Time to Change Your Paradigm?

I saw this pasted on ‘X’ (Twitter) the other day.

My first reaction was sadness. This author is living his life believing that everyone becomes sick. There’s nothing we can do about it.

When he sees someone who is not sick, it amazes him.

It really makes me think. There is an explosion of chronic disease in the United States.

• Diabetes - up almost 500% since 1980

• Alzheimer’s - up 147% since 1990

• Mental Illness - Up over 52% since 2005

Chronic disease in general in the US is expected to increase from 133 million to 170 million by 2030. That’s over half the current population.

Chances are if you’re not surrounded by people with chronic disease, you may very well be in a few years.

That’s why it makes sense for that person to write that post. They probably see others having health issues all the time. It becomes normal to think that the human race is condemned to feel sick at some point.

Quite the peer pressure.

You might start thinking you should be feeling sick somehow to ‘fit in’ with everyone else. You also probably become very open to suggestions from authority figures.

Doctors, nurses, the news media, politicians etc. Telling you that you’re at that age where you need a statin. Or that your 130/80 blood pressure qualifies you for blood pressure medication.

You may start thinking healthy people are just sick people who are trying to hide something.

Once we expect everyone to be sick, we stop calling for BETTER health care.

Instead we ask for LESS EXPENSIVE health care.

We want lower prices for insulin.

We want universal or single-payer (read ‘free’) health care.

We don’t ask ‘what can we do to not need healthcare?’

See how it changes the Paradigm? People don’t have expectations anymore that their health will improve.

They have the expectation that the healthcare industry will manage your chronic disease. Society no longer expects that the healthcare industry will solve your chronic disease.

Or help you prevent chronic disease.

It seems like that needs to change. Many parents tell their kids to aim for the stars. Set high expectations. We should do the same thing for the healthcare industry.

Right now it’s easy to go to a doctor because:

• They’re close by

• They were referred by another physician

• They were ‘in-network’ with your insurance company

We should be seeking out medical businesses and institutions that have a track record of putting problems into remission. The ones that ask you about diet and lifestyles. Ones that ask you to start by changing those factors. Not ones that just prescribe pills.

Not necessarily ones that are the cheapest or have the best insurance coverage.

The industry will follow the money. All industries do. Right now the money is in volume of patients, not outcomes.

Volume means repeat patients. Not cured patients. The paradigm needs to change.