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Choosing Health Care It seems that there is a lot of discussion going on in our nation about health care, how much it costs, and who should pay for it. But even more basic than that, a lot of people are questioning the very definition of health care. Often the treatment we receive appears to focus only on what is "broken" or what is wrong with a part of our bodies like we are machines that can be fixed simply by changing a defective part. It is often thought that merely eliminating symptoms is the answer to sickness and pain, but this is "disease care"; it only treats the body's response to the cause of the problem. When you use a pain killer you only mask the pain and do nothing to deal with its cause. Would you turn off a ringing fire alarm without looking for the fire? Worse still, your body can develop a tolerance to medications and you have to take more and more to get the same results. Now you have another problem. It seems to me that it wasn't always this way. For centuries, humankind understood that a person is more than just a collection of parts. People knew that the mind and spirit of a person was just as important to good health as the parts of the body. But in recent years, things have gotten out of balance. We have been primarily looking at the mechanisms of the body and seem to feel that the mind and spirit aren't involved at all in poor health. Well, even our bodies know this is the wrong way to look at things because they rarely respond to surgery and drugs with true lasting health. It is becoming clear to millions of people that repair work is not "Healthcare" and now they are looking for answers. It seems to me that healthcare should be a system based on the wisdom that addressing and treating the whole person, mind and body, is fundamental to good health. Holistic Healthcare is the better answer that people are looking for, a way to treat the causes of disease and discomfort and find permanent good health. It is a system that deals with the reasons for poor health rather than just the symptoms of disease. Now, to me that makes allot of sense. |