Filed under: personalfinancenewsss.wordpress.com | Tags: Care, Formerly, HEALTH, Speaks, uninsured, Voice
Let me begin delving into this controversial topic with a disclaimer: I am not an expert on the complicated nuances and tendrils of health-care reform. However, I have two perspectives around this subject that make me passionate about it.
First, as a life coach, I am very well-versed in what it?s like to try to help people improve their lives when they feel enslaved to a particular job because of the health insurance it provides. Second, because one of the biggest problems we have in discussing this issue is that a major segment of the uninsured aren?t speaking out, I would like to share my experience as an American who was uninsured for about four years.
This combination has led me to the conclusion that we need health-care reform, if only because it is ruling our lives in ways it shouldn?t.
How did Americans come to feel it is natural or normal to wedge a full, rich life into a 50-week work year where a job is measured by how much it will pay in case you?re hit by a bus or diagnosed with a debilitating illness? Why are so many holding onto jobs that are draining them emotionally and sapping their spirit and essentially putting them in a vicious cycle?
I?ll tell you why. They?re scared of ?what might happen? to their health, their families, their finances. Or perhaps it?s because about 10% of Americans are on anti-depressants and they?re counting on their health insurance to pick up most of the tab. Never mind that most — that?s most, not all — don?t need them for any reason other than to numb them instead of actually feeling their feelings. According to a recent article in USA Today , the majority of this 27 million people aren’t being treated for depression and there has been a decline in patients receiving psychotherapy.
?During the study, spending on direct-to-consumer antidepressant ads increased from $32 million to $122 million,? writes Liz Szabo about the study, which was published in the Archives of General Psychiatry .
That is just plain scary. We have allowed this issue bogged down with corporate interests to mess with real quality of life for way too long. So many of my clients look like a deer in headlights at the thought of striking out on their own in employment because they?ve been so socialized into this mindset. There should be options that won?t send hardworking people spiraling into debt, that will allow for freedom of choice to work in a job that makes them feel satisfied and productive. That just makes sense, doesn?t it?
We can rant at town hall meetings. We can scare the bejesus out of our seniors. We can make it partisan. We can pretend it?s only lazy, rebellious, stupid or poor people who don?t have health coverage (and who cares about them, right?).
I confess I had some of that stubborn mindset for a while. After all, I have been gainfully employed since age 14 because I?m driven and creative and, well, I love to work. I took health insurance for granted until, at age 40, I no longer had it because I was laid off. That was in 2002. Once COBRA ran out, I didn?t have the money to keep up the payments.
Panicked at first, I eventually made a very conscious decision to take the wellness approach. I kept up my gym membership (a fraction of the cost of health-insurance payments per month) and ate well (mostly fresh produce, protein, and non-processed foods). I avoided and evaded when any conversation turned to health insurance so no one would know I wasn?t covered. I felt the stigma very deeply. Once I got my business to a place where I could afford coverage, I found a plan that rewards wellness.
The way I see it, there are not enough people on board with that approach. Instead, we have melodrama, fear of change, over-complicating, over-simplifying, and politicizing around one of the most important issues of our time.
I was partly smart, partly fortunate, to get through that time healthy and hearty. Just a week ago, as I sat in a tiny church in Lake Como, Italy, marveling at the beauty and artistry of the place, I wondered if the artists who brought their gifts to those walls were thinking about their health-insurance coverage as they worked.
My bet is no.
Nancy Colasurdo is a practicing life coach and freelance writer. Her Web site is www.nancola.com. Please direct all questions/comments to FOXGamePlan@gmail.com. (more…)
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Guru, HEALTH, helps, keep, Priority, Vitamin
MALIBU, Calif. — When I decided to interview Gene Arnold, known as the Vitamin Guru to the Stars, I was expecting some version of those fast-talking guys who try to sell you things in infomercials.
That is nothing like Gene Arnold. In fact, the owner of The Vitamin Barn in Malibu does his best selling by virtue of living a philosophy of wellness and pouring his passion for that into his business.
“You either catch my philosophy or you don’t,” Arnold said. “We provide an opportunity for wellness a day at a time.”
While wellness has become a catch phrase for so many things these days, underneath the marketing hype is a real way of being that just makes sense. Right now, when so many Americans are trying to figure out ways to cut their budgets, I tell my life-coaching clients to keep the gym membership and the vitamins in there as a priority. A debt counselor once told me that’s good advice, especially if a person is potentially going to lose their health insurance or doesn’t have any to begin with.
At age 46, Arnold is more than happy to contribute to the wellness of his clientele, because it’s been his way of life since he was a child whose parents worked in vitamin stores. He helped out and became the front guy answering questions for customers when he was in his early 20s.
“It became known that I could find the answer to anything,” said Arnold, a.k.a. Vitamin Gene.
In 1993 he decided to open his store in California, he started an intensive search for a good location. Since he naturally gravitates to the beach, when he got to Malibu and saw prime space for lease, he went for it.
“It was out of fear, into faith,” Arnold said.
Success in one store prompted him to eventually grow to six, but he found his service-oriented personality didn’t line up well with that sort of growth.
“I’m not that kind of guy,” Arnold said. “I’m a community guy. I’d rather be in my store.”
Just ask the celebrities who frequent his vitamin and juice bar, which is located in the famed Malibu Colony Plaza, a place where a lot of celebs do their day-to-day shopping. On my recent visit, as I waited for a scrumptious shake made with dates and bananas, Fran Drescher — looking fabulous in sweats — was making a purchase. While Arnold is not the type to get star-struck, one of his favorite moments was when Ozzie Osbourne came in asking, “Anything for the liver, mate?”
Arnold takes particular pride in helping someone who has a specific issue — like losing weight or getting off sleeping pills — and seeks his advice for a remedy. He has had a lot of requests for energy and immune support and so he created what he calls wellness shots.
“Every winter for the last six or seven years, we’ve served about 300 hand-blended shots a day,” he said.
Arnold and his staff prefer to juice through a press to retain the pulp, so he began pressing ginger and then adding Echinacea, oregano and ginseng to those shots. Now, through the magic of mass market retail, that potion — called ImmuGo — is available all over the country. It’s in tiny, ready-to-drink tubes.
“I was with my daughter in Wal-Mart, getting her ready to go back to school,” Arnold said. “She’s six. She saw [the ImmuGo on the shelf] first. She said, ‘Daddy, Daddy. Look.’ She was excited.”
What excites Arnold about that scenario is how he’s managed to integrate his family and his business. His daughter is sometimes behind the juice bar with him. His wife — in addition to regularly joining him in Thai yoga — has been doing some of the promotional travel for the new product with him.
“It’s important,” he said. “It makes for a more fluid life.”
His ultimate vision, since Malibu has a lot of high-end rehabilitation centers, is to open a spa and cater to the rehab community.
“I love beautiful places,” he said. “I envision a place where people can grow.”
And speaking of visions, I asked Vitamin Gene if his life is what he envisioned it would be.
“It’s not what I thought it would be,” he said. “It’s better.”
You either get it or you don’t. No infomercial needed.
Nancy Colasurdo is a practicing life coach and freelance writer. Her Web site is www.nancola.com. Please direct all questions/comments to FOXGamePlan@gmail.com.
