A podcast episode by Dr. Betty Murray presenting a simple self-checkup called the "Seven Pillars of Health." Listeners are guided to rate themselves 1–10 across seven domains—sleep, body (physical condition), bowel movements, energy, mental state, relationships, and spiritual health—using concrete anchors for low (1) and high (10) scores and short practical advice (e.g., use feelings over noisy wearable data, aim for daily bowel movements, cultivate social support and a spiritual practice). The host recommends identifying the lowest-scoring pillar and prioritizing improvements there.
Chapters
The seven pillars is kind of a fun little thing that I take people through. And I'll do as a short version with you right now if we want is is it's kind of a self checkup. And I tell people, listen, if you were doing this at least once a month and being really honest with yourself, you may be able to find things before there's a real problem or stop chasing down one system that you think like, you know, mold, exposure, whatever it is, you're chasing down that so hard that you're not looking at these other pillars. If you can write it down or put it in your phone, you're going to be rating yourself on a scale of 1 to 10. So 10 is, I'm doing really great with this one, not so well. So let's start with sleep. Very important for everything. So you know, how much quality sleep are you getting? REM sleep, deep sleep. Do you know, are you wearing a wearable? If you're a woman and wearing an OURA ring or wearable, it's not that accurate even for sleep. For men it's 75%. So back to I like wearables, I like data. However, they're not a hundred percent accurate. In fact, in some instances they're not accurate in a big way. Listen to how you feel. Do you wake up? So a one would be you can't get to sleep and you can't stay asleep. Hard to go to sleep. Well, waking up all throughout the night, a ten is you wake up ready to go get out of that bed after about eight hours of feels like restorative sleep and you have energy throughout your day. That's a 10. So write down 1 to 10 where are you on your sleep and that's by how you feel. And you can weigh in on what your wearables are saying, but remember, they're not so accurate. Not yet. I think they'll get there. Now let's talk about your body. Your body is beyond your weight and physique. You know, if you want to look in the mirror and say you're going to look like a supermodel at 6:2, and you're not built that way. So let's go beyond that. It's not a stat. It's about are you happy with it, Is it healthy? Do you feel good? So one would be you're weak, you don't feel strong, you feel flabby, and you really don't like looking in the mirror. You know, you're not being too hard on yourself, but you just say, I can do better. A 10 is you love your body. It's working well. No aches and pains. It's working well, and you're taking really good care of it. You're going, you're exercising, you're doing movement, you're doing your strength training. You're taking care of it. That's a 10. Again, you might not look like a supermodel, but your body's in great shape. Next one is bowel movement. Yes. I want to talk about poop for a minute. So. Yeah, yeah. So a normal bow movement, you know, it's just kind of an average. Everybody's a little bit different. But when I describe it, most people, especially women, go, what? It's from your wrist to your elbow, about that long. It should be a medium brown color. It should be easily passed in a log. Not stringy, gooey, any of that. It should be about as big around as your wrist. It's pre in the middle. It should be pretty. Pretty form. Pretty larger than you think. You look and say, wow, how'd that happen to come out of me? So they're lar. A little bit larger than you think, and they don't smell bad because you're breaking down the foods well. So if they're. If you have number one would be a stinky poo. It's really gooey, it's stinky, it's really short. Or they're little rabbit pellets or you're constipated. You're not even going every day. You should be mostly going every day for the most part. A 10 is, you know, you're kind of so proud. You look back and you go, whoa. I almost would like to show somebody because it's like, wow, that. That's incredible. Nobody's going to do that. But you look back, you feel better. You look at it and you're going, I'm doing something right. My stress level must be down. So I'm not turning off my. My digestion stress level. I must be handling that. And I'm eating pretty well and moving. Next one is energy. Are you ready to go in the morning without coffee? In fact, you should be waiting at least an hour to have that first caffeine anyway. And are you not crashing in the afternoon? So one is you're waking up tired. You're tired all day, and then you can't get to sleep. And you know what we call that, right? Is wired and tired. You're exhausted, but you can't go to sleep because you're wired. Brain is busy. It's going, that's, that's a, a, a dangerous place to be in sleep. That's a one, a ten. You know, you, you, you, you get caught doing things like my, My dad's birthday is tomorrow. He's 92 years old. He golfs 18 holes even in the summer in Arizona, probably three times or four times a week. He goes dancing most nights and he goes to the gym at least three or four times a week. A week. So that energy, that kind of energy at no matter what age, because too, too many people say, well, I'm getting older. I'm supposed to get no, no. Now there's some things he can't do like he used to, but he's pulling himself out of a soft shell, hyperbaric oxygen tank just fine, which a lot of younger people couldn't. So we should age like that and we should have energy like that. And age is not an excuse. Next, his mental state. Now go back to dad. He's like, well, I'm doing good. That 92 doesn't bother him. He's like, he's grateful for where he is, that he's help, help and happy. And his mental state, he doesn't think he's 92. Right? They. He literally. He knows he is, but he doesn't. So mental state, clarity, cognition, your focus and memory. Are you having trouble pulling words? Word retrieval, short term, long term, all that stuff. So if you really have in trouble saying, I'm really forgetting things more than I used to now. Forgetting where you put your keys, that happens to everybody. Forgetting where you parked in the parking lot. That's always because you weren't paying attention. The thing is, you know, you really know. Are you having trouble pulling a word or a person's name? Are you, are your, is your focus not there? You can't read like you used to or really have clarity to understand what's going on. And, and, and a, a 10 is going to be. You're on it. You're wiring and firing. Your brain is good. There's. Sometimes it'll be less because you didn't sleep as well, but for the most part, brain should be working for you. Next couple or last ones are relationships. We know studies show it a strong support system. You live longer, you're healthier, less diseases, having people around you. So if you don't have family or friends or colleagues at work, that's, that's a, that's going to lower your number. Also intimacy, intimacy with your partner. And if you don't have a partner, even intimacy with yourself. We are sexual beings, we are touchy feely and we should be being intimate in some way and having a good tribe around us. So the 10 is a great tribe and great sex. Now you wrote yourself a 10, right? Yeah, yeah. Spiritual health, probably the most important, if you feel connected and you've got a deep sense of gratitude and you can find serenity even when chaos is happening around you and there's, there's, there's grief or trauma, all those things around it, you have a practice, a breath work, a meditation, a prayer, something, something that you can connect to, something outside of yourself, God, spirit, whatever your belief system is. If you have that ability to connect there in the middle of chaos, you've got a good spiritual health piece going. But if you feel alone, you wonder if it's all worth it, you have no connection. That's, that's a, that's a low, low number on that spiritual health. But you know, spiritual is not saying you have to go, you have to be religious and go to church and do all the rules in church. This is the ability to find and feel that peacefulness and connecting this when you need to. So I always say, pick, look at your numbers, back at your numbers, what's the lowest one? Pick that. And there's so many things that you can do in all of these areas, whether you know, whether it's just knowing the things you should be doing and you're not, and just give yourself a little time period to say, I'm going to work on this.
