Books Worth Reading: Health and Healing: The Philosophy of Integrative Medicine and Optimum Health, by Andrew T. Weil MD

There are, as near as I can determine, no books about health, although there are many titles claiming to be about health – on books about medicines and illness.  We might count books that aren't really about health, like many exercise books.  There are no diet books about health – they are all about illness.

If you want to learn about health, there are a few books worth reading.  Some of them will change your understanding of health and medicine. This is one, although it is not a book about health.

Health and Healing: The Philosophy of Integrative Medicine and Optimum Health by Dr Andrew T. Weil

I listened to the audio book in my car as I drove from place to place – a very effective way to read a good book, although repeating specific passages of interest can be a bit tedious – and referencing them afterwards even more challenging.  This book is a comprehensive review of conventional (he uses the word allopathic) and various alternative medical systems.  It is fascinating, well written and full of interesting ideas.  Dr Weil gives an intelligent review, albeit his personal opinion, of each of the fields of medicine.

Andrew Weil has worked and studied in and with many different fields of medicine, gaining a lot of experience over the years. He provides a very scientific and interesting view of different schools of medicine.  He reviews allopathic (traditional Western) medicine, homeopathic, naturopathic, osteopathic, and chiropractic; acupuncture, holistic medicine, shamanism, faith healing, and psychic healing.

His discussion of placebos is a powerful document on the weaknesses of allopathic medicine. He points out many inconsistencies in the way conventional medicine treats placebos and the placebo concept. Specifically, they do not treat placebos scientifically. However, he neglects to discuss the concept of regression to the mean, which is an important factor in the placebo effect.  Not surprising, as this aspect of placebos is seldom recognized or discussed in medical research.  In simplest terms, regression to the mean is the tendency of things that are ‘out of balance’, or away from the ‘mean’ on first measurement, to regress to towards the mean on subsequent measurements.  To a statistician, regression is a statistical fact that has nothing to do with cures or placebos, it is simply a fact of statistics and how they work. To medical researchers, regression to the mean is easily mistaken for the placebo effect of placebos, or the placebo effect of drugs.  And it is very difficult to separate from the placebo effect, especially in cursory analysis. 

I loved the section of healing of warts – where he demonstrated beyond doubt that none of the so called ‘healers’ has a scientific approach to illness. None can heal warts effectively although all agree that warts can be healed, sometimes by the strangest of techniques; a clear demonstration of the failure of so called ‘medical science’ and of 'alternative medicine' as well.

Unfortunately, although Dr. Weil put the word ‘health’ in the title, the book would more accurately be named ‘Sick and Healing’, or perhaps ‘Medicine and Healing”. Of course it would have sold fewer copies with a more accurate title.  Dr. Weil seldom makes any true references to health except in the binary mode (you are healthy, or you are not healthy).There is no discussion of healthicine in any detail, only of medicine. 

Andrew Weil clearly demonstrates the case that medicine, as studied today is an incomplete and unscientific field of study. He has also demonstrated that the different fields of medicine are adversarial and thus weaker and less scientific than we might hope.

It is unfortunate that he does not take the next step – to suggest a study of healthicine (of which medicine is a small subset). We can hardly blame him – healthicine is not in the dictionary.

Andrew Weil has written many other books, and although I have seen a few of them, I don't think any others have real value in the field of health (as opposed to the field of medicine). He often uses the phrase 'optimal health', but completely ignores many aspects of healthiness, focusing instead on illness.  For example, his book: "Natural Health, Natural Medicine: The Complete Guide to Wellness and Self-Care for Optimum Health by Andrew Weil (Dec 9, 2004)", which might appear from the title to be about health, is according to the introduction: "a complete guide to preventative health maintenance" (whatever that might actually mean is beyond my comprehension).  It has a chapter on diet, one on exercise, one on connections - but the content could as easily have been written by anyone with a bit of common sense. That is to say - they could have been written by any normal person with a bit of knowledge and head full of some right ideas and some nonsense. It has more chapters on medicine than on health - and he even puts supplemental vitamins and minerals in the 'treatment' section of the book. You can't judge a book by it's cover.

Andrew Weil has a website where he promotes his ideas and concepts of health and medicine with the tagline "Your Trusted Health Advisor". Unfortunately the items on his website are remarkably predictable,  and not really about healthiness in any depth. The website has a clear 'medical' focus as opposed to a health focus and repeats many common misconceptions about health.

to your health, tracy
PersonalHealthFreedom.com 

Tracy is the author of two book about healthicine: 

What is Healthiness?

Some time ago, I realized that 'healthiness' was not in the dictionary.  If you search for healthiness, you will (as of today, August 7, 2012) find yourself re-directed to 'health'.  But if you search for 'illness', you are not re-directed to 'ill'.  Why?

I later noticed that 'healthicine' is also not in the dictionary, and commented about these missing words in several blog posts, as I tried to understand their meaning. As I explored by blogging, I found that blogging only gives a small view into the total concept of healthicine and healthiness. As a result, I have decided, and started to write a book on Healthicine, which will be available through online purchase to articulate my ideas about healthicine and healthiness.

Many years ago, I read Kurt Vonnegut's essay 'New Dictionary', in the collection "Welcome to the Monkey House".  At that time I realized that dictionaries are created by people, people with understandings, mis-understandings and points of view.  I take all dictionary definitions as - interesting starting points, to be used to further our knowledge.

Of course when a word is not even in the dictionary, we have to make do. Long before the internet, I saw a common word: 'tare' on the side of many trucks.  I looked and looked in dictionaries, but could not find it.  Finally, many years later, it appeared in dictionaries.

When will 'healthiness' appear in dictionaries?  Today, Wiki re-directs to 'health', Merriam-Webster, and Oxford redirect to 'healthy'.  Wiki and Merriam-Webster make no further reference to the word, providing no further clarification. Oxford Online simply says "healthiness: noun". Healthy is defined: "in good physical or mental condition, in good health", healthiness is the noun, not really defined.

The suffix 'ness' is defined.  Merriam-Webster defines '-ness' as: state : condition : quality : degree .  Oxford dictionary says: denoting a state or condition.  

Healthiness therefore refers to a state, condition, quality, degree, of health. 

Illness - refers to a specific type, or state of 'ill', healthiness refers to a specific type, or state, or quality, of health.

Health is often considered to be present or absent.  Either you 'have your health', or you don't (eg. you are ill).  The word healthiness can be used to indicate a state, or status of health on a scale. Health is not typically measured, because it is very complex and poorly defined.  Each healthiness can be measured. We can measure height, weight and calculate BMI.  We can measure heart rate, respiration rate, temperature.  Some measurements are mechanical and objective - they could be done by a machine. We can also measure subjective healthinesses, like pain - how much pain do you feel, what kind of pain do you feel, how frequently do you feel pain.

When we are 'ill' there can be many different types of illness present, and there can be varying degrees of 'illness'.  You might have a mild cold, a bad flu, or a terminal cancer. There are many unique illnesses, and each unique 'illness' can have many dimensions. The same is true for healthiness.

When we first think about health, we think of it as an overall condition.  He, or she, is healthy (or not healthy). If we translate this to healthiness, we want to know the quality of healthiness.  He, or she, is very healthy, somewhat healthy, a little unhealthy, very unhealthy, etc.

It is possible to be very healthy, somewhat healthy, or unhealthy - without being ill.   It is possible to be healthy, somewhat healthy, and unhealthy, and be ill at the same time.  Thus: "Jim has a cold, but he is a very healthy person, so we expect him to recover quickly." or "John has a cold, and his health is so poor we are worried he will get pneumonia."

Each healthiness is an independent state, although each can affect the other.

When we start to study healthiness, we recognize the need for more detail. Because we don't study healthiness seriously, we have very poor information about the many scales of healthiness. Healthicine is the study of healthinesses. Today, healthicine is not even in the dictionary, and therefore it is not studied seriously by anyone.

On any healthiness scale, the status of an individual person might be deficient, or in the normal range, or excessive.  We know that all illness is the result of a deficiency or an excess.  The challenge is to know learn is normal, and what might be an optimal range for each type of healthiness.

Resting pulse, for example, is a measure of healthiness. Resting pulse might be too low - a deficiency, that can indicate or cause illness, it might be in the normal range, or it might be too high - an excess that indicates or causes illness.  But it gets more complicated. A healthy resting pulse for an athlete is very different from a healthy resting pulse for a senior. A healthy resting pulse for someone with a large heart is lower than for an equivalent person with a smaller heart.

We also need to distinguish between average, normal, healthy and unhealthy. The average adult has less than 2 legs - about 1.9995, because some people have had a leg amputated.  A normal adult has two legs.  An amputee, having less than two legs, can be healthier than a normal adult with two legs.

And so it goes for each healthiness indicator.  Each healthiness has an average range, a normal range, and a healthy range, which may vary depending on the individual being assessed.

Some indicators might have no deficiency level or no excessive level (in normal situations).  For example, mercury provides no useful contribution to health, so there is no possibility of a 'mercury deficiency'.  Because mercury is toxic, the optimal level for health is zero.  The average level is typically higher than the optimal level, because all of us, living in today's society, have some mercury in our bodies.  The amount of mercury that is excessive is not clearly defined - we don't know the level required to create illness, and it varies depending on the specific form of mercury and the individual being assessed.

Some health issues, some healthinesses, are very controversial, or very confused by current medical studies.  What is the optimal level of 'fat' in a healthy person?  Many people believe that less fat is healthier, but this is not proven.  When certain types of fat levels drop too low, healthiness decreases.  The  healthiest levels of fat might vary from person to person, depending on genetic or other factors.

We need to learn to measure healthiness more effectively than we currently measure illness. We tend to not measure illness either. Doctors 'diagnose' illness.  When it is diagnosed, they prescribe treatment. Statistics are collect about the incidence of disease - less frequently about severity.

How many different measures of healthiness are possible?

Is it possible to create a useful 'overall measurement of healthiness'?  Is it useful to create a measure of healthiness at each layer in the hierarchy of healthicine? Each layer in the hierarchy consists of many, many different aspects of healthiness, each of which can be measured.

Which measures of healthiness are most important indicators of overall health? We tend to measure and investigate indicators of 'illness', but not indicators of healthiness.  I believe this missing link, the study of healthicine, is very important, critical to our understanding of healthiness and illness.

Physical Healthiness

We can, in theory, measure the physical healthiness of someone's genetics, nutrients, cells, tissues, organs, systems, body, mind, spirit, and community - each layer in the hierarchy of healthicine.  Which is most important?  For each of the layers in the hierarchy of healthicine, there are thousands of health measurements we can study. We might measure the healthiness of the heart, the lungs, the kidneys.

We might measure the size of the heart, the strength of the heart, the flexibility of the veins in the heart, the fat content of the arteries... and so on. For each organ there are many healthiness measurements. Most of the attention paid to the heart, by today's researchers, are measurements of illness, not measurements of healthiness.

Process Healthiness

Each genetic process, nutrient process, cellular process, organ process, system process, bodily process, mental process, spiritual process, and community process also has healthy aspects that can be measured.  Respiration, heartbeat, memory, coordination, faith, and cooperation are all aspects of healthiness that can be measured and possibly found to be deficient, healthy or excessive.  Today we hardly know what is normal.  Our ability to identify processes that are deficient or excessive is much lower.

Sensory Healthiness

Each of the five major senses (sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell) can be deficient, normal, optimal, or excessive in healthiness. We have many other senses - sense of balance, sense of time, and even common sense.

The sensation of pain can be deficient, normal or excessive. Each deficiency or excess can indicate unhealthiness and may be caused by other unhealthinesses.  Each sensory deficiency or excess can result in other illnesses. A deficiency in "common sense" might also result in (or be diagnosed as) illness.

Unhealthiness

Healthiness therefore refers to a state, condition, quality, degree, of health.  So what is unhealthiness?  An unhealthiness exists when a specific healthiness is deficient, or excessive.

Note: Unhealthiness in this model is a point on the scale (or two points, one for deficiency and one for excessiveness).  It is not a judgement of 'bad' vs 'good', it is simply a tool to help us understand and improve healthiness.

Like healthiness, there are many different types of unhealthiness.  An overall measurement of unhealthiness is the opposite of the measurement of healthiness.  A trivial example, resting pulse rate.  A healthy resting pulse rate for a normal adult is between (approximately) 60 and 75 beats per minute.  A pulse rate that is considerably below 60 is deficient, and a rate over 75 is excessive.  Each of those may indicate a minor, or a serious unhealthiness, as might an irregular heart rate.

In Conclusion

Doctors measure 'illness' rather than healthiness - in order to treat illness.  The tools and techniques we have to measure healthiness are very poor quality.

We have a lot to learn about health and healthiness; the field healthicine, of which medicine is a small but important subset.

When do we start to learn about healthiness?

to your health, tracy
http://personalhealthfreedom.blogspot.ca/p/subject-index.html

Tracy is the author of two book about healthicine: 

How do Vitamins affect Healthiness? What is Healthiness?

Dr. Mercola's excellent post on Vitamin D and Breast Cancers, and the poor quality of comments, prompted me to think about the differences between illness and healthiness, using Vitamin deficiencies as an example. The Mercola article says that many people suffer from a Vitamin D deficiency, and that deficiency causes many illnesses.

I take a different view.  I see a Vitamin Deficiency as one of many possible 'unhealthinesses'.  Unfortunately, healthiness is not in the dictionary - so neither is unhealthiness. My comments to the Mercola post are as follows:

Vitamin D is essential to many factors of healthiness. Our medical system has a focus on 'illness', not healthiness. Studies of Vitamin D - like studies of all vitamins, are generally weak and biased to the medical side.  Healthicine, the arts and sciences of health and healthiness, does not exist inside the medical system for a reason - healthicine is larger than medicine, and includes medicine as a subset.  If we want to study the true value of Vitamin D, and other healthiness factors - we need to learn to study health, not just illness.

Many chronic diseases, including cancers, may actually be 'unhealthinesses', not 'illnesses'.  What's the difference? The distinction between an unhealthiness and an illness is not well understood. A Vitamin deficiency that does not lead directly to an illness is an unhealthiness - it creates a possibility for illness.  The more severe it becomes, the more likely that some illnesses will occur or increase in severity. A Vitamin deficiency, or several, may be severe enough to create several illnesses at one time.  Are you suffering from a Vitamin D deficiency, or from cancer, caused by a deficiency?

Vitamin D may well be part of a constellation of deficiencies, or unhealthinesses, that lead to chronic illness. But we don't study healthiness (it's not in the dictionary - a healthiness is a specific incidence of health, like resting heartbeat,  Vitamin D consumption, level and types of exercise, etc.) therefore we don't understand unhealthinesses.

It is clear that increasing your Vitamin D has very healthy effects - that the healthiest levels of Vitamin D are much higher than most people have. This has been studied and demonstrated with many illnesses.  We need to study how it affects healthiness. We need a healthiness paradigm. http://personalhealthfreedom.blogspot.ca/2011/01/health-paradigm.html

to your health, tracy

Tracy is the author of two book about healthicine: 

Mercola on Vaccines

I have been trying for some time to research and understand the vaccination controversy from a health perspective, rather than an illness perspective. It is sometimes difficult to adopt the health paradigm (instead of the illness paradigm: ) when reading arguments that go back and forth.

Today, Mercola posted an article on the Whooping Cough vaccine, which has tons of information, and the comments from other people provide more information.  I encourage you to have a look - but the information is so complex I don't expect many people to come away satisfied.  I believe this is partly because virtually ALL of the experts discussing vaccines adopt an illness paradigm, only studying a small part of the problem.  We need to learn from a health paradigm, the illness paradigm is too limited to provide valuable infomation: http://personalhealthfreedom.blogspot.ca/2011/01/health-paradigm.html

Here are my comments on the Mercola post:

It is important to understand that immunity, whether it is vaccine immunity or natural immunity, does not kill the virus, nor do they prevent the virus from spreading.  Vaccines are designed to tune your immune system to fight the virus when it appears. Vaccines use a dead virus, so it is natural that they are less effective than natural immunity. 

It is entirely possible that so called 'herd immunity' does not exist. The whooping cough virus exists in the environment.  We cannot eliminate it from the environment.  Even people who are vaccinated come in contact with whooping cough virus - and it reproduces in their bodies.  Then, after some time, the immune system might recognize and fight the virus. Even then it is still reproducing and being spread by the person with the virus. This is the same for every virus we tackle with immunization.

Vaccine statistics measure how many people were affected by the virus, seriously enough to create a diagnoseable condition. Anyone who contracts the virus and exhibit fewer symptoms, or does not go to a doctor, is 'not counted'. People who are vaccinated, and thus suffer whooping cough at a lower level are still spreading the virus.  Because their immunity is lower than those with natural immunity - they might be spreading it more.

Vaccination and the arithmetic of vaccine studies is very, very complex.  Simple statements and techniques like 'herd immunity' and 'cocooning'  are designed to promote vaccines, not to understand them. We need to study and understand the mechanisms, successes and failures of every vaccine individually and not make generalizations that promote mis-information. We need to use a Health Paradigm to understand vaccines, our illness paradigm is too limiting: personalhealthfreedom.blogspot.ca/.../health-paradigm.html  

Everyone has a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of healthiness. tracyhttp://personalhealthfreedom.blogspot.ca/p/subject-index.html

Tracy is the author of two book about healthicine: 

Is Brown Rice Healthier than White Rice

Quora often poses health questions and gets a wide variety of responses from their user community - of which I am an active member. Unfortunately, the questions asked often show the bias, or unscientific nature of the site managers.  And today is no exception. Today's Quora included this silly question:

Why is brown rice healthier than white rice? Is brown rice healthy?  -  you can click the link to see the question and the ensuing discussion.

Let's follow the chain of nonsense.  First untested assumption: 'white rice is healthy'.  Is white rice healthy?  Frankly, we don't know.  Many people think it is - and many people think it is not healthy.

So. Next silly assumption: 'brown rice healthier than white rice.'  This might be true.  But it might not. At least one commenter has suggested, and provided arguments that brown rice is not healthier than white rice.

Which lead Quora to the question:  "Why..."  Of course we cannot discuss why something is true, until we actually measure whether or not it is true.  Has anyone bothered to test brown rice to see if it is healthier than white rice?  Not as far as I know.  Not in a scientific fashion.

My responses to Quora often question the question - and today is no exception.  And I often get negative points for pointing out the obvious, such is life.  Here is my response to the Quora question.


As is often that case, the person who wrote the question made a fundamental error.

We do not know if white rice is healthy.  White rice provides energy, but does not provide other nutrients.  Eating white rice might actually be an unhealthy activity, because it displaces foods that provide real nutrition and not just empty calories.

Is eating brown rice healthier?  As far as I know this theory is 'yet to be proven' as well.

If we ran a lab test, with mice, not people, and fed them ONLY white rice, or ONLY brown rice, we might expect the brown rice mice to live longer, healthier lives than the white rice mice.

Until we actually make some scientific measurements - we don't know white rice from brown. You can rationalize all you want - the truth is only to be found in actual measurements.

to your health, tracy
http://personalhealthfreedom.blogspot.ca/p/subject-index.html

ps. If you enjoy my posts, please share - and you might LIKE my facebook page. 

Tracy is the author of two book about healthicine: 

Health Freedom and the News: Merck vs The Wall Street Journal

I don't generally blog about topical issues, but today - Dr. Mercola's post prompted me to write about Merck aka The Wall Street Journal.

A few days ago, the Wall Street Journal published an article about a lawsuit against Merck.  Former employers of Merck accuse the company of falsifying evidence about the mumps vaccine, and falsifying results of mumps vaccine testing - and publishing false results on vaccine information inserts. They claim that these lies gave Merck a monopoly in the sales of mumps vaccines - costing the taxpayers billions of dollars for a vaccine that was far less effective, and possibly more dangerous than represented.

A few days ago, this news didn't surprise me.  I am currently doing some research of a vaccine blog post, and I thought it would be useful info when I'm working on that post. What do I think about vaccines?  To tell the truth, I'm not sure.  I believe that the concept of vaccines is valid, and that they can work - but I also believe that each specific vaccine needs to be tested and constantly measured to ensure that it is both effective and safe.

Today, Mercola advises that the Wall Street Journal article is gone. It has disappeared from their website and also from all internet cache sites.  Google, for example, and Bing - don't seem to know it existed.  Links that were published are suddenly 'broken'.  According to Mercola, the article disappeared after an "elite" network of CFOs from the world’s top corporations met at the WSJ. Merck is on that executive council." You can view Mercola's post and comments here. 

It's worth checking out the Mercola article, and the comments as well.  I've actually made a point of saving the article to my computer, and also saving a PDF of the court documents because I'm worried about more censorship. 

I believe in health freedom - and it is difficult to attain any kind of freedom when our major news organizations decide what to publish, what not to publish - and what to 'unpublish' based on pressure from corporate interests. Frankly, why should anything they publish be 'unpublished'? If they want to apologize - they should be honest about it and apologize.  Unpublishing, making the news disappear is downright Orwellian. 

Everyone has a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of healthiness.  We all have a right to the news, not just the news that corporations decide to allow us to read.  Yesterday's news is part of history and should not be disappeared.

to your health, tracy

Tracy is the author of two book about healthicine: 

Mercola on Pain and how to Relieve Pain with Healthy Actions

Dr. Mercola has an interesting post about PAIN and EMT to relieve pain. http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/07/21/eft-for-pain-relief.aspx?e_cid=20120721_DNL_artNew_2

I often find Mercola's posts very useful - and read the comments as well. However, I view these issues from a health perspective - most people view from an illness perspective.  When viewed from a health perspective, different facts come to light. Mercola neglects to mention that sometimes, we need to fix pain by finding the source, not by techniques that minimize pain.

Pain, like all health factors, exists on a continuum from pain deficient, to normal healthy pain, to excessive pain.

Here is my comment to Dr. Mercola's post.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Pain is healthy, a healthy response to danger in our environment, a healthy response to damage in our bodies.  In healthy bodies we need to feel pain appropriately.  What is pain? 

personalhealthfreedom.blogspot.ca/.../what-is-pain.html

When pain becomes persistent, it is clear that there are severe problems.  Pain is also a learned response - and our body and brain can re-create pain where it does not exist, even where body parts do not exist. Treating long term pain with painkillers is basically an admission of failure to understand the problem. The underlying problem may be: 

1. 'learned pain' as discussed in this post, or

2. it may be 'ongoing damage' - which needs to be located and stopped, or

3. it may be a result of 'severe damage' to the body which is not ongoing, but is so severe, or of a nature that it will not heal.  

Both 1 and 3 above can be treated with EMT.  We can learn to 'not feel pain' when the pain is learned.  We can also learn to 'not feel pain', or at least not feel it so severely, for severed damage.  

Painkillers should be prescribed as a bridge - for short term pain due to injury.  But for all cases of long term pain, a re-assessment is required. For items 1 and 3 - 'severe damage' and 'learned pain' EMT is the appropriate response.  

For ongoing damage, it is important to identify the source of the damage - possibly toxins in the diet, for example and eliminate the source of the pain. 

Everyone has a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of healthiness.  Everyone has a right to UNDERSTAND their pains. tracy

personalhealthfreedom.blogspot.ca/.../what-is-pain.html

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Tracy is the author of two book about healthicine: 

Unhealthiness vs Disease

There are many so called diseases, that are actually not 'diseases', they are actually serious 'unhealthiness'.  We need to distinguish between unhealthiness and disease.

What's the difference?  In the posts Concepts of Illness and Disease, and Healthiness and Healthicines, we saw that a disease occurs at the red line of diagnosis. Diagnosis occurs when the unhealthiness has become so severe that it can be diagnosed as a disease.

Once a disease is diagnosed, we often look for a single solution.  An antibiotic for a bacterial infection.  An antifungal for a fungus infection.  A drug for a disease. We treat disease with a surgical approach - a very specific solution that tackles a key point in a serious problem.

Treatment is judged as a success if it moves the unhealthiness across the line of diagnosis.  Duh. You can be just a shade over the diagnosis threshold, but according to the medical community you might be judged as 'healthy', because you cannot be diagnosed with a disease.  This problem exists, in part, because medical doctors have a monopoly on diagnosis.

Unhealthiness is broader than disease. It includes disease - but also the gradient between perfect health and disease. It is harder to recognize, harder to identify, and much harder to treat. It must be treated with healthicines, not medicines. We all know situations where someone seemed 'perfectly healthy' and then they were 'struck' by a disease like cancer.  But we also know that cancer normally takes years to develop.  Years of unhealthiness that is not recognized.  Arthritis is also a disease of unhealthiness, not a disease with with a single cause.  There are many similar disease: Alzheimer's, macular degeneration, obesity. A disease sometimes affect just a single part of the body - an unhealthiness tends to affect the entire hierarchy of healthicine.

How can we recognize the difference between a serious unhealthiness and a disease? A primary disease has a simple cause. The cause can be identified and the disease can be treated. It can often be prevented or the progress stopped.  

An serious unhealthiness is typically a condition with many causes or contributing factors. Is obesity a disease?  Or is it an unhealthiness?  Labeling it as a disease leads to attempts to find simple 'disease' causes and solutions to a problem.  The magic bullet. There is no magic bullet to healthiness.  

A combination of many different unhealthinesses might not be severe enough to be diagnosed as a disease - but may cause severe health problems.  Many so called diseases might actually be a combination of different types of unhealthiness, each of which is below the threshold of a disease.

You can't fix a serious unhealthiness with a single solution - it's the wrong solution to the wrong problem. It's more complicated.  If you try to treat an unhealthiness with a single solution - you will likely create more, different and possibly worse unhealthiness. It doesn't matter if your 'solution' is a drug, from conventional medicine, or a natural product, from alternative medicine, it's still the wrong answer - to the wrong question.

The first step to resolve an unhealthiness is to recognize it, and to recognize that is not a 'disease'. Once we learn to recognize unhealthiness and to distinguish between 'disease' and 'unhealthiness', we will learn to eliminate many so called 'diseases' by the application of health.  

In many cases, we don't recognize an unhealthiness until it becomes a serious problem - at which point it is diagnosed as a 'disease'. Like the frog in a pot of water on the stove.  It doesn't realize the water is slowly getting hot - and is eventually cooked.  If we have symptoms of arthritis, we might ignore minor pains and get more and more used to them.  As the pain grows we become less sensitive.  The pain becomes part of us.  The arthritis grows in severity.  By the time we recognize it as a serious problem - it may have caused irreparable damage. I believe the same happens with many degenerative diseases, obesity and even cancer. People often try to treat obesity with unhealthy, short term dietary changes, when what is needed is a permanent health change.  Of course permanent health changes are much more difficult to identify, and much more difficult to implement.  Many healthy changes initially have strange 'symptoms of healthiness', that cause rejection.

With arthritis, as with many unhealthy conditions - using drugs can actually make the problem worse, treating the symptoms, or some minor aspect of the condition - while letting the cause persist and grow under the level of awareness.

There are many unhealthinesses that are susceptible to simple changes. These are the result of simple deficiencies or excesses.  If you are deficient in Vitamin C, you can resolve the unhealthiness by consuming Vitamin C.  If you are suffering from an excess of many single nutrients or toxins - you can eliminate the unhealthiness by changing your habits.  However, these unhealthiness conditions can be very difficult to identify if they are not so serious that they can be diagnosed as diseases.  And by that time - they might have caused serious, possibly irreparable damage.

Everyone has a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of healthiness. Everyone needs to have unhealthiness recognized, measured and tracked, and healthy actions recommended - before disease appears.

to your health, tracy

Tracy is the author of two book about healthicine: 

ps. If you enjoy my posts, please share - and you might LIKE my facebook page. 
This post was also published on Health Freedom Alliance 
and also at Quantum Wellness Houston
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