You may not be aware but there are two competing paradigms within healthcare.  The first focuses on symptom-management, emergency medicine, and empowering the doctors.  The second involves taking care of yourself, the conservative use of healthcare, and empowering the individual.

One says perform "diet and exercise" (whatever that is) and when it fails we have all the drugs and surgery you'll need to get well again.  If there are no symptoms and none of the tests are positive then you have a "clean bill of health."   The emphasis here isn't on prevention it's on diagnosis and treatment.

The other says do as much as you can to help yourself stay healthy FIRST.  It provides actionable information on how to do so and help patients reach their goals.  It understands that not every component of health can be tested in a test tube or a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study.  The emphasis is on making your body as healthy as possible to help avoid the occurrence of future illness.

Doctors and hospitals don't say, "We don't want you to get the disease."   It's more like "we want to diagnose the disease (once you get it)" and then "appropriately treat it" (because that's what we get paid for).  Doctors and hospitals don't get paid for prevention, as a matter of fact they lose money with each disease that is prevented.  That is why you don't hear much about what else to do besides performing "diet and exercise."  Although it never is really said which diet or which exercise to perform.

One thing is for certain, hospitals need sick people to survive.  If you're looking for someone in a hospital to offer you actionable preventative health information that you can do on your own, you're probably searching in vain.  Prevention isn't profitable.  There may be a ton of  "preventative recommendations" that require a doctor's visit like colonoscopies, paps, and mammograms, but Medicine becomes strangely silent in the area of self-care.  Not to mention there is viable data showing that there are very real things you can do for colon health, cervical health, and breast health that don't involve "diet and exercise." 

I wonder what would happen to disease rates in the country if as much energy was focused on prevention as treating the illness after it has already happened or developing drugs.   Hmmm, healthcare reform?

If a multi-million dollar "Cancer Treatment Center" springs up in your area, be prepared to hear very little about how to PREVENT Cancer.  The same holds true with Catheter Labs, Heart Centers, and so on.  All that technology and personnel have to be paid for and its the sick people in that community that will do it. 

If these centers spring up in response to need, would they be willing to shutdown if that need decreased?  Or would they create demand by a variety of means such as focusing on symptom-management, using treatments known to have other negative side-effects that will have to be treated, and withhold or subvert viable prevention information?  Remember it is a business. 

How is the new MRI going to be paid for, or what about the new Cath Lab, or what about all the fancy new Electronic Medical Records software and computers?  We'll need plenty of sick people to pay for those.  What about the hundreds of people employed by the hospital?  Can they afford for you to be healthy?  Wouldn't they stick to the party line because it benefits them?  You bet your hiney.

The question is:  How many have to be sick and how sick do they have to be for healthcare survive as it is now?  My answer:  Too goddam many.  Medicine needs to change fundamentally from the art of treating sick people to one of Prevention First, Treatment Second.

Some villages in Africa only pay the community healer if everyone in the community is healthy.  If someone is sick, the healer doesn't get paid!   You have to admire the wisdom of this, the simple undeniable logic.  Healthcare providers have a financial disincentive to get you healthy.  They don't get paid if you are healthy!  It's completely ass-backwards and that is why it's getting more an more expensive.  The system benefits by generating more disease.

That is why more funding or universal healthcare won't fix the problem.  Medicine will expand like a cancer using up the funding and still requiring more.  The glut and abuses of the system are many fold, but it all boils down to the fundamental logic of the situation.  They get paid if you are sick and don't get paid if you are well.  The dollar and what it does to people is to blame.

Furthermore, with the increasing technology it's becoming harder and harder to question your doctor's judgements.  You come in for one thing and next thing you know you need an MRI, a CT Scan, more bloodwork, a chest-xray and so on.  Who can argue with science, right?!   I'm here today to tell you that the application of science is fertile ground for discussion.  Maybe you don't need the 8 unnecessary tests to feel like you're healthy.  Maybe an "over abundance of caution" is unwarranted.

Maybe if you got up off your butt and worked out, started eating right, managed your stress, slept 8 hours every night, drank 2 liters of water a day, explored detoxification, explored Complimentary Medicine, you wouldn't feel the guilt over your health that makes you immediately susceptible to the abuses of the Sickcare Paradigm.  You'd know that you're healthy because you had been managing your health all along!  You're preventing things!  You're in the game, not a passive spectator!

One thing is for certain.  If you don't spend a little time or money on your health on the frontend, it will take much more time and money treating the diseases caused on the backend.  So don't feel that you're saving money and time by not doing the right thing!  Wouldn't you like to keep your family from seeing you sick?  Wouldn't you like to be healthy enough to play with your grandkids and great-grandkids?!   Wouldn't you like to never have to go to a nursing home?!!!  Start now.  Make small changes.  Invest in your future, for God's sake! 

If you're looking to those that profit from you being sick for guidance, please reconsider.  Start looking to professionals that profit from keeping you well for answers, they are the ones that have a vested interest in you staying well, just like you. 

We are all about you being empowered to protect your own health.  We hope that you search and find the health you're looking for.