic which will drain fluid out of your body, rather than a Lifestyle Prescription which will have you cool down an over-stimulated sympathetic nervous system, reduce your body weight, stimulate the elimination of toxic waste, unclog the pipes and flush out your liver.

Of if you have the flu, you’ll come away with a tablet to dry up the stream of mucus flowing from your nose, ignoring the fact that the mucous stream is an integral aspect of the body’s way of dealing with the viral infection.

Of if you’re feeling anxious, sad, grief-stricken, tired, angry, moody, despairing or vacuous; if you break into tears, feel blue or just plain dreadful, you can walk into a doctor’s surgery and in seven minutes come away with a prescription for a bottle of Diazepam.

Because of the inter-relatedness of all the key body systems we need to think further than just the relationship between the mind and other body systems, and start talking about a host of body system inter-relationships

•    the mind - muscle

•     the heart – liver

•    the lung – stomach

•    the endocrine – skin ….

Once we’ve got that concept firmly embedded in our psyche, maybe we’d be better able to look at the human being as a total, unified system instead of a group of parts stuck together. Traditional Chinese and other traditional medical cultures have a much better handle on these inter-relationships than Western medicine.

Instead, using the reductionist model we treat the body like a machine, made up of quite separate and distinct parts, each having little or no connection with the other parts. This is another of the great tragedies of modern medicine. If the pump plays up, we treat the pump and only the pump. In fact we’ve got to the point in medical plumbing history where we can replace the pump altogether and not give two hoots about the causes of the dysfunction in the first place.

If the exhaust system gets faulty we just stick a bit of muffler putty up it and keep going.  Using the reductionist model, the question of why various body systems and organs become dysfunctional doesn’t have to be addressed.

Perceptual motor mechanics, plumbers, fitters and electricians, masquerading as physicians, and their indifferent patients masquerading as machines, conspire with each other to mask the symptoms of the dysfunctional parts in the quickest possible time, using the most expedient means, regardless of the cause of the dysfunction or it’s relationship to dysfunctions in other body systems which may, or may not yet have appeared.  This is usually done with a symptom-masking pill.

Just treating the symptoms with pills is a very tawdry, lazy, and primitive form of treatment which only leads to more complicated and expensive medical treatments in the future. The other parts of the body which are dysfunctional and have a causal relationship with the problem that has promoted the visit to the doctor in the first place are not treated.

Hospitals are being clogged up by the recipients of this medical practice.

Intelligence

Whilst the mind is just another body system, it is not the only one involved in intelligence and communication. Intelligence is spread throughout the body.

All of the cells of the body and all the key body systems and major organs have their own intelligent means of communicating between cells of like character and cells in other organs, memory …

Having said all that, the concept of viewing the brain/mind as one key body system group (psyche) and treating all the other body systems as another group (soma) has been with us since time immemorial and is useful for the purposes of illustration.

As well as being an organ in it’s own right, one which has to manage it’s own function, the brain is also the central processing centre for all the other systems. If something goes wrong with the brain, there is a high likelihood that it will affect other systems.

Psycho-somatic effect

For instance, when people get anxious their blood pressure can go up, they could get an irritable bowel, rashes, headaches and chronic fatigue. This is known as the psycho-somatic effect.

Somato-psychic effect

On the other hand, what is less well known is that when something happens to other body systems there is a high likelihood that there will be an effect experienced in the mind. This is the somato-psychic effect.

For instance if the body doesn’t get enough physical activity, essential fats and B group vitamins a person can end up feeling depressed. 

The corollary of this is that if someone is feeling sad, anxious and miserable there is a high likelihood that a lifestyle prescription involving:

... will lead to a dramatic improvement in a their health, fitness and wellbeing.

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