Dr. Andrew Belaveshkin

The biggest threat to your health is the loss of faith and the ability to change anything. Well, over half of our health depends on our desires and conscious efforts. Health is a way of thinking, self-identification, a drive for self-fulfillment, a will for life. When we lose this will, we lose not only our health but also ourselves. Everything we do today is either an investment in our future or a loan for our future. Improving our health today makes us healthier tomorrow, in a month, in ten years. However, if we constantly borrow from our own health by undersleeping, overeating, and overindulging, the time to pay will inevitably come — in the form of untimely aging, illnesses, and suffering. As Socrates mentioned philosophically, “health isn’t everything, but everything without health is nothing.” Health pyramid. Imagine an unhealthy person: they are overweight, eat disorderly and chaotically, don’t get enough activity, rest too much, have no desire or mood to learn and develop, hav...

Health is not Everything?! Congratulations to you, reader! If you are reading these lines, you are most likely concerned about your health, think about your future, want to become tougher and stronger, live longer and better. Concern about the optimal state of health is already an indication of health since people who live one day simply don’t think about the long-term consequences of their actions. However, you are here, which means that you believe in yourself and are ready to handle various challenges. Referring to the question: “What’s the most important thing for you?” we confidently respond, “Health!” I guess you’d be surprised if I suddenly say that health shouldn’t be your primary goal. After all, we end conversations by wishing each other to stay healthy, and one of the toasts during feasts (which aren’t always healthy) will definitely be to everyone’s health. With all responsibility, I declare that the excessive pursuit of health is a symptom of poor health. A person who set...

False invincibility (invulnerability). American economist Samuel Peltzman discovered and described the cognitive bias of false invincibility, which states that people are more likely to take risks when they feel more protected (Peltzman Effect or risk compensation). This phenomenon manifests itself in various areas of life: when people begin to trust a salesperson, they are inclined to buy things they didn’t plan to buy; a person carrying a weapon behaves more recklessly, provoking aggression; even when wearing a mask, we tend to ignore illness symptoms and neglect basic hygiene rules, thereby increasing the risk of infection; a soldier wearing body armor moves less carefully and safely. A similar effect is observed when we protect ourselves from the sun. The effectiveness of sunscreen is calculated for ideal conditions, but in reality, people apply it unevenly, rarely reapply it, and so on. Most importantly, when using sunscreen, people spend much more time in the sun than they would ...