Since our very beginning—when the idea of ON Care was just a conversation at the kitchen table—we have asked ourselves what our real, ultimate goal is. At first the answer was to set up a solid general-medicine practice where Alexandra could finally practice the kind of medicine that the insurance-driven system makes almost impossible. Yet the moment we stopped and looked at the bigger picture, we saw the limits. If our target is health, medicine by itself is only a partial tool. One of the clearest examples is nutrition: most physicians leave school knowing very little about it, even though it is now clear that what we eat sits at the root of many modern diseases. So, if we truly want to aim at helping people achieve full health, we have to add other perspectives that complete what medicine cannot cover on its own.
And right there the more uncomfortable—but much more important—question appears: health for what? For us the answer soon became obvious: to live well. It may sound simple, but that single idea changes everything. Wanting to live well—both in our own lives and in our patients’—reorganizes how we understand each decision, each habit, each trade-off.
Consider alcohol. Yes, alcohol is toxic; recent, serious research has been dismantling the old claim that “moderate drinking is heart-protective.” Still, human life is clearly social. Connection, ritual, celebration, small shared pleasures: sometimes a drink, just like a dessert, greases the wheels of friendship or opens the door to a new conversation. For a young adult, not drink at all can mean closing the door on lots of opportunities to meet new people and share new experiences. Don’t get me wrong, none of this means that alcohol is necessary for a good life—far from it—but it does remind us that a good life carries cultural and subjective layers. The good life is not the result of chemical or physical formula. It is not as simple as ticking every box on a list of “ideal practices” and considering the job done.
We are not only a body; we are also mind and spirit. Think of elite athletes—Michael Phelps is an easy example—who appear to live extraordinarily healthy lives, with bodies that perform at a level few of us can imagine, and who then fall into deep depression once they retire or hit their goals. It would be far too neat to say they simply “forgot to train their mental health,” as if meditation or a weekly therapy session could automatically provide meaning and belonging. Those tools are valuable, but they do not, by themselves, give us purpose or community. And without those two anchors, the rest hardly matters. So we protect health not because that menas a life well lived, but because health lets us pursue a life that is worth living.
A useful way to see it is to flip the reasoning. These days we know that disturbances of
mind and spirit show up as very real physiological consequences. The modern doctor’s joke that “everything is caused by stress” is funny precisely because it is true. Chronic stress—now almost a default setting—has clear links to headaches, muscle pain, high blood pressure, heart attacks, reflux, insomnia, inflammation, acne, and the list goes on. The present-day waves of loneliness and depression lead to equally serious physical problems. In The Myth of Normal, Gabor Maté notes patterns that border on disturbing: excessive politeness and self-silencing show a strong connection with autoimmune diseases such as lupus, multiple sclerosis, and rheumatoid arthritis, while suppressed anger or relentless ambition track closely with coronary disease.
Perhaps the simplest demonstration of the mind-body link is the placebo effect. It is one of the most replicated findings in all of science: when a person firmly believes they are receiving a remedy, the body generates powerful biochemical responses even if the pill is nothing but sugar.
This link should be obvious, yet our daily life often suggest that we are pretending it isn’t there. We accept, almost without protest, that we can spend years sitting in front of a screen, half-sleeping, rushing from one obligation to the next, or feeling alone in a crowd, and trust that we will sort it out “later.” Sometimes “later” is too late.
So let’s pause and listen to what human experience keeps telling us:
Lack of sleep leads to immune problems, insulin resistance, anxiety, and cognitive decline.
Lack of exercise weakens muscles and bones, worsens metabolic health, and lowers mood.
Poor food choices fuel chronic inflammation, visceral fat gain, gut imbalance, and hormonal chaos.
Loneliness pushes baseline cortisol up, increases systemic inflammation, and shortens life expectancy.
Absence of meaning shows up as depression, substance abuse, and higher cardiovascular risk.
Weak community ties make us less resilient and slow recovery when illness does strike.
Seen from this angle, a broad—but surprisingly consistent—map of the good life becomes visible. It has endless regional and personal variations, but the central landmarks stay the same: our nature calls for lives with movement, consistent sleep, real food, and that stretches outward toward others and toward purpose. It calls for work (of any kind) that contributes, for moments of reflection and contemplation, and for regular touches of the natural world. These are themes that Aristotle, Buddha or Christ each explored in their own language, and that modern science now confirms: stray too far away and we get sick, we hurt, we run out of the energy we need to be present for our children, our partners, and our communities. In this sense the good life is not an ideological or philosophical invention, but what we get when from our own individuality we try to honor our shared human nature.
