Healthcare According to Congress
The healthcare system is getting attention and Congress and the world are exploring the most effective ways to administer healthcare. It has become even more imperative that we address how much power the individual has in caring for themselves medically. The whole concept of lifestyle change is based upon the idea that your own choices can have more impact on your healthcare than many medical interventions. This is because lifestyle changes address the problems before they happen. They are preventative, instead of trying to repair a damaged body after the fact. Recently the U.S. Congress discussed this very fact. Check out the press release from the Council of Responsible Nutrition.
It seems so elegant and sophisticated to solve complex problems medically. For the medical community it has seemed too rudimentary and simple for nutrition and lifestyle to be accorded the same weight as actual medical science. As some of my other posts have indicated though, new discoveries warrant another look. Epigenetics and modern biochemistry make scientific equality of nutritional and environmental issues essential for medical science to even progress. These two elements are becoming even more important to study since so little is known about their true connection to all aspects of body function and disease. They are emerging sciences. As such are only beginning to show their importance in the overall prevention and treatment of the diseases and chronic disorders that have also financially crippled so many in the last century.
The linked article above from the Council for Responsible Nutrition quotes one M.D. this way:
“Mark Hyman, M.D., Medical Director of The UltraWellness Center and nationally recognized author, speaker and authority on prevention and wellness, spoke about the importance of treating the entire system, not just the symptoms, when it comes to health conditions or illnesses.
“The irony is that the current healthcare system will pay for expensive medical treatments, but it won’t pay for dietary supplements to keep our bodies healthy,” said Dr. Hyman. “As a nation, we are overfed but undernourished. Dietary supplements play an important role in functional and preventive medicine.””
Can Science Catch Up with Us?
Science is trying to catch up with our own bodies natural ability to heal when given the proper tools. They do not fully understand the body, but are trying, and are just beginning to really formulate some tools. That is why I work along with Nutritional Council and use their products. This company is not merely a supplier of nutriceuticals, but is on the forefront of educating on emerging scientific studies, and how to utilize them in modern nutritional therapy.
Since you cannot patent a food, or at least should never be allowed to, (contrary to some GMO food patents currently held) their research is unusual. Why? It does enhance their ability to create proprietary blends of different nutrients and profit from their sale. However, the nutrients themselves, once isolated as functioning in a particular therapeutic capacity, are fair game to any manufacturer to use. That is what prevents the FDA from accepting health food products official claims to treat disease.
If the same resources that pharmaceutical companies use to develop profitable synthetic drugs were used to prove the efficacy of natural remedies, we could see a much more rapid development of standardized therapies from nutrition and supplements. But who will pay for the studies and the science that they will not personally benefit from financially where does the money come from? Good question. Thankfully there are scientists willing to do the work, and these are the ones we rely upon for the information that supports our work and the production of the highest quality supplements. You see it has to be someone who cares about the science more than the money, and helping others more than themselves. This seems contrary to the very nature of our species. But in the case of nutrition, helping others is helping ourselves, and not pursuing this with all our force and resources, is self destructive.
Our Goal is to do just that. Use our time and energy, along with resources available to us to promote the investigation and study of the use of nutrients for better health.
We must all keep our eyes and ears open for new information and emerging studies. These can help empower us to become stronger and healthier using simple techiques. All this without relying exclusively on post-catastrophic intervention, and chemical cocktails that line pockets. All science must work together, and as we know, hubris is probably the biggest hurdle in any scientific discussion. This is of course second only to personal remuneration, or cash returns, and this can be simple greed, which is a sickness of mind not body. Yes I can hear the altruistic champions of scientific integrity, and heated denials of those in the scientific community staunchly rejecting any charge of selfish gain or ego. Rebuttals do not create truth. Only positive actions and meritorious, meaningful work do.
James Marfleet, CNC, LE