When it comes to problems with our current healthcare system, the list is quite long. At the foundation of these problems is the fact that it should not even be called a healthcare system, as the focus of this system is not on health itself, but rather the futile attempt to eradicate sickness and disease. Our so-called healthcare system is actually a sickcare system.
You might be thinking… of course we need to eradicate sickness and disease. And it may seem silly for me to be critical of those efforts. But trying to eliminate sickness and disease is like trying to remove darkness from a room. Darkness is nothing, it isn’t something we measure. Light, however, is something, and can be measured (in lumens, lux, or candela). To get rid of darkness, you don’t take away the darkness… you add light.
Realizing that sickness and disease are not the entity, but health is, changes everything. Once you begin to put your time, effort, and money into building health, sickness and disease lessen. The healthier and stronger you become, the less sickness you experience.
If we take a closer look at our so-called healthcare system, you’ll see that very, very little attention is given to the things that actually build our health. Instead, it is a system built on identifying conditions, naming them, and treating them. And we have now spent well over a century, and an unimaginable amount of money, thinking that we can identify and treat all things that ail us. If this system worked, we would surely be much healthier, yet we continue to get sicker and sicker. It’s sad, scary, upsetting, and frustrating.
It should go without saying that the emphasis on treatment of disease, instead of the building of health, is profit-driven. There is not much money in the building of health and the prevention of disease. The big money is in ongoing treatment with drugs, procedures, and medical testing. I have been critical of the pharmaceutical industry, but I should not be surprised. They are businesses. They are profit-driven. They have responsibilities to their shareholders. And not only is health-building not profitable, it actually threatens their bottom line. We can’t expect them to take interest in health, and shouldn’t be surprised when they utilize their influence to suppress healthier, safer, and more natural alternatives.
There was a recent JAMA Pediatrics study showing a nearly 20% rise in bariatric (weight-loss) surgeries between 2020 and 2021 among 10 to 19-year-olds. This is classic medicine. Instead of getting to the root cause of a problem, they opt for expensive, risky, and often failing interventions. And any time you address the effect and ignore the cause, you get adverse side effects. Well, in the case of doing these surgeries, they are now finding that a reduction in hormone production is leading to a weakening of their bones. Yikes!
But hold on, a medical expert stated that this could lead to new therapies to help with the bone issues. Yep… they do a surgery that does not affect the cause of the problem, leading to more health issues, which will get treated by another pharmaceutical, again treating the effect, not the cause. It is very good for business, but terrible for these teens.
Of course, there are ethics and morals that should be involved, but we’d be naïve at this point to think that those would dictate the behavior of almost any large industry. To think that our healthcare system will change is wishful thinking, but a waste of time. The road out of sickville will not be in a vehicle driven by a medical doctor, it will not involve a stay at a hospital, and will not involve some miracle breakthrough. We know that health gets optimized, and sickness and disease decrease, when we implement positive lifestyle changes. If you want to get on a better path, one that leads to true health, vitality, and longevity, it will start with how you eat, how much you move, how you think, and the way you live.