Welcome to this health-focused corner of substack.
Who is Dr Kiran Sodha?
I come with a few identities and blend these together to provide unique insights and new ways of thinking about your health too.
I am:
a GP and health coach with an interest in lifestyle medicine and healthy ageing, bringing 15 years of clinical experience.
taking the focus away from just disease and engaging in health promotion, prevention and taking a ‘root cause’ attitude to health.
supporting patients to achieve better health today and resilience to prevent illness in the future.
experienced in start-ups, innovation & entrepreneurship in healthcare having founded two, and studied these topics academically.
delivering to talks to health professionals and multinational companies on a variety of health topics
also a patient and navigating health services
adjusting to life in Australia and on my own life journey.
What is ‘Finding Health’?
Finding health is not just about finding our own health. It’s about keeping and maintaining what we have, and improving the niggles as well the big illnesses that may come to affect most of us in our lifetimes.
This considers a difference in language, that we move away from just talking about and treating disease, but taking a focus on health instead. We’re so often focused on medical care, without realising there is health to consider too.
I appreciate that this may feel pedantic to consider health and medical services differently, however it’s in this nuance that so often doctors are questioning what our identity is when we move into prevention and health optimisation, rather than thinking about the disease-focused model medical systems are accustomed to.
What are these health issues?
The biggest health problems of our modern world can be broadly considered into key areas especially when it comes to health prevention and ageing;
Mental health & Memory
Metabolic & Cardiac health
Musculoskeletal health
Malignancies (Cancers)
Mental health includes conditions such as anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and burnout. Memory reflects the growth of dementia as a key cause of illness, heartache and death.
Dementia is now the leading cause of death in Australia, one of the first countries for dementia to outnumber heart related causes of death.
Metabolic health is a broad term that includes conditions such as type 2 diabetes, metabolic-associated fatty liver disease (MAFLD) and other conditions that affect our cardiovascular system such as high cholesterol and raised blood pressure.
Cardiovascular disease perhaps needs further introduction but this includes conditions such as heart attacks and strokes.
Musculoskeletal health reflects the increasing frailty that many experience in old-age. But this can be avoided for many people through healthy actions in their lifestyles. This action typically is taken earlier on in life, think of it as adding to your health pension for the future.
Most cancers are what we call ‘multifactorial’. They develop as a result of multiple different reasons rather than just one. There is a genetic component, and also far less predictable than many other conditions as to who will be affected.
But it is clear that there are populations that experience higher rates of cancers than others. While we cannot take full control, we can certainly aim to reduce risks.
Mind and body…
When we support the mind and body to be more resilient and reverse these conditions, we are also helping to avoid longer term consequences.
All these conditions are interlinked, and they’re the core ones that affect us as we age.
Finding health is a life journey and ever-evolving.
It’s a path that we will all need to take at a time in our lives, very often multiple times.
This journey is more than avoiding the downward spiral into the poor health; which is often accompanied by disability, pain, disempowerment and loss of control.
It can also include a move towards ‘health’ rather than just the avoidance of illness. As we develop resilience we can reduce the risk of developing mental illness.
Why subscribe?
As a human-being, I personally aspire to the principles I’ve outlined, live by, and embody them. It’s not always easy and I’m no saint.
You will see a personal as well as my medical and evidence-backed scientific perspectives here.
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