Agency: Sense of agency refers to feeling control over actions and their consequences.

“What Is the Sense of Agency and Why Does it Matter?” Pubmed Author: James Moore.

Health Agency is the feeling of control over your health and well-being efforts and the accountability of what those efforts bring.

Agency, is what allows one to pause, evaluate, and act according to one’s values and goals for the outcome. 

To make an educated decision, or deciding one action to take or not, or to take one action rather than another, based on the specific knowledge of options available. Aka: Education on the subject. 

Informed choice, on the other hand, according to a basic online medical dictionary definition, is “a decision by a patient about a diagnostic or therapeutic procedure, based on choice, which requires the decision to be voluntary and that the patient has the capacity for choice, which rests on three elements:

• Possession of a set of values and goals

• Ability to understand information and communicate decisions

• Ability to reason and deliberate.

In the book “The Power of Agency,” when agency is not present, the result is the feeling of anxiety and overwhelm. 

The WHO reports that the U.S.A. is the most anxious country globally.

When someone’s sense of agency decreases, the stress response activates and shuts down higher-level thinking, making rational choices and reasonable responses more difficult.

The Department of Health and Human Services states that only 12% of American adults have “proficient health literacy.”

Not surprisingly, just under 12% of American Adults are considered metabolically healthy, according to a study published in the Metabolic Syndrome and Related Disorders journal.

What is the number one healthy habit in which one can invest time, effort, and money?

Health education. 

Unfortunately, most government and conventional medical establishments and professionals will define health literacy as understanding the medical treatment options for a given diagnosed condition.

That’s fundamentally wrong, and that core error in thinking carries an undeniable potential consequence of death.

To navigate today’s health environment, the most critical life-sparing and improving effort any individual can make are investing in learning the basic concepts of human physiology or how the body works.

We are the agent for our health and quality of life, and the number one contributor to our health status is our life and lifestyle choices over time. Healthy or sick, it’s our fault.

Understanding how the body works and how our daily choices impact its functions is now a life-or-death issue.

This basic understanding will help us make any decisions about making healthy changes, creating new habits, eliminating old ones, and using medical treatments. 

You pay the ultimate price or reap the absolute benefits of any health consideration you make, not your doctor or online health guru. You.

You are the agent of your health and disease fate. Invest well.

You can’t make an educated decision without education first or an informed choice without prior information. Invest wisely.

Personal values

Quality Information

Health Agency

Personal Choice

Absolute Accountability

Results

When we learn more, we can do more. 

We can do better!

Dr. Don