We sat down with Dr. Jacob Dewitt of Integrative Health, a Direct Primary Care Clinic that provides sustainable wellness and preventive healthcare with a patient-centric approach. Dr. Jake is a strong advocate for building strong patient relationships, emphasizing continuity of care, and recognizing the whole person in his practice---and he's also WeShare Health's Chief Medical Officer. We asked Dr. Jake a few important healthcare questions, and here are some of his helpful answers.
If I have only 10 minutes for my health today, what should I do?
I'm going to start with breathing, right? So many of us air trap, so many of us don't pay any attention to what our diaphragms are actually doing during the day. You've got to watch how you're breathing. That's very, very important for your acid base balance for perfusion into your organs, for stress, serotonin levels, cortisol levels, dopamine levels. Even if you just take a few minutes a day to just focus on your breathing in a quiet, calm space, even if it's just in your car, that's something that everybody can do.
As a patient, how can I become more health literate?
I think that there are a lot of good ways to do that and I think one of the most important is to not be afraid to ask really challenging questions of your healthcare providers. As the consumer of that healthcare---as the person that's having to take that medicine, or follow that advice, or going to get that imaging study done---you should have a thorough understanding of why. Asking those hard questions, talking to each other, looking things up online, doing the best you can to make sure it's a credible source, bringing resources in with you to the office to your clinical encounter and saying, "Hey, I found this online. What do you think?" And if you get turned down right off the bat or condescended to, then that's probably not the right provider for you.
What do I wish my patients would do more often?
You know, I tell everybody that we all need more cardiovascular exercise, it's a good thing to do. I'm trying to pay close attention to what's in our food and just understanding that you become what you eat, right? Your cells are made of everything that you take in. So have a really firm understanding of the nutritional index. There's some great apps out there too to help you identify and understand, hey, this thing that's in a healthy wrapper? Is it truly healthy? But something else I really encourage all my patients to do in my own practice is talk to each other. Communicate, ask each other questions, share things that you may have read or learned about. And then that way your friends and family can go to their healthcare providers and use them as guides.
