Health and Responsibility

Jefferson Breland

(12/2023) This past month as I sat in the "Quiet Room" of the Clarence M. Mitchell, Jr. Courthouse in Baltimore, MD waiting for my juror number to be called, I began to quietly muse on the word "responsibility."

Since you asked, "Yes, I live in Baltimore, MD. And yes, I have an acupuncture office in Gettysburg, PA and yes, I also have an office in Baltimore."

Also, since you asked, my home is approximately 65 miles from Gettysburg and it takes me about an hour and a half to drive that distance. My Baltimore office is not quite 7 miles from my home and takes me a whopping 25-30 minutes to drive there. Ah, city life.

Any-who, responsibility.

The reason "responsibility" came to mind was the thought, "Would I do this voluntarily?" Would I donate my time to participate in our system of justice if I wasn’t summoned under threat of legal action from the Jury Commissioner of Baltimore City?

Jury duty is just that, a duty. According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), duty has two primary meanings. One definition is "a task or action that someone is required to perform." A second definition is "a moral or legal obligation; a responsibility."

Aha! There it is again, "responsibility."

A practice I use to look at words afresh, is to break it into its parts and think like a child. The word, responsibility, seems pretty straight forward. It looks like a mashup of the words, response and ability. Turn it around and one might say it simply means the "ability to respond."

Put like that, we all have the "ability to respond."

According to the OED, there are a variety of definitions of responsibility which seem more complicated. They use words such as duty to, control over, job, legal obligation, required, moral obligation, respect, and blame.

So what does this have to do with our health?

I’ll put it to you this way.. Would you rather voluntarily take responsibility for your health or wait to be summoned under threat of disease to help yourself?

If we apply the ideas in the OED definition of responsibility we can look at health from a number of different angles.

Is our health a duty? To others? To ourself? Is it like a vow? Something we promise as in traditional wedding vows such as the classic lines, "… in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do us part…."

Is our health a matter of control? A means of taking control of our life or using our health-related issues to control others? Examples range from feigning illness to get out of a test in school or to not go to work to something as extreme as serious as Munchausen syndrome.

Do we give over control of our health to others? Do we blindly rely on experts such as medical professionals to make observations about us and make decisions for us?

Some people view their health as if it were a full-time job. They do background checks (DNA testing) and track their family history of illness. They join affiliated clubs and communities like gyms, Peloton, CrossFit, or yoga studios. They plan meals and design their life schedules as if they were business plans to submit to a bank for a loan.

Is one’s health a legal obligation? Or perhaps a moral obligation? To whom? Ourselves? Our loved ones? Our community?

Can we blame our health on something or someone? Yes, there are occasions where accidents happen and there is a someone or something to blame. Most often, however, we look outside of ourselves for the condition of our health. It’s easy to blame DNA, allergies, the events or choices of our life, or our healthcare professionals for our health problems. Some of us even blame God for our ill health.

To state the obvious, "Health" is an important conversation. It is a complex issue that is influenced by many, many factors. The conversation is influenced by our religious beliefs, our societal and personal beliefs around death and dying, by the language we use to describe health and disease, the structure of our healthcare and health insurance systems, and even our definition of the word, "health."

Let’s start with a definition of health. It is simply the state or condition of our body at any given moment. Health is health. Now, we can say there is a continuum of health from "good" health or "good function" to "bad" health or "bad function" in which symptoms present themselves. These symptoms indicate an imbalance or function issue in your body.

When we look at health in relationship to the function of our body, we can then apply the concept of our "ability to respond", to take action to improve our body’s function.

I believe health is a personal responsibility. I believe it is our responsibility to pay attention to the symptoms, the messages our body sends us. I believe it is our responsibility to make necessary shifts in our life whether it be diet, sleep, activities, or work when our body says, "Hey, look over here! Stop that!"

Too often we ignore these messages and take over-the-counter drugs to continue life as normal. We often continue doing the same things that led to the initial symptoms. When we do this, our body will send us more powerful messages and up the ante of the symptoms. Something like a simple tension headache may, over time, lead to a diagnosis of high blood pressure.

Our health is, in a way, our contract with life. Our lives are our responsibility, so why don’t we think about health the same way. Why do we sub-contract the most fundamental aspects of our life to other people if our health is our responsibility?

I used to do home renovation for my job. When I would hire sub-contractors, I often worried that they would not do as good a job as I could.

Now you might say, well, U am not a healthcare professional, I have to sub-contract. That may be true. I propose to you that you know yourself and your symptoms and the subtle shifts in the function of your body better than anyone else in the world. Only you can detect the subtle signs of an imbalance in your health

All you have to do is acknowledge that your health is your responsibility. Know that you have the "ability to respond."

Begin to pay attention to the messages your body is telling you.

What to do with these messages, you ask? Sometimes the answer is as simple as going to bed a bit earlier or eating a bit less. It might mean turning off the news on the television or internet. It might be as simple as substituting room temperature or warm beverages for iced or cold beverages.

Then, pay attention and see what helps or doesn’t help.

Once you begin to reawaken your mind to your body’s messages, you will notice more and more subtle signs of an imbalance earlier and earlier.

This process of taking responsibility for one’s health is an opportunity to educate yourself about your body's specific signs of needing help and then what helps and what doesn’t.

Once you get a sense of how you can help yourself, you will also learn what you can do yourself and when you might need to bring in a medical professional such as your local acupuncturist.

Want to learn more? Give me a call. Be well.

Jefferson Breland is a board-certified acupuncturists licensed in Pennsylvania and Maryland with offices in Gettysburg and Towson, respectively.
He can be reached at 410-336-5876.