Is Wealth Replacing your Health?

What choice would you make? A way that just makes you wealthy or the one where you can balance earning wealth while taking care of your health?

“I aspire to be like you one day,” I told my uncle when I visited him in the Intense Critical Cardiac Care Unit (ICCU). It was really heart wrenching to see a person like him lying helplessly on the hospital bed. Well- known for his iron will and strong determination, he was a man who started from scratch and developed a multi dollar business mansion in a span of three decades. Ask about his age, and he smiles and tells you, “I am 50 years young!”

While coming out from the hospital, I kept wondering where it all went wrong with him. Doctors were monitoring his condition closely as he had suffered a major heart attack. They said he was critical and the heart attack could have been averted if he had taken care of his health.

In today’s turbulent economic conditions, managing a business for an entrepreneur is an arduous task. Engaged in calls and meetings around the clock, sitting for long hours with the laptop, and incessant responsibilities take a toll on health. Usually people who manage their own businesses pay attention to every important task, but their health.

How to stay fit while sitting behind a desk all day?

But the big question is should you go about earning wealth at the cost of losing your health? Think about it from a business perspective – if it’s a gain at the loss of your health. Is it worth it? A wise answer would be an obvious “no.” By not paying enough attention to their health, entrepreneurs can manage to pass through their 20s and 30s with few health problems, but these issues catch up slowly. Whether it is the development of crippling back problems, diabetes, high blood pressure,high cholesterol, or digestive disorders, most of these conditions are very hard to reverse once they are set in.

For entrepreneurs, a sedentary lifestyle, lack of time for exercise, and a constantly stressed out mind, are some major factors which are responsible for the onset of major chronic diseases. To battle against them, one needs to consciously inculcate some small, yet significant changes in their lifestyle. To be hale and hearty make sure that you eat healthy food, take out time for some exercise every day, practice meditation and relaxation techniques to get rid of stress, avoid junk foods, and sleep adequately for about 7-8 hours every day.

Make healthy eating choices to keep productivity levels high

Regardless of your definition of success, make sure that you follow a healthy lifestyle to reap long term heath benefits. Just as your business thrives well when you take care of it, the same way your body and mind will function properly only if you adequately take care of it.

Adopt Walking as Part of Your Healthy Lifestyle

As Ralph Waldo Emerson puts it “The First wealth is health” and in life you should never barter your health with wealth. For all those who manage their businesses, this should serve as the right dose of motivation to take charge and manage their health as well.

Read more:

Snack Smartly: Be Hale and Hearty. 

Stay Fit While You Work.

Walk for Health.

The “change” starts with you. The change starts “now.”

Being a couch potato, not exercising, had that extra large fries, can’t keep your hands off that beer, and that puff says it all…

If you are among the people whose philosophy is to live carefree life, and to the fullest because we live only once, then the good news is that you are not alone. Millions of Americans and people around the world think that having fun is “their right” and taking care of their health is somebody “else’s responsibility” – parents, doctors, government, Pretty much, everybody else other than them. The bad news is that might have been true in the past, but the party is coming to an end soon, very soon. Here is it why?

People adopting sedentary lifestyle and not caring for their own health is becoming a very expensive proposition, not only for their own health, but also for the society, and the government at large. Lifestyle diseases, such as, obesity, diabetes, high cholesterol, hypertension, etc. have reached epidemic proportions and is crippling our healthcare system. The high cost of healthcare for these diseases is putting too much pressure on our healthcare system, one that it can’t bear for long, without making any changes. We are almost coming to the end of the rope. As per Center of Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), our healthcare spending has increased by a whopping 100 times from $27.4 billion in 1960 to $2,701 billion or $8,680 per person. During this time the US population has just grown 1.6 times (1960: 186 million; 2011: 311 million) (1).

Without changes to our health, the future doesn’t seem to be very bright either. The national US healthcare spending is projected to reach $4,781 billion by 2021(1). As per a report published by The Milken Institute, an independent non-profit think tank, “good health is an investment in economic growth. The United States faces an increasingly competitive global economy, and our national economic performance is closely tied to our ability to maintain the best-educated, most highly trained, and healthiest work force.”(2)

But, there is hope. If we as a society make a change in our attitude towards our health, stop passing the buck, and take control of our own health, we can change the trajectory. We can still hope to see a happy, healthier, and prosperous America. The Milken report concludes, “reducing the avoidable costs associated with these conditions is central to meeting the twin challenges of promoting affordable health care and fostering continued economic growth. We have a choice: continue on the current path or alter it by changing our behaviors and focusing on prevention and early intervention.”(2)

The “change” starts with you. The change starts “now.” I urge you to change not just yourself, but be a change agent, to your family, to your neighbors, to your society, and to this great nation – United States of America.

Your partner in change and taking control of our own health.

iControlMyHealth Editorial Team

1. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Office of the Actuary, National Health Statistics Group; U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Economic Analysis; and U.S. Bureau of the Census.

2. DeVol R. and Bedroussian A, An Unhealthy America: The Economic Burden of Chronic Disease Charting a New Course to Save Lives and Increase Productivity and Economic Growth, Executive Summary and Research Findings, Milken Institute, pub. October 2007, http://www.chronicdiseaseimpact.com.