With the ubiquitous buzzword "health care" second only to "financial crisis" these days, I was drawn to a couple of articles yesterday that try to take up the cause of redefining 'health' and 'health care' in this country.

Shawn Phillips, of Body-For-Life fame, makes this point about American health care in the online magazine Success:  Americans spend an increasing amount of resources, not only on health care but on health and fitness products and services, but we're still getting sicker.  Phillips suggests that, among other things, it's because our conception of "health" is flawed:

...for most of us health is subconsciously, if not consciously, defined as the "absence of disease."...Barring a sudden, tragic diagnosis like cancer, you’re "healthy." As a result, we talk about health, eat a few veggies, slip in and out of diets and avoid the doctor—yet make no real change until it’s absolutely necessary....For those who refuse to settle for "good enough" there exists a higher state of life. Some know it as "optimal health." I call it strength...strength is the presence of abundant energy...

It's a good point, and reminds me of the paradigm which puts sickness, wellness, and fitness on a health continuum:  whereas "sickness" is a lack of wellness, "fitness" is a state of hyper-wellness.  It's further away from sickness.  Seen this way, the pursuit of fitness isn't just a fanatical, self-centered hobby but a buffer against disease.  It's health plus.  It's money in the wellness bank.

But in our health care system, fitness is, generally speaking, an afterthought.  The focus is on sickness:  treating it, patching us up, medicating us, getting in there with all fours with the stainless steel, then sending us back, dazed and sutured, onto the battlefield.  It's wrongheaded to point fingers:  pressed to the wall, I'd place equal blame on the medical pros, who generally don't emphasize fitness enough, and on us, the consumers, who expect our doctors to work miracles on the bodies we've neglected for decades.

I'd also hazard that there's a distinctly American fear of stepping on toes at play here.  We don't like being told what to do, so doctor's often don't, even when we need it (there is evidence to support this).  We want to be allowed to eat french fries and play video games all day and still look like a million bucks on the beach, and who says we can't?

 


In this Experience Life article, the author suggests that we need to make a sharp left  turn away from thinking of health care as "The Doctor I Go To When Something Breaks"--what she calls the "fix-me" method--to a more holistic approach, in which we take more personal responsibility for our health: rethinking our diet, activity levels, environmental influences, AND relationships with health providers.  In other words, we should seek to become active partners with our doctors in maintaining our health and wellness.

This sounds like a bit of a pipe dream, but apparently, there are promising signs of change out there:

    ...Healthcare consumers, providers and policy makers are all quickly waking up to the fact that conventional Western medicine – with its dependence on long-term pharmaceutical use and expensive interventions – is not serving the real needs of a population (and economy) in the throes of a chronic-disease crisis.

The Institute for Functional Medicine (IFM) in Gig Harbor, Wash., is among the most promising beacons of hope on this horizon. Established in 1992, and overseen by an impressive collection of leading medical minds, the IFM (www.functionalmedicine.org) is committed to reeducating and reorienting medical professionals along more integrated, patient-centered lines – in keeping with the very best established science.

I'm not sure if I can yet envision a health-care industry in which, for instance, fitness coaches are an integral part of everyone's 'wellness team,' but groups like the IFM are certainly a step in the right direction.