Prevention is the Answer to Our Healthcare Woes

Do you want change in our health care system? If so, it is critical to start thinking about health care change in the form of 'preventative' action rather than remaining with the Status Quo. Our current health care system relies too heavily on reactionary treatments that wait until the problem is acute (and sometimes too late) instead of emphasis on changes in lifestyle that would support a preventative system and better health.

How is prevention different than our current system? Let's take a look:

1. Prevention assumes that everything you do affects your health, which it does. It comes from a holistic approach, rather than than a compartmentalized view taken by allopathic medicine. In other words, allopathic medicine waits until the problem is noticed by the patient and then treats symptoms, not causes. Preventative medicine knows that every day counts in making your health optimal. It considers diet, stress, sleep, physical, spiritual, and emotional needs.
2. Preventative measures are ongoing. They are continual in nature, whereas allopathic treatments are used only when there is a symptom occurring. Many people have health issues and aren't even aware of it. It can take days, weeks, or years sometimes to notice negative effects of poor lifestyle habits. That is why preventative medicine is so important.
3. Preventative medicine does just what its name implies - it prevents issues from occurring before it happens or lessens the severity of a problem because action is constantly being taken. Allopathic or reactionary medicine doesn't prevent anything except the body's reaction to poor lifestyle, and then can cause or exacerbate other issues in the body because everything is connected. Our organ systems are not isolated from one another and when one system is compromised, it puts a strain on the others.
   
4. The cost of preventative health care is paid incrementally and falls under a "cost of living" item, and is much less compared to costly intervention recommended after a condition has gone on for a long period of time by allopathic medical treatment.
   

The time has come to address this issue and put pressure on government and health decision-makers about creating a health care system that values and utilizes preventative care for citizens of our country. As long we as rely on pharmaceutical and allopathic care for the primary treatment of health issues and undervalue the importance of lifestyle changes that really work, we will continue to see a rapid decline in the health state of all people.

In 2007, President Obama talked about how we spend less than 4 cents of every health care dollar on preventative care. The U.S. Preventative Medicine organization praised his appeal for modernizing health care by investing in prevention. But is he just giving lip service? We need action and progressive leaders who will deliver! Write letters to your congressmen and women, and to the president expressing how important preventative care is to you. Get involved locally. Become an activist and make waves in your local community, or run for office. The only way we will see change in our current system is from people who get involved and want action.

Any prevention plan that works will include eating diet of whole foods and encourages you to avoid processed foods. That means, literally, foods that are as close to nature as possible. For the past 50 plus years, common medical rhetoric tells us to avoid foods with fat and cholesterol - but in doing so, we've caused many of the very debilitating diseases and conditions which have become so chronic in our culture. A return to traditional, whole foods is the only diet philosophy which supports a truly preventative way of looking at health. For more information about how the role of traditional diets prevents disease, visit The Weston A. Price Foundation.