Vivek Murthy
As all of us know, health is deeply intertwined with culture: what we eat, how active we are, how much we sleep. These are rooted in cultural norms.
What you quickly realize once you commit to getting more sleep is it can increase your productivity, it can improve your mood. And that doesn't just help you at work, but it helps you be the kind of person you want to be with your family and your friends and that's ultimately what matters most.
The A.C.A. is not perfect, but it has helped us move forward.
A few colleagues and I began Doctors for America with a simple belief that physicians should play a leadership role in designing and running our nation's health care system.
When I was Surgeon General, I spent a lot of time talking to people in living rooms and town halls all across the country, and one of the things I started to notice was that behind many of the stories of addiction, violence, depression and anxiety were threads of loneliness.
There are several factors in modern society that contribute to loneliness. One is that we are more mobile than we have been in decades past, which is fantastic in many respects, but also leads to us to move away from communities that we grew up with and got to know over time.
You can be surrounded by many people but still feel quite lonely if you don't have strong connections and if you feel you can't be yourself with them. Conversely, you can just be around a few people, but feel deeply connected to them.
The amount of time it takes to recover from the coronavirus differs widely. Some people will get the virus and have no symptoms at all, other people will have mild symptoms like a low-grade fever or a mild cough and others will get really ill and will need to be hospitalized.
When we have emotional pain in our lives, we are going to seek to relieve that pain in some way.
Be very disciplined about dedicating some time - even if it is five minutes a day - to calling or talking to someone you love. That kind of consistency, even if it is just five minutes a day, helps to remind us that we have a well of connection in our lives.
Service is a powerful pathway of getting out of loneliness. It takes the focus off of you and puts it onto someone else.
I think sometimes in the focus on deep friendships and on romantic relationships, we can lose sight of how important the small connections we make are with strangers and with people that we may encounter for just a few seconds or a few minutes, whether it's the barista at our coffee shop or the stranger next to us on the subway.
Anchors are those people in your life who remind you of who you are - your values, aspirations, and worth - even when you forget. Keep them close and always let them know how much they mean to you.
I believe that inspiration is one of the most powerful forces in life. In career and in relationships, it's worth searching for the path that inspires you. Pursuing such a path often entails risk - it may involve making a big change in what you're doing - but the career risks we regret most are the ones we don't take.
Touch is incredibly important as part of the human experience. Our ancestors relied on human touch to form and strengthen bonds with each other. Touch can accelerate a feeling of connection and releases hormones in our body that engender trust and build connection.
Our health care workers are the heroes of the Covid-19 response.
It's easy to say that health is all about personal responsibility and we should all make good decisions for ourselves, but the reality is far more complicated. We know that in the case of motor vehicle accidents, how other people drive makes a difference in how safe you are.
A prevention-based society is one in which every institution, whether they're a hospital or a clinic, or a school, an employer or a faith-based organization, recognizes and embraces the role that it can play in improving health.
When I look at the patients that I've cared for with mental illness, I know that many of them took years to come forward and tell somebody that they were in pain and that they needed help.
Sometimes when you get sick and you go to the doctor, it can feel like you didn't get your money's worth if you don't come away with a pill. I've had many, many conversations with patients who I've cared for over the years about why it's actually in some cases better not to go home with antibiotics.
When I was younger, my family suddenly and unexpectedly lost all of our life savings to a man we had trusted as a friend. The financial loss was difficult, especially because my sister and I were both in college. But the breach of trust was even more painful.
Without strong communities, we cannot pull together during times of hardship. Our diversity turns from a source of strength to a source of conflict.
My mother was from a middle-class background.
Arranged marriages are ones where you got to learn who the person is after you actually get married, which can be challenging.
Despite growing up in very poor circumstances, my father had big dreams.
I have experienced loneliness at many, many points in my life and felt this profound sense of shame about it - all the years when I was a child that I struggled with feeling lonely when I was scared to go to school and petrified of walking into the elementary school cafeteria because I was worried I wouldn't have anyone to sit with.
We don't do enough to help older people recognize how much they matter.
If you've ever had the experience of being in conversation with someone when they were fully present, listening deeply to you when you're sharing with them, you know that five minutes of a fully present conversation like that can be more powerful than 30 minutes of distracted conversation.
We can experience an erosion of self-esteem when we're lonely, as we come to believe that it's because we're not likable or because something is broken inside of us. And that can just compound that loneliness further and further.
When it comes to our relationship with loneliness, specifically, it's important to understand how our relative introversion or extroversion informs our preference for social interaction.
While there are relatively few extreme introverts or extroverts, most of us lean in one direction or the other. If we lean more toward introversion, we'll generally prefer less social activity than more extroverted people. One inclination is not 'better' than another, but our culture can make it seem as if extroverts have a social advantage.
There's a tremendous sense of shame that people who are lonely feel. I say that as someone who felt ashamed of being lonely as a child and even at points during adulthood.
If we approach other people understanding our own value, being confident in who we are, being centered and grounded, it's actually easier for us to connect with them because we can listen more deeply and we can express ourselves more authentically without fear of being judged or not being enough.
Emotions are a source of power, and that's what science tells us. But many people I encounter have been led to think of emotions as a source of weakness.
Most parents vaccinate their kids. That is the bottom line.
It is true that there are some parents who have concerns about vaccines, but while we hear about these concerns a lot in the media, I don't want people to think that the majority of parents out there do not believe in vaccines and then most kids aren't getting vaccinated. In fact, it's exactly the opposite.
My journey to working on loneliness was certainly not an expected one or planned one.
When I went through my confirmation hearing to serve as surgeon general they asked me what my priorities would be and I didn't list loneliness in that priority list because it was not one at the time.
We will not solve the addiction problem in America if we don't address social connection.
Many people feel that if they're lonely, that means that they're not likable or that they're broken in some way.
When people tell you that you're less-than and that you don't matter and that you're inferior, you internalize some of that.
Surgeon generals are appointed by presidents, but our work isn't about politics. Our highest duty to to the public. Our true guide is science. Our job is to speak the truth about public health, even when it's controversial or perceived as political.
Our nation absolutely has what it takes to overcome the COVID-19 pandemic that's claimed tens of thousands of our loved ones. We have the talent, resources and technology.
I can learn a lot from reading briefing books and talking to experts, but that pales in comparison to what I can learn from going out and talking to people about what they're actually experiencing and hearing about their ideas.
When you're in a pocket with low vaccination rates, that's when you find yourself at greater risk of getting measles.
With any sort of major change we need to make in our lives, it's much easier to do it with other people. We succeed and thrive best when we work together and support each other. When we struggle alone, that's when the struggle can seem impossible.
Not all social interaction is uplifting.
So my weakness is sweets. I like bread pudding and cheesecake in particular.
We can no longer remain within our exam rooms and ignore what happens in our communities. As physicians and dentists, we must have a presence in both places. Our sacred responsibility is both to help the patient in front of us and also to safeguard the health of the nation.