Women's Health Care: the Best Care Starts with YOU

Start with Yourself

Choose Self Care and Self Help

Creating and living a healthy life starts with ourselves--we create and sustain our wellness from the inside out.

You are the only one who can pay attention to your body and the information your body offers you about about its needs. You are the only one who knows your health concerns and questions and how important and urgent they are in the context of your life.

Take Charge of Your Health

The cornerstone of being in charge of your own health is what you know--what you know about your body, your history, your questions and the health issues that are "hot buttons" for you.

In a recent WebMD article about Women's Top 5 Health Concerns, Saralyn Mark, MD, remarks on the need for women to take charge of their health to make the best use of the massive amount of information now available:

In order to make full use of this information, Saralyn Mark, MD, encourages women to take charge of their health. She says women need to work in partnership with their doctors by finding out their family medical history, educating themselves on health issues, and paying attention to their bodies.

"You know what makes you feel good, you know when you don't feel well. Understanding your body is key," says Mark, senior medical adviser for the Office on Women's Health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

(Reference: WebMD Feature: Women's Top 5 Health Concerns, http://women.webmd.com/guide/5-top-female-health-concern, accessed October 29, 2008)

Choose Your Partners with Care

Instead of seeing your doctors as experts who know what is best for you, choose to see your doctors as partners in your team, trusted advisors who contribute knowledge and skill to your health improvement plans. Your doctors will help you work to prevent health problems and to deal with any that develop. If your present doctors feel uncomfortable with partnership and cooperation, choose new doctors and health care providers.

Consider an Integrative Approach

An integrative approach to my own health care is the approach that saved me years of misery and led to a life of vitality and wellness as my "normal" life. I combined the advice and care of both "traditional" and "alternative" health care professionals. I combined practices that addressed my "mind" and my "body" as one integrated whole of ME.

I have watched my parents and in-laws struggle through both chronic and life threatening health issues with the advice and care of their primary physicians for whom pharmaceuticals (drugs) were the primary tools of health care. Without a health care education myself, it is still obvious to me how one drug leads to another and then another as the body's natural balance is destoyed, one layer at a time, one drug and its side effects at a time.

As a result of these negative examples--and as a result of my positive experience--my approach to my own health care seems so clear, simple and fundamental. At various stages of my life, my primary care giver has been either a woman who is a medical doctor (M.D., or Doctor of Medicine) or a woman who is a naturopath (N.D., or Doctor of Naturopathy). My health care combines self care (diet, exercise, supplementation and meditation) and both traditional and alternative health care.