There are basically two philosophies when it comes to healthcare. The first is an illness based philosophy. It assumes that the body is not very clever and not very well designed and sometimes it just goes wrong or forgets how to work properly. In this case we must go and see a doctor who has studied many years to understand all these design faults and like a good car mechanic, can fix the problem. I once took my Fiat to a garage and the mechanic said “oh all Fiats seem to have this problem.”  “Oh this is common at your age” say some doctors as you take your aches and pains in to be ‘fixed.’  Is age the cause of health problems? Why then are some old people very healthy? Are health problems the result of our design faults? Is nature such a bad designer? 

Since the majority of medical treatments include drugs or surgery, the assumption is that if you have a health problem, you must be lacking a chemical, or have a dodgy part. Ever heard someone say; “my dicky heart, bad back, bum leg, dodgy knee”? Not very endearing terms for a system that nature took millions of years developing. However, modern medicine has taught us to have a relationship with our body based on fear and distrust. The popularity of this model of thinking is that it allows the patient to be the victim and the doctor to be the saviour. It means the patient is at the mercy of the doctor.

This brings us to the second philosophy of health, a ‘wellness’ based philosophy. This philosophy states that the body is perfect and never really makes a ‘mistake’ and that nature never plans for failure. This philosophy says that the body was not designed to be healthy or sick, but was designed to survive. All activity within your body is based on a survival strategy. If you eat poisonous food and spend the whole night throwing up, this may not be a comfortable experience, but if we could not throw up, how would the poison come out. Is vomiting a sign of bad health or a survival strategy? If you have a fever, has the body forgotten what its temperature should be? Fever is a vital part of the immune response as invading bacteria and viruses cannot reproduce effectively in higher temperatures, making it more difficult for the enemy. Even cancer is an intelligent survival response, but that’s another topic in itself.

The purpose of pain is that the body wants to tell you that something physical or emotional is not working to our benefit and a change in behaviour is needed if further damage is to be avoided. Have you ever felt a part of your body hurting more when you are stressed? A health crisis often happens when we are at a crossroads in life. A great doctor once told me that when your future self will no longer tolerate who you are being, a health crisis happens. Are our symptoms our enemy or our guide?

With the predominant approach in healthcare today being an illness approach it’s not surprising that there is so much illness, mental and physical. Ok we don’t have great epidemics like the great plague anymore, instead we have AIDS, cancer, autism and depression. Where is our approach to health care really leading us? Drug companies are finding that it is leading to the continued use of their products and with drug companies virtually ruling the medical system, the ‘health care’ system itself is not very ‘healthy’. Drugs allow us to be comfortable and unaware while things are going quietly wrong. Drugs take the battery out of the smoke alarm. They teach us to look outside of ourselves for answers to all our problems. Drugs often give us more years in our life but rarely more life in our years. Is this health?

Medical practitioners in conjunction with the pharmaceutical industry have taught us that disease is the cause of bad health and we must attack the disease with the drug. The pharmaceutical industry has become a trillion-dollar industry based on this idea, without ever really addressing the question of what causes disease.