What if we sold health?
What would our world look like if we sold health instead of medicine?
The way our current world works is all about quick-fixes, a magic pill, and finding the easy way out. We sell and market medicine when what we should be encouraging people towards is simply a life of health. If we sold health instead of medicine doctors would be trained better, nutrition and food would be at the center of health conversations, and we would have a more conscious society.
Many doctors today are no more than prescription writers. (One note before I go on, I recognize and appreciate the work doctors do and am grateful for the advancement of science). Unless you are working with a very well educated and aware specialist they most likely will not look for the source of a problem they just look for the medicine that will be the best band aid. Pharmaceutical companies are in the pockets of so many of our doctors pushing them to sell their product with no concern as to how these drugs are affecting real people. Doctor’s do not receive adequate nutrition training and fail to study the source of a problem. “During four years of medical school, most students spend fewer than 20 hours on nutrition. That’s completely disproportionate to its health benefits for patients” (Stanford Medicine). If we lived in a world that recognized the impact of health, doctors would receive much more nutrition education and understand the impact food has on our bodies. Doctors need much more training looking at the causes not simply being able to look up a drug based on a patient's symptoms.
Modern medicine has brought our society so far and our current habits are negating the improvement that those medicines can actually give us. What drugs we do still need to take would be more effective, likely not just in theory, because our bodies do not have any resistance built up so they can be incredibly effective. Think antibiotic resistance and the crisis we currently are facing. We also would have less disease if everyone was more aware of how nutrition affects their health. We would be a society that didn’t need drugs unless it was absolutely necessary and when necessary it would be more effective.
Growing up we all hear the phrase “you are what you eat” and it tends be said in a joking way to a kid who eats too much junk food, but there is truth behind that phrase that we are overlooking. Our bodies literally are made up of the components of what we eat. When we eat that food is broken down and the nutrients, or lack of, are then transported throughout our bodies to build us. Food is fuel and you can either run on garbage or clean energy.
Nutrition impacts our moods, energy, longevity, likelihood of disease, and so much more. If we cared about health than we wouldn’t have ads for drugs but instead ads about the benefits of spinach.
As a society we all would be much more in-tune with our bodies if we cared about health above all else. We would know what to do, what to eat, and what habits maintained our health. No longer would we look to what pill to pop but instead what food to put in our body. When a headache springs up we wouldn’t look for the quick fix of advil but instead think about how much water we have had or expose to fluorescent lights or if we have been sitting too close to a computer for hours. We would be able to identify the source of our pain or discomfort and know how to fix it.
Selling health would mean that instead of ads for pills that have a massive list of potential downsides and can, and often do, harm our bodies more, we would see ads listing the benefits of green leafy vegetables. We would have ads that share the importance of physical activity. We would ban marketing of prescription drugs in the public. We talk more about the source of our problems and not just a way to temporarily relieve the pain. Selling health would mean a more educated, conscious, and thoughtful society.
References
https://med.stanford.edu/school/leadership/dean/precision-health-in-the-news/why-medica-schools-need-focus-nutrition.html
