HEALTH + WELLNESS
time at an increased cost. Their visits
are simply triage sessions designed to
order tests, procedures and surgeries.
What is most concerning is Americans
are suffering from more health conditions and continue to be less healthy
every year. They are responsible for
the decline in their own health. They
lack appropriate education and currently the medical office environment
is not conducive to providing them
the education they need.
Physicians often lack the education as
well. Medical education is now funded
by the very corporations that profit the
most—the pharmaceutical corporations and the hospitals. Thus, medical
training now concentrates on pharmaceuticals, procedures, hospital care and
testing. There is little to no education
on prevention of disease and nutrition.
Medical corporations do not profit
from prevention.
How did it get so complicated? It
seems America’s medical system is as
unhealthy as we have become and at
the rate we are going it will be impossible to financially support this system.
It seems an impossible fix and it is
unclear where to start making changes.
Patients and physicians must be the
catalysts for change. It is unclear where
to start yet the solutions may lie in
teachings from thousands of years ago.
About 2,400 years ago, an early physician, Hippocrates, wrote a manual
providing early physicians and patients
with basic and useful information
designed to provide a holistic approach
to care. Though today every medical
student takes the “Hippocratic oath”
when receiving his medical degree,
few of these new doctors are familiar
with Hippocrates’s basic teachings and
fewer yet put any of the principles into
practice. Hippocrates teachings were
clearly ahead of his time. His guidelines should serve as a foundation for
the changes needed in our healthcare
system today.
Hippocrates was a Greek physician
who was born in 460 BC on the Greek
island of Cos. At the time, he was
regarded as one of the greatest physicians of his day. He based much of
his writings and practice on observations of the human body and how it
was affected by man’s surrounding
environment. He thwarted the belief
that disease was punishments from
the gods and instead was a result of
environmental and physical effects.
He was a great believer in cause
and effect. Some of his teachings are
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