Modern medicine is focused on disease and illness and the pharmaceutical industry is making billions from the illnesses of the world’s population. In theory, there is nothing wrong with this, lives are being saved every day with drugs developed by the pharmaceutical industry; painful conditions are made more bearable; life-threatening infections are being overcome, and medication, in general, is helping to improve the quality and add years to our life. So medicines have a tremendously positive impact on our personal and global health.
However, when we look at the pharmaceutical industry in-depth, we find a global money-making machine, no different from any other industrial or commercial sector. No longer is it driven by the need to help the suffering humanity, it’s become powered by profit, which often spills over into plain greed.
One example is the indiscriminate “pushing” of medicines and supplements when what the health industry should be pushing is the need to “please eat and live healthier”: to give up smoking, do more exercise, and eat your way to better health and vitality. Instead, the message is, “if you take our magic pill, you will have more energy for work and play and you will lead a healthier and happier life”. Attractive models with big smiles on advertising billboards reinforce this conviction in our minds.
Meanwhile, modern man is eating junk food, smoking, drinking, and living two-thirds of his life in a sedentary position, so how can we expect to enjoy a healthy state of wellbeing? It doesn’t come automatically from taking a pill.
Nope, living such a lifestyle means that we are managing to keep in good health only by… chance!!
These days, doctors don’t have the time or incentive to tell us how by changing our diets or walking an extra kilometer (1200 steps) a day, we are essentially preventing illness; supporting our immune systems, so that we do not get ill in the first place.
Instead, a patient walks into a doctor’s office, is conditioned to receive a prescription with some “magical medicine”, which they will take to the pharmacy, buy the medicine and expect miracles to happen. When just by living healthier, we can eradicate disease, without any medication whatsoever!
Doctors have unfortunately become blinkered into the “a pill for every ill” mentality. Very few doctors know, or are interested in sharing ways to get better by diet and lifestyle change. The modern medical model is based on illness: the more ill patients through the door, the more money generated!
In such a model of healthcare, more patients mean more income, and so the doctor will never have time to give advice. He becomes a dispenser of prescriptions, an intellectually sophisticated drug pusher.
Thankfully, with access to the Internet comes the availability of free and valuable information about any subject on earth, which has led to a shift in mentality. From being a passive patient, now we are seeing patients who have done their research and know about healthier alternatives to pills and drugs.
A pro-active patient wants to participate in regaining his health and keeping in good health and understands that intelligent choices can be made independently.
However, we need to go one step further and instil a “Wellness Mindset” in each individual, so that we are aware that good health is the result of choices made as a free person. Whatever we choose to put in our mouth will impact on our health, whether positively or negatively. Choosing to stay seated most of our waking hours, will also have an impact on our health and will determine how healthy we will be in 5 or 10 years from now.
There is no free ride in keeping healthy; it’s not rocket science. It’s all about making simple healthy choices. Not about taking a pill every day.
The choice is literally in our hands and…mouth.
