Putting Medical Science Under the Microscope, Part 5
My purpose is not to disparage science. Far from it. Medical research has produced many life saving and life enhancing advances. Whenever I write a prescription or recommend a treatment, I rely on the body of medical knowledge produced by generations of dedicated scientists.
My point is that science is not infallible. Medical research isn’t always correct and doesn’t always have the complete and final answer.
But, when it comes to our health, we want infallible. We want definitive answers. We put our faith in the most up-to-date research. We eagerly wait for the latest wonder drug, believing it can deliver what it promises and what we need. We believe that science holds the key to health.
Our faith in science blinds us to other forces which shape and influence our health. We don’t recognize that there is something beyond medicine which keeps us alive and well. That something is inside each of us. We both hold and are the key to health.
The human body is a medical marvel: well-tuned, self-diagnosing, self-repairing machine which replaces 50 to 70 billion new cells each day. The body can easily go into overdrive, increasing its self-repair capacity several times over in order to fight infections, or recover from surgery, or mend broken bones. Without the help of the human body, no medication or surgery or any other treatment can work.
The key to health is the body’s own self-repair mechanisms. When we think about the latest medical breakthrough, we need to look to ourselves just as much as we look to science. Healthcare should be more than writing prescriptions or getting diagnostic tests. True healthcare recognizes the importance of the self-repair systems, and supports each of us in creating conditions which foster and strengthen that system.
In an era of increasing chronic disease and rising medical costs, we need new ways of looking at health. We need to focus less on disease, and place more emphasis on our innate ability to maintain our health. We need to ask how exactly does the body heal the cut, rather than making a better bandage. And we need to make maintaining our health a priority, rather than waiting for science to save us once we’re sick.
You are the key to health, and the future of healthcare lies — quite literally — in your fingertips.
