Your Best Life - Spine, Brain, and Mind Health

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It's a great night It's so nice to see familiar faces and make new friends tonight. It's great to meet you all. I have one hope tonight and that is…, I want to impart valuable information to protect your spine your brain and your mind so that you can live a longer, happier, healthier, more exhilarating life.

You heard my professional introduction. This is my personal bio. Medicine is in my DNA. The picture up in the upper left-hand corner is my grandfather, my great uncle, and my two uncles…, and my nephew a fourth-generation physician is training at Drexel now. I am lucky to be a part of a very special group of doctors who are outstanding surgeons. People who would take care of my wife and my family like you wouldn't believe. They're phenomenal surgeons and phenomenal doctors and people.

As you know, I'm a coach. I love coaching my wrestlers in the wrestling room, my staff in the office, and my team in the operating room. I love helping people unlock their potential. And lastly, this is a picture of my grandfather's prescription pad. I keep it with me every day. He's with me…, with every patient that I see…, and I have to tell you I love being a doctor.

I love being a neurosurgeon and the most favorite thing I love the most, is when a patient comes into my office puts their arms around me and gives me a big hug and says doc thanks for saving my life. It is priceless and it is precious, and I love it.

You know what I hate about neurosurgery? It's not the long hours. It's not the stress. It's not waking up with a pounding headache the next morning because you've been peering through a microscope all day. It's delivering bad news…, bad news about preventable, avoidable traumas, tragedies, and diseases I'm going to be showing you some pictures too…, of autopsy specimens. People who have died from preventable diseases…, preventable traumas. These specimens that you're going to see here were living breathing people just like you and I, and unfortunately, they succumbed to mishaps or diseases that are preventable and avoidable. So, I show you these pictures not to repulse you or to make a strong impression on you, but really to honor these people. Let's honor them by preventing these accidents from happening in our lives, in our family, and our friends.

Now I know you heard my bio, but tonight I don't want you to think of me as Dr. McLaughlin. I want you to think of me as Mark your trail guide, and I even brought my backpack for our hike. I view learning as a journey and some of the best conversations and lessons I've ever been able to teach my kids is on hiking trails. So, let's go on a journey tonight. In my backpack I have packed three books for our journey…, “The power of habit”, “Save your Aching Back and Neck”, and “The Noticer”. Each one of these books contains valuable lessons that I'm going to share with you that will help you protect your spine, brain, and mind.

Let's get started…  “The Power of Habit” by Charles Duhigg. It’s a wonderful read, It's about why  habits are created…, why they exist, and  how we can change them. It's very interesting. You know forty to fifty  percent of the things that we do on a  daily basis are not decisions. They're  actually automatic habits. Our brain tries to find a shortcut. It wants to conserve energy so what does it do? It  creates a loop in our brain that allows us to not have to make a decision.

So  what is the anatomy of a habit? A habit is formed by a simple loop; a queue, a routine, and a reward and it's fed by cravings, so if you have a craving for a runner's high and you put your shoes on, you're going to go for a run and you're going to feel that runner's high. You're going to feel that reward and that's going to feel good and  that's going to feed that loop and that's a  wonderful habit to have. But what if our habit is…, we're experiencing stress and we reach for some food or we reach for a  glass of alcohol or something else and then we get our reward which is to relax ourselves?

That's a bad habit. These bad  habits need to be modified or deleted from our activity. This is an excellent book that talks about this habit loop. So what does that have to do with safety of our spine? I want to train you to be tragedy terminators. I want to train your  eyes and your mind tonight to seek out and find danger in your home and in your  family and your friends homes because I  can tell you I see people in our  emergency room every day that don't need  to be there.

(Watch the entire video for a rich resource of useful tips)

 

The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg

Save Your Aching Back and Neck - Stewart G. Eidelson, MD