Recently, I have read a number of articles in some of our most highly respected medical journals, highlighting a ten-fold increase in retracted scientific publications over the past decade, along with their conclusions that author misconduct was the cause in the majority of the cases. This indicates a dramatic increase in plagiarism, sloppy science that cannot be reproduced, falsification of numerical data, and even creating false scientific images in Photoshop. Interestingly, this trend is global and, in my opinion, stems from the pressures to be first, to publish-or-perish, to become commercially valuable to the growing number of ventures called private-public-partnerships (PPP’s), which are designed to monetize new findings more quickly than they can be verified. Speed is critical and the name of the game.
But what does this trend in medical science have in common with a recent New York Times article emphasizing the rules of corporate warriorship—the expectation of logging longer and longer hours, working on weekends, and showing up during late hour meetings when your supervisor or CEO is expected to attend—rather than being purely efficient and results oriented?
Perceived pressures for success are putting tremendous stress on our society’s most educated and “successful” people. For years, we have studied how to maximize time management on an organizational level, but we have not studied the effects on our energy reserves as individuals within our organizations (in other words, energy management). How can anyone arrive home at 7 pm from work, precluding any possibility of exercise, eat a late dinner, have quality time with the children or partner/friends, check emails, then get to bed at midnight, and consider this a sustainable energy strategy?
Numbers don’t lie. This year alone, 40 million people in the U.S. will experience an anxiety-related impairment. About 1 in 10 Americans aged 12 and over takes antidepressant medication. The number of prescriptions for anxiety, sleep medications and antidepressants continues to skyrocket. The use of stimulants to offset fatigue, poor concentration and memory continues to grow. The incidence of low thyroid levels, allergies, food intolerances, obesity, diabetes, asthma and immune disorders continues to increase in epidemic proportions.
If you do not sleep 7-8 hours per day, exercise, make a serious attempt at eating a whole food, organic diet, and have relaxed time for yourself, your family and your community, you will likely age in an accelerated fashion. In other words, you will pay for it later in life with some form of chronic deficiency, illness or some loss of quality of life. This scenario is based on our genomic reality.
Our genome was developed some 40,000 years ago at a time when we began the agricultural phase of human development. We became programmed to optimize our metabolic systems for natural food intake and to respect natural and seasonal cycles. The lay press and nutritionists make us aware of our need to focus on natural foods, as our genetics designed us to eat local, seasonal, organically grown food. This is very often quite difficult to accomplish in modern life, yet there is increasing awareness in this field.
It is unfortunate, however, that this same level of awareness is not present with respect to our disconnect with natural bioregulatory cycles. Our innate ability to regulate our body temperature, sleep, blood sugar levels, our hormonal, nervous and immune systems, as well as our metabolic systems, is all being altered by our 24/7 lifestyle, with growing health and quality of life implications. We are currently living in “experimental times,” and never before in human history have we been subjected to the sheer number of stressors we are exposed to today: environmental, chemical, metabolic, emotional, and social.
Our body systems need to learn to cohabitate with these new challenges and we need to vastly improve our ability to individualize our approaches to each person’s unique genetic and acquired challenges. Whether it be a nutritional plan uniquely suited to an individual’s metabolic profile, a plan to optimize the microcirculation to ensure that nutrients are getting to the cellular level, a plan to enliven a suppressed immune system, or a detoxification plan to deal with chemical and heavy metal exposures that are suppressing essential enzyme and metabolic pathways. Each of us needs an individualized plan.
Our most important asset is our health, and most of us don’t realize this until our health is taken away from us. Prevention is the key, and I recommend that you not rely solely on your own assessments of your health risks and on your own strategies to mitigate those risks. It has become too complicated a paradigm to guess. I see increasing numbers of patients with longer and longer lists of vitamins and supplements than ever before which raises a number of questions. Are these supplements getting absorbed? Are they being distributed to the tissues? Are your cells able to incorporate and utilize them? Make arrangements for an assessment by an integrative medicine specialist who understands the broadest concepts of preventive medicine to review your strategy. Get follow-up laboratory measurements to determine whether you are still benefiting from the strategy you are counting on.