The Hidden Cost of Hustle: Why Your Health Can't Wait

The following is adapted from Unsplode by Trevor B. Hanson and Caleb O. Pinegar .

In the hustle culture of our modern world, hyperfocus usually means putting our heads down and spending day in and day out building our business or career. Our health is what commonly gets left behind.

In my medical experience, most people ignore their plans for health (strength, flexibility, nutrition, rest) the same way they avoid understanding their financial plan. That imbalance might not seem like a big deal, but it is actively diminishing our longevity and crippling our sense of happiness, fulfillment, and purpose.

What's worse, people don't usually come to see me until they're really sick and hurting. Each of them wants to be fixed immediately so they can get back to their lives. But far too many have passed the stage of genuine fixing. Their habits worked against them over time until they brought themselves to my office for major repair.

One patient I will never forget, whom I'll call Charles, checked into our Ohio hospital just before Christmas. He was warm and radiant, an instant favorite among the doctors. All he could talk about was getting home to play trains with his toddler grandson. His evaluation seemed routine. He was overweight, had chronic heart issues, and had hurt his shoulder in a fall. I went over a simple shoulder surgery with him and assured him there was plenty of time to recover before the holiday.

Then a complication with his IV left a blood blister on his hand. A healthy body can usually resolve that. Charles's couldn't. Overnight, his entire arm turned red and hot. The infection spread rapidly, and despite multiple surgeries, it took his life. Charles never made it home for Christmas.

Two truths stand out. What happened to Charles was not his fault. But he also hadn't been taking care of himself. Decades of poor choices left his medical team very little ability to control a common complication.

So much of our health is outside our control. But there is a ton we can control, and all of it contributes to your HealthSpan: your holistic health snapshot and your associated life expectancy.

The challenge is that our medical system is reactive, not proactive. Specialists are trained and paid to treat a problem, not to coach you on prevention. As an orthopedic surgeon, I am in some ways a hammer looking for a nail. That's why you need to build your own team of specialists and generalists who keep your full health picture clear.

And this isn't only a lesson for older people. The body starts maturing at twenty, yet we rarely feel the consequences until much later. I ate sugar freely through my twenties and thirties and stayed in good shape. By my forties, losing weight took real work. Our daily habits compound, just like capital in a financial plan.

Start now, wherever you are. Give yourself permission to picture the future you want, and adjust your habits to fit it.

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For more advice on building a proactive plan for lifelong health, you can find Unsplode on Amazon.

Trevor Hanson, a wealth manager and financial planner with more than twenty years of experience who serves high net-worth individuals, families, and business owners, is the founder and president of ApexFlow Wealth Management and Paramount Private Wealth.

Dr. Caleb Pinegar, a board certified orthopedic surgeon with fellowship training in sports medicine and orthopedic surgery and a certified athletic trainer, has spent his career committed to helping others with his expertise in athletic longevity, injury prevention, and rehabilitation.