How many healthy sick people do you know? When you see someone taking medications do you typically think of them as a healthy person? Is a healthy person someone that needs more and more medications and surgeries as they age or less to no medications? Why is it that every time we use the word "healthcare", it really means "disease care" or "disease management". How much health-care is really in our current health care model? Why are we only using the 'bandaid to body-parts” approach.
We currently have no health system that merges the disease based model of lowering down symptoms (medications and surgeries), with a health enhancement model. We have a system that treats “DISEASE” without promoting "HEALTH". Most conventional medical doctors and the current medical system address a person when their health has declined enough to create a definable disease. It is then at the “diseased state” that the system can justify spending funds on the person. In other words, “you have to be sick to get a test or treatment”.
Contributing factors like; the aging population with poor lifestyle choices, decreased fitness and increased obesity has created an expensive and overburdened “disease care” system and not a proactive less expensive “healthcare” system. Unfortunately what this translates into for a person, is that you have to be noticeably “sick” or “diseased” (by the systems approved testing) to qualify for treatment. This has caused the public to seek out more alternatives.
Patients constantly say statements like; my purchase cialis does not do any prevention and does not have the time to talk about more than one problem a visit. My doctors only does tests to see if I am sick, they do not do tests to see how healthy I am. Why do I have to be sick to get a test? Why doesn’t my medical cialis teach me about diet, fitness, lifestyle and stress reduction? Why does my medical doctor only treat symptoms? Why does my medical doctor always give me a new drug prescription for every problem? Believe it or not, it’s hard to be a medical doctor; your medical doctor is doing the best job that they can. The problem lies in how they have been trained to look at a patient. It’s that old saying “if all you have is a hammer than everyone is a nail”. Most of the population would agree that medical doctors are essential and have a definite place in a medical system; they excel in “crisis management”, for instance, broken legs, accidents, heart attacks, gun shots, etc. Most conventional medical doctors are highly trained in disease management via decreasing the physical signs and symptoms of disease using treatments that include drugs and surgery. However most of the population is not aware that the treatments necessary to save a life in “crisis” are totally different than those needed to prevent and reverse chronic disease which is ninety percent of all disease. When I was doing a minor surgery shift in Portland, I would stand back in admiration of how amazing the medical doctor was in saving a person life suffering from a heart attack. I soon realized after several shifts that sometimes the same person had to be saved over and over and that in order to really make a difference, how doctors see their patient had to change.
I was able to stand back and see the best of both worlds; I realized that they must be merged. If you have a heart attack you definitely want to see a crisis doctor specialized in disease, however if you want to prevent a heart attack you must seek out a doctor trained in health, and both of these must overlap and be supported. One reality for patients is that chronic disease is increasing, and that the system of treating these chronic diseases with drugs and surgery instead of enhancing health (called prevention) maybe life saving in the short term but it is very be ineffective and extremely costly in both money and quality of life in the long term. Most of the population unfortunately is not fully informed of the current deficiencies in the medical system and even more so are not encouraged to explore viable alternatives (Chiropractic, Naturopathic, Anti-aging, Osteopathic, Acupuncture, Nutritional, Lifestyle and Emotional counseling) Because of this, patients tend to go to what they know and what is available. They seek out alternative or non-conventional medical information from their conventional medical doctor or pharmacist with the assumption that they will also be experts in this field and in realty they are not (image vs. reality). The obvious problem is that currently most medical doctors have only minimal or no training in prevention, nutrition, vitamins, hormones, anti-aging, stress coping and happiness enhancement and therefore leaving the patient without options. This hunger for viable preventable options is what has fueled the rapid growth of patients seeking viable options that carry less side effects, improve the quality and quantity of life and give more power of choice to the patient.
