Posts by Ruthann Russo

10 things to do at your desk to improve your health and balance your nervous system Breathe: Breathing is the only bodily function that is both conscious and unconscious. You breathe whether you think about it or not. However, if you think about your breath, you can alter it. It is this ability to alter…

YouLab is a skill that acknowledges you as the research scientist of your own life.  As with any experiment, you are looking for a cause and effect relationship. For example, what happens when I don’t eat sugar for a day? When I opt for the stairs instead of the elevator for a week?   It’s…

According to the CDC 90% of healthcare dollars are for people with chronic and mental health conditions.  The eight most common chronic conditions linked to high employer spending are depression, increased blood glucose, high blood pressure, obesity, tobacco use, physical inactivity, anxiety, and chronic pain. Self-care, practices individuals take to maintain or improve their health…

In a recent interview, the CEO of a large health system described population health as having, “an interest in you as a person and in being responsible for your health…”   While a noble feat, what if health systems instead (or additionally) created partnerships aimed at empowering community members to manage themselves?  This partnership, called a…

Chronic conditions are responsible for 86% of healthcare costs in the United States. Stress is at the root of most chronic disease. And, self-care practices, such as meditation, yoga, acupressure, guided imagery, and qi gong can be used to manage both stress and chronic conditions. The problem? These interventions are not covered by health insurance.…

The annual cost of chronic pain is as high as $635 billion a year, which is more than the yearly costs for cancer, heart disease and diabetes.  In 2014,  Integrative Medicine Journal published an article I wrote about options for treating chronic pain that complement conventional treatment.  The research supports interventions such as biofeedback, guided…

You know how at the moment we become a parent we think to ourselves, no one ever taught me how to do this, no one ever taught me how to be a parent? We’re just supposed to “know” how to be a parent.  The same is true for self-care, it’s something that is assumed to be…

The concept of self-care can sometimes feel illusive or just so basic that it hardly seems appropriate to use self-care and the current US healthcare crisis and drive for value-based care in the same sentence.  The bottom line? Self-care is the foundation for all care. The cause and effect of a Sustainable Self-Care Initiative If…