The 1% Solution: A Story of Modern Medicine

In today's world and ever changing environment, we are quickly discovering that personal responsibility for our health and finances is the best way to secure a safe and sound future. The recent changes in the financial markets have demonstrated that we cannot hand over our future to others and think that they will act, or know how to act in our best interest.

As someone who spends a great deal of time researching and reading up on the latest discoveries that science has to offer, combined with 25 years of clinical experience, I estimate that we know about 1% of what goes on in the human body. That's correct, "1%." That may be a startling revelation, but I believe that it's a generous number and a good starting point.

Take the human digestive tract, for example. The human body has 10 trillion cells in it and the digestive tract has 10 times that amount, or 100 trillion bacterial cells. Science states that the vast majority of what takes place in the digestive tract is unknown. That alone means that we know very little about the largest percentage of our internal makeup. If we even knew everything about the 10 trillion cells that make up the human body, that would be 10%, but we are far from knowing much about those cells, also.

We live in a world where modern technology is unable to reveal to us the intricate and complicated mechanisms that allow the body to do what it does. The cellular functions remain hidden to us for the most part. Most of what is practiced is based on cadaver medicine and what we've learned from dissecting the dead. MRI's, CT scans, X-Rays, blood tests and everything else that we use to arrive at a diagnosis is still very crude in the overall picture. By the time something shows up via these assessment tools, we are already far along the path of degeneration and disease.

The concept of "practicing" medicine is humorous and the source of many jokes. We "practice" based on what is unknown and "doctor" people based on what is known. In the TV series House, MD, a doctor and his team of physicians continually end up misdiagnosing and mistreating with the wrong drugs, which lead to further complications, until they finally end up with the correct diagnosis and treatment right before the patient would otherwise die. A happy ending! In the United States alone, however, these mistreatments and adverse effects from drugs lead to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people every year. The number of unnecessary surgeries is in the millions. These numbers exclude clinics, nursing homes, extended care, and assisted care facilities which could easily double or triple those statistics.

This is not a put down on the medical profession, as anyone who "practices" as a doctor knows that what they are being asked to do on a daily basis is somewhat of a miraculous task. You can also ask anyone who has spent time in hospitals with loved ones or friends, that the example as illustrated by House, MD, is a very accurate portrayal.

Is there an answer then when we know so little about what we are dealing with? If we wait until we have a problem, then there isn't a good answer other than what we've seen already and know from the information presented above. The only answer that I know of is to be on the proactive end and take personal responsibility for our own health. The answer lies with us.

We must take care of our bodies through whole foods, clean air and water, exercise, detoxification, uplifting thoughts, positive emotions, meditation and prayer, service to others, and continually taking steps to improve our health in each and every moment. Our homes should be a refuge and a place for our bodies to heal and renew. I believe that we need to start with ourselves, before we can effectively deal with the larger issues of how to bring change to the world. Only then will we have the reference point for what health truly is.

To lead a healthy life, is to lead a life out of the ordinary. It is an extra-ordinary life!

Comments

[DennyCrane]

Obama is one of the first candidates for public office who actually talks about prevention and personal responsibility. Howard Dean said it best. We don't have a health care system. We have a disease care system. We wait til people get sick instead of expecting people do a better job of taking care of themselves. I eat right and exercise, don't smoke, and don't drink too much. I have never had more than a cold for over 10 years. But we as a culture abuse our bodies and then expect an overburdened health care system to take care of us.

[rini]

It's extremely sad that the environment, bacterial and otherwise, that supports life is actually at risk due to human activity. Just as we are beginning to appreciate our place in the biosphere, we are actually destroying the biosphere. Health maintenance is a joke with out environmental awareness.

[peakeproductivity]

I was trying to digest the news that I have far more bacterial cells than human cells, and I found this article interesting as follow up reading:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080603085914.htm

It should be interesting to see where further research (over $100 million in grants over the next 5 years) will lead.

[Dr. Jeffrey McCombs - Huffpost Blogger]

The National Institute for Health's Human Microbiome Project should give us more answers -

http://nihroadmap.nih.gov/hmp/

Thanks for the comment.

[ouroborous]

I agree; understanding our relationship with our symbiotes is hugely important. Equally important basic research includes such un-exciting -- but very importan -- topics as protein folding, gene expression, and so on. These don't tend to make big headlines, but they are basic science that we need to do in order to even begin to understand the human body.

[ouroborous]

"Take the human digestive tract, for example. The human body has 10 trillion cells in it and the digestive tract has 10 times that amount, or 100 trillion cells."

Um... what? The digestive tract has more cells in it than the entire body? Is this some kind of new math? I hate to belabor the obvious, but it's simply impossible for a part of the body to have more cells in it than the entire body. I would assume that this was a simple typo, but the math in the rest of the paragraph simply brings home the point that you really don't know what you're talking about, Doctor ("If we even knew everything about the 10 trillion cells that make up the human body, that would be 10%"). Given this wacky math, I find the "1%" premise of the article suspect -- it may well be like that old canard, the very false "fact" that we "only use 10% of our brains" (implying psychic powers or something similarly spooky.)

While your point -- that we still know very little about some aspects of human physiology -- is valid, your conclusions are suspect. We need to fund more basic and applied research so that we can close this knowledge gap. Also, we need to keep working to disentangle the interests of Big Pharma from our taxpayer-funded research organizations so that we can trust the research findings to be more objective.

The only solution to too little knowledge is -- more

[Dr. Jeffrey McCombs - Huffpost Blogger]

Yes, 100 trillion is quite a large number to comprehend, but here are some references for you:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18196951?ordinalpos=1&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DefaultReportPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16497592?ordinalpos=2&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DefaultReportPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum

http://arjournals.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146%2Fannurev.mi.31.100177.000543

http://www.fdhn.org/digestivehealth/get_the_facts.html

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080603085914.htm

http://www.livescience.com/health/060601_gut_microbes.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gut_flora

The bacterial cells are much smaller than the human cells, which may help put that into a better prespective.

We actually use every cell of the brain at all times.

[theleahsaur]

I think the problem is that nowhere in the article does it state that the 100 trillion cells you are referring to are bacterial cells, as opposed to 10 trillion human body cells.