How to shift the Paradigm in Health
We are used to use a wrong paradigm in healthcare. This paradigm is outdated and finds its roots in Newtonian Physics and the science and political systems of the 17th century. In this paradigm man is seen as a clockwork mechanism whereby the focus is targeted on malfunction and repairment. Like body and mind, ‘patients’ and their diseases are seen as separated entities. Diseases are being addressed by an autonomous healthcare system. The health care consumer is a bystander. Man is mainly neglected as decision maker regarding his own health and largely underestimated as biological system with it’s own healing potential. Up till now the new insights of modern (post Newtonian) Physics have never been incorporated in our 21st century Medicine.
This ‘disease’ driven system is accountable for incredible medical progress, innumerable treatments but also rising costs. In the long run this will make healthcare unaffordable for a large part of the population. Focus on needs of the consumer instead of generating medical products could tailor treatment and reduce costs.
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Where did it go wrong.
In ancient times man was regarded as a unity. Based on the Bible and the works of Aristotle there was no clear division between body and mind. Philosophy, sciences and religion were not clearly outlined and belonged to the church. With his observations of the planetary system Galileo Galilee made a division between church and physics and became the father of science as we know it. Rene Descartes gave after 2000 years a new impulse to philosophy and introduced the dualistic principle, dividing physical from non physical, the human body to be studied by science, leaving the mind to the church.
According to planetary mechanics Isaac Newton applied the mechanics of the universe to the human body, reducing it to a mechanistic ‘clockwork’ system. Disease care (and healthcare) became the domain of medical science.
Dependent on the church, science and state in the 17th century and not having medical knowledge, man had no other option than to hand over his human machine to science.
And actually this is still the situation.
But science has evolved in a dramatically way: empiricism, thermodynamics, but especially Einstein relativity and quantum mechanics made the big difference. Man appeared to be more than the sum of its mechanical parts. The human body contains 10 billion solitary living organisms and behaves more like a swarm then clockwork. Investigation of the genetic code did not answer the question of life. There is enough scientific proof for interaction between mind and body. The mechanistic approach of man had to be abandoned. Insights which are not yet fully incorporated in nowadays medicine
By political changes and social movements democracy and power came to the people, the digital era brought big data and demognosis (AV) to the crowd. The health consumer is no longer dependent and ignorant and can take responsibility for his own wellbeing. Dis-ease should be managed in a cooperative way and not just taken over by a system of biomechanical engineering.
So it is time to shift the 350 year old paradigm of Health, which undoubtedly will have a profound impact on how the health system works at the moment. Putting the focus on health and vitality instead of disease, on bio-energetical systems instead of clockwork and the central positioning of the empowered consumer will revolutionize healthcare. It might even reduce the ever increasing costs.
November 2019 my membership of Osler’s Alliance
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A selection of slides of the presentation