May 11th, 2008 by Dr. Val Jones in True Stories
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My regular readers know that I’m a very conscientious person, and that although I try my best to prepare in advance for all manner of SNAFUs, I still fall victim to the occasional malfunction or “blonde moment.”
My most recent episode occurred en route to interviewing Governor Huckabee. I was really looking forward to our interview and was quite determined not to have anything go wrong. I packed my briefcase the night before the meeting, and made sure that my digital voice recorder was working, had batteries, etc. and that I had a pad of paper and a pen in case of emergency.
I carefully gathered all my things together and hopped in a cab (a black jeep with a yellow taxi sign on top) to the interview destination – a hotel lobby near the Newseum. I was re-reading my interview questions when I reached into my briefcase to get out my wallet to pay the driver. My heart sank. I had forgotten my wallet! My car-less husband (the first person I hit up for cash) was at a doctor’s appointment across town. I had no friends meeting me at the hotel lobby (and I certainly wasn’t going to ask Gov. Huckabee if he could lend me $20). I explained the situation to the driver and sheepishly asked if he had a card or if I could arrange to meet him later on in the day once I had my wallet.
The driver saw how sincerely sorry I was – and told me that he had no cards, and that I should just consider the ride complimentary. I promised him that I wasn’t in the habit of stiffing taxi drivers, and that I really did want to pay him back. He would have none of it. “It’s not a problem, ma’am. Don’t worry about it.” So off I went to meet Gov Huckabee – and I only dropped my Blackberry once in front of him.
Flash forward 4 days… I’m returning home from The Big Sleep Show (it was in Chicago) and waiting in the taxi line at the Reagan National Airport. This time I have hubby with me (he’s always good for a $20) so I figure the cab ride home will be smooth (though I’ve had some bad experiences with DC cabs in the past). As I get to the front of the line, I look over at the cab that we’re about to get into. It’s a black jeep with a yellow taxi sign on top.
I ask the driver if he remembers a woman who didn’t pay him for an early morning cab ride a few days prior. “Oh, yeah.” He said. “You mean the doctor lady?”
“That was ME!” I exclaimed. “I didn’t know how I was going to repay you for your kindness. And now I can do it in person! This is quite a coincidence.”
The driver smiled and was quiet the whole ride home.
I paid him for both rides plus a nice tip. “Keep paying it forward, brother.” I said, “you never know when it will come back to you.”
What are the odds?This post originally appeared on Dr. Val’s blog at RevolutionHealth.com.
May 10th, 2008 by Dr. Val Jones in Uncategorized
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My blogger colleague, Trisha, at Ideas for Women told me about an exciting, virtual walk across America that is being sponsored by the Department of Health and Human Services. The event starts tomorrow (Mother’s Day, May 11th) and you can sign up for various routes. I chose the cross-country route that begins in San Francisco and ends in my city: Washington, DC. I guess I felt inspired by my recent chat with Mike Huckabee about how he lost weight and got fit.
The idea is to use a pedometer (or your best guess work) to track your daily steps, with a goal of about 10,000 per day. You can tally your steps each day so that they contribute to the grand total contributed by your team mates and others in the Woman Challenge.
You can also track your participation in my “Lose 20 Pounds” group here at Revolution Health.
Care to join me? My team is called “Dr. Val” and my home city is Washington, DC. You can also leave your username (that you chose when you signed up at the Woman Challenge site) and home town in the comments section below and I’ll invite you personally.
Don’t live in the US? All the more reason to have a virtual vacation here and walk across the country with me!
All those of you who are moms (or any of you who’ve ever had a mom – ha, ha) please join me in getting out into the fresh, virtual air in honor of Mother’s Day. Imagine how good we’ll feel 8 weeks from now…
Happy Mother’s Day!
This post originally appeared on Dr. Val’s blog at RevolutionHealth.com.
May 9th, 2008 by Dr. Val Jones in Uncategorized
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Revolution Health is always looking for creative ways to bring important health information to the public. This week, in honor of Mother’s Day, we’ve created a virtual women’s health expo – and we’ll donate to the featured non-profit organizations for every click you make.
So why not do some good for the following non-profits by visiting their booths at the virtual expo? This is the easiest way for you to support your favorite non-profit – you can even visit them in your pajamas. 
Y-Me National Breast Cancer Association
Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance (DBSA)
National Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies Coalition
National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI)
National Women’s Health Resource Center
The Wellness Community
Women’s Sports Foundation
Go Red For Women
Healthy Weight For Life
Society for Women’s Health Research
*Go to the Women’s Health Expo*
This post originally appeared on Dr. Val’s blog at RevolutionHealth.com.
May 9th, 2008 by Dr. Val Jones in Celebrity Interviews, Health Policy
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This is a continuation of my interview with Mike Huckabee at the National Changing Diabetes Program conference in Washington, DC. In my previous post I asked Mike about his weight loss journey, and in this post I asked him some global questions about healthcare. My regular readers will appreciate that my digital voice recorder did not malfunction during this interview, though I did drop my Blackberry at one point out of sheer enthusiasm. Gov. Huckabee was the first to reach down and help me get it. What a gentleman!
Dr. Val: Your friend, Dr. Fay Boozman, said “We need to stop treating snake bites and start killing snakes.” Tell me what that means in practical terms.
Huckabee: Healthcare in America is reactive and is geared towards intervening in catastrophic situations, when what we should be doing is focusing on preventing them. The whole system is upside down. It’s like we’re focused on putting Humpty Dumpty back together again instead of keeping him from falling off the wall. Our healthcare system is based on a broken egg concept.
So the key thing that we have to change in healthcare is to focus our resources on prevention and a healthy lifestyle.
Dr. Val: You said that your hope was that “‘Healthy Arkansas’ will spread like a highly contagious but benevolent virus that could become the genesis of ‘Healthy America.'” Can you give me a virus update?
Huckabee: We did in fact launch “Healthy America” and it was the most successful Governors’ initiative in that we had more states participate in this than any other NGA (National Governors’ Association) initiative. Forty-three states launched state-based health initiatives for preventive health. Some were more aggressive than others.
We began the initiative because there was a new awareness of the need to change the healthcare model from intervention to prevention. The concept of Healthy America was to influence behaviors at work, at play, at home, and at school. These programs have been remarkably successful. For example, in the first year, the average productivity of state employees increased by $3400/year. And that’s not to mention the savings in healthcare costs. The average diabetic spends 8.3 days/year in the hospital. The cost of those days could pay for 7 years of diabetes counseling and medication. It’s as if the choice is between a new oil filter or a new engine – which do you think is going to be less expensive?
Dr. Val: Revolution Health is attempting to encourage behavior modification through social networking and online, physician-led programs. What do you think are the strengths and limitations of this approach?
Huckabee: First of all the strengths are more dramatic than you may realize. When we used the online approach in Arkansas, we did health risk assessments followed by online coaching for everything from smoking cessation to weight control. Online programs can be very successful because they’re instant and accessible 24 hours/day. The socialization becomes very important because peer pressure can be harnessed to challenge people to walk more steps or lose more pounds than the others in their group.
Online approaches aside, the key to improving health in America is to create an atmosphere of healthy behavior. This cultural change may take a generation to achieve, which is why most politicians don’t touch it. Politicians like to deal with issues that can be dealt with in an election cycle, not a generation.
However, America’s approach to littering, seatbelt laws, smoking, and drunk driving are four examples of real changes we’ve made in this country over time. The changes took place in three stages: attitude change, atmosphere change, then an action is changed.
Attitude change involves giving people information that changes the way they think about an issue. Atmosphere change means making unhealthy behaviors difficult to participate in (like taking away ash trays and putting up a no-smoking sign), and finally the government codifies into law the new behavioral norm.
The government is usually the last player, not the first, because people have to create the behavioral norm before the government can enact laws. If the government tries to mandate a personal habit, then the debate will not be over the merits of the approach, but over the personal liberties of people to do what they want to do. And in America, the government always loses that argument. So what you have to do is get enough Americans believing that taking care of themselves is the right thing to do, and then there will be the demand for government to put that into law.
We don’t have a healthcare crisis in America, we have a health crisis. And if we dealt with the health crisis we would resolve the healthcare crisis. The real reason we’re in trouble is because 80% of the money we spend on healthcare is a result of chronic disease. And that chronic disease is primarily the result of over-eating, under-exercising and smoking. It’s our lifestyle that’s killing us.This post originally appeared on Dr. Val’s blog at RevolutionHealth.com.
May 8th, 2008 by Dr. Val Jones in Celebrity Interviews
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I had the exciting opportunity to interview Governor Mike Huckabee at a recent conference for the National Changing Diabetes Program. As most of you know, Mike lost 110 pounds through lifestyle interventions and has kept the weight off for over 5 years.
Since I’m leading a weight loss group, I was inspired to read his new book, “Quit Digging Your Grave with a Knife and Fork.” I really enjoyed his witty and down-to-earth, positive approach to health. If you can imagine Dave Barry and Norman Vincent Peele getting together to talk about weight loss strategies, you’d pretty much have Gov. Huckabee’s book. I highly recommend it.
As for our interview, I’ll split the Q&As into two posts. This first post is about Mike’s personal journey, the second is about his view of healthcare. One thing’s for sure, after meeting Mike Huckabee in person, I can say that I’ve joined the team of folks who wear the “I heart Huckabee” t-shirts. He is a softspoken, kind-hearted, honest man with a quirky sense of humor and a gift for parables and analogies. Enjoy his thoughts below…
Dr. Val: It seems to me that your weight loss journey began the day when you sat in a chair at the State Capitol, and it broke under your weight (in front of a group of government officials). Do you think that successful weight loss usually begins with an “ah-ha moment” like yours?
Huckabee: I don’t think it’s always the case that people have that level of epiphany. Most people who are overweight know it – every time they bend over to tie their shoes and can’t, every time they need a seat belt extender on the airplane, etc. they realize that there’s a problem. Unfortunately, though, their response is often one of helplessness. They believe that they just have to live with their weight problem instead of believing they can do something about it.
Sometimes an epiphany can make people really angry, and cause them to say – “I don’t care what I have to do, I need to change.” Most people have made numerous attempts to lose weight and have tried many different diets, but they don’t understand the real problem. It’s a lifestyle issue, not a program issue. Diets fail because they have a beginning and an end. You’ve got to see this as change not so much of the menu but of your mind. Don’t focus on losing weight – that’s a big mistake. Focus on the things that make you healthy and then the weight takes care of itself. You may never be the skinniest person, but you’re better off healthy than you are skinny.
Sometimes I find that when people make weight loss their goal they lose weight but they’re not healthy because they haven’t done it in a healthy way. They haven’t combined activity with the weight loss. They’ve just starved themselves, and that’s not health.
Your health is like a dashboard. If the only thing you ever look at is your speedometer, and you don’t look at the oil gauge and the water gauge, you can get into serious trouble. You think, “hey, I’m going the speed limit” but that’s not the point. That’s how fast your car’s going, not how well it’s running. Health is the same way – you can’t just focus on weight, you’ve got to look at your cholesterol levels, hemoglobin A1C, blood sugar, and blood pressure as well.
After I broke the chair I went to see my doctor and he ran some tests that confirmed I was a diabetic.
Dr. Val: What did your doctor say to you at that point?
Huckabee: My doctor gave me a talk that changed my life. A lot of doctors simply say, “you’re a diabetic, here’s some medication, try to lose some weight and do some exercise.” But my doctor looked me in the eye and said, “you need to understand that if you don’t make a lifestyle change, you’re in the last decade of your life, and let me describe the decade…”
Quite frankly if he had just said that I was in my last decade I might have said, “Hmm, that’s not good, but you know what? I bet a drug company will solve this problem for me in the next few years. That way I can eat what I want and do what I want and just take a pill and everything will be fine.”
But that’s not what he told me. Instead he told me the truth, and he said “let me describe the decade…” And in great detail my doctor began to explain what diabetes would do to my body, organ by organ – my vision, my extremities, my heart. He made it sound like a slow, lingering death. And right then and there I vowed to come up with a different exit strategy for my life.
I gave up sweets and fried foods and began to exercise. You have to understand that this was a huge turning point for a southern boy. I used to say that exercise is for people who have nothing better to do with their lives than to get on a treadmill and play the role of a hamster. But I became one of those people that I used to make fun of – I’ve already completed four marathons. But most importantly, I haven’t needed any medications in 5 years and my doctor says that it’s as if I never had diabetes at all.
Dr. Val: You wrote, “If you really hate yourself when you’re fat, you’ll also hate yourself when you’re thin.” What did you mean by that?
Huckabee: Well, you have to be honest and tell people that their weight is a reflection of their personality. There is something inside of them that let them get completely out of control. It may have been a feeling of inadequacy, or some guilt – every person is different. But usually something is underlying the weight problem. It may be the fear of not having anything to eat next week. But something has to give a person that reckless abandon. Just because you change the physical aspects of your life, doesn’t mean that your emotional, mental, and spiritual aspects are going to change.
Dr. Val: How do you get to the bottom of what’s driving unhealthy behaviors?
Huckabee: I know that for me it was when I started to ask myself, “why is it that I’m triggered to overeat?” Some of it was childhood memories – it was the comfort that food brought. As a child, the few privileges I had were related to food. So food was always a reward. I received affirmation from dessert and would indulge myself to re-experience those childhood memories. I know that sounds awfully elementary but these things get imprinted on us. When we’re adults and someone is cruel to us or something bad happens, we affirm ourselves with food so that we can feel as if we’re a good person again. But once you come to terms with this, you regain control. You can tell yourself you’re alright and you don’t need food for comfort or affirmation.
**Up next, Mike speaks out about healthcare**This post originally appeared on Dr. Val’s blog at RevolutionHealth.com.
