About Me

"I am a family physician and public health specialist, and have lived and worked in Africa, Asia and North America. I am passionate about health-care development and am a co-founder and director of Healtheon Asia.

This is a collection of my thoughts, travels and things I can't otherwise classify."
- Dr Armid Azadeh

Thursday 5 January 2012

New year and "new" idea!

This last new year was probably the most uneventful one I've had in recent memory. In the last 5 years I've spent my new years' eves under the Sydney Harbour Bridge, in beautiful Cape Town, in snowmageddon Baltimore, in smog-filled Jakarta, and in a secure compound in Nigeria. This year however I spent it on a remote sheep farm in the Little Karoo of South Africa. I'm even a little embarrassed to say that I didn't even stay up for it!

It was on another night, when I happened to be struggling to sleep, that I conceptualized my personal philosophy on health and wellness. I wasn't on the farm this night so counting sheep was not an option. There are many ancient belief systems and contemporary ones that see the healthy human frame as being in perfect balance or harmony (or ease), and the unwell as being out of sync or imbalanced (or dis-eased). Similarly my approach to my patients is to explore their person to begin to understand the origin of the disharmony. This may be challenging in a 15-minute consultation which is often the case, but as I've begun to gain the confidence of particular patients through repeated visits, I have become more aware of the factors, events and behaviours that disrupt their homeostasis.

And with this word, HOMEOSTASIS, I would like to summarize my philosophy/approach to maintaing health. How-you-stay-as-is (homeostasis) is essentially the biological process whereby an organism maintains a constant internal environment. I'll elaborate further on some ideas relating to this concept with regards to how it may improve and furthermore maintain your health in subsequent posts. This isn't a new idea but is essentially a novel way of exploring the concepts related to maintaining your homeostasis.

Have a balanced year!