The general meaning of the word disease ” according to Wikipedia ” is that it describes an abnormal condition affecting the body of an organism. The signs and symptoms of which suggest a particular medical condition which will be caused by external factors or internal dysfunction. An example of the former would be an infectious disease while the latter would be typified by something like an autoimmune disorder.
Is it possible that the way in which we perceive disease has led to the many problems within our current healthcare model and its increasing ineffectiveness?
Instead of looking at disease as a set of symptoms which speak to the overall condition of the biological system which is your metabolism; we give them names. In doing so it’s as if we give them a life of their own and think of them as independently arising circumstances that happen to us as a result of genetic predisposition and/or the luck of the draw. In true interventionist form we then attack the symptoms rather than stepping back to perhaps see what fell out of balance in the first place and thereby attempt to re-establish the balance lost.
This naming and focus on treatment through intervention, without regard for the metabolism as a whole has also led to the mainstream creation of many strands of specialty throughout the medical profession. All of these specialists have particular sets of tools in the form of drugs and surgery with which to intervene and make war on symptoms. For example an oncologist is trained to fight cancer with chemo-therapy and surgery. Under the ‘best practices’ model there is little consideration for what metabolic shortcomings or environmental factors led to the cancer in the first place. The orthopaedic surgeon only knows to replace the damaged joints of an osteoarthritis sufferer; with no consideration of why the patients body stopped regenerating and replacing cartilage.
This fracturing of medicine into separate disciplines has naturally made it almost impossible to receive treatment as a whole person. Instead of creating and maintaining well-being we have become consumers of health. To the medical establishment we are nothing more than individual collections of symptoms, conveniently catalogued and named. The pharmaceutical companies with there co-responding treatments for ongoing management of these diseases coupled with the side effects of treatments, provide a never ending stream of drugs; in effect creating a perpetual money engine.
Whether evolved or designed, there is simply no discounting the remarkable example of bio-engineering that is represented by the human metabolism. It is a system which exists only through an inconceivable number of interrelated processes carried out by an equally diverse number of micro-organisms and cellular machinery. Not to mention the complex symbiotic relationship with bacteria which provides for digestion and a majority of the immune system. In each one of the more than a trillion cells that make up the human body, there can be one hundred thousand processes going on in each one of those cells at any given moment. This system is sustained by the variety of organic and inorganic (mineral) elements traditionally available to us from our environment. How could balance not be a part of such an inconceivably complex biological system? The fact that these bodies are adaptive, regenerative, organized, self balancing and self healing when provided with the right fuel, is completely ignored by the interventionist mainstream approach.
Osteoarthritis is not a disease that attacks your joints. It’s a collection of symptoms that indicate a metabolic hunger for the components of tissue repair. In this case the cartilage that pads your afflicted joints. Taking NSAIDs and carving out the problem will do nothing to attend to the underlying metabolic need that caused the problem to begin with. I suppose it could be likened to a coal minor ignoring the fact that the canary in the cage beside him is dead and casting the canary aside, works on anyway.
If you are content to give yourself over to the mainstream treatment for your osteoarthritis then so be it. After all freedom is about choice but in choice, there is also freedom to be found and perception is everything. Metabolic health is the ultimate freedom from disease, medically imposed pain and financial hardship. I know this to be true after correcting the symptoms of my own osteoarthritis without drugs or surgery.