Below is a short excerpt written by Daniel Lopez who is an Osteopath in New York. Osteopaths work on the premise that real Health is much more than just the absence of disease. According to Merriam-Webster Dictionary, the word health is defined as, “the condition of being sound in body, mind, or spirit; especially : freedom from physical disease or pain.” In short, this is saying that health is simply the “absence of disease or pain.” Sounds good right? This definition of “health” is what drives the medical field today. Think about it. The traditional medical approach takes whatever symptoms people have and the medicine given is generally aimed at suppressing the symptoms or simply remove them. Because as long as those symptoms are not present, then one is “healthy.” If you have inflammation, you take an anti-inflammatory. If you have a runny nose and congestion, you take a decongestant. If you have a bacterial infection, then you take an antibiotic. If you have high cholesterol, you take a stating to lower your cholesterol. If you have high blood pressure, then the solution is to take a medication that lowers your blood pressure. The list goes on and on. This has the mind set that is used when developing medications. Another approach is that if something is causing a problem, we simply remove it as long as it can be removed. Your gall bladder or appendix become inflamed, then let’s simply cut them out because you can live without them. Problem solved and you are “healthy” again because you are now free of physical disease and pain. The problem is that this is not a complete picture of health. Have you ever heard someone say something like, “So and so was healthy and then out of the blue had x and died”? Unless they caught an acute disease that is fatal within hours or days, that person was not “healthy” and then just died. The problem is that they really were not healthy, they were “asymptomatic.” Medicine will never see “health” as more than this as long as we operate with the mentality that health is the absence of disease and pain. Health is multifactorial which has multiple components including nutrition, exercise, structure, hydration, sleep, and many other components. Osteopath Melanie Young, Director of City Osteopaths, will add here that what we are looking to create in each person is optimal health. This means you have a body which is able to respond appropriately and quickly to immune challenges, has an ability to create the right hormones in the right amounts at the right times, to have fully functional digestion to gain the most from the food you eat, to be able to rapidly fall asleep, sleep the night through and awake refreshed with plenty of energy to last the whole day and partake in home/school/work activities with ease around you. To be able to enjoy and be fully present in each moment of the day with healthy relationships. This is Health and its what everyone needs.
Posted on: Thu, 15 May 2014 09:20:17 +0000
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