Most of us on a day to day basis just get through the day with The Big C – That’s right: c.o.f.f.e.e.!!. The line up at the hospital café first thing in the morning before ward rounds is worse than peak hour traffic. There are mobile latte vans that visit our surgeries in private practice. We need our coffee. When we have breaks in the day, we have more coffee, and yes, we like the taste, and the smell, because its amazing!!! But, how well do we feel without our coffee? And that’s a telling point…..
If we are needing sugar and caffeine to get through the day, then there is something not quite right. Apart from its taste, it is a stimulant, it heightens the nervous system, and then it drops us again.
Animals don’t need stimulant drugs to make it through their days. Dogs do great without it. They’re pretty happy too. So, as an interesting note, why do we?!
Can we really say that we are living well and truly vital if we are needing stimulants to get through the day?!
The history of doctors and their association with stimulants is well known. Not, that it is something to aspire to, just something to be aware of 🙂 I once read that one of the founders of a famous US teaching hospital was addicted to cocaine having to give himself a dose each day just to function….I do not know for sure if that story is true, but as we know in medicine our rates of addiction are high, and they are not even measuring our addiction to caffeine… 🙂
Most of us are so used to feeling tired that we think it is normal. But, whilst it might be the norm in our profession, its actually is not natural to feel so tired and exhausted that you can’t get through a day without a stimulant! That is a sure sign that we are not as well as we could be. We’ve just become used to this way of living that it is ordinary for us, and its become a collective team activity at morning tea time, or post ward round….
As health care experts, why do we accept being so tired as our normal? Why are we tired only a few short hours after waking up when sleep is supposed to regenerate us and give us energy?
Can we say it is something of being truly well to need a drug like caffeine (as tasty as it is!) to keep us going?
Lets face it, as doctors, we are so used to dealing with the most horrendous diseases, that we consider that if we don’t have a disease that we must be well!
But being chronically tired, is not part of a state of well-being.
Being well is more than the absence of diagnosed disease.
To me, a state of well-being is feeling fully energized, joyful, vitalized on waking and during the day, having a sustained zest for life. It is a wonderful feeling on the inside, not just the absence of cancer.
Most of us feel grateful that we don’t have a horrible disease. But what if there was more to well-being than just not having disease! Continue reading →
When young people go to medical school they are called medical students. They know that they are to learn about medicine. Everything about medical school is about learning about medicine. In fact, every waking moment is about learning about medicine.
As doctors and as medical students we hear a lot about this thing called ‘work life balance’. We know that we need it, we are told that we need it but we are not really told what it is, why we need it and how to get it.
Dr Maxine Speaks 
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