Health is Wealth. You need a Health Manager.
Ancient wisdom still rings true. Physical health is a prerequisite to fully enjoying the other forms of wealth like money, social status, and even freedom. Yet many of us spend years over-indexed in building material wealth at the expense of, and often to the detriment of, our physical health.
You might assume that you are born with your health. Under this pretense, health is something you maintain and monitor on occasion. You see a doctor when your health deviates from baseline and requires restoration.
Our current health care system has likely shaped and certainly accommodates this common approach to health. Drawing an analogy to the financial services industry, our health care delivery system functions largely like a bankruptcy lawyer—salvaging some ownership or bailing you out of debt once your health deteriorates. Primary care doctors, largely due to their time constraints, patient loads, productivity quotas, and excessive administrative burden, function more like tax accountants—balancing your body’s basic ledger annually (if that) to make sure everything is “normal.”
But modern medicine’s definition of normal health is a far cry from optimal health.
Truth be told, none of us are born with the guarantee of good health. We are born with the genetic potential to accumulate health. Some of us are born with the wind at our sails—the proper nutrition, education, safe homes and loving support to fully capitalize on our genetic potential. Others of us encounter adverse circumstances and experiences—trauma, toxic environments, poverty—that significantly curtail our health potential. And all of us must work to reduce these inequities so that we all have the opportunities and supports to thrive. But no matter who you are, where you come from, or what life portends for you, maximizing your genetic potential and building health is an active process.
Like financial wealth, health accrues over time with a series of consistent habits and routines. Your health and your wealth are long term investments that demand sacrifice, discipline, and delayed gratification.
The financial services industry has an army of wealth managers working to help you save, allocate, diversify, and accumulate wealth. The healthcare industry offers no such service. Currently, if you have the intrinsic motivation to build your health, you are the one responsible for architecting the plan—navigating a confusing and commercial wellness industry, finding a primary care doctor to do more than check a few cursory boxes, deciphering fact from fiction in the scientific research, and finding solutions that work for your unique psychology, physiology, and preferences.
Your health is wealth. And your health care should provide the tools, training, and team to help you mitigate risk, manage your energy, and master the habits and routines that to help you realize our genetic potential.
VIM’s Performance Medicine service is akin to a wealth manager for your health—helping you build health and maximize your performance. Starting from a thorough assessment of your current baseline, we work with you to design a comprehensive, integrated, and iterative Performance Plan that delivers the diagnostics, fitness prescription, referrals, technologies, and most importantly, the behavioral strategies that you need to take deliberate and repeated action on your health and performance goals.
There are no hacks, shortcuts, or silver bullets. This is not a passive process that can be automated or outsourced. You are the necessary substrate for your own growth and development.
But it is also a journey you need not take alone. Nor should you. You are operating in a modern environment that runs counter to your innate wiring, slogging through a daily deluge of ploys and gimmicks to grab your attention, and shuttling around a siloed and stopgap health care system. You need expert guidance to help navigate your unique path to optimal health and performance. You need a health manager.