Joey and I are not only partners in business, but partners in life as well. We live and work together. Often, we even get stressed, overwhelmed, and develop bad habits together due to our hectic work life as business owners. It can be tough to eat healthy meals, and even tougher to get in our recommended exercise.
That’s a big reason we are on this “Journey to Wellness” – to do our best to get back on track and get our lives back in some resemblance of balance. This starts with developing a baseline from which we can measure progress. And it starts with being honest with ourselves on where we are today, despite how we got here.
We’ve decided to get this baseline analysis from our friend and neighbor, Dr. Damon Heybrock with Health Studio KC in Woodside Village. We’ll follow-up this blog with an honest assessment of our discoveries and a plan to improve. But, we wanted to start by sharing what Dr. Damon has to say about the importance of these wellness checks:
Wellness Checks: Your Health Dashboard
-Dr. Damon Heybrock, Health Studio KC
Most of us treat our cars better than we do our bodies. Our cars get routine maintenance and check-ups, we choose the premium gasoline, take them in when they make a strange noise and we pay attention to the indicator lights on the dashboard. Can you say the same for your health?
We are generally a group of skilled deniers and slow reactors in matters of our health. Our goal at Health Studio KC is to make it easy for you to place a renewed focus on your health and wellness. You may ask, “Why should I go to the Dr, I’m not sick?” Here’s a few decade specific thoughts on why you should establish a relationship with a primary care doc and make a goal to set up a check up today:
Your 20’s: You’re transitioning from college to your first job. Exciting freedoms and new opportunities. There’s a good chance you feel healthy and have a hard time imagining getting sick. You are likely playing harder than you are working, but there are new pressures and responsibilities.
Nutrition is too often quick, easy and cheap. Increased stress, poor concentration, increased passions and fluctuating emotions are common. Creating balance may not yet be a learned skill and the understanding that healthy lifestyle choices today will pay off in the long run is useful to realize. This is a great time to establish a relationship with a Primary Care Physician you can talk to and trust and begin talking about health goals. You will be way ahead of the curve in your health — and as a result — in life.
Check up indicator dashboard: Weight, Blood Pressure, Emotional/Mental Health, STI prevention, Nutrition, Testicular Cancer, Alcohol Consumption
Your 30’s: You have increasing responsibility and investment in your relationships and your work. With that comes more juggling and less time. Health often starts taking a back seat at the same time it is getting a little more difficult to be at your best. When do professional athletes typically start eating better and caring for themselves? In their 30’s. Time for you to do the same.
Nutrition habits, if not previously addressed, still suffer due to lack of time. With decreasing metabolism, increasing body fat mass and decreasing body muscle mass this can be a problem. Decreased sleep can be affecting energy, concentration and testosterone levels as well. Learning how to turn off work and be present at home also becomes an important skill in jugging of responsibilities.
Check up indicator dashboard: Body composition, Blood pressure, Anxiety/Stress, Cholesterol and Blood Glucose, Testosterone, Work/Life Balance.
Your 40’s: Wisdom and perspective, a knowledge and confidence in who you are and much less concern for who others want you to be. That said success comes with responsibility and too often results in too much fatigue and too little time — all work/no play. Burning and churning now results in things starting to catch up with you — consequences. If you aren’t on track at this point, now is the time to get into gear — so that you can enjoy the fruits of your labor.
You very much are what you eat and now it is noticeable. Your waist line predicts your risk for disease and adding cardio is no longer enough to shrink that number. Sleep can be tougher to come by and how you feel today and how you want to feel tomorrow are going to require some effort.
Check up indicator dashboard: Heart Health, Liver and Kidney health, Family History, Athletic Gains/Recovery/Injury prevention, Sleep, Hormones
Your body has a design — there is a way in which you run most optimally, where the tensions are in balance and you feel well. How to achieve and maintain this? Well, the broad strokes are simple — eat well, move, get some sleep, hydrate. But life has a way of complicating things and as Charles Eames noted, “The details are not the details. They make the design.” Health Studio KC is here to help with the details — from conversation to plan to execution — enabling you to be a responsible participant in your health. We understand that health is not one size fits all and that each of us are a melodious medley of our past, our family, our work, our passions, our responsibilities and our choices, our present realities and our future hopes. What does health mean for you now and what do you want your health to look like in 5/10/20 years from now? The choices you are making today are directly influencing those goals.
The “Why?” of Health Studio KC is a desire to enable you to be a responsible participant in your health — to partner with you in achieving your most optimal design.”
Joey and I had our wellness checks at Health Studio KC. We’re already discovering things we can change to get our health back on track. Watch for our follow up story to hear about the plans we’ll put into place to stay on our journey to wellness.
