Is lifestyle medicine a contradiction?

What do people mean by the term “lifestyle” medicine?

If it simply means matching the prescription of medicine and medical care to the living habits of people, shouldn’t we have been doing that already?

If it means getting people to change their living habits to promote good health and well-being that makes good sense, and will reduce the need for medical care, or may even eliminate the need for medicine altogether.

If our NHS had been established to support and promote health rather than to diagnose and treat disease, we would not be asking this question now. Doctors would have been trained in health education, health promotion and healthcare, as well as pathology and disease treatment and management. The sad truth is that doctors have little training in health promotion and are now ill equipped to help patients with advice or offer any natural health therapy.

Since the inception of the NHS there has been a growing divergence in our health care provision, with most funding going to drug therapy and other medical interventions, and health education and therapy being left to the private sector as provided by CAM practitioners. This is fine for those who can afford to pay for the services of their CAM therapist, but unfortunate for others who have to resort to becoming ill before they can benefit from our free NHS.

Thus, if the way forward is to promote a healthy society where everyone is encouraged and educated from childhood to learn how to take more responsibility and care for their own health and well-being, resources have to be progressively redirected from our current NHS towards a new real NHS, a National Health System. This will be a NHS that will be financially sustainable and rely less and less on prescribing “a pill for every ill”.

The expertise needed for this paradigm shift is ready and waiting to take on this challenge. It is the experience and practice of natural healthcare by the thousands of CAM practitioners, supported and working with a growing number of new enlightened doctors who embrace this concept and are now trying to make up for the deficiencies in their training.

For more thoughts on this subject please listen to my podcasts:
“Your Health in Your Hands” on all major podcast sites.

What is Health? Is It More than an Absence of Disease?

What’s The Cause of a Disease? Pathology or Ethology?

The New “Wonder Drug” or just Food For Thought?

Is Your Doctor a Health Doctor or a Sickness Doctor?

Forget Your Drugs, Sort Your Lifestyle!

Health is Based on Family and Community

Towards a Better and Healthier Nation

Enjoy Optimal Health – The Skype Lifestyle Course

Or read more on the promotion of health without medicine in my newly launched book “FREE HEALTH – Your Own NHS Natural Health Service” now available from Lulu.com

Words: Michael Lingard BSc. DO. WPNCert.
Orthopath, Buteyko Educator & Plantrician