Being Healthy with Dr. Leonard Scott

Being Healthy

by Dr. Leonard Scott

My name is Dr. Leonard Scott, a dentist who wrote a book on holistic health entitled The Ultimate Boost from Within, 31 Days to Health, Wealth, Wholeness, and Happiness. I have practiced dentistry for over 40 years in Indianapolis, Indiana. For nearly half of those years, I hosted an hourly radio broadcast called Medically Speaking sponsored by the Marion County Public Health Department. During those programs, I interviewed health professionals from many medical disciplines. From these broadcasts I gleaned a plethora of information concerning being healthy.

Through the years I have witnessed too many friends and even some family members dying before their time. We all must leave this planet at some point, and you can be in perfect health and be in a terrible accident and lose your life prematurely. But it is quite another thing to lose your life early because of bad habits you acquired such as smoking or using other tobacco products, excessive alcohol use, consuming too much sugar and salt, and living a sedentary lifestyle.

Along with hosting the radio program, I interviewed and asked qualified professionals if they thought the things we do affected our lives and health. Dr. Brian McCarley, a chiropractor said, “By making certain lifestyle changes we can see degenerative processes reverse. We have become a culture of saying, ‘fix my problem, you are the professional, fix me,’ rather than saying, ‘help me stay well.’”

Pastor Jeffrey A. Johnson, Sr., Pastor of Eastern Star Church and a cancer survivor said, “My body is the temple of God’s Spirit. The parts of our being are so closely related that they catch each other’s diseases. You can think yourself into a physical sickness. Or your body can be so messed up physically that it can cause you to be depressed.”

Dr. Jerome Adams was the State Health Commissioner in Indiana at the time I interviewed him. Since then he has become the Surgeon General of the United States. He believes change will come with the implementation of MACRA, which is the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act. Dr. Adams stated, “MACRA shifts Medicare reimbursement from paying for procedures and individual care encounters, to paying providers for keeping people healthy.”

Dr. Kenneth Ackles, who was a practicing chiropractic physician for many years said, “You only see the doctor a small percent of the time so an individual should try to eat healthy, keep their weight down, and have a very good attitude. Stress and strain cause most of our diseases. If a person has a good immune system, he can handle about any disease.”

Laughter can also contribute to your better health. The Scriptures say that a merry heart does good like a medicine. It has been said that you can add years to your life and life to your years by smiling, laughing and being joyful. Laughter decreases stress hormones, increases immune cells and triggers the release of endorphins, the body’s natural feel-good chemicals. Endorphins promote an overall sense of well-being and can even temporarily relieve pain.

To summarize, we boomers can increase our state of healthiness by improving our dietary habits, increasing our exercising habits, having a good attitude and doing a lot of good belly laughing. That’s a really good step toward being healthy.