Pillar #2: Health - How Exercise Impacts Recovery

How proactive are you at managing your health? It's a question I ask myself all the time. My name is Jason Lennox. I am your resident recovery champion, here to talk about everything recovery, wellness. And as I say often, I believe we're all in some sort of recovery. Mine happens to be substance use, a bunch of other things. But I believe we can all relate to some of the lessons that come with recovery. And so, as in this series of the four pillars of recovery, according to SAmHSA, a national federal body, the second pillar is health.

And health really falls into, as if you remember, the first pillar was home, which fell into those basic needs of Maslow's hierarchy. And the second level of Maslow's hierarchy is safety and security. And inside that falls health on a more proactive basis. And I think there are two buckets of health. So I want to distinguish which one I really want to spend time on. The first bucket is we have to manage the immediate health problems. So if somebody is going through withdrawals, has a mental health crisis or other disease management type things that are managed more immediately and acutely through withdrawal management programs, emergency departments, mental health crisis programs, that's one set.

But what I want to focus on a little bit is more of the long term proactive efforts to attain health. And there are seven, eight. Depends on where you look. A bunch of different dimensions of health and wellness. You have emotional, you have physical, you have occupational, social, spiritual, intellectual, environmental, media, financial, all these. And so I really, in the interest of time, want to focus on the physical. And inside physical wellness, I want to just touch on exercise, because I think probably of all those dimensions, we all have some ability to really touch on exercise and begin implementing something that makes a difference.

We can get out and we can take a walk, we can get on the bike. And so inside the physical wellness space, there were actually 43 studies done several years back that correlated recovery and substance use treatment with exercise. And in 75% of those 43 studies, so, you know, in the low thirties, 75% of those studies actually showed an inverse relationship between the amount of exercise and substance use concerns. And so as people exercise more, substance use went down. And so there's a lot of evidence out there that really shows the tide to wellness from exercise.

But especially it's becoming more and more interesting, and people are looking to study it a little more as it relates to substance use recovery. So as I always like to do, I like to set the stage a little, and I like to give a little bit of data and now share a little bit of story, some anecdotal evidence, and I'll take you back to 2015, when I first got into the addiction treatment industry, and I was working as a treatment tech at a new program in southern Minnesota. And one of the things that I just loved doing was teaching exercise.

I was a personal trainer, certified, and so I would come in a little early and bring folks down to the little exercise room that they had and put on group exercise classes. And it was so great. The same cohorts of people that would come down, and they were into it, and they would be changing diet, all kinds of other impacts by the time they left. But one of the things that made me realize it was a light bulb moment for me when we had an alumni event, and there must have been 30, 35 people that came back that seemed to be doing well, had some sustained recovery.

And I realized that all but about three or four of them were participants in different cohorts of that group fitness class. And so it just struck me in that moment that that was making a real difference. And there was a correlation between people who not only were exercising and staying well, but with the exercise came other things that they started to get involved in. Community, spirituality, diet, improved. And so it just really was the beginning of a snowball effect. And so, again, I think there's so much in the health space, and there's so many dimensions.

You have a lot of experts that can touch on a lot of those things, but I want you to think about how proactive are you in terms of health, and how can you look at some of the. The things that come with exercise that make a difference? If you have any questions, you don't know where to start, please do reach out. I told you, I personally train for years, and I still do to some extent. I'm my own trainee, and I put myself through some really challenging workouts and misery at times, but for a different day.

Reach out. I would love to connect and think about that. When it comes to physical health, there is so much evidence out there that proves that when we are better physically, the other dominoes start to fall. Grateful to be here with you and look forward to pillar number three coming.