What would happen if we became CEOs of our own health?
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What would happen if we became CEOs of our own health?
When Jack Dee, a stand-up comedian, suggests he ought to be elected as Minister for Health to sort things out in a day, the audience spontaneously laughs. Yet, scratch deeper underneath this man’s humour and his further suggestion to, “Stop people coming if what happened to them is their own fault”, even though it “sounds hard but word would get around and people would start to be more careful”, it must be said, carries some truth …
Traditionally, we held doctors on par with priests and handed them over a certain sovereignty, which many gladly held onto, retaining this whole mystic air around them and the know-it-all attitude. With the Latin lingo they were reminiscent of the priests of the medieval times who held their power over the common folk by reading the mass in Latin, so the populace couldn’t understand them.
But, what would happen if we stopped seeing doctors as gods and the answer to all our prayers?
What would happen if we became CEOs of our own health, which is precisely what’s humorously alluded to by Jack Dee?
More than ever there is a great call for doctors, historically the gatekeepers of health care, to step back and for patients to step forward to take greater responsibility for their health, keeping it in their own hands rather than handing it over completely to the doctor.
Everything in and around us, all the stats as well as many of our medics, including Professor Tony Young, a consultant surgeon and The NHS’s National Clinical Director for Innovation, are telling us that it is high time “We get serious about prevention.” And to get serious about prevention means each of us taking more responsibility for the daily choices we make.
Gradually, we have seen massive changes in our health care/medical systems. Doctors’ bags have morphed to a point where what’s available to doctors is available to patients too – new tools, tests, apps … a digital patient kit in the comfort of our living rooms. Apparently we are already living with generations that will be equipped with ‘insideables’ – chips (not the French fries kind!) planted under one’s skin and ‘ingestibles’ – minute sensor pills we would swallow. All of which are said to be able to take us away from medical professionals and have healthcare placed back into our own hands.
But are we taking responsibility for our own health as much as possible? If at all?
Whilst advances are being made with personalised medicine, where the right drug is administered for the right person at the right time, taking all patient factors into consideration, there is much more still to be done to achieve true personalised medicine. The days of one size (drug) fits all ought to be consigned to the history books.
Taking responsibility and having personal medicine would imply that we’d not only live longer but healthier too. Or perhaps not – if we continue to bathe in the pool of irresponsibility.
Some of the world’s most esteemed scientists are convinced that the ageing process can be treated as an illness and apparently billions are being poured into longevity research to find the elusive cause of ageing in order to attenuate it.
But what is the purpose of defying death when we are light years away from defying so many diseases?? It’s like looking to the stars to avoid addressing all the earthly matters.
Indeed, people are living longer, surviving conditions that in the past were untreatable. However, we have a situation where, according to Professor Young, 70% of our healthcare budget is spent on chronic disease management! Evidently, living longer is costing us a fortune because the disease is still prevalent.
In the same talk I heard Professor Young state the fact that more than half of our population is overweight or obese! – the trend which is suggesting that in the coming years more people will die from obesity than cancer.
And YET – Obesity = entirely preventable condition! The equation we seem to loathe hearing, let alone heeding.
Given the seriousness of this, shouldn’t we as a nation, as a race of people, actually do something about it, other than book our medical appointments and cry out loud: HELP/SAVE ME/RESCUE ME? And when that’s not possible we complain about medics, blame the respective governments for insufficient funds and call the NHS incompetent.
Hard not to concur with Jack Dee when he says he is sick of people moaning about the NHS and medics, the very same people who work hard day and night to help restore our health, rectifying the outcomes of our ill-choices. The last thing they need to hear is us moaning things like: “Casualty is such a horrible place to be.”
“Yes it is,” confirms Jack. “Because something horrible has happened to us! What do we want? Disneyland?”
Around 8.5% of our GDP is spent on healthcare and around 18% in the USA. Are we not, through our irresponsible behaviour, (food and lifestyle choices) further taxing a system that is already bankrupt, and then we berate it? No amount of money poured into the NHS would satiate the balance sheet if we continue to eat and drink ourselves to illness and disease.
“Our medics do provide great healthcare but there is only so much they can do when the patients are not taking care of themselves,” says Professor Young. He/They are not telling us this to fend us off from overcrowding the wards and clinics, but instead they are communicating that they are only human and there is only so much fixing they can do. No different to what a car mechanic would say/do if we kept bringing back our car as a result of our bad driving techniques like overusing the clutch or misusing the gears.
Many of our wise and hard working medics like Professor Young are appealing to patients, doctors, citizens, indeed to everyone, that we all need to roll our sleeves up if we are going to deliver a society that knows and lives health and wellbeing, which would then lead to a richer quality of life for all.
Health and wellbeing of our society is in truth about prevention and it starts with caring enough for ourselves to make more sound choices when it comes to food and beverages, how we move, how we exercise, how we are both physically and emotionally, as it is our daily choices and behaviours that contribute to illness and disease.
“There is no money to be made in preventative medicine. And that is because each and every one of us just needs to get on with being responsible for our lifestyle choices. But there are trillions to be made from irresponsibility.
Serge Benhayon Esoteric Teachings and Revelations Volume II, p 128
And guess which medicine currently dominates society?”
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Medicine, Well-being, Health, Lifestyle
