Redefining Health- Evolve Performance Healthcare
The inspiration for our definition: For this skier and his pup, health is an experience found in ‘the pure joy of two mountain souls sharing a day in the wild.’
Health is a word that we hear everyday. Be healthy, eat a healthy diet, adopt a healthy lifestyle. Everyone wants to be healthier. With better health as the goal, it's important to clarify what 'health' means to us.
Traditional medicine has defined health simply as ‘the state of being free from illness or injury.’ With this definition it would be impossible for somebody with a genetic disease to ever be healthy. Is that what we believe? That someone dealing with a lifelong condition is automatically disqualified from living a healthy life?
A wellness visit at your doctor’s office may have you perform a series of tests to determine your level of ‘health’. We’ve created acceptable ranges of weight, blood markers and other exams that determine our level of health. If your cholesterol, HDL, LDL, CRP fall within these ‘acceptable’ ranges then you would be classified as healthy. This approach makes health a numbers game. And when we begin breaking down and micro-managing the findings of a scale or lab report we jump to solutions that can be counter intuitive to health (losing weight would be the classic example).
At Evolve Performance Healthcare, health is about more than the absence of a disease or injury. It’s more than a number on a scale or the findings of a lab report.
Health is about how you experience the world we live in. How you utilize the tools you were given to do what makes you happy.
With this definition, health becomes an action. Health is exploring. Health competing. Health is spending time with family. It’s about following your passion. It includes different lifestyles and body types while requiring the adoption of the lifestyle changes necessary to avoid the chronic illness and injury that could limit our ability to do what we love.
What does this mean for the doctor? It means that true health will never be found inside of a doctors office (unless your passion is sitting in a waiting room). That long term, sustainable results won't be achieved through endless therapies or expensive technology. With the goal of optimizing the human experience, the role of the doctor becomes one of an educator, a coach, a motivator.
We look forward to serving the Portland community and providing the guidance to help our clients to create the life that they envision.