Prescription drug spending hit $374 billion in 2015. I heard this fact on the radio this morning while driving my kids to school. $374 billion dollars sounds like quite a business profit margin to me. If the practice of modern medicine isn’t about selling drugs to patients and making money then it is showing that a lot more people are becoming sick. That the healthcare system isn’t working. Maybe we should accept that modern Western Medicine focuses on disease/illness and the way it has been successful in treating is through prescribing these drugs. The how tos, the why, and the preventive side isn’t the main goal.
My partner just came back from a Diabetic conference. One of the things that was highlighted during this conference was that every person over the age of 30 should be on statin drugs. This was their preventive approach. If you research what has been shown about the long term use of statins and the complications that arise from this drug, you will realize how harmful it is that many people are on this drug and using it as a long term solution to high cholesterol. And while the focus is on preventing heart disease, the drug damages the liver and kidneys. And this leads to other diseases that are now a result of taking the drug. Instead of working with diet, exercise, stress, and just day to day activities to making life simpler, prescribing a pill is quicker. And while you are controlling the cholesterol level, what is happening to the good cholesterol that is a building block to essential functions and workings of the human body?
I got into Chinese medicine watching my mom go through cancer treatment in the late 80s. Yes there has been an evolution in cancer treatments yet the side effects still remain the same. And the goal is still to treat the cancer, the disease, and not really the cause or the how to or the why that this person has become sick. Or how to prevent cancer from happening again once they are in remission. The power over our own bodies and the why it works has become such a mystery to us and we keep getting sicker. Yes acupuncture, massage, energy work, nutrition counseling have all become offered as a optional side you may wish to pursue which gives people more power over their bodies and how they can feel. Alternative medicine still has a long way to be integrated as a whole part in care.
Chinese medicine was created as a preventive medicine, a way for the individual to communicate with their body and become aware of what is out of balance. And sometimes what disease that is showing up when you seek out a Traditional Chinese practitioner has been evolving for years, decades, from imbalances and your body trying to ‘fix’ itself when finally it breaks. So that mean the healing part, the true healing part, will take time. And educating and getting this message to people who are so used to the pill solution can be hard. They look at price per treatment and think that it is too expensive or the results aren’t happening quick enough and they walk away when they feel better but having given their bodies the time to heal. This leads to it coming back. Sometimes I tell my patients with chronic diseases that how many times, pills, doctors have you seen over the years to try to find the answers, and now I am just asking for not even half that time to begin the healing process in your body to truly change. To truly heal thyself.
I have a patient who saw me weekly for 8 months for severe digestive problems that he had been dealing with for over a decade. He made that commitment to himself and saw the slow gradual change happening and there were regressions when he was stressed or ate something wrong. But the progress was always forward. The symptoms were less, the duration were less, and eventually not even there. So we moved to twice a month, then every 3 weeks and now once a month. And he still feels great and comes just for preventive reasons.
It was when it became allergy season, he realized that he wasn’t taking the pills he used to, having the itchy watery eyes, sinus issues or the lack of energy that he had every year for decades. Not just 10 years. We are talking about most of his whole life. And we weren’t even “treating “that because it was the imminent daily issue he was focused on and because this medicine is a whole body medicine, the body treated itself through the acupuncture treatments and change that for him. We are now going on two years, now coming once a month, and passing his “allergies” season and he has hardly had a symptom. And now he doesn’t have the side effects that come from taking allergy medicines and other medications he was on. His body is fighting for itself and regulating it on his own.
Sometimes we just need outside help, a little push and a commitment to our own body. People say acupuncture is expensive. I want to use him as an example break down his cost over two years because he was committed. For 8 months seeing me weekly he paid $65 a treatment. This is $260 a month, $2080 for those 8 months. Then 6 months of every 3 weeks so that is 8 treatments at $65 for $520. And now once a month for the remaining 6 month of the two years is $390. That brings his two year total to $2990.
If you google what they predicted the average person spending in health care for 2015 was $10000 a year. And how many people do you think got the whole body healing effects for that $10000 and how many do you think didn’t get any help and are going to spend even more with the pharmaceutical and healthcare system this year. I pay $200 a month in just my healthcare, go to the doctor once a year and I am almost paying what he paid for long term results just to have health insurance. So yes, the cost may seem like more up front yet in the end, you save a lot more and get your health back. And can start building a stronger you so that you are no longer fighting diseases, but preventing and adding quality to your life. And maybe soon, healthcare will cover this kind of medicine, these kinds of results but until then, isn’t your life worth it? Isn’t your body and your health? That is where you get decide.