Holistic Wellness
Water: The Missing Link
In his 2003 book, The Murad Method, and again in his 2010 offering, The Water Secret, Dr. Murad demonstrated how cellular hydration is the common thread linking aging, disease, obesity, and wrinkles.
As our bodies age, our cells lose water—water that is essential for the proper functioning of every organ—including our largest organ, the skin. But we can prevent water loss and repair and restore our cells to the hydration levels of our youth. That’s a major part of Dr. Murad’s worldwide Inclusive Health movement, combining internal skincare supplements, topical products, and diet and lifestyle recommendations.
The transformative power of Inclusive Health is rooted in the science of Cellular Water®–a comprehensive approach to health that looks to the strength of cells themselves as the key marker of good health. Moreover, while many physicians advise their patients to “drink plenty of water,” Dr. Murad uniquely advises his to “eat your water!” It’s the best way to get water—and other healthful ingredients—into the cells, as his own research has shown.
Inclusive Health:Encompassing Body, Mind and Environment
As founder of the worldwide Inclusive Health movement, Dr. Howard Murad has helped millions around the world lead healthier and more fulfilling lives. Inclusive health consists of three main elements: external skincare, internal care, and emotional care.
External care involves protecting the skin from the sun, wind, pollution and harsh chemicals through the use of appropriate skincare products.
Internal care consists primarily of diet: eating your water! (along with vegetables and fruits, “embryonic foods,” healthy fats, and clean protein)—and taking supplements that enable your cells to retain the water you give them.
Emotional care involves attending to your mental environment—the thoughts you think and the attitudes you adopt. They have a profound effect on how you feel—and how you look!
Dr. Murad believes so strongly in the importance of a positive mental outlook that he has developed over 500 personal “Insights” that he shares with patients in his office and makes available through his books and through a smartphone “app.” He has conducted several experiments documenting the positive health effects of an affirmative outlook, including an ongoing study at the UCLA VA Hospital with diabetic patients.
Cultural Stress
When his patients started showing up chronically exhausted and emotionally “beat up,” Dr. Murad coined the term “cultural stress” and “Cultural Stress Anxiety Syndrome” (CSAS) and started investigating treatments that would return them to a state of vibrant health.
That was in 2003. Since then, science has confirmed a link between what it calls “oxidative stress”—environmental stressors that overwhelm the body’s ability to neutralize or repair the damage—and neurodegenerative diseases, heart disease, age-related cancers, and a host of other illnesses.
And what increases oxidative stress? Cultural stress! The non-stop pressure to keep up and keep going that characterizes our too-busy lives. Cultural stress is:
- Robbing us of our identities
- Making us lonely and socially isolated
- Accentuating environmental stress
- Robbing our bodies of water
- Aging us prematurely
Much of Dr. Murad’s work as The Father of Modern Wellness® involves teaching people how to manage cultural stress through a comprehensive treatment plan that involves returning as much as possible to the internal physical and emotional state of your toddler self—when your cells were healthy and hydrated, you slept “like a baby,” your outlook was positive, and “failure” meant nothing to you. In a pilot study of female patients, Dr. Murad showed how an inclusive health protocol (internal care, external care and emotional care) was able to reverse CSAS, rejuvenate cellular health and slow related degenerative cell aging processes.
Dr. Murad’s three-part prescription for taming cultural stress includes:
Step 1: Letting go of your need to be perfect (as everyone else defines it) and instead reconnect with what makes you happy. This is the most important step in managing cultural stress, as Dr. Murad’s own research confirms.
Step 2: Improving your health at a fundamental level:
- Eat your water (To fully hydrate and restore your cells)
- Feed your face (Following a cleanse, tone, repair/protect, moisturize regimen twice daily)
- Savor sleep (it’s not just for beauty; it’s when your body repairs itself!)
Step 3: Embracing the power of movement. It burns fat, builds muscle, relieves stress, and brightens your outlook.
Insights
Throughout his eventful life, Dr. Murad has been guided by insights that have encouraged him to follow his own unique path, no matter what “the experts” said. The result has been a life that is deeply satisfying—and that keeps him connected to his own sense of purpose and passion for living. This is a joy he wants to share with his patients and followers around the world.
Many of his insights are included in his books, Creating a Healthy Life, the Health and Happiness series, and the Managing Cultural Stress series.
The Canvas of Life:A Video Journal
Dr. Murad didn’t know he would become a pharmacist, a physician, an author, the founder of a skincare company, an artist, or the Father of Modern Wellness®. But he worked hard and was willing to change in response to circumstances. Or, as he says, he “allowed success to happen.”