A (living healthy) QUIZ

Pre-Quiz background: Hippocrates was a respected Greek physician who is considered the Father of Medicine. His primary contribution was to separate medical care from the general views of the time which were that the gods were responsible for all disease. He wrote the Hippocratic Oath more than 2,400 years ago, and it is still used today to identify the ethical standards of modern medicine. While there is of course some controversy about the precise wording and about whether he actually wrote it, I’ll leave that to the scholars. One popular attributed phrase is: “First, Do No Harm.”

Now, The Quiz:

Short-term harmful effects: Temporary relaxation followed by

  •  Anxiety
  •  Irritability
  •  Nausea
  • Argumentative behavior
  • Decreased
    –Mental function
    –Balance
    –Reaction time
    –Judgment
    –Muscle strength
    –Aerobic endurance

Common harmful by-products:

  • Weight gain
  • Injuries
  • Academic and job problems
  • Relationship issues
  • Memory loss
  • Accidents
  • Violence

Long-term harmful effects:

  • Harm to every organ in the body
  • High blood pressure
  • Stroke
  • Heart disease
  • Certain cancers
  • Birth defects
  • Suicides

What is it? The answer is one word which I’ll tell you later if you haven’t figured it out. Obviously, if Do No Harm is relevant, the one word which applies to all the above, also is.

OK, after doing no harm, what is Living Healthy? For this answer we don’t have to go back 2,400 years because it’s different for each of us. While it involves some combination of physical activity, balanced nutrition and rest, our chosen or required lifestyle often dictates how much time we devote to practice Living Healthy. For instance, my chosen profession requires me to hold myself to a higher fitness standard than say, someone who does engineering research. It’s about individual priorities.

With that in mind and accepting that most of us would like to spend as much of our short, short lives free of pain with enough energy to enjoy the many pleasures we are privileged to have access to, consider this: we all waste too much time doing meaningless random things because we don’t prioritize our individual values.

I’m suggesting taking a moment to privately identify what each of us value. Write them down. Edit. And then, start prioritizing our precious time accordingly. If we do this with seriousness, and practice it with consistency, we’ll benefit from it. Practicing this consistently shouldn’t be difficult because, remember, this is about what we individually value.

While I have no interest in auditioning to be your conscience, (my life is too full of questionable choices to be qualified) and I don’t want to be a hypocrite, the quiz answer is simply: alcohol. Please take a moment to review all of those effects. Daunting, aren’t they? Whether we choose moderation, abstinence or full-fledged self-indulgence, it’s like our values. It’s all about individual choice.