A Cheerful Heart Is Good Medicine
What I saw at the bedside, and why it changed everything about how I approach health as a Nurse.
I've sat with a lot of sick people.
Of course in the typical way people imagine when they think of nurses. The rushing, the beeping monitors, the controlled chaos of a busy unit. Beyond that I mean the quieter moments. The ones where it's just you and the patient, and the room gets still enough that something true and vulnerable surfaces.
In those moments, I would experience something nobody can teach you. Those moments taught me what life is about. In the raw, deeply traumatic times, vulnerable and out in the open when you are truly experiencing moments when life changes for someone.
Illness doesn't just happen to the body. It happens to the person. It’s even bigger.
It strips identity. It steals independence. It severs people from their routines, their roles, their sense of who they are and what their life means. I've watched patients lose their spark long before they lose their health. And I've watched that loss, that quiet dimming of the spirit and soul.
What a Crushed Spirit Actually Looks Like
There's a verse in Proverbs 17:22 that I based my business The Good Medicine off of.
“A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones.”
As a nurse, I have learned it to be truth direct from ancient words written by Solomon in the book of Proverbs. Proverbs is a book of wise sayings, a textbook of teaching people how to attain wisdom, discipline and provides moral instruction. So when I was starting to build my business I asked myself “What is my purpose and focus in shifting from bedside nursing to nursing in the community?” My answer? I was tired of watching patients feel crushed, defeated, and ashamed, heading toward needless pain and unhappiness when I knew we could be doing so much more. This verse came to mind and it summed my purpose up perfectly thus the start of The Good Medicine.
My focus isn’t JUST physical healing. It’s the end goal of a cheerful heart. A feeling, an emotion, a mood, a mindset that can help people find hope to start moving toward physical health. Not only that it’s doing it alongside someone so you don’t have to navigate this complex, confusing and often disheartening health care system alone.
So what does “A crushed spirit” mean?
A crushed spirit is a physiological state. Chronic stress, isolation, hopelessness, loneliness, sadness, grief, traumatic experiences and memories and shame don't stay in the mind. It can migrate into tissue, into cells, into disease that won't budge no matter how clean the diet is or how hard your working out.
It shows up in elevated cortisol. In dysregulated blood sugar. In rising inflammatory markers. In blood pressure that won't come down. In a cardiovascular system under constant low-grade stress.. In shallow breathing and shoulders that haven't dropped in years. Its overwhelms and anxiety, brain fog and fatigue, symptoms triggered by an emotional state that your body has been holding on to.
“Dries up the bones” is what we now call chronic disease progression.
What a Cheerful Heart Actually Is
Here’s what I want you to understand: a cheerful heart is not toxic positivity. It’s not pretending everything is fine when it isn’t. It’s not a personality trait you either have or you don’t. I hate pretending things are fine. That’s unhealthy and in fact will lead to illness as well. Emotional aren’t meant to be stuffed down.
A cheerful heart is something much more specific and much more attainable.
It’s hope. Real hope, not denial.
Its connection …feeling genuinely seen and supported.
It’s purpose…knowing why you’re getting up in the morning.
It’s living in alignment with your values instead of against them.
It’s laughing with people you trust. Resting without guilt. Belonging somewhere.
Physiologically, that translates. Stress hormones come down. Immune function improves. Inflammation regulates. Sleep deepens.
This is what lifestyle medicine is trying to say with data. It’s what Solomon said thousands of years ago, you cannot separate the spirit from the body and expect either one to thrive.
Why I Built The Good Medicine
By the time most of my patients find me, their spirit has taken as many hits as their body has.
They’ve been sick long enough to lose pieces of themselves along the way. They’ve been handed protocols and told to comply. They’ve been reduced to a chart, a diagnosis, a list of risk factors. And somewhere underneath all of that, there’s a person who just wants to feel like themselves again and enjoy life. Often times there personality has taken a hit. They aren’t who they used to be, fun or adventurous. They have maybe hardened and have walls up. Maybe they only have the capacity to survive and are no longer living life. It’s possible it’s not this extensive but you see the direction your headed in and you don’t want to get there.
That’s who I’m here for.
Not just the labs. Not just the lifestyle protocols. But the whole person. The one underneath the diagnosis, underneath the exhaustion, underneath the years of being told to just eat better and stress less without anyone asking what’s actually making it hard.
The goal of my work isn’t just better numbers.
It’s getting your spark back.
It’s building a life your nervous system feels safe in. One with meaning, rest, laughter, community, and real hope. Not the kind you perform, but the kind you actually feel.
We can work towards optimizing labs and fine tuning your health together along with other providers. But if the spirit is crushed, the body keeps the score and sometimes you just need someone to walk alongside you. Sometimes you just need someone to start digging away and finding solutions that work for YOU. It might be the littlest change that starts to bring the spark back. It might even be knowing someone cares and will listen. Once my patients feel that I see the shift in their spirit and slowly but surely things start turning around. That’s exactly the feeling I work towards!
A cheerful heart really is good medicine. It always has been.
