The Cause of Health vs The Cause of Disease

Here's a provocative idea: if our societal focus in medicine shifted from the cause of disease to the cause of health, we, as a society, would be way way healthier, something like 80%.

What is "the cause of health"? It's a set of conditions, in no particular order: meaningful social connection, love, family, lots of "light" and clean whole plant foods with high levels of micronutrient density combined with a high level of energy "kept" relative to energy expended in digestive / elimination / detoxification processes, continuous access to low toxicity environments, clean air and water, sunshine, sufficient quality and durations of sleep, challenging levels of physical activity on a regular basis, a sense of purpose.

Energy efficient nutritionally dense foods are a core concept in "cause of health". All of these factors are important, but the point of departure with leverage for most people will be change of diet. There is a saying "you can't exercise your way out of a bad diet". So yes, "diet and exercise" are both important, but as your weight drops rapidly from a correct diet your ability and innate desire for activity will increase. If your weight isn't dropping rapidly toward a lean healthy level, and you've been doing a paleo diet, you might want to consider a whole foods plant based diet with no "empty calorie" substances (sugar, white flour, oils). It's delicious, and once you figure it out, easy to do and maintain.

Here's another idea, instead of lifespan as a measure of health, let's look at quality of life parameters: at what age does a chronic condition set in? At what age do we begin taking meds for them? At what age are we no longer able to run (a very basic indicator of health and quality of life)? Or even walk unassisted?

Life span has been increasing until very recently, but if current trends continue today's children will be the first generation to live shorter lives than their parents. On the other hand "life span with quality" has been dropping for decades, and is now accelerating at an alarming rate, especially in youngest populations.

What went wrong? Well, many things, environmental degradation is high on the list. But I'm going to suggest something else is more directly responsible, with a far greater impact on health. And that something is technology. Or perhaps more accurately, an over reliance on technology, coupled with "wishful thinking" exaggerations and misapprehensions about what technology can do. We may have entered an era where the total impact of modern medicine on health has become counterproductive.

How can that be?

I think of myself as a bit of a technologist, and I love technology. My life long avocations and vocations all have technology at the core. I "grok" technology pretty well, and that gives me a sense of what's possible in the physical universe, and what is not.

Another area of strong interest for me is psychology, and the biological force at the base of psychology, which might be characterized as "animal" instinct. I have come to think of the essence of Freud's work as the attempt to examine and understand the collision of animal instincts with civilization, especially in a post industrial world setting. (Recommended reading: Freud's career summation essay, "Civilization and Its Discontents".)

What are instincts? Everything our brain and autonomic systems do on a "non-thinking" level, from regulating heart beat to the shock of adrenalin that occurs the instant danger appears in our sensory awareness field. It's the aggregate of all autonomic functioning, which has one overarching function: to keep us alive, as an individual, and as a species.

The most basic way to understand instincts that I have come across is put forth in the short book "The Pleasure Trap", where instinct is characterized as "the motivational triad", the three basic forces that function to keep us alive and well, but can backfire on us in the post-industrial technologic world. They are 1) seek pleasure, 2) avoid pain, and 3) conserve energy. Perfect recipe for life as a couch potato right?

And this would be a good place to remember that instinct "drives" our behavior to a significantly greater extent than we are consciously aware of. Hiding in this thicket is the reason addiction can be so difficult to overcome...but that's another topic.

So...getting back to over reliance on technology, and in particular medical/pharmaceutical technology, the motivational triad explains a lot.  Let's call it couch potato medicine. Or maybe medicine intended to manage the ill effects of the couch potato lifestyle.

The technologist in me does not see this as a black and white situation. Broadly speaking there are significant aspects of modern medicine to be greatly appreciated, surgery for example. Even there however are many common conditions that are far better treated with diet/lifestyle modifications, heart disease for example, the leading killer of Americans. But when banged up from a traffic accident we are tremendously grateful for an ambulance ride to the nearest hospital emergency room, and antibiotics when really needed. Modern medicine, perhaps surgery in particular, can be truly miraculous.

So what about surgery's sibling, pharmacology? Unfortunately progress there is harder to see. In fact, in broad stroke efficacy comparisons of pharmacology to diet/lifestyle modifications, pharmacology has been in a pronounced regression trend for a few decades, which is roughly correspondent to the decrease in "lifespan with quality" mentioned earlier. This is couch potato medicine at it's finest.

How did this unfortunate state of affairs come about? In very simple terms, it comes down to profit, the one area where pharmacology has achieved a progression trend of mind numbing magnitude. And how did it achieve this? The promise of technology, the silver bullet solution to all our problems, magic, in the form of a simple pill.

It may be the most seductive form of marketing there is. To some extent even the purveyors are seduced. But it's not working, the rapid decline of health measured in quality of life tells the real story. Not only is it not working, it is counterproductive. At base it's not all that different than good old snake oil, but it's dressed in (promise of technology magic) super fancy clothes, and it is a (profit) giant.

The MDs who actually do reverse and heal the common chronic conditions, do so by first putting patients on a "cause of health" program, and second by taking them off the medications that have been prescribed. It's not easy, it's more labor intensive than prescription pad medicine, and we've been raised with magic bullet thinking. But the list of docs that practice (let's call it) "whole foods medicine" is getting longer and longer, as we collectively begin to see the emperor is wearing no clothes, and demand for true health increases. And as demand for true health medicine increases it increasingly becomes a social norm, and become easier to do.

To be clear, I am not saying get rid of doctors, or all medications. I am saying begin to demand true health practices and the system will change for the better.

So yes, the consistent application of "cause of health" principles reverses a long list of the common physical malfunctions that are reducing quality of life way too early, and ending life prematurely for the vast majority of us.

But the application of modern pharmacology typically only slows disease progression, is expensive, and has side effects which have further negative impacts on health.

I'm pretty sure modern pharmacology is not the program Hippocrates envisioned when he said "let medicine be thy food".