Simply Healthy

In case you hadn’t noticed, the health care industry has developed a bad case of the “OVERS.”

Medical experts and mainstream media sources have been telling us for some time now that we are over-diagnosed, over-treated, and over-drugged.

In his New York Times OpEd, “If You Feel O.K., Maybe You Are O.K.” this past February, Gilbert Welch,  professor of medicine at the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, and author of Overdiagnosed: Making People Sick in the Pursuit of Health asks:

“…is looking hard for things to be wrong a good way to promote health?”

The BMJ Group, a 137 year old medical information provider, which publishes the venerable British Medical Journal, recently published an article titled, “Preventing overdiagnosis: how to stop harming the healthy.” The opening sentence of the article says,

“Evidence is mounting that medicine is harming healthy people through ever earlier detection and ever wider definition of disease.”

Several weeks ago, in its Well column the New York times published an alarming article titled “Overtreatment is Taking a Harmful Toll”. Author, Tara Parker-Pope, concludes:

“…an epidemic of overtreatment — too many scans, too many blood tests, too many procedures — is costing the nation’s health care system at least $210 billion a year, according to the Institute of Medicine, and taking a human toll in pain, emotional suffering, severe complications and even death.”

And finally a Reuters article titled, “Stemming the tide of overtreatment in U.S. healthcare” tells us:

“MIT healthcare economist Dr. Jonathan Gruber estimates that about $800 billion – or nearly one-third of all healthcare spending – is wasted in unnecessary diagnostic tests, procedures and extra days in the hospital.”

And as far as over-drugging goes, The Centers for Disease Control has now classified prescription drug abuse as an epidemic.

Enough said.

One of my first employers, a wise Japanese woman who founded and ran her own international school in Tokyo, once told me, “If you bring me a problem, bring me a solution too.”

A previous post highlights some solutions that fellow Americans are finding in ever increasing numbers:

According to everydayhealth.com “About 40 percent of American adults currently use some type of alternative therapy to relieve stress, help manage health conditions, or just promote general wellness.”

The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine confirms that over 85 percent of those alternatives involve some sort of prayer.

USNews reported in 2008 that, “In recent years, a growing number of rigorous studies have shown that spirituality—including prayer, meditation, and attendance at religious services—benefits health in ways that science hasn’t fully explained. Among other effects, regular worship and other spiritual acts appear to lengthen life expectancy, strengthen immunity, improve the body’s response to stress, and boost other measures of physical health.”

The open-minded pursuit of spirituality, which many are finding foundational to all health, is simple, inexpensive and open to all. Sacred texts, church fellowship or just building quiet, prayerful moments into our days, weeks and months can help us stay simply healthy.