Home Page      Article by Karin Koski

Genuine Healthcare

In the early years of the 21st century we have seen skyrocketing costs in healthcare and the increasing application of pharmaceuticals to people undergoing life’s stresses or manifesting objectionable behavior. Although a large enough portion of the population is concerned with natural foods, exercise, and vitamins so that health food stores and health clubs are not hard to find, we still hear alarming health news, such as statistics indicating that more than half the population in America is overweight or obese. In spite of anti-smoking and anti-drug campaigns, a significant portion of the population smokes and/or uses illegal recreational drugs. Teenagers and adults are dying from overdoses of drugs, both recreational and prescription, at an increasing rate. 

Currently there is a huge debate over healthcare reform. There is even a proposal to fine people for not carrying health insurance. Probably most of those who agitate for better and more healthcare do so for humanitarian reasons. Healthcare sounds like a good thing. But what if there are more important, higher-level issues that are being overlooked? If we push for healthcare that does not solve the real biological and psychological problems of humans, what have we gained? Focusing on the narrow band of healthcare covered by allopathic medicine may do as much good as devoting more buckets to bailing out a sinking ship instead of fixing the breaches in the ship’s hull.

The definition of health is physical and mental well-being; soundness; freedom from defect, pain, or disease; normality of physical and mental functions. Medicine has brought us some marvelous techniques for removing defects, pain, and disease. It has extended the life span of humans and lowered the infant mortality rate. In some ways, however, it has contributed to a loss of health.

Removing an organ or body part, for instance, could be considered to be creating a defect, if the ideal is to have a normal, functioning body. Introducing a substance to which the patient becomes addicted could be considered to introduce abnormality and a worsened mental state. Giving prescription drugs to patients who have abused their bodies with unsavory lifestyles, or who have no grounding in being responsible for their health in the first place, does not really address and solve the actual reasons for poor health, so health therefore continues to deteriorate.

Cancer has been under research for decades at the cost of untold millions of dollars. While treatments do exist, they are not highly successful in many cases and a diagnosis of cancer might mean that one’s life can be extended only a few months or years in a “battle” against cancer. If the actual cause of cancer were known, it would be easy to eliminate. Vitamin deficiency diseases and diseases connected with a known virus or bacterium have been successfully cured or treated, and nearly eliminated from society.

If you were to prioritize the following factors in order of their ability to positively influence the physical and mental health of an individual, based on your personal experience and observation, what would be the results? I put food on the list first as most essential to physical health from my point of view, but the rest of the list is not in any particular order.

• Quantity of food

• Nutritional quality of food

• Nutritional supplements

• Forms of promoting health and well-being other than conventional medicine, such as chiropractic, acupuncture, homeopathy, and religious practices

• Freedom from pollutants, toxins, poisons, and dangerous substances in air, water, buildings, and food

• Knowledge and execution of hygiene: cleaning the body, caring for wounds, care during short-term illness such as colds and flu, sexual practices

• Freedom from nonessential prescription pharmaceuticals which influence body chemistry and have side effects and the possibility of harmful or fatal overdose or allergic reaction

• Availability of life-saving pharmaceuticals such as insulin and antibiotics

• Expert diagnosis and care from doctors/hospitals in cases of injury and acute disease

• Freedom from substances that provide little or no nutrition but influence body chemistry and mental state: sugar, caffeine, alcohol, nicotine, marijuana, cocaine, etc.

• Sufficient rest and sufficient physical and mental activity (“sufficient” varies greatly from person to person)

• Freedom from extreme and prolonged strain to body from work or sports

• Freedom from proximity to discouraging, noncontributing, and hypercritical individuals who are an emotional drag on one’s well-being, or an ability to handle and withstand them

• Living in a climate and environment that is comfortable (varies from person to person)

• Being warm enough and cool enough for comfort most of the time

• Freedom from oppressive influences that take from those who work and give to those who will not honestly work (including the government, when it does this)

• Freedom from criminals who make the environment unsafe

• Ability to read, learn information, and master valuable job skills

• Ability to get along with others

• Awareness of and action toward one’s own constructive purposes, with workable technology to eliminate destructive purposes in oneself

• Ability to overcome disappointments in life emotionally

My point is that the physical and mental health of an individual depends upon a great deal more than his health insurance coverage. Needs covered by health insurance come after the fact of failures in a great many other categories. Perhaps if all the factors listed above were handled, doctors and hospitals might not be nearly as prevalent as they are today. They will always be necessary, but an aggressive approach to building and maintaining real health would put many more professionals on the preventive side of the situation and fewer on the side of treating the failure in health known as disease.

Here is an excerpt from an article that appeared in the New York Times on December 9, 1908, mentioning that the Emmanuel church movement had achieved a remarkable cure rate of 80% with tuberculosis patients. Dr. Woods Hutchinson is quoted below.

“The time is rapidly coming where two thirds of the doctors will be in the employ of the community, either as Inspectors in the schools or on boards of various kinds. The day is near at hand also when the doctor will no longer be engaged to patch up the sick man, but to prevent him from getting sick. He will visit families, examine the premises, inspect factories and shops, and give instruction to his patients how to keep from getting sick. Each family will select its doctor and pay him so much a year per capita. The doctors will not lose by this arrangement either.”

Imagine this system in practice. The best doctors—those who gave the best advice and were most successful at persuading families to carry out the advice—would promote the most health in society. They would gain new patients and prosper based on their ability to promote good health. Doctors would be reluctant to accept patients who would not follow sound advice, and such patients would find it difficult to procure a good doctor.

This system may have flaws that would make it impractical while other problems in society remain unsolved. If it could be used, however, it would tend to give the most immediate help not to those patients who could pay the most, but to those patients who were most responsible for their own health and were willing to follow sensible advice from the doctor. It might require that medical school curricula concentrate much more on disease prevention and nutrition than on pharmaceuticals, and that may not be possible until medical schools are supported less by the pharmaceutical industry.

These points require some observation and consideration rather than an emotional reaction to the issue of people going without healthcare insurance. I’d be interested to hear what you discover.

And consider this next: have you ever known individuals who, in spite of dizzying amounts of stress, lack of sleep, dietary faux-pas galore, and over-caffeination, still manage to be alert and healthy compared to others, living to ripe old age? Some people don’t need as much healthcare as others because they have an unquenchable vitality. What if we could impart that vitality to others rather than giving expensive medical treatment?

I think that is a far better solution.