complementary medicine

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 young age (because of genetics) and the other sister lives to be 100 (genetics).

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