This page contains a Flash digital edition of a book.
BFive Steps to


by Marco Visscher, Ursula Sautter and Carmel Wroth


How integrative medicine can make health care simpler, more effective and more affordable.


etter Health


Suffering from headaches and depression? Don’t let a doctor put you on drugs; instead, look for the underlying causes. High cholesterol? Try the Mediterranean diet, with a glass of organic red wine a day. The best way to win the war on cancer? Eat healthy, exercise and develop an active social life. An increasing number of physicians are realizing that this type of approach, geared to prevention and a conservative use of medications and technol- ogy, not only increases patients’ vitality, but saves lots of money.


I


n the words of Dr. Dean Ornish, founder and chairman of the Preventive Medicine Research Institute, in Sausalito, California, “It is time to change not only who is covered, but also what is covered.” There is an overemphasis, he says, on treating symptoms and on the idea that caring for our health is primarily the responsibility of medical experts, rather than of individuals themselves.


Zhaoming Chen, a neurologist and chairman of the American Association of Integrative Medicine, describes the way things currently work. “We only treat the disease after it occurs.” With figures showing that 95 cents out of every dollar spent on health care goes toward treating illness, he notes that “The best way to reduce the costs is prevention.” Integrative medicine puts the patient, not the doctor or the


36 Collier/Lee Counties swfl.naturalawakeningsmag.com


insurance company, at the center of attention, and it puts the focus on the sources of illness and not the symptoms. Health care costs are continually rising, but people are not getting any healthier. Here is a five-point prescription for the future of health care that applies the tenets of integrative medicine to make today’s health care simpler, more effective and more affordable.


1. Emphasize Illness Prevention About half of all American adults have a chronic illness, according to the Partnership for Solutions, a John Hopkins University-led initiative to improve care for Americans with chronic health conditions. Ornish claims that three-quarters of the more than $2 trillion recently spent on health care in a single year went to treat these kinds of conditions, includ- ing obesity. “All of these can be not only prevented, but even reversed through diet and lifestyle intervention,” he says. “It just seems so obvious to me that this is where we should be putting our focus.”


There is a long way to go before prevention is on the national agenda. While prevention is indeed better than cure, we tend to reward those who find solutions for existing problems rather than those who ensure that those problems don’t occur. “Prevention is boring,” says Ornish. Rather, “We need to focus on living better.”


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72