What a Dentist Can Teach You About Getting Healthy

August 12th, 2010 | Posted in Fitness tips | No Comments » | Share this article

What? Can we really learn stuff about exercise and diet from a dentist? Well, this is more than just the idea of a dentist — this is about people who are specialists, who are devoted and educated towards a specific thing. Read on — I’ll explain.

1: We All Know Teeth Are Important.

No one is going to tell you that taking care of your teeth isn’t an absolutely crucial thing. We all know it is. You need to brush your teeth twice a day, floss daily, and go for regular checkups to the dentist.

If you don’t do these things, bad stuff happens. Really bad stuff, that requires complicated drills and crazy anesthetics. Prevention is the best medicine here, and that’s never really going to change. So far, so good? Still with me?

2: The Dentist Knows That More Than Anyone Else.

Now — the dentist knows these facts more than anyone else in your life, probably. It’s their job to hammer the importance of oral care into your brain, over and over again. You need to brush your teeth. You need to prevent cavities by flossing. You’ve gotta eat right, cut down on the sugar, and take care of your teeth.

3: Dentists Would Like it If Your Oral Health Was Your Absolute Top Priority.

Dentists have to do complicated dental surgery every day. They see the consequences of not paying attention to your teeth on a regular basis, and they want to do everything they can to make sure you don’t fall into the same trap.

Good dentists know that we can’t devote our lives to oral health, though. They’d probably all secretly love it if we went around thinking about how clean our teeth were all the time, but they know that taking care of your teeth is really more about establishing strong habits than it is about, say, reading books on flossing techniques. Smart dentists will push the habit stuff in a non-aggressive way, while less-smart dentists will try and scare you into flossing with lots and lots of horror stories (since they see it all the time).

4: Fitness Pros Know This Too.

Any personal trainer or fitness pro knows that their clients can’t turn their entire lives upside down in order to devote themselves 100% to insane levels of fitness and clean, good eating. It’s a great goal for anyone to have, but short of actually becoming a fitness pro yourself, it’s just not realistic.

And yet the fitness and diet industry also know that radical lifestyle transformations sell a lot of books, equipment, and DVDs — so it’s hard to break free of that pattern. Sounding like a sensible doctor and saying “stay active and eat well” doesn’t really make for an interesting message after the first few times you’ve said it.

5: But We Gotta Be Realistic Here.

So that’s why sites like JNL.tv exist — because I know you need something more than just “get active and eat smart”. But at the same time, I also know that you’re not going to become a world-renowned expert in fitness overnight, that you’re not going to immerse yourself in the science of aerobic exercise and strength training until you’ve practically got a degree in it.

It’s too much. The problem is that sometimes we can give off this impression — in order to really get in shape, you’ve got to really immerse yourself in all this stuff, until you’re absolutely sleeping and breathing fitness, 24/7.

While that is kind of what happens when you start living a great, healthy lifestyle, it’s not really in the way you think. It doesn’t mean you’re going to start reading 50 books a month on your body’s fat-loss systems or nutritional input. It means that you’re simply going to start making better decisions instead. And that your choices will start to be processed through a framework of health, rather than just fulfilling a need.

So don’t be intimidated by the level of dedication and devotion that we fitness professionals show. You don’t have to change every aspect of your life and go completely crazy just to get healthy. And if you try, right off the bat — chances are you won’t stick with it. It could happen in the future, but remember — one step at a time.