editor’s letter T e wellness challenge I
n mid-April, I went to the excellent TEDMED conference in Washington DC and had a thought
provoking week hearing about the future of health and medicine. Although the majority of speakers
took the conventional view of disease as something to be ‘cured’ with drugs and surgery, there were also a number of speakers who challenged this. Mark Hyman from the Institute for Functional Medicine argued that we should make a clear distinction between conditions which can be prevented or resolved by lifestyle change – such as obesity and heart disease – and medical situations such as accidents which require surgery and drug therapy. He said we’ve reached a tipping point where there are
more obese people in the world than people who are starving and that this problem can be most cheaply and eff ectively dealt with through lifestyle change. I’d always naïvely assumed the spa and wellness
industries and the medical sector share broadly the same goal of a healthier world, however, I came away with a diff erent impression. For drug companies and some parts of the medical profession, it appears that the optimal outcome is large numbers of people who are well enough to stay alive for long periods of time, but sick enough to need constant medication, so they’re eff ectively being farmed for profi t. And creating combinations of drugs can be even more lucrative – one speaker explained there are diabetes
Drug companies need large numbers of people who are well enough to stay alive for long periods of time, but sick enough to need constant medication
drugs that cause heart problems and heart drugs that cause diabetes – he referred to this as ‘pharmageddon’. I’d always thought it was a lack of pharma development
which led to this happening, but the more sinister explanation is that once you have a contraindication, you’ve created a market for another product. I came away with the view that wellness and
conventional medicine are in competition. So what’s the answer? Firstly, to fi nd allies within the
medical world and to collaborate with them to build a body of knowledge which proves that lifestyle change works. Secondly, to work with the corporate health sector because they have the same objectives. T irdly, to work with government health providers who are focused on reducing costs and fourthly, and most importantly, to educate consumers, so they understand they have the power to remain healthy and to cure disease through great lifestyle choices.
Liz Terry, editor twitter: @elizterry
Read editor’s letters
from previous issues of Spa Business at
blog.spabusiness.com SPA BUSINESS 2 2012 ©Cybertrek 2012
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