Health care should be preventative, not reactionary

The purveyor’s of health continue to promise one cure after another, yet they don’t even understand the disease. The real reason no progress has been or will ever be made in health care on a governmental or institutional level is because they have no awareness to the actually manifestations of disease (or perhaps they just don’t bother because there’s no money in it). Type 2 diabetes is not a disease of Metformin deficiency. Heart Disease doesn’t develop due to lack of statin drugs. Your poor sleep is not due to a Lunesta deficiency. Your adiposity didn’t advance because you waited too long to sign up for CoolSculpting… (you have to see the video)

This line of thinking completely misses the point of what primary health care should be.

Think of human physiological dysfunction as trying to repair a broken vase. You start with the big pieces and, finally, all that’s left are the tiny shards of the impact point. Those tiny shards will go together in the end, but you would never have started there.

The big pieces are akin to the different pieces of your lifestyle — how you eat, how you sleep, how much you move, how you think and ultimately the environment you find yourself in. All these play a role in constructing that vase so that it doesn’t break easily, and can possibly become antifragile.

You always see headlines with “cutting-edge discoveries” that ostensibly have the power to change the world, but in reality, never provide a single cure because they completely miss the point.

Health care should be preventative, not reactionary. Primary health care should be eating well, moving well, sleeping well, and spending time in the sun with people you enjoy. Secondary health care can be when you go to see your doctor because you had too much fun with your friends, decided to climb a tree, fell and broke your arm!

It all comes down to taking responsibility for your health. As I said yesterday, we have been taught that the system has our best interests in mind, however I think the epidemic rates of poor health should be considered cause for continuing to believe in a system that failed you long ago.