Are We Getting Healthier?

It is so easy these days to think that we are people who are doing everything that we can to be healthy.  In fact, the media often report it as such and with half baked research writing, they prove it to be so. Yet, I would submit to you that we are not getting any healthier.

Health care costs are rising at dramatic levels and have been doing this for several years.  However, I don't see where people are any more health than they were 10 or 20 or 50 years ago.

Yes, we take many prescriptions and over-the-counter medications to help suppress symptoms that we encounter in our life.  Then we take even more to counter the side effects of those prescriptions.  At the end of the day, the symptoms are still there, but they are suppressed.  Does that mean we are getting healthier?  If you hide a fire under a blanket, does it mean the fire is gone?

If we truly want to become more healthy, we need to discard our old way of thinking and embrace truth that we can demonstrate in our own lives.  It isn't about following a dogma or thinking happy thoughts or embracing what someone says.  It is about going in and discovering our innermost parts of our life.  This is where true healing takes place.

For more on this subject, you may want to read "Losing Focus In Healing".

Branding Disease

In a recent article on thebetterhealthstore.com, there was an article titled "Branding Disease, Selling Cures." Quoting the article, "Drug makers have have become expert at creating diseases to sell their pharmaceutical cures."

Stop and think about this for a moment. If you're a drug company and your shareholders want you to keep making a profit year after year, what would be the best way to sell your product? Why not create a need for the drug and then focus on people who possibly might need the drug?

Sure, a case could be made that each person really needs this drug and so the drug company is offering a vital service of health and well being to that consumer. You could make that argument or you could broaden your mindset a little, shift out of our current paradigm and really use all the brain cells to think about this.

If you think I am making this up, consider the following that the article talks about. In 1928, there was a popular book by the name of "Propaganda" by Edwards Bernays. He is considered to be the father of public relations. His main point was that the public relations business was less about selling things than about creating the conditions for things to sell themselves.

So you're saying, so what? Every company out there tries to sell their product and this is America, so what's your point or your beef with doing this? What are you, anti-capitalist? I can answer that last question in one word, NO! I am not against making money but when it preys upon innocent folks and gives the illusion that it is something good for them when maybe it is not, than "Houston, we have a problem!" Please though, let's not stop here. Let's explore this a little further and I think you will understand the point I'm trying to make (and the article was making).

Pharmaceutical marketers now sell drugs by selling the diseases that they treat, otherwise known as "disease branding". To brand a disease is to shape its public perception in order to make it more palatable to potential patients.

Panic disorder, reflux disease, erectile dysfunction, restless legs syndrome, bipolar disorder, overactive bladder, ADHD, premenstrual dysphoric disorder, and even clinical depression: All these conditions were once regarded as rare until a marketing campaign transformed the brand.

Let me repeat that last statement from the article again because it is important. "ALL THESE CONDITIONS WERE ONCE REGARDED AS RARE UNTIL A MARKETING CAMPAIGN TRANSFORMED THE BRAND."

Once a branded disease has achieved a degree of cultural legitimacy, there is no need to convince anyone that a drug to treat it is necessary. It will come to them as their own idea.

Disease branding works especially well for two kinds of conditions. The first is the shameful condition that can be destigmatized. Another good candidate for branding is a condition that can be plausibly portrayed as under-diagnosed. Branding such a condition assures potential patients that they are part of a large and credible community of sufferers.

For another moment of truth, consider the following event that took place in 2002. The vice president of Pharmacia, Neil Wolf, explained the branding strategy in a presentation called "Positioning Detrol: Creating a Disease." By creating the disease of "overactive bladder," he claimed that Pharmacia created a market of 21 million potential patients.

Here's another moment of truth to bring the point I'm trying to make, closer to home. In order to convince shy people they had social anxiety disorder, GlaxoSmithKline, the maker of Paxil, hired a PR firm called Cohn and Wolfe. Cohn and Wolfe put together a public awareness campaign called "Imagine being allergic to people," which was allegedly sponsored by a group called the "Social Anxiety Disorders Coalition."

I could share so much more from the article but if this has gotten your attention, please go read the entire article. It is mind blowing exactly what is going on in the medical industry. I knew there was a shift in the advertising and marketing of these drugs but I could not quite put my finger on it until I read this article. If this doesn't wake someone up a little, than please rush to the doctor and have someone check your pulse - you might not be alive!

Am I being too radical on all of this? I don't think so and I've tried to offer some proof according to the article on the better health store.com website. We really need to wake up in this country because our health care system as we know it is failing. We are spending record amounts of money in medical care and are not any more healthy than we were 20 years ago. As humans, it is part of our existence to become more aware of ourselves and to grow, evolve and learn rather than just be mere participants in life.

I'm going to leave you with one statement in the article that I think really brings the entire article home. "If all drugs were harmless, disease branding would be relatively harmless, too. But no drug is completely benign." If you need any proof of that, just search the side effect of any drug you are interested in and see how many serious conditions (including death) are listed. That should be more than enough to make everyone sit up and think instead of just ingesting what is being marketing to them.

As with everything that I post, please feel free to challenge it for your own life and see what fits and what does not. Use the information here to help you learn more about yourself and the best way to take care of yourself. Do not use this information as the sole source of medical advice as to how to live your life. This is not meant as medical advice. It is only meant as information to help you understand and evolve as a human.

To Read The Complete Article, go to Branding Disease, Selling Cure found on The Better Health Store.com .



Blog Post & Images (c) 12/10/10 Don Shetterly - use by permission only

US Health Care Costs Skyrocket

According to HealthReform.gov, the United States (US) spent approximate $2.2 Trillion on health care in 2007 or $7421 per person. This comes to 16% of the GDP. Furthermore, health care costs doubled between 1996 and 2006. I could continue to state additional facts of how expensive health care is getting to be but we all know this. If this source for information like this does not interest you, than just do a google search on skyrocketing health care costs and you will find a great deal of information out there. Most of the statistics and information show the dramatic increase in health care costs and the projections indicate the costs are only going to rise.

The problem comes in, not in anything political or any of the other stuff that is reported and blogged about, but in how we actually view the paradigm of health care that we live in. Most of us, go through life thinking that a pill advertised on TV, or a medical procedure that is supposed to cure everything within us or the label that is placed on our condition gives us definitive proof that what we suffer from is real. This is where many of us stop in our quest for relief from health conditions affecting our lives.

The only thing that we are missing is why with all the money we are spending, are we not curing people? Why are we continuing to spend record amounts of money on all these things and yet not come away being healed from these things? Yes, you can suppress and manage symptoms but in most cases, you are not truly healing your body.

Yet, we as a nation have embraced these ideals as the answers to our health problems. Of course, I'm not discounting the medical advances we have made and the significant scientific understandings through research that we have discovered but at some point we all as a society and as individuals need to start asking some very difficult questions. We need to question why we continue to do the same things in health care and get the same results while costs skyrocket.

Often we fail to embrace all parts of the healing systems that we can. We segment everything into what a professional tells us is the answer when instead we need to stop, listen and feel to what is within us. We push ourselves constantly and ignore the messages the body tries to get us to listen to. We think that we have to make ourselves busier and push ourselves because that somehow makes us a more successful human. Many humans today do not even stop for a moment to take care of themselves and then they expect their bodies to perform and not get sick.

In many ways, we have not discovered the truth of healing health care. We have failed to see that answers we need come from within us and not necessarily from a pill, procedure, philosophy or person. We as a society and as individuals need to wake up and we need to wake up quickly.

I've been through some serious health challenges in my life including paralysis, depression, migraines, ulcers, anxiety attacks, severe rashes and itching. Many of these things I believed were life sentences and I felt for a long time that I would be on medication for the rest of my life. It never occurred to me at the time that there was a possibility I would find something that allowed me to move past these things and find a way to heal my own body.

Today, I am no longer on any medications. After a recent dental procedure, I took some antibiotics for a few days but outside of that, I had not been to a pharmacy in years. I no longer stock Tylenol or other over the counter products in the house because I do not need them.

In fact, a year ago my pulse was clocking in at a constant 99 beats per minute or higher but now my pulse rate is around the 70's. I didn't use drugs, procedures or new age concepts to change it. I used my inner awareness and inner healing to create lasting change within myself. I resolved the issues that needed to be resolved instead of hiding my head in the sand. It did help having a pulse meter that gave me inside information as to what was happening with my pulse.

Each person can choose to believe what they want to believe but please know that this is your belief system. It is your paradigm, not actually what is true and scientific proven fact. This is not about taking away pain but going into the pain and reclaiming the power, the energy and hearing the message of the pain to heal one's self in a very deep way. Many new age concepts think that "pain management" or "pain relief" is healing when in reality, you're just turning off the information flow from the body.

This is not about going to some individual and having them "heal you" but that you find the true healer within your own body and that you become more aware of who you are. It is about evolving as humans and becoming all that we are and all that we are meant to be. The answers to what we need do in fact lie within ourselves. It may be frightening to find them but if we ask, search and listen, we will find them.