Alternative Medicine Articles

Alternative Medicine is Preventive; Western Medicine is Curative

Have you heard the term wellness? It has two contexts, one in alternative medicine and one in Western medicine.

In the alternative medicine world, wellness means taking care of yourself so you don't get sick. Let's find ways to avoid cancer, heart disease, mental illness. We can do this through changing our diet, exercising more, and changing our energy fields.

In Western medicine, we wait until we get one of these diseases, then we rush heroically to beat the disease. In Western medicine, the term wellness means early detection of disease. If you walk into a Wellness Center in a hospital, you'll see mammogram screening rooms, MRI machines and other tools to scan for the existence of disease.

Is that wellness? To me, it's not. Wellness is about staying well, it is about avoiding disease in the first place. When a person is told You have cancer, it is a major blow to their psyches, and their lives. Why go through that if you don't have to? Why not do whatever you can to avoid that terrible day?

Western medicine treats the pre-detection part of life as a kind of random soup of nothingness. You can't really do anything about any of these diseases, you just get them or you don't. No rhyme or reason to it, it just hits you, and then you deal with it.

Genetics is a big factor in the Western medical model. If you get cancer, ah, well, it was in your genes that you'd get it. You see, your great grandfather had cancer, so it was inevitable that you'd get it too.

Huh? Unfortunately, Western medicine can't explain why siblings get or don't get diseases supposedly passed on from their parents. One sister dies of cancer at a 25 (because of genetics) and the other sister lives to be 100 (also genetics?).

For my part, I'm going to take the best care of myself possible, and not play a silly waiting game for disease.

Daryl Kulak is the author of Health Insurance Off the Grid, a book that explores how a combination of holistic health and the new Health Savings Account (HSA) can make an enormous difference in the budget and health of the self-employed. Daryl is not a medical doctor, nor is he an insurance agent.

Related Links:

Know About the All Purpose Holistic Medicine

Bling Therapy - Healing with Gemstones

Revolutionary Medicine: Shockwave Therapy for Chronic Pain Sufferers

Latest Alternative Medicine News

Yet Another Reason to Eat Those Veggies ...
1 Sep 2008 at 4:15am
Want another way to beat your risk of developing cancer? Eat those veggies! Sure they get a bad wrap for maybe not being the sexiest food, but when...

Talk About Messing Up My Meditation
25 Aug 2008 at 11:05am
It seems that with each day, a new carcinogenic, or cancer causer, is brought to our collective attentions. If we are not told to stay away from microwaves, be...

Can Vitamin B Protect You from Pesky Mosquitoes?
18 Aug 2008 at 4:49am
Over the years, one of vitamin B's believed benefits is that it will protect you from mosquitoes. Supposedly, vitamin B creates such an unpleasant odor through one's pores that...

What is DHEA and What Should I Know About It?
4 Aug 2008 at 12:48pm
DHEA, short for dehydroepiandrosterone, is a hormone that's produced in the body and is converted into male and female hormones. Our natural DHEA levels typically peak in our 20s and...

Can Saw Palmetto Stop Baldness and Hair Loss?
29 Jul 2008 at 6:00am
A reader asks, What can you tell me about saw palmetto? I read that it's a good herbal remedy for hair loss and baldness. Saw palmetto (Serenoa repens or Sabal...

A Remedy for Scars?
23 Jul 2008 at 3:13am
A reader asks, Is there a remedy to prevent scars? A neighbor swears by honey, but I'd never heard of using it for scars. There are a number of home...