being beautiful part 3

Dr. Mehmet Oz

Looking, feeling and being beautiful are the themes of Dr. Oz's book YOU: Being Beautiful: The Owner's Manual to Inner and Outer Beauty. He wraps up his conversation about the book with co-authors Dr. Arthur Perry and Dr. Michael Roizen, and they talk about how your romantic relationships, career and happiness are all important parts of achieving inner and outer beauty.



Romantic Relationships

If you want to keep your relationship with your partner solid, Dr. Roizen says it's important to keep the physical attraction fresh and resolve problems that can harm your relationship, like financial stress. He offers advice that can help keep your love life beautiful:

* Recreate your romantic relationship often: "You really need to remake your marriage every seven years," Dr. Roizen says. During the first couple of years marriage, Dr. Roizen says the dopamine rush of physical attraction is at play, then, for the next few years, the "cuddling hormone" oxytocin takes over. By the seventh year of marriage, Dr. Roizen says the rush of hormones dies down and you need to renew your relationship and make it romantic and exciting again.
* Talk about finances with your partner: According to Dr. Roizen, about half of all divorces are caused by financial problems. Those problems can also age you by as many as eight years, Dr. Oz says. Saving 10 percent of your paycheck in an emergency account can help give you piece of mind, relieve stress and may save your marriage, Dr. Roizen says.



Career Success

Doing what you love for a living and making your career a priority will help you stay happy, maintain your energy and continue being as beautiful as you can be, Dr. Oz says. Dr. Roizen and Dr. Oz offer advice to help you improve your career and ultimately slow the aging process:

* Pick a career you are passionate about: "Pick your job for the passion, not the paycheck," Dr. Roizen says. "The more you are passionate about it, the better you will often get rewarded."
* Improve your work environment: Plants and greenery in your office help improve your productivity, Dr. Roizen says. Also, set your thermostat to 72 degrees—it's most efficient temperature to work at, Dr. Oz says. Opening windows will improve the air quality in your office too.
* Don't retire: "Retiring ages you about eight years," Dr. Roizen says. "In fact, a lot of people will die in their first couple of years after retirement because they don't have a passion in life. So, even if you hang it up in the sense of not earning money from it, find another passion and transition to that."



Pain Management

Pain is a major problem that strips away the vitality of many Americans, Dr. Oz says. "Feeling beautiful, to a lot of people, is about avoiding pain," Dr. Oz says. Dr. Roizen, who is the head of the Pain Management Center at the Cleveland Clinic, offers insight into chronic pain and common pain management.

* How chronic pain develops: "Chronic pain sets up what we call a positive feedback loop, that is, a little more pain gets to be a little more pain and [builds] until it gets both chronic and worse, so you have to break the cycle at least every three weeks or else it builds and builds and gets permanently ensconced in your system so you will always have pain, so you have to break it," Dr. Roizen says.
* How to break the cycle of pain: "Don't be afraid of taking enough medicine, getting enough shots, doing whatever it takes to absolutely break the cycle periodically, so that you don't get this windup or positive feedback loop," Dr. Roizen says.
* Back pain: Back pain, especially lower back pain, is very common, and Dr. Roizen says medication, injections, massage, acupuncture and chiropractic care are helpful when recovering from it. Also, he says putting ice on your back for 20 minutes at a time, three times a day, cools the inflammation in your back and brings blood flow to the painful spot and helps quicken recovery too.
* Stay active: Dr. Roizen says when you are inactive, you lose muscle mass and that means it takes longer to recover from back and other pain.



Happiness and Inner Beauty

Your overall happiness, with every aspect of your life, may be determined by how beautiful you feel on the inside and out, Dr. Oz says. You can determine how happy you are with yourself by taking The You-Q Test . It is a series of questions that allow you to figure out how beautiful you perceive your body to be on the outside and on the inside, Dr. Oz says.

Dr. Oz also shares six paths to happiness:

* Be positive and generous
* Feel empathy
* Find authenticity
* Embrace emotion
* Explore spirituality
* Understand unhappiness