March 2007 ISSUE

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HEALTH

Doctor Answers Health Wake-up Call

The Healthy CEO
By Dr. Larry Ohlhauser, M.D.
JuneWarren Publishing Ltd.
Edmonton
Order online:
www.thehealthyceo.com

He may be a medical doctor, but the author of The Healthy CEO had fallen into the same personal traps that many busy people do. He was working too hard, exercising too little and neglecting the things that keep a life in balance.

Dr. Larry Ohlhauser, a public member of APEGGA Council, received his wake-up call during a visit to Colorado. Difficulty breathing, mild chest pains, a lack of energy and an overall feeling of illness forced him to miss a social engagement and a day of golf. These were both activities the former registrar of the College of Physicians and Surgeons would never bow out of under normal circumstances.
If he hadn’t figured it out, his wife sure had: Dr. Ohlhauser needed to see a doctor. And soon.

Dr. Ohlhauser will bring that tale and practical advice to the Executive Track section of this year’s APEGGA Annual Conference and Annual General Meeting. Michael Canic presents the Power of Strategy on Wednesday morning, April 25, and Dr. Ohlhauser follows in the afternoon with The Healthy CEO. The conference runs April 25 to 28 in Calgary.

Dr. Ohlhauser did make it home from Colorado, but the Edmonton resident and healthcare consultant soon heard some unsettling words from his doctor. “You are responsible for your own health. Get in shape, take care of yourself and reduce your stress. You need to do it now . . . before it’s too late.”
He’d heard that before — but he was the one doing the talking. “In clinical practice,” Dr. Ohlhauser writes in the preface of this anecdotal self-help book on wellness, “I had given that same advice to countless people. But I’d never really applied it to myself.”

He’s is now. And he’s passing along what he’s learned to CEOs and anyone else who needs to adopt a healthy lifestyle. Dr. Ohlhauser’s book has all the essentials it takes to reformat a life for health and happiness.

The stories and scenarios draw on the CEO experience, although really, any busy person can apply the principles. The book’s statistics tend to be American — to speak to a larger market, the reader has to assume — but they paint a picture not unlike the Canadian one.

The book glides through all areas of health. Being well, writes Dr. Ohlhauser, is about balance. “Our lives cannot be compartmentalized into isolated components. Every aspect intrinsically impacts every other one,” he writes.

“Financial stress will lead to relational strain and physical manifestations of that stress. A relationship crisis may rob you of sleep and your productivity at work. If you neglect your physical health, your work performance flags and side effects reduce your relational capacity.”

Launch changes in physical, relational or financial health, and your whole life benefits. “Don’t just manage your life. Lead it . . . and lead it well,” says The Healthy CEO.

In about 250 pages broken into comfortable blocks of text, quotations, checkpoints, graphics and anecdotes, Dr. Ohlhauser lays out the fundamentals and the specifics. A CD inside the back cover serves as a workbook, giving The Healthy CEO extra value as a practical tool.