Staying Healthy

Report Outline
‘Health and Fitness’ Decade
Wellness Program Components
New Wellness Practitioners
Special Focus

‘Health and Fitness’ Decade

Evolving Change in Medical Thinking

You know, doctor,” a 33-year-old woman said to her cardiologist, “I always try to follow my grandmother's advice and stay away from doctors as much as possible.” The physician, who heads the cardiology department at a large hospital in Washington, D.C., replied: “That's very good advice.”

It appears as if more Americans than ever before are trying to stay away from doctors by taking responsibility for their own health and practicing preventive medicine on a daily basis. Countless numbers of Americans are eating nutritiously, exercising, losing excessive weight, and trying to control stress, cigarette smoking, and alcohol and drug consumption. The main reason: an increasing awareness that these lifestyle changes can greatly reduce the risk of getting a host of serious diseases, especially the most common causes of death: heart disease and cancer.

“Physical health has taken on great importance in our lives and …many of us are thinking about it almost to the point of obsession these days,” said social psychologist Carin Rubenstein. Said Jack Foard, chief operating officer of the Sun Valley Health Institute: “The decade of the eighties will be remembered as the decade of health and fitness where there was a real turnaround in the medical mentality of the country.”