ActiveHealth, Author at ActiveHealth Management

Our patented CareEngine® technology sorts and organizes large volumes of data.

At ActiveHealth we believe in whole person health and the importance of incorporating mind, body and spirit as we help our members work toward their health goals. The connection between mind and body is well-established. We recently published a white paper that focuses on addressing how physical and mental health are linked, and the importance of assessing every aspect of the members we serve. This is especially true for our members managing chronic conditions.

Why do we include “spirit?” It’s tempting to dismiss the word spirt when connected to well-being. We most often think of it in terms of religion or spirituality, but there are other connotations of the word that are relevant in this space. Consider the phrase “fighting spirit” – it speaks to determination, resilience and perseverance. All of these are necessary when setting out to achieve new health goals.

As we begin our work with members, we focus on helping them create motivation and confidence – the desire to change and the belief that they can succeed. As these become more fully formed and the member begins to achieve their health goals, new feelings emerge, like satisfaction, pride and fulfillment. These feelings drive the urge to set and achieve new goals.

At home and abroad, we’ve experienced a pandemic as well as social and political upheaval. As a result, levels of stress are high and indicators of optimism and happiness are low.¹ People are feeling dispirited, which is often accompanied by a lack of motivation and desire to do much of anything. In these times, it’s easy to fall into unhealthy coping behaviors, like emotional eating, isolating oneself, drinking too much alcohol and abusing drugs.

Now, more than ever, it’s important to acknowledge the important role that resilience and a sense of optimism play in our willingness and ability to make positive changes for our health. Making time for self-care is restorative to the spirit, whatever that may be for you. It may be spending time on a hobby, being with loved ones or just being outside. For some, finding a calm, balanced spirit may indeed be rooted in spirituality or religion.

Spirit is easy to overlook, especially compared to the more serious and debilitating effects of physical and mental illness. However, it’s a necessary component of overall well-being. It is from our spirit that we access the drive to improve our health and the commitment to create lasting change.

¹Gallup International. Less Hope and Happiness in the World 2021. Available at https://www.gallup-international.com/survey-results/survey-result/less-hope-and-happiness-in-the-world-2021. Accessed March 4, 2022.

A health system with 12,000 employees spent years developing an employee well-being program that uses sophisticated analytics to find opportunities for employees to improve their health.

But what do you do when employee needs change rapidly and outside your typical analytics cycle?

We’re in one of the longest periods of unrelieved stress in modern history. We aren’t sleeping as well as we used to. We aren’t eating as well, either. Alcohol consumption and drug use is up.

What can we do to help each other keep it all together?

Integrated health care is an approach to health care in which the patient’s care plan reflects their biological, psychological, spiritual and social needs in one cohesive treatment plan. It’s rooted in the idea that each of these aspects contribute to the whole health of the individual. When one area is off balance, the others will be affected. The pandemic has shined a light on just how interrelated these aspects are and has renewed our commitment to one of ActiveHealth’s founding principles. Health is more than the absence of a physical illness or injury. To be healthy, to be truly well, we need to bring physical, mental, spiritual and social health into balance.

The value of preventive health care is well established

Preventive health care helps identify emerging risk factors for physical health, like rising blood pressure and cholesterol. This approach to health helps find new conditions as early as possible. Biometric screenings give us insight into rising risks, and mammograms and colonoscopies help find cancer early. We need to promote our mental health with the same effort and intent.

Pay attention to your mental health

Some simple things can help promote mental health and build resilience. Healthy relationships are a key part of the foundation of good mental health. Surround yourself with people that you like, admire and trust. They’ll become the social support network you can lean on when you need help, and it builds your sense of self-esteem to offer support to people you care about.

Make taking time for self-care a priority. It can be anything that relaxes your body and calms your mind – reading a book, walking in nature or having coffee with a friend. It’s easy to lose yourself in family, work and social obligations. You’ll find you have more energy and enthusiasm for them when you’ve met your own needs.

Watch for warning signs

A big part of preventive physical health is being aware of the symptoms that might hint at a problem. The same is true for mental health. Take note if you find that you’re losing interest in things you once loved or that you’re not bouncing back as quickly as you usually do. Sleep can also be a clue, both sleeping more than usual and not sleeping well. Don‘t dismiss it if you’re worried more than usual or have trouble concentrating. For many of us, these are signs that it’s time to pay some extra attention to our mental health.

The reward can be whole health in the long term

Managing your health isn’t always easy, and over time a variety of emotions can arise. Determination, confidence, anticipation, frustration, anxiety, and depression are all normal and natural. It’s important to be able to recognize them and talk about them. Our clinicians are trained to create safe spaces for our members to share every part of their health journey with no fear of judgment.

Let’s do the same as a society. Let’s make it acceptable to talk about mental health concerns as openly – and with the same degree of seriousness – as we would talk about high blood pressure, cholesterol and blood sugar.

Services are provided by ActiveHealth Management, Inc. Our programs, care team and care managers do not provide diagnostic or direct treatment services. We assist you in getting the care you need, and our program is not a substitute for the medical treatment and/or instructions provided by your health care providers.

Things we discuss – and things we don’t

Imagine that your friend had a total knee replacement. He had surgery and weeks of physical therapy to recover his mobility. Chances are good that many people in your social circle would know that he’d been having problems with his knee and that he had the surgery to correct it. People would ask about it, check in during the rehab and celebrate his return to weekly pickup basketball games.

Now, imagine your friend was battling depression. What would you do to support him – more importantly, would you even know he was struggling?

Mechanics vs. identity

From very young ages, we learn that the body is a machine. It needs rest. It needs fuel. It breaks down sometimes. We see crutches, casts, braces and boots as the body heals, and, for most of us, our sense of self isn’t tied to how well it functions. It affects how we get through our daily lives, but not who we are. The same isn’t true for the brain. Medical issues in the brain can affect all kinds of systems in the body – tactile senses, motor control, thoughts and feelings. That’s why conditions like dementia are so devastating – they distort our sense of who we are and what is real.

Challenge your discomfort

It’s not unusual to be uncomfortable talking about mental health – there are many reasons why people might feel that way. Family and cultural norms may preclude open discussions about it, and there are a lot of harmful misperceptions that permeate the media. Talking about mental illness does not cause mental illness. The opposite is true. The more we talk about it, the more likely people are to get help and successfully cope with their condition. In some cases, talking about it literally saves lives.

Remember the larger purpose

In the context of our closest relationships and in conversations with clinicians, we have to talk as candidly about our mental health challenges as we do about our physical ones. Until we make it as normal and acceptable to have depression as it is to need knee surgery, we can’t really achieve our health goals. To be healthy, to be truly well, our minds, bodies, souls and spirits must be in balance. The truth is that we can’t get there if we’re pretending that a major factor in our overall health doesn’t exist.

Context matters, and so does your audience

We often use words for dramatic effect. If your family came in from hiking all day and sat down to a beautifully prepared meal, you could reach for the potatoes and exclaim, “I’m starving,” without much chance of offending someone. However, you’d be much less likely to make the comment while volunteering in a food pantry or shelter.

It’s not always easy to tell who your audience might be, though. People of all sizes, shapes, ages, ethnicities and cultures are susceptible to mental health conditions. Yet, we use “crazy,” “insane” and “OCD” casually and often without any regard to who might be in our audience.

Promote parity for mental and physical health

Words associated with serious physical illnesses don’t appear in our everyday speech in the same way. If you got home from work utterly exhausted and said, “Work was insane today,” your audience would understand that it was busy, overwhelming and draining. If you collapsed on the couch and said, “Work was like getting chemotherapy today,” they wouldn’t get the same message at all. Moreover, they’d probably feel like it was inappropriate to compare a hectic workday with having chemotherapy.

We can do better

Over time, we have begun to misuse words that represent powerful, life-altering experiences to many people, and it can reinforce the stigma associated with mental health conditions. If we consciously replace these words with any of the dozens of alternatives available to us, we can begin to lessen the stigma around these conditions. People who are suffering from them will feel more comfortable talking about them, and clinicians will have a more complete picture of the overall health of their patients.

Start with you

Give some thought to your own language choices – I certainly have, especially as I worked on this piece. If you knew that something you were doing unintentionally was making someone else bleed, you would stop doing it. It may be harder to ignore a physical injury you’re accidentally causing, but emotional injuries matter too. It’s not soft, wimpy or lame to notice that you could be hurting someone and do something about it.

Services are provided by ActiveHealth Management, Inc.  Our programs, care team and care managers do not provide diagnostic or direct treatment services. We assist you in getting the care you need, and our program is not a substitute for the medical treatment and/or instructions provided by your health care providers.

The approaching holidays spark a sense of nostalgia, especially this year as we try to recapture a holiday season closer to ones we’ve known before. This season is a chance to revisit and renew traditions and reconnect with family and loved ones.

Our holiday traditions make up a family legacy – an inheritance of sorts. Many of our first lessons are at home. We learn to be social and model behaviors; we develop habits and preferences. We learn how and what to eat, and that grandpa mashes potatoes better than anyone else in the family. We learn that Saturdays are a good time for recreational pursuits, and that Sunday afternoons are prime time for naps. We carry these and other lessons and habits with us and we teach them to our own families.

There’s a term called generational wealth that refers to inheritance, usually large amounts of money or property passed down from generation to generation. If you need an example of what that might look like, think of Downton Abbey. That’s firmly in the fiction category for most of us, but generational health isn’t fiction and need not be. The concept of generational health suggests that our family history affects our health, and not just in terms of genetic predispositions.

Children who see their parents being active, and enjoying it, are more likely to be active themselves. They’re also more likely to be active as teenagers, to carry the habit into their adult years and to teach their own children to enjoy an active lifestyle. Family dinners are a chance to pass down recipes that are important to your family and cultural history, and they’re also a chance to connect with each other face to face at least once a day. They’re also a venue to teach good nutrition habits. If healthy food choices and eating habits are the default options, we’re far less likely to develop and pass along unhealthy habits as we get older. Meals together offer communion as well as a chance for lively discussions and can provide a safe space to foster self-confidence and self-esteem.

This year, as you’re planning your holiday gatherings, I encourage you to notice and enjoy the traditions – both purposeful and unconscious – that you’ve carried forward. More than that, though, I encourage you to think about how you can contribute to generational health within your own family, both genetic and chosen, this holiday season and into the New Year.

Wishing you health and happiness,

Dr. Jonathan Rubens, former Chief Medical Officer, ActiveHealth

Throughout human history, health care has been primarily symptom focused. From shamanic potions to robotic surgeries, caring for a person’s health has been unshakably tied to the diagnosable effects of disease. If you weren’t afflicted or ill in a way we could see or feel, you were healthy. As long as you were healthy, you were just waiting to get sick. There was no in-between. This way of thinking is directly connected to the explosion of chronic conditions in America. Six in ten adults have a chronic condition, and four in ten have two or more.¹

When people get sick, we focus on “breaking” the fever, surgically removing the tissue, or alleviating the complications, of disease. Approaches that could prevent the need for clinical treatment are somehow thought of as being outside of the common health care system. Even though we’ve known for a generation or more that the causes often far precede the event we’re treating. For example, heart disease is a cluster of chronic conditions that spring up from unhealthy behaviors – being inactive and eating an unhealthy diet to name just two. It has also been the leading cause of death in America for decades.² We may not think of heart surgery as symptoms treatment, but it is. Much in the way that a fever is a visible sign of an infection, heart disease is an end-product.

As we increasingly prioritize primary, secondary and tertiary* prevention and as we make great strides in uncovering the root causes of disease, we have to consider other factors that affect people’s health. Where do they live – do they have access to healthy food and preventive care? Are they living with emotional stressors? It’s a chain of symptoms stretching from less-than-ideal living situations to unhealthy choices to manifest heart disease to chest pain. We must address each link in the chain, including the social determinants at the very base of the chain. Considering the entirety of the influences on personal health– that’s our job at ActiveHealth.

We start the process of identifying the links by gathering population data from as many data sources as we can. We look at sociology, demography, geography, psychology and physiology. These data and our analytical tools give us actionable insights into each person’s health, related health behaviors and opportunities for improvement. It is these insights that we use to help each individual chart their personalized path to improved health and well-being.

However, working with people is rarely that simple – we can’t simply state the facts and wait for them to act the way we expect. In large groups, we humans may act according to certain sociological or economic principles. But, on our own, we are deeply emotional and don’t always make the choices that serve our long-term best interest. So how do you solve this? How can you motivate people to work for their health when the advantage of doing so (avoiding disease or disability) may not appear until decades from now?

It comes down to individual motivating factors. Some people struggle with follow-through and respond more readily to close guidance. Others only need that initial push to get started. The way to move a population is one person at a time. It takes communication, motivation and intervention blended together in a configuration that works for each person to help them reach their potential.

To be successful in both prevention and treatment, we must understand the unique situations that surround and impact our well-being in order to deliver solutions that can improve it.

* Primary prevention focuses on preventing conditions before they occur. Secondary prevention focuses on preventing the progression of an existing condition. Tertiary prevention focuses on reducing the impact of a condition that has already occurred.

¹Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Chronic Diseases in America. Available at https://www.cdc.gov/chronicdisease/resources/infographic/chronic-diseases.htm Accessed September 17, 2021.

²Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Heart Disease in the United States. Available at https://www.cdc.gov/heartdisease/facts.htm Accessed September 17, 2021.

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