Narrator: Coming up on Mayo Clinic Q&A,
Dr. Moain Abu Dabrh: Well-being is a journey. It's a dynamic
situation. We need to think about what potential challenges
that we might face. Generally, one of the biggest challenges
that we see, and often they're unaddressed, is the balance or
the harmony between what our life demands are and what is our
personal capacity to take on those challenges.
Narrator: Well-being is fundamental to our health and
overall happiness. Having a strong and well adapted sense of
well-being can help us improve our outlook on life and have a
positive influence on others.
Dr. Moain Abu Dabrh: But we need to allow ourselves to be
compassionate to ourselves and to others. These are challenging
times. So, being kind towards each other, being compassionate
towards each other and towards ourselves. It is important.
Dr. Halena Gazelka: Welcome everyone to Mayo Clinic Q&A. I'm
your host, Dr. Halena Gazelka. Whether you suffer from a
chronic condition that affects your quality of life, or you
have bad habits you'd like to change, a health and wellness
coach could help you and what a great time to think about it as
we start 2022. Health coaches are professionals who can be
trained and integrated in health care settings to help support
caring for and giving patients skills and tools to improve
their well-being. Here to discuss being well with your
well-being today is Mayo Clinic physician, researcher, and
board-certified health and wellness coach in integrative
medicine and health at Mayo Clinic in Florida, Dr. Moain Abu
Dabrh. Thanks for being here today, Moain.
Dr. Moain Abu Dabrh: Great to be with you, Halena.
Dr. Halena Gazelka: I'm so glad to have you here to talk about
this topic. We talk so much about illness, and so, it's fun
to talk about promoting our wellness.
Dr. Moain Abu Dabrh: Indeed.
Dr. Halena Gazelka: Moain, when we say well-being what does that
encompass? What do we mean by that?
Dr. Moain Abu Dabrh: Well-being is such a great word that
encompasses so many aspects. And there is a lot of debate about
what is the exact definition. However, we like to think of it
as the state of being good within yourself and how you feel
about your living. So, this truly has the word divided into
two words, well being. And that's really simply where it
comes down to.
Dr. Halena Gazelka: I like that. Well being, a being who is well.
It's good.
Dr. Moain Abu Dabrh: Absolutely.
Dr. Halena Gazelka: When we're focusing on well-being why are
intention, accountability and commitment all important
concepts?
Dr. Moain Abu Dabrh: Those are important because when we think
about well-being we like to think about what are the aspects
of our well-being. So, those are not only limited to our physical
and emotional, or psychological, they also extend beyond that to
social, spiritual occupational, vocational, cultural, any and
every aspect that affects our life and well-being. And when we
think about those, we like to think about how can we approach
them. So, we really have to define first, what is our
motivation to make this change. What is the outcome where we
would like to be in our life, and then as we set the
motivation and decide about the direction that we would like to
explore, the step that is important after that is to
create accountability to making that change. And that is work in
progress. And when we become accountable, and we become
committed to the process, that journey sets itself moving
forward.
Dr. Halena Gazelka: Well, that's wonderful. I like that idea of
looking forward and knowing where you want to arrive so that
you can plan the pace and the strategy to get there. It's
good. Moain, what are some of the challenges that an
individual might experience as they attempt to take care of
their well-being? And how do you as a health and wellness coach
assist them with that?
Dr. Moain Abu Dabrh: Well-being is a journey. It's a dynamic
situation. It depends on the day and now, and the future. And as
we set intentions and become accountable and committed to the
process, we need to think about what potential challenges that
we might face. Generally, one of the biggest challenges that we
see, and often they're unaddressed, is the balance or
the harmony between what our life demands are and what is our
personal capacity to take on those changes and challenges.
So, really understanding what is the, in simple words, the supply
and demand. Knowing what is on our plate, and what are the
resources that we have also within ourselves and in our
surroundings that we can take on those challenges. So, that's one
of the biggest challenges. There are other things. We go back to
the work we said earlier is setting the intention to where
do we want to be on this journey. If I want to lose
weight, what is the purpose? Why am I deciding to lose weight?
If I want to eat better, what is the ultimate goal here? And
it's not really just the goal, it's the process and where we
would like to reach as a destination. Another thing, we
have these challenges of setting this all or nothing. If we
can't do it all, then we're not doing it at all. So, we need to
be more compassionate towards ourselves about making those
small changes. And those small changes build up and eventually
lead to bigger changes.
Dr. Halena Gazelka: You know, I like what you said about supply
and demand. I often tell my chronic pain patients that you
start each day with a bucket of energy, and you have to decide
how you're going to spend it. It's not going to get any larger
during the day. So, you have to ration it out. Maybe you save it
for something important you're doing that day. But the same
kind of concept applies here. It's very interesting.
Dr. Moain Abu Dabrh: Very thoughtful, very well said.
Exactly.
Dr. Halena Gazelka: Moain, we often hear the term resilience
used. How do you define it?
Dr. Moain Abu Dabrh: So, resilience is a term that
really, I like to use the metaphor, it's how we can be the
Phoenix. How can we arise from the ashes? Life throws so many
challenges at us, and resilience is the ability to cope and come
back and rebound from those challenges. So, if we are faced
with some challenges that just kind of forces us to sit down to
pause to maybe fall, it's how can we stand up and rise again
and become stronger and learn from it to move forward. And
that's really simply what resilience is.
Dr. Halena Gazelka: Tell us about health and wellness
coaching. What is it, and who is it for?
Dr. Moain Abu Dabrh: So, a health and wellness coach really
is a professional who has been trained on understanding how to
partner with a person or a patient depends on the context
and the setting. And creating an understanding of what matters
to that person, partnering with them to help them identify their
vision to living their best life, and then really how to
move forward, how to explore and experiment with strategies and
using evidence-based strategies to achieve that. Centering on
motivation, centering on accountability and commitment,
as we mentioned earlier. In clinical care settings and
healthcare settings, coaching is relatively still a new process.
And it has been integrated because we do believe that a
patient's life is still a person's life. We don't only
focus on illness care, we need to look at the 360 view, illness
and wellness care. We need to understand our patient's context
Dr. Halena Gazelka: You know, we have just been through a busy
of life, their values, their preferences outside the clinical
setting, and how we make sure that their health care plans fit
within their lives and not the opposite. So, that is really a
part of how health and wellness coaching is becoming crucially
important, and as new players in the game partnering with other
health care professionals in the clinical setting.
holiday season, and we're starting a fresh, brand new year
of 2022. I have often said that I do not like to set resolutions
any longer the older I get, but I do like to have goals in mind.
So, what advice do you have for people who want to make some
positive changes in their well-being in 2022?
Dr. Moain Abu Dabrh: You brought up an important point. People
are divided about am I a resolution person or not? So,
and I say whomever you are, power to you, that's the thing.
If you are a resolutions person, set your resolutions. If you
are not and you take it one day at a time, there's nothing wrong
with that. So, what matters is how can you move forward and
continue to move forward. So, I think one of the things that I
encourage patients when I work with them with my partners in
health, I say, think about why you would like to do this first.
Where would you like to be, and sometimes we get stuck in
understanding that purpose. And I would encourage you to allow
yourself to explore that. You don't have to find exact purpose
to set a goal. It's okay to say, you know what, I'm going to
explore it a little bit. I have this where I would like to be,
but maybe it's not clear yet, and that's okay. So, being
intentional about where we'd like to go and allowing
ourselves the room for exploration. The next step is
really setting the goal. Thinking about what are the
goals and processes that we would like to change. What are
the habits that we would like to change? What are the habits that
we would like to maintain or improve? There's an acronym out
there has been from research that has been done and is called
SMART goal setting. And that is an acronym that comes from being
specific, setting goals that are measurable, attainable,
realistic, and really thinking about the time that you're going
to spend working on these. So, those are some things that I
would like to think about as we set the intention to move
forward with improving our well-being.
Dr. Halena Gazelka: So, sometimes goals have to be
practical because you have to fit them in with the rest of
your life.
Dr. Moain Abu Dabrh: That is important. The context of our
life is important. And often in healthcare, we forget about
that. We forget that our patients, we have other things
that happen in our lives. And it's important to think not just
from our illness care, but also from our wellness care, what
happens outside the clinical setting, how can we bring those
together to match our values, our preferences, our context of
life. Those are important, and they should be accounted for.
Dr. Halena Gazelka: Moain, I'm curious how you became
interested in integrative medicine and health and wellness
coaching.
Dr. Moain Abu Dabrh: It is a journey in its own merits, quite
honestly. Growing up I've always been curious about
well-being and wellness and health promotion. And actually
going into medical school was truly by chance. I was having a
conversation with my father who was asking me about what is my
intention, where I would like to be. And I said, I really want to
do something that has something that sets me in a path that I
can serve people. And my mother always taught me that whatever
you do find joy and meaning in what you do. So, I decided to go
into any field that will serve those two. And he looked at me
and he said, I think you will be good with helping people in the
medical field. So, I made an agreement with him, and I said,
I will make that, I will go into medical school if you quit
smoking. And he decided to quit smoking on the spot that day.
So, that was really what started this journey. And as part of
going into medical school he encouraged me to go into what
used to be a course in health promotion. And that was really
kind of the baseline to how I experienced coaching and
motivation and changing habits. Which later on as I joined Mayo
Clinic, I was given the opportunity to be trained and
become a health and wellness coach along the way.
Dr. Halena Gazelka: That's a wonderful story. Thanks for
sharing it with us. Moain, any last words of wisdom for our
listeners today?
Dr. Moain Abu Dabrh: Yes. Thank you. It's been really wonderful
exploring this together. I think really what we need to
allow ourselves to be is to be compassionate towards ourselves
and towards others as we are exploring. These are challenging
times, and they will continue to be to a certain extent. We're
learning more, we're exploring more. And it's okay to make
mistakes. It's okay to say, I don't know. And it's okay to ask
the questions. So, being kind towards each other, being
compassionate towards each other and towards ourselves is
important and well-being is a journey. There will be progress,
there will be success, and there will be setbacks. And that's
part of it. So, I hope everyone finds that purpose and finds the
the resources and the support to lean on each other during these
difficult times.
Dr. Halena Gazelka: Thank you so much for being here today,
Moain.
Dr. Moain Abu Dabrh: Thank you. It's been a pleasure.
Dr. Halena Gazelka: Our thanks to Dr. Moain Abu Dabrh for being
here with us today to discuss health and wellness. He's an
integrative medicine specialist at Mayo Clinic. I hope that you
learned something from him today. I know that I did. We
wish each of you a wonderful day and a wonderful year.
Narrator: Mayo Clinic Q&A is a production of the Mayo Clinic
News Network and is available wherever you get and subscribe
to your favorite podcasts. To see a list of all Mayo Clinic
podcasts, visit newsnetwork.mayoclinic.org. Then
click on podcasts. Thanks for listening and be well. We hope
you'll offer a review of this and other episodes when the
option is available. Comments and questions can also be sent
to mayoclinicnewsnetwork@mayo.edu.