Healthy Wealthy & Wise Dr. William T. Choctaw, MD, JD
The Healthy Wealthy and Wise Podcast, with Dr. William T. Choctaw, MD, JD is a monthly podcast that focuses on personal growth and development by exploring a range of topics related to mental and physical health, personal wealth, leadership, and interpersonal relationships. Dr. Choctaw draws on his 75yrs experience and 50 plus years of surgical practice since graduating from Yale University School of Medicine.
Each month, we strive to provide our listeners with mental, physical, and spiritual strength by giving actionable advice, tips, guidance, and information to help them achieve their own personal, professional, and spiritual goals. We consider the health of the mind, body, and spirit paramount as a single unit that provides a cumulative strength greater than the individual parts, to strengthen the whole person.
We appreciate the natural differences in need between men, women, adults, and children. We recognize that the power to be happy is within each of us and under our control. We embrace technology and identify how it is applicable to our daily success. We address the entire human experiences from generation z to the baby boomers.
We’re passionate about the total person, and helping our listeners build and lead a full, well-rounded and happy life. So, tune in every month for an inspiring, encouraging, and informative podcast!
Healthy Wealthy & Wise Dr. William T. Choctaw, MD, JD
Exploring Loneliness: Understanding its Impact and Finding Solutions
Are we really alone in our loneliness? Today, we draw a focus on the silent epidemic that's sweeping the globe - loneliness. As a recognized public health crisis, it's essential to understand not just the definition, but the impact it has on our bodies and minds. We go beyond the surface, exploring how Covid and other societal stressors exacerbate this isolation. But this isn't a voyage into despair, it's a journey of hope as we uncover solutions to this pervasive problem, and ways we can all take action.
Ready for a loneliness intervention? In the heart of our discussion, we explore a variety of strategies to help mitigate loneliness. Cultivating healthy habits like good nutrition, regular exercise, and practicing self-kindness can be game-changers. We'll dive into the power of getting involved with volunteering, social clubs, classes, and even how technology can serve as a lifeline. Paying special attention to our teenagers, who often wrestle with intense feelings of isolation, we remind everyone that patience is a virtue, especially during life's challenging moments. Tune in, and together let's navigate a path towards managing and treating loneliness in our society today.
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The Host, Dr. William Choctaw; MD, JD, is a healthcare leadership expert, possessing a Medical Doctorate from the Yale University School of Medicine, and a Jurist Doctorate from Western University. Over a span of 50 years practicing medicine, he has served as Chief of Staff, Chief of Surgery, and as a member of the medical executive committee at Citrus Valley Medical Center over a 10 year period. Also, while practicing at Citrus Valley Medical Center, he served as Chief Transformation Officer, (developed a Robust Process Improvement/Lean Six Sigma program). Dr. Choctaw lectures nationally and internationally on medical leadership issues for hospital staffs, executives, and managers. He served as a Physician Surveyor on the Joint Commission. He's the author of 2 books, "Medical Malpractice: A Physician's Guide to the Law" and "Transforming the Patient Experience: A New Paradigm for Hospital and Physician Leadership, published by the Springer Publishing Co. He’s the President of Choctaw Medical Group, Inc., a clinical practice and medical legal consulting firm for medical staff executives, physician leaders, and hospitals.
Welcome to the Healthy, Wealthy and Wise podcast with Dr William Chokta, MDJD. Our mission is to empower you with the knowledge and the tools you need to thrive in all aspects of your lives. Join us now as we discuss everything from nutrition and exercise to money management and personal growth. Dr Chokta will provide insightful advice on how to improve your physical and financial health, as well as your emotional and mental well-being. Whether you're looking to boost your energy levels unlike financial freedom or cultivate a more positive mindset, we've got you covered. Get ready to become the best version of yourself, so let's get started. Here's Dr William Chokta, MDJD.
Speaker 2:Good morning. I'm Dr William T Chokta and I will be your host this morning for the Healthy, wealthy and Wise podcast. Welcome to the Healthy, wealthy and Wise podcast. This is part of our Masterclass series on leadership, and we're absolutely delighted to have you. Today, we're going to talk about a familiar topic called loneliness, and the reason is that just recently, the American Medical Association, which is the premier physician association in the country, has just occurred loneliness as a public health crisis. So we want to look at it from the perspective of what can we do to manage and treat loneliness in ourselves and in those around us. So welcome, and let's get started.
Speaker 2:As always, I'd like to start off with my beliefs. I believe life is about being of service to others. I believe knowledge is power. I believe leaders can change the world. As always, we're going to start off with an outline and give you an idea about what we're going to talk about. And, as importantly, we recognize that your time is very, very valuable, and so we do not want to waste it. So we're going to go over the definition of loneliness. We're going to talk about the impact of COVID and other stressors on loneliness as a society issue and ways that we, as individuals and collectively, can help to mitigate this particular problem. As always, our discussions are based primarily on my 75 years of life and my more than 50 years of medical experience as a practicing general surgeon. This is part of our masterclass series, as I mentioned, and our masterclass, basically, is about creating leaders in the world, and particularly leaders who can help with mental, physical and spiritual issues.
Speaker 2:Well, what is loneliness? One definition of loneliness is that loneliness is a perception of social isolation. The perception of social isolation and keeping in mind in this situation, perception is reality, okay, even though one may not be socially isolated. If you think you are, then you are. Another definition is that loneliness is the subjective feeling of a lack of companionship, even when others are around, and this is a very important factor, or a more important definition, that you can be lonely in a crowd. You can be lonely in the center of a lot of activity that's circulating around you, because the important issue here and this is where the mental aspect comes into play it is your perception of whether you're isolated or not isolated. Loneliness can occur regardless of your social status or number of relationships. You can be in a relationship and still be lonely. You can be wealthy and still be lonely. And you can have high social status and still be lonely. Why? Because loneliness is your perception of social isolation, so it is not being alone, it is you think you're alone, and so we want to address those perceptions in ways we can mitigate and prove it.
Speaker 2:One of the things that loneliness can do, obviously, is that it can have physical impact, and one of the physical impacts can be an infectious, chronic diseases, and part of the reason for that is this is where the mental part of the body can affect the immune system, and the immunity, or the immune system, is very, very important in terms of providing infections and in terms of dealing with various types of infectious illnesses, particularly, as we've noticed earlier, a few years ago, the pandemic, whose sole impact was its ability to hurt individuals by affecting a weakened immune system. Stress many times can increase loneliness. Stress has been shown also to decrease the immune system, and these are ways of physical impact that stress can have on the body, and stress can subsequently lead to loneliness, and loneliness can have an even larger impact on the body. Now, in terms of stress as a contributing factor to loneliness, there are two types of stress. One is what I call good stress and the other I call bad stress. Good stress is that type of stress that is usually directed short lived, for a particular purpose, and after it's over you feel better. And that's where, let's say, you have to give a speech and you're very nervous about the speech and you're stressed about it and because of that stress you study even harder to prepare for the speech, you practice more, but when the speech is over and you've done well, the stress goes away, it abates. I call that good stress because it forced you to prepare even more for that event. The same is if you're going to compete in some physical competition, maybe on a team, a soccer team, a basketball team, et cetera, and you may be a little nervous right before that occurs. After the game is over, the stress goes away. The other type of stress which contributes to loneliness is what I call bad stress, and this is stress that is not short lived and it's based on usually old beliefs and thoughts that tend to limit or inhibit you and causes you to develop distorted perceptions.
Speaker 2:And remember one of the points that we frequently try to make is what we believe affects how we think. How we think affects how we feel, and how we feel affects how we act. So if you're not shielding very well and if you're having disturbing thoughts, go back to your original belief systems and see what those thoughts and feelings, what beliefs those thoughts and feelings are based on. And many times you can just change them because they're your beliefs, you created them and if you created them, you can get rid of them. Some of the other contributing factors to loneliness are aging I'm going to consider aging 65 years of age and older. As we get older, many things begin to change in our lives and those include social, psychological, mental as well as physical, and the sum total of a lot of that is that we may do less, we may enter a react less and, as a result, we may develop a greater perception of loneliness, Sometimes of abuse, are many times lonely, they feel isolated.
Speaker 2:Why? Because many times they feel that they do not have control. They do not have control of their environment, they do not have control of things that are happening to them and they many times can be highly susceptible to descending into a feeling of profound loneliness and subsequent depression. Poverty can do that. Poverty is a type of restriction of one's environment, one's ability to do things that may provide happiness and joy. Victims of discrimination. Similarly, because of the limitations that can be imposed Now, I might suggest that even if you are a victim of discrimination, that can have less of an impact if you take that and put it in a different perspective. And one of the ways to do that is if someone is doing things to you or saying things to you, you can just basically turn it around on them and just feel sorry for them and make them the problem instead of you being the problem.
Speaker 2:And then another factor in loneliness is elder abuse. You would be amazed at the number of elders who are abused in this country by their families and by those around them. And this abuse can take different forms. It can take financial form, a financial abuse form where they've lost control of their bank accounts or their assets. It can be physical and obviously mental at the same time. But, as we mentioned, covid actually made us even more cognizant about the importance of loneliness because it was occurring on such a large scale. It was a shutdown of schools and offices and businesses and places and places of social interaction. It was forced upon us, quite honestly, to save our lives and those individuals who were introverted in personality many times adjusted much better to those who were extroverts, who enjoy that interaction, and they had a much more difficult time adapting to that and some did not adapt very well.
Speaker 2:But my point is this is something that will always occur with us, whether it's doing a time of a pandemic or not, and it's certainly something that we need to be aware of in ourselves and in others and be aware of certain mitigating factors that we can implement to decrease that. And one said that social isolation or loneliness is like smoking 15 cigarettes per day in terms of this physical impact on our longevity. We also know that loneliness or social isolation is associated with high blood pressure. Stress can affect the immune system, as we talked about before Many times. Stress-related problems can lead to things like stroke, heart disease, dementia and ultimately, suicide. So it's a serious problem and it's something that's appropriate for us, as individuals who are concerned about our fellow beings, to be aware of so that we can help them in addition to helping ourselves. And, of course, the ultimate impact of loneliness or severe social isolation can actually be suicide, where individuals are so depressed or descend into an area of depression that they feel it necessary to take their own lives or attempt to take their own lives, and suicide is based on three very serious areas of feeling among those involved, and one is the feeling of hopelessness Things are bad and there's no hope that things will get any better. Helplessness Things are bad and there's no way that anyone can help them to make things better. And worthlessness Things are bad and they deserve it. And so if you're interacting with individuals or view yourself or heavens those types of feelings, it's important to seek help or certainly to try to help them. There's all perceptions and it's important to try to mitigate those perceptions to allow individuals to be happy and to survive.
Speaker 2:Ucla, university of California, los Angeles, has a very, very simple loneliness scale. Actually, it's just three questions and the scale is based on one point for hardly ever answer. Two points for some of the time answer. And three points for often answer. And the questions are how often do you feel that you lack companionship? One point for hardly ever. Two points for sometimes. Three points for often. Second question how often do you feel left out? One point for hardly ever. Two points for some of the time. Three points for often. And third and final question how often do you feel isolated from others. One point for hardly ever, two points for some of the time, three points for often and usually. If you have nine points on that scale, then you are lonely or feel more lonely. If you have less than three points or less, then you are not very lonely.
Speaker 2:One of the ways of mitigating loneliness, believe it or not, is eating healthy. It's amazing how eating healthy is an asset to all sorts of maladies mental, physical or physical, spiritual. And certainly as a part of eating healthy fruits and vegetables, primarily along with selected meats, is vitamins, your vitamin D that's associated with sunlight, getting outside and walking around and being connected to the universe, if you will, is important and proper eating. As you might suspect, exercise is also a very, very important part of mitigating loneliness. And you may say but if I exercise by myself? Well, what happens is that when you exercise, you feel good, and when you feel good, that then puts you at a better frame of mind to enter, react, or maybe do those things or go those places that you would not go or do if you were feeling lonely or depressed. Certainly you want to enter, react more socially. And when I say enter, react more socially, this is something that requires a conscious act.
Speaker 2:Most of us, let's say, who go to school or go to work or participate in basic things such as research or different civic activities. That's sort of built into our routine. But when those things go away, for whatever reason, one has to get into the habit of consciously doing things, and so we're talking about things that you consciously do, if I would like to say, if you have a cell phone, you can go to college. If you own a cell phone, you can go to college. Go online with your cell phone through the three-year browser, look up the university, find a course that you can take for free and start going to college, and this can connect you with the larger world just from your cell phone. And this is one of the simple ways that technology being available to us, can do things to help us or to make us feel more connected. Some other strategies to help them with loneliness, controlling bad thoughts. When you start having bad thoughts or negative thoughts, start asking yourself why do I think that? About Mr Smith or Mrs Jones? Why do I think that about? Well, just because it rains, it's a bad day. Maybe the rain is cleaning everything and things going to be bright and beautiful, and the sound of the rain and the smell of the rain makes you feel good. So it's really what you think is your perception, so practice. Another thing is to practice self-kindness. Now, this may sound a little strange but, believe it or not, the people who are hardest on us are ourselves, all those things we were told and told over the years. We still have them in our minds and when something comes up, many times we get into the habit of going back to those bad and negative beliefs and using them against ourselves. So change that. Practice, because you control them. Volunteer for a cause that you believe in. Join a class, join a club, but practice living in the now. Forget about yesterday, don't worry about tomorrow. All you have is right now. So get into the habit, as some of my Buddhist friends say, and living in the now, living for today.
Speaker 2:One of the things that we can do is that if things are bad and we feel that things are bad for us and we are feeling lonely, it's to ask for help. You'll be amazed at the number of individuals who will help you if you just ask them, and this may be those that you know, or maybe those that you may not know very well, but be okay with that. If you have certain needs, let's say if you have certain health needs you're having a certain pain and the pain continues to bother. You Get into the habit of taking care of those needs. Because what happens is is that if you ignore those needs, they can gradually start making you feel more and more and more uncomfortable, sad, lonely and self isolated. And part of addressing those needs is just talking to somebody about it. We call it ventilation. You'll be amazed that and just talking to a friend or colleague about something you're going through or something you're experiencing will make you feel better after you finish talking about it and it will pull you back out of that.
Speaker 2:That travel down to the area of loneliness and self isolation. And again, give yourself time, be patient. I know most of us say, well, no, I'm not patient at all. But basically, don't sweat the small stuff, and most stuff is small. And when you look at something that you think is just horrible, that maybe you experience or about to experience, when you put it in perspective you will find that it's really not quite as bad as you think it is. And, more importantly, you've probably gone through something like this before and came through it with flying colors. So give yourself a break is what I'm trying to say, and you'll be amazed at how things are not quite as bad as we always think they are. One of the things to do in terms of helping others is be aware of the fact that not only does loneliness and self isolation occur in the aging, it occurs in the youth. Particularly pay attention to your teenagers, those in middle school, high school, etc. They go through this also and many times with them, you have to be particularly cognizant and spend more time talking to them and trying to understand, to get through the layers of what they really think and what they really believe. But they too go through the same issues that we adults go through, and many times because they are teenagers and their brains are not developed 100% the way an adults would be, they are not equipped to handle it quite as well, so they need extra help and extra support to deal with those things.
Speaker 2:So there are some benefits, particularly with exercise, and we mentioned exercise before. But I want to be more specific about exercise, because this is something really basic that we can do. And again, when I say exercise, I'm not talking about running 26.5 miles, I'm talking about walking, I'm talking about moving, if you will. Moving M-O-V-I-N-G. Moving is exercise, and moving over a period of time consistently. But what studies have shown is that exercise psychologically improves your memory. It can improve concentration. It obviously helps you deal with stress. If you have certain mental disorders, let's say mental issues or whatever, it can help to mitigate that those issues. It helps with your moods. If you feel better, you will act better. It helps with your self-esteem. That's one of the immediate benefits of exercise. If you have one of those watches that lets you know how many steps you've made, and when you see you've made I don't know 100 steps, you feel good and that all goes into the body, mind, spirit process to make everything collectively better. So do those things that are readily available to us eating, exercise and sharing our thoughts and concerns with another we can do to sort of mitigate some of our issues.
Speaker 2:I personally am a physician of faith and I have found that my faith is invaluable in helping me deal with issues and I would certainly recommend that to you and you will find that that will help you as a bridge to get over some of those difficult and challenging circumstances. Somebody once said pain is unabortable, but suffering is optional, and the difference between pain and suffering is, I see that suffering is something, is pain over a long period of time. Suffering is something that's deeper than the superficial pain. Suffering is the why to the pain. I can tell you that, as a physician, one of the things I've seen in individuals patients who are believers, who are Christians or believers in different types of faith is many times that they feel that they have failed because they feel pain or they're scared or they're frightened, and I try to reassure them that being fearful is a normal reaction to situations of concern, that it is not a failure of faith and indeed it is a normal reaction. And so it's important to realize that we don't have to suffer unnecessarily, that we can take those things that have benefited us and worked for us, the people and the ones who love us, in addition to our faith, and that will help us to deal with the pain that we have to deal with.
Speaker 2:So, in summary, loneliness is a public health crisis and I equate loneliness and social isolation as the same thing. It can affect us on a physical, social and a spiritual level. Many things that can help to mitigate that, or a good diet and exercise, joining a club, joining a team, joining a group, volunteering for a cause. You believe in consciously thinking good thoughts, remembering that our beliefs affect how we think, how we think affects how we feel, and how we feel affects how we act. So it's important for us to mentally exercise positively in a daily way, and one of the ways to do that is just to ask yourself what it is you're grateful for and make that a habit to do every single day, and you'll be amazed at how that will help.
Speaker 2:My basic principles, as I like to always conclude by saying, in my life God is in charge. As I mentioned, I'm a physician of faith, and that has sustained me over my more than 50 years. I don't have any bad days. I used to have bad days, but I got rid of all my bad days about 30 years ago because I figured out that if my day was good or bad, it depended on me. So I just decided I didn't want it anymore and I don't have them anymore.
Speaker 2:I don't sweat the small stuff, and most stuff is small. Indeed, when things happen to you that you perceive as negative, most of the times it's not as bad as you think it is. So put it in perspective, move on. Next, forgiveness is therapy. I have learned that when things and or people say or do things that affect me or that I perceive to be negative, I need to live to give them, and I found that that is therapeutic and allows me to move ahead and stay happy. And finally, everything is a relationship and relationships are based on mutual respect, mutual trust and good communication. If you have those three things, you have a good relationship. If you do not, you have work to do and, in conclusion, be the change that you want to see in the world. Thank you and have a wonderful day.
Speaker 1:And then take the next step of action and share it with your family, friends and or your co-workers. They'll be glad you did so. Until the next time, live your best possible life the best possible way. You've been listening to the Healthy, Wealthy and Wise podcast with Dr William Choctaw, MDJD.
