Deaths were up for heart disease, stroke and Alzheimers and also from unintentional injuries and suicide. Robert Anderson, chief of the mortality statistics branch at the National Center for Health Statistics, believes that some of the reasons for these results are because of the obesity epidemic in the U.S. as well as the national crisis of prescription opioid abuse and misuse.
Let’s look at the leading causes of death in the U.S.
- Heart disease
- Cancer
- Chronic lower respiratory diseases
- Unintentional injuries
- Stroke
- Alzheimer’s disease
- Diabetes
- Influenza and pneumonia
- Kidney disease
- Suicide
Most of the diseases listed are chronic lifestyle diseases. Lifestyle diseases are those which are directly affected by one’s actions, behaviors, the ability to manage stress and emotions. When a person is able to modify his or her behavior with a chronic lifestyle illness, his or her chances of living a longer and living a more productive and healthy life increase immensely.
Look at the experiment done by Dr. Dean Ornish who proved in his book, Program for Reversing Heart Disease, in 1995 that you could actually reverse heart disease by changing your diet, exercise regime and your outlook on life.
The prescription of our modern medical system in the United States is to prescribe medications to lower cholesterol, liquify the blood through blood thinners, lower blood pressure, kill pain, improve the mood, etc.
All of the prescription medications have many side effects, which in turn, make the patient more ill. We are literally medicating patients to death.
Alternative medical systems, like Ayurveda, assist the patient in taking charge of his or her own health, by making healthy changes to enhance wellbeing. Ayurveda has been around for over 5,000-years and has withstood the test of time.
If death percentages are not enough, maybe look at the cost of medical care. Healthcare costs are rising and keep rising for the individual. When I spoke to a physician, with 25 years in practice, he said to me, “Michelle, health insurance is no longer for people with ill health. It’s just a security blanket for major medical emergencies, but cannot be relied on.” While the Affordable Healthcare Act, insured 20 million Americans who were previously uninsured (including the writer), we have all seen the monthly costs increase yearly for the past few years. Insurance companies have gotten smart and realized that payouts for so many sick people is costing them more. So they’ve raised their rates and increased deductibles and out-of-pocket expenses for the consumer.
Making lifestyle changes or teaching patients simple but transformative techniques and rewarding them for those changes is where our health care must go. If health insurance companies are smart, they will reimburse more for services like health classes, personal training sessions and consultations, massage, yoga, tai chi, acupuncture and even for vitamins and herbal medicines, such as turmeric pills, which are known to help with a whole host of symptoms.
A single set of chemotherapy treatments costs around $30,000
Heart bypass surgery costs between $70,000 to $200,000
To treat one person with diabetes, it costs around $10,000 annually.
Can you imagine if there was a menu of items where a patient could choose 20-40 treatments throughout the year, through their health insurance where they could select lifestyle change services?
Let’s say a patient chooses:
10 lifestyle or health consultations at $175 each
10 personal training sessions at $50 each
20 sessions of yoga at $15 per class
1 gym membership at $35/ month (I understand that many health insurance companies are already doing this.)
A selection of vitamins and herb capsules at $50/ month
We are talking about $3,570 per patient versus tens of thousands of dollars in payouts for medical expenses.
Even if we don’t get that far in our lifetime, think about your personal finances. Isn’t a few thousand dollars per year worth your life, your health, and your quality of life?
Our current medical system is not giving us the answers we need to get and stay healthy. It can no longer be a trusted model. It’s time we expand and look to other ways to regain and maintain our health and wellbeing.
Wishing you perfect health always,
Michelle
Michelle S. Fondin is the author of The Wheel of Healing with Ayurveda: An Easy Guide to a Healthy Lifestyle (New World Library, 2015) and Help! I Think My Loved One Is an Alcoholic: A Survival Guide for Lovers, Family & Friends and upcoming book Enlightened Medicine: Get & Stay Well for Good This Time.
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