Focus on Sickness or Health—Your Choice

Conventional medicine is a “disease” business. The focus is diagnosing and treating disease; using diagnostic tests and drugs each of which may have significant side effects. Doctors have been trained to look for drug solutions even for health conditions which arise from predominantly lifestyle issues: such as improper diet, lack of exercise, exposure to toxic substances, smoking, improper sleep habits, and insufficient techniques for dealing with the stressors in one’s life.

For example, if a person has high cholesterol and is advised to exercise and take Omega 3 oils to reduce the risk of heart disease, the beneficial side-effects include improvement in their pain levels, and likely reduced risks of cancer and degenerative brain diseases as well. If you look up the effects of the statin drugs (commonly used to reduce cholesterol) there will be a list of serious side effects, which over the years grows longer as the drug is used by more people. The long-term use (for years) of any drug should really be regarded as an experiment, since almost no drugs are tested over many years before regulatory approval is granted. The real long-term studies begin with the prescription in the doctor’s office and at that point careful data is rarely being kept

 

In 1990, David Eisenberg of Harvard University did a national survey that showed 34% of American adults had used at least one unconventional therapy in the previous year, resulting in 425 million office visits. By 1997, the trend had increased to 47% of Americans utilizing these therapies with 625 million office visits and an estimated 30 billion in out-of-pocket expenses.

People are actively turning away from the approach of conventional therapy and seeking out health care professionals who will listen to their concerns, spend time teaching them how to take charge of their own health and make changes that will impact all areas of their well-being. Studies have shown that the average length of time that a family doctor spends with a patient is 7 minutes. The doctor, on average, lets the patient talk for 16-18 seconds before interrupting them. People are beginning to reject this approach and thereby are the driving force behind the “Wellness Revolution”

Did You Know?

The wellness industry is predicted to generate a trillion dollars in annual expenditures by 2012. (For more info see Paul Pilzer, The Perfect Storm)

Did You Know?

Drug companies are run by marketing executives and not scientists. There is not a reliable market in sick people. There is a larger market share in healthy people. Many classes of drugs are being marketed to convince healthy people that they need to take drugs for the length of their lives.