What prevents people from healing today?
There are too many self-imposed and societal barriers to health:
- Stress
- Disparities
- Access
- Cost
- Knowledge Gap
- Regulation
- Wait times
- Pollution
- Plastics
- Chemicals
- The mindset that the magic pill will cure me – I can’t heal myself
The modern medical model focuses on acute symptom relief. This is limited to focusing on the illness, not the cause. This type of care is fragmented and does not optimally serve the individual’s best interest when you can only heal or address one body part at a time. The body is viewed in parts, not as a whole.
Finally!
The medical approach is shifting the focus on prevention, and care is coordinated by a team of health care professionals who communicate to each other to obtain the best result available for the patient. This model involves sitting and listening to the patient.
According to Dr. Jerry Mysiw, if you listen long enough, the patient will give you a diagnosis. Physicians are relying heavily on metrics that limit what they can do to support a patient. This new model of teamwork, communication, collaboration, and treating the person as a human being instead of a number was around hundreds of years ago. Sages, doctors, medicine women would use roots to heal the body. The body responds best to natural substances, not chemicals or sulfur medicines with so many adverse side effects. We are now going back to plant-based medicine. As the philosophers say, if you wait long enough you will see it happen again.
Coordinated, long-term care increases life expectancy and improves the health of the patient, and they make fewer trips back to the hospital.
- Community
- Peer support
- Resources and policy
This type of patient is more involved in their own care which helps them feel empowered, as they become proactive in improving outcomes.
Being heard and seen is one of the most important things in health care.
Working Together to Find the Answer
I had the opportunity to work with a motor vehicle accident client who was in a minor accident. He presented with concussion and whiplash. After working with him a couple of times, I referred him to a medical doctor that does trigger point injections. When he returned to my office after the injections, his muscles were becoming more hypertonic and the symptoms were bigger than a concussion, but he was being judged as a malingerer and chronic complainer.
I requested he ask this medical doctor to prescribe an MRI, which he did. It turns out a tumor was present in his sinus cavity, causing many of the symptoms on the left side of his temple, chronic headaches, and visual pain. Taking the time to listen it is the secret to discover what is beneath the pain.
Does your health care team support you? If not, it’s time to find the doctor that supports your need for prevention and longevity.