Below, I have shared links to 2 recent health news stories for your interest and review. One is on drugs and depression and one is on obesity in America. People are suffering.  From my perspective, there is another path we can take individually and collectively to address these health concerns, and what they may signify as perhaps symptoms of deeper personal and societal imbalances calling out for healing and change. 

One may ask how and why are more and more people mildly depressed and obese, what does it mean, and what is the most effective and wisest response?  Clearly how we are addressing these issues is not working.  On one important level, these stories provide strong evidence of the continued and increasing need for proven, effective,  natural, whole person mind-body integrative medicine approaches to treatment and prevention.  This is even more apparent with the current debate over the health care crisis and how best to change and improve our health care system.  If one looks deeper, the issue and problem goes way beyond the rising cost of health care, or even how medicine is practiced. Both are important issues for sure.

The issue is how and why do we live as we do, eat as we do, stress as we do. How did we come to be this way, and will we listen within for the answer and change?   

In this context, looking at and listening for the underlying causes one can learn from these two news stories.   The  hopeful reality is that there is an answer, there is another way, there is another path.... at the heart of which is personal responsibility and lifestyle change and engaging in a self healing journey integrated with whatever treatments are chosen.  This involves people having the courage to choose to face their stress, pain and illness and as necessary seek support from the health care system to also view it as an opportunity for healing and change beyond treating the symptom.  For more information on this concept, please refer to the Natural Awakenings article provided above, "Illness as an Opportunity to Awaken Consciousness."

 

This path may involve natural therapies from meditation and stress reduction counseling, to diet and nutritional counseling, to exercise and simple lifestyle changes and attitude shifts, and to deeper psychotherapeutic processes aimed at the heart of healing and transformation.  These natural approaches are effective and serve to integrate treatment, prevention and health promotion and wellness all at the same time.

I am reminded once again of the continued critical importance of the statement form Joseph Califano made 31 years ago as head of Health Education and  Welfare, after results from the study commissioned  in 1979 examining lifestyle factors contributing to the chronic diseases of the 3 top killers of our society ....producing the book...."Healthy People, the Surgeon General's report on Disease Prevention and Health Promotion."  He said..."You the individual can do more for your own health than any doctor, any dug, any exotic medical device"  In light of the studies reported in the news stories, in light of our health care crisis and health care costs skyrocketing,  we all need to heed and  live those words...individually  and collectively and make it the cornerstone of our health care system and the foundation of our own efforts to be and stay healthy.