Reclaim your health, naturally

A 2008 New York Times article revealed that out-of-pocket health care costs for insured couples retiring at age 65 are likely to reach $225,000 over the course of their retirement. This figure excludes over-the-counter drugs, dentistry and nursing home costs, all of which are potentially significant. Those retiring ten years from now at age 65 may need over $1 million to cover the same medical costs.

Is this progress?

Health care in America today is a market created by an industry seeking ever greater profits. We can not wait for reforms to our health care system to come from the government or from the industry itself. We can reclaim control of our health -- and our wallets -- primarily by learning to take care of our own bodies. It's that simple. But we've lost sight of what this really means.

Although we are inundated with information about health and medicine, and spending more than ever on health care, somehow we are no healthier. Insurance companies are covering less, out-of-pocket costs to consumers are increasing as medical and health insurance expenses continue to rise. Doctors are ordering costly tests of questionable value to increase their own income or just to protect themselves from legal action, driving up costs even more. Pharmaceutical costs are unregulated by the U.S. government and just keep going up even as their marketing of new diseases (and drugs to “treat” them) flourishes.

We are driven by fear to get a range of medical screenings and tests, and to become consumers of pharmaceutical medications for life. Why does it seem that once on a prescription for high blood pressure or high cholesterol, for example, it is assumed you will remain on it forever? Might not your body’s health improve? What if you were to take additional measures including diet and exercise, as well as stress-reduction – couldn’t your blood pressure normalize or your cholesterol return to healthy levels? Why aren’t these approaches a part of the standard of care in medicine? Why doesn’t your doctor talk to you about what you can do to eliminate your need for certain drugs and give you a plan that aims to help you get off the medications? And what are we doing to create so much high blood pressure and high cholesterol in the first place?

Something is wrong with this picture. We have bought into the sickness industry and continue to fuel it. The real remedy is to “get off the wheel” and stop playing along, to recover our health without relying exclusively on drugs, tests and providers to do it for us.

It's time to question what we've been told about health and medicine. As it turns out, the person with the greatest power to cure you is...you. And you can do it without the latest information on antioxidants, Omega 3 essential fatty acids, blueberries, SAMe or caffeine.

This does not mean rejecting all of medicine. Medicine has its place -- both conventional and holistic approaches. The problem is that it doesn't know its place and has taken away our inherent power to cultivate health naturally. It has convinced us that health is finding the right medicine for our symptoms, instead of teaching us to avoid those symptoms in the first place. Once we're sick, we're potential consumers of the medical market, and they have a lot to sell us.

While holistic medicine grows out of a preventive approach to health, in the current environment even this has been taken over by the prevailing medical marketing approach. Instead of emphasizing a whole diet and a lifestyle that includes a balanced range of activities to support health, we are seeing nutrients and herbs being tested and used in a drug-like way. Holistic therapies are tested for use as alternatives to existing medical treatments instead of using them preventively as they were intended.

Instead of starting you on a pharmaceutical medication, the "holistic" doctor may first give you a vitamin supplement or concentrated herb. True, it may be better for your body, but it continues to ignore the power of a whole foods diet combined with healthy living in favor of another form of "medication."

It's time to reshape our relationship to health and medicine. This is what we'll be looking into in this blog...how to reclaim our own health naturally, and to use medicine wisely and judiciously.