The query gripping the nation: "How do we reform health care?"
But I don't hear anyone asking a far more essential question: "What is health?"
Given that we all want health and spend trillions to "care" for it, it's sobering how little thought we give to its true meaning. When I ask, the response I receive is typically "the absence of disease." Health is much more interesting and consequential than this. To define it in this negative sense is no more accurate than to define wealth as the absence of poverty.
I define health as a positive state of wholeness and balance in which an organism functions efficiently and interacts smoothly with its environment. Good health comes from an innate resilience that allows you to move through life without suffering harm from toxins, germs, allergens and changing environmental and dietary conditions.
By no stretch of the imagination does mainstream American "health care" move us closer to this vision of robust, resilient health. It is a fiscally unsustainable, technology-centric, symptom-focused disease-management system. Consider that two-thirds of all Americans die from cardiovascular disease, cancer, and diabetes, which are all strongly associated with lifestyle choices. Maintaining and paying for our current system will serve only to continue - if not exacerbate - this trend, and bankrupt the nation in the process.
A truly reformed health care system will care for our health rather than care for our ills. This does not mean it will abandon those who are sick or injured. Instead, measures that maximize our innate self-healing capacity - our health - will be used first whenever possible to both facilitate recovery and keep us whole and balanced.
How do we get there? Here is a summary of the health-promoting, disease-preventing agenda that I set forth in my new book, Why Our Health Matters: A Vision of Medicine That Can Transform Our Future available September 8, 2009.
- Our medical schools must teach health promotion along with disease management and crisis intervention. If the National Board of Medical Examiners included questions on these subjects in required student exams, schools would quickly add them to their curricula.
- Insurance companies, whether private or government owned, must be compelled to pay for health-promoting measures. In turn, this will encourage physicians to offer such treatments in earnest.
- The federal government must create new departments within the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Health and Human Services to emphasize health promotion and disease prevention. An Office of Health Education should be set up within the Department of Education to establish a K-12 curriculum of health, healing and disease prevention.
- Citizens must pressure the American Hospital Association, the American Public Health Association, the Centers for Disease Control and other relevant governmental agencies to make greening our hospitals and medical centers a top priority so that they themselves don't create even more illness. Examples of such changes: stopping environmental pollution caused by hospitals (e.g. mercury discharge) and banning the sale of junk food on their premises.
- We need to accept the seemingly obvious fact that a toxic environment can make people sick and that no amount of medical intervention can protect us. The health care community must become a powerful political lobby for environmental policy and legislation.
- We need to support grassroots movements to ban sales of soft drinks and junk foods in public schools, make schools serious about physical education and health education, and fight attempts by agribusiness to weaken federal organic standards.
- We must insist (with the power of our pocketbooks, voices and written words) that television networks, movie studios, radio, the internet and print use their tremendous influence in a positive way. The media showers us with destructive, illness-promoting messages (such as kids devouring junk food and adults popping pills for trivial, transient discomforts) and fear-based news reporting on health. We must use creative messages in the media to counteract this influence.
- American businesses are struggling to pay outrageous, exploitive insurance bills for their employees, hampering our ability to compete globally. In 2005, General Motors paid an estimated $1,525 in health-care costs for each car it made; Japan's Honda paid $97i. We must convince corporate America that preventable employee absenteeism and diminished productivity can be counteracted in a cost-effective way by offering workers health-promoting programs such as discounted gym memberships, smoking cessation programs, and more nutritious cafeteria food. Ultimately, the sophisticated American marketing talent that pushed us toward unhealthy behaviors might be marshaled to move us all in directions that are more consistent with good health.
Benjamin Franklin's adage "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" has never been more relevant. In Franklin's time, contagious disease was the scourge of humankind, but focused effort has rendered it a historic footnote. With sufficient will, we can do the same with chronic disease that now costs us so much to manage.
References:
iRelman, Arnold S., M.D. A Second Opinion: Rescuing America's Health Care. Public Affairs, 2007, p. 78
Andrew Weil, M.D., is the founder and director of the Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine and the editorial director of www.DrWeil.com. Become a fan on Facebook.
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We write extensively about related issues at http://dentistryfordiabetics.com/blog, especially the links between elevated blood sugar and gum disease that can interfere with diabetes control and significantly increase risk of serious health events such as heart attack, stroke and blindness.
- Charles Martin, DDS
Founder, Dentistry For Diabetics
Businessmen can corrupt easily due to $$ issues.
just beware out there.
Western Medicine is a band-aid at best. Where has the true innovation gone? Where are the cures?
What company wants a cure when you can profit off a "disease management plan."
Do your best to exercise, eat healthy, and remain at a low stress level.
Keep your body in an alkaline state.
Lay off the sugar and fast food.
The last person i want to see is a doctor, because they sometimes create more issues than were there before.
ALSO **** Have Doctors Post PRices Above The RECEPTION DESK, that way you can PRICE SHOP THEM. Never understood how doctors can do as they feel in the exam room...than bill your insurance.
Take a stand and ask if this test, or that test is truly necessary. Sometimes it is, but sometimes it isn't. It's up to you to stamp out the corruption.
Lipstick on a Pig when a doctor keeps asking you to come back for visit after visit.
I love doctors because for the most part they mean well. It's the doctors that are bought by insurance companies i don't trust.
Make sure your doctor has your interest at heart, not your insurance companies. You can tell by doing research on the most effective drugs, treatments, etc. Ask around. Do your work. It's your life.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2003/0304.longman.html
To get an idea of how wildly ineffective our health-care system is, consider this: The United States spends roughly $4,500 per person on health care each year. Costa Rica spends just $273. That small Central American country also has half as many doctors per capita as the United States. Yet the life expectancy of the average Costa Rican is virtually the same as the average American's: 76.1 years.
How can that be? According to public health researchers, the biggest reasons are behavior and environment. Costa Ricans consume about half as many cigarettes per person as we do. Not surprisingly, they are four times less likely to die of lung cancer. The car ownership rate in Costa Rica is a fraction of what it is in the United States. That not only means that fewer Costa Ricans die in auto accidents, but that they do a lot more walking, and hence they get more exercise. Thanks to a much lower McDonald's-to-citizen ratio, the average Costa Rican thrives on a traditional diet of rice, beans, fruits, vegetables, and a moderate amount of fried food--and therefore enjoys one of the world's lowest rates of heart disease and other stress-related illnesses.
http://www.reuters.com/article/hotStocksNews/idUSTRE5724Z920090803
I decided right away that I needed a different doctor, and a different outlook. It took many years of looking, but happily, I am 61 years young, no medical conditions, very active and in shape. I don't ever get a cold, flu, headaches or any other bother. I can walk 18 holes of golf and be ready for more, when guys half my age have to stop 'cause they just can't go on. I have followed Dr. Weil's advice, and others like him, and am happy I did so.
You are the Medical Poet Laureate, as far as I'm concerned.
Thank you,
Para vida y amor sin miedo
Maria Thysell
https://www.madashelldoctorstour.com/Mad_as_Hell_Video.html
These Oregon physicians are in the process of organizing a caravan designed to inform the public about the benefits of the single-payer option. At last count they will be stopping in approximately 23 states, on their way to demonstrate in Washington. They need volunteers and our support. Please spread the word.
http://www.reuters.com/article/hotStocksNews/idUSTRE5724Z920090803
I agree that diet and choices (smoking, alcohol, drugs) are also a critical part of this equation. Personally I think that to avoid the "Crazies" screaming for their "rights" we should increase education about tobacco, and soft drinks, while also taxing them highly. The addition of "High Fructose Corn Syrup" to just about everything sold in stores is also something the FDA needs to look at since that agency is charged with providing safe foodstuffs to the American citizenry. Websites such as the HFCC industry mouthpiece at http://www.sweetsurprise.com/ would have us think that HFCC is one of the "Basic Food Groups" of required things we should eat. Read the stuff they say on that site. It's spin at its sugary sickly sweetest absolute best.
Bob
Setting bones is a well known medical practice. Anthropologists find evidence of the practice among the Mayan elite. It is the difference between serious disabling and complete recovery. It is possible to live in the United States and not be covered for this ancient procedure.
Covering essential medical practices, assuring doctors of their proper recompense, spending the little difference between an able citizen and a social dependent -- is more than simple decency. It is responsible and patriotic and, in every way, the right thing to do. Don't try to do it with charity and voluntarism: such things should be conventional and certain.
When such simple things are done, we can and should worry about training doctors in more sophisticated practices.
Oddly enough, even better than an improved drive thru is getting out of the car and walking to a sandwich shop. I can imagine such might even be an elegant lifestyle, but I wouldn't know.
Um, why shouldn't they get the same benefits? Are you really saying that in order to have health care (that each person pays premiums, deductibles and co-pays for) that one should be required to live a 'perfect' or societally-approved lifestyle?
Should someone who works in a factory have to pay more than a person who works in an office? Should someone who engages in risky behaviours like skydiving also have to pay more? Who decides what the 'approved' diet and lifestyle consist of?
The USA has the highest expenditure per capita on health care in the world. BUT you don’t get value for money! Some disturbing statistics support this opinion.
Infant mortality (Deaths of children under 1 year old)
1st Iceland 2.9 deaths per 1000 live births.
22nd UK 4.8 deaths per 1000 births
33rd USA 6.3 deaths per 1000 births
Overall life expectancy
1st Macao 84.36 years at birth currently
6th Canada 81.86 years
25th UK 79.01 years
35th USA 78.11 years
When American doctors first start work in UK hospitals, it is obvious that their whole emphasis is on defensive medicine. They invariably over-investigate and over treat patients. Nothing comes without side-effects; Excessive X-Ray or CAT scan investigations leave the patient vulnerable to malignant problems later in life...leukaemias and the like. All drugs have side-effects; the more you use, the more side-effects you get. Minor illnesses get major therapies which do very little and carry big side-effects. This is poor medical treatment and costly.
I am surprised to read that medical training ignores preventative health in the USA. That's a huge mistake that carries enormous costs in later life. I trained as a doctor some 30 years ago and preventative medicine was an important part of my training. Stopping the junk food, pill popping, overeating attitudes in a society pays great dividends in later life.
I don't blame doctors for the lack of attention to prevention; the problem is the health system itself. Providing preventive care unfortunately doesn't bring in much money for health insurance companies, nor is it likely to save them much money in the future. Prevention of many common diseases must start extremely early, perhaps even in childhood, to be effective. But the chance of a child retaining the same health insurance throughout life is highly unlikely. HMOs would be foolish to spend a lot of money on prevention because they wouldn't reap the rewards; the individual's insurance company 30 years in the future or Medicare would.
Mostly, I'm in favor of private enterprise, but in the case of primary health care it has become blatantly obvious that it just isn't working. I'm not saying the government should take over, but they do need to create incentives for insurance companies so that providing preventative care isn't the equivalent of throwing money away.