Wellness
by Dr Jeff Wilson                                   

    Ever find it interesting how kids act when they go into a toy store? They see a magical world of exciting games, devices and play gear. There are opportunities everywhere, the shelves are full and it’s all there for the asking! To them, there isn’t a reason not to have what they wish; after all it’s what a toy store is all about. But as a parent, that’s not the same world you see. To you, there is a price tag or a sacrifice to be made for such items. Perhaps it’s even more unrealistic because you have come to ‘learn’ those items are just not meant to be had, that they aren’t meant to be taken off the shelf for anyone who merely asks.

    It comes down to a matter of perception. Compared to the following discussion, that may seem a bit glamorous of a comparison. However, the state of health in our country has become nothing short of an enormous tragedy, yet all the while we’re being led to believe that our advancing technologies are a means to overcome disease. Our perception is systematically being filtered, dare I say we are being brainwashed, leading us to think that our health care system is effective at bringing us better health. Changing our perception is the first step in bringing about a change to our health, our children’s health, and the future of our health care system.

    It’s not an enjoyable task to discuss the deplorable state of our country’s health any more than it is to watch the stock market these days, but the road to recovery similarly needs to accept a hard dose of reality. Or like our economy, the failing health of this country will continue to spiral beyond control.

    The declining state of our health has come about through Western medicine mentality. We are not a society entrenched with principles founded to preserve, nurture and cultivate the precious life forces. Instead we have contrived a system of treatments aimed at an expected cause and effect as if the essence of life is incapable of its own perfection. So subtle are the many facets of our system of care that our ‘perception’ of health has become distorted. It is completely out of line with the realism of what we can and should be doing for ourselves and especially our children. That solution is the concept of wellness, central to the theme of this article.

    If you ascribe to media publicity, we are led to believe that illness is a given fact of life that we are destined to encounter. It will rob us of our freedom to enjoy our time and future if we don’t protect ourselves with costly insurance and “early detection” methods driven by a mentality of allopathic (use of medicine remedies) care. Yet as the population is becoming enlightened to the success and better overall approach of natural health, we have adopted the concept of ‘wellness’ as the new model of maintaining and enhancing our health. As if we discovered some profound cure of our own self induced declining health, we now aspire to wellness as an icon of a new era of health philosophy.

    Don’t get me wrong, I’m all in favor of the ideals of wellness and counseling on natural health principles. What seems odd is that wellness shouldn’t be regarded as a novel concept but instead a principle of our lives, as basic as say, good morals.

    People of Eastern health philosophy embrace this as a lifestyle instead of a thing to go out and do. They don’t go in search of a place that treats for wellness or a program or service to sign up for. They understand that the body is a temple, pardon the cliché, and that health is as much a part of their internal being as every thought. We need to embrace an entirely unique (to us) perception of health. Making change won’t come from creating more artificial drugs or providing everyone universal coverage for the same failing care that hasn’t changed the scope of our disease progression for decades. We must accept new principles and ideals that promote the understanding and proliferation of the awesome power and perfection of life forces that we already posses. These fundamentals will not only preserve but will foster more robust health and a fulfilling life.

    Our challenge, as daunting as it has become, is to overcome the habits of the modernized, instant gratifying, automated society that has reduced our accountability and obliterated our children’s understanding and attention to health, and more accurately, the core energy of our life. It’s a task that will never be accomplished by the current social order, but only by individual choice to return to an understanding or ‘connection’ with the energy of our make up. The starting point is accepting the problem and wanting to make a change. In simplest terms, it begins at breakfast, lunch and dinner. It includes periods of focused exercise and mobility along with meditation. Even greater gains come with making spiritual connections and methods of energy healing. Fortunately these principles are gaining rapid attention, but for newcomers the real challenge is overcoming the dogma of our Western society lifestyle. Understand that Japan, for instance, has the world’s largest population of centenarians (no those aren’t Battlestar Gallactica fighters; they’re people over 100 years of age!) That will never come about from our ‘eat junk - don’t dare exercise - take the magic drug remedy’ mentality.

    A recent experience that I find exemplary occurred last year when I accompanied a friend who ran in a “Race for the Cure” event in Chicago. This program is an awesome example of the dedication of millions to strive for a cure for breast cancer, with millions of dollars in research funding provided from scientific, medical and corporate grants. However the disparaging part of the event was the misrepresented image portrayed for a “cure” of cancer by the nature of the supporting sponsors. Surrounding the staging area at the lakefront park were booths of packaged, processed foods, junk food and potato chip vendors. While some were supposedly more “healthful”, no products available were without poor substances or artificial additives with some known level of health risk. Yet other than bottled water, nowhere was a single provision for essential elements of life and health. There was no source of nutritional supplements, organic food growers, green teas, anti-oxidant products, detoxification systems, fitness center representation, mental or spiritual guides or any other element of restorative health. In essence, a ‘cause’ that most Americans support gallantly, the search for cancer cures, is being supported by factors that are known to perpetuate its course and yet not a single provider of proven anti-cancer mechanisms was present. Although this wasn’t surprising to me, I was curious as to how many others, if any, were aware of the same travesty.

    In a recent article in US News and World Report, Top Hospitals Embrace Alternative Medicine, doctors talk of change but nonetheless with resistance. The article describes a significant trend toward obvious success of Eastern medicine and integrative health principles. People are utilizing methods and embracing a new mentality toward life that is more effective and getting results despite an air of disdain from Western medical doctors. Although she assumes a position in integrative medicine, Dr. Barrie Cassileth states CAM therapies for cancer patients at Memorial Sloan-Kettering "have to be rational, and they have to be evidence-based". Homeopathy is "absurd," she says. "It's like a religion." Nor does she put much faith in energy healing: "Manipulating someone's energy field is nonsense." And while acupuncture is offered at Sloan-Kettering, "we don't do it thinking we're stimulating a vital force—we know we are releasing substances from the brain that make people feel better." In actuality, her interpretation is consistent with the flawed thinking and resistance to the evidence of more successful approaches. I am fortunate to have spent many years as a research scientist, learning the skill of interpretation of data, and understanding what “evidence-based” actually means. I comically refer to Columbus; the world is round but Western medicine continues to insist it is flat no matter how much evidence says otherwise. Some people will continue to look for the edge no matter what.

    Our perception of our health and sustaining the energies of life is changing, although slowly. It’s kept in slow motion by the archaic mentality of a powerful pharmaceutical based, allopathic model of health care. Fortunately more and more individuals are coming to understand that toy on the shelf is really available. That restoring health is there for the asking if you truly want it – don’t be convinced you have to resign to a path of disease and failing cures. It’s up to us to decide if we want to be part of the system that says the world is flat, and continue to expect that a magic drug will come. Or we can decide to connect to the essence and energy of life and choose the means and measures to bring about wellness, not simply as a program at the fitness center, but as a true state of mind.