Family Chiropractic Centre

PARADIGM LOST

I have a funny twist in my left eye (astigmatism) which my glasses correct, and which became glaringly apparent after crushing my glasses when working one day. Sitting down to dinner later that day, I quickly put my hand to the side of my plate so that it wouldn't slide off the table, which had developed an alarming six-inch drop to the left.

The table, of course, had not warped, but without the correction of my glasses my perception certainly had. During the two weeks it took to replace my glasses, my brain quickly straightened out my twisted world, only to have to repeat the process when I got my new glasses.

The filters, or paradigms, through which we view the world similarly become as transparent to our perception as did my glasses. By becoming aware of these paradigms we can see how they direct our decisions, beliefs, and actions. In health care it is becoming increasingly evident that the paradigm we have used is not working.

Runaway drug consumption

The spiralling cost of health care, which is now gobbling one-third of our GNP, is bankrupting us.

To add physical insult to fiscal injury, we have become a drug culture. In Ontario, for example, seniors consume the greatest amounts of prescription medication in the industrialized world, at a rate of more than four prescriptions per person. A few other examples of a system turned sour:

• 15 tons of aspirin are consumed daily, causing 2000 deaths per year
• Aspirin toxicity is the leading cause of kidney disease, stomach ulcers, and Reyes syndrome in children
• 60% of all drug-related emergency room visits and 70% of all drug-related deaths involve adverse reactions to prescription drugs
• Adverse reactions to prescribed medication ranks third in hospital admissions for preventable disorders, after cancer and heart disease, far ahead of all accidents (including car accidents, suicides, and gunshot wounds)
• 1.6 million people are hospitalized yearly due to adverse reactions to prescription drugs; 160,000 of these people die from the reaction

A culture of addicts

These facts reveal (1) the outcome of our culture's reliance on orthodox medicine to cure our ailments, and (2) that we have been enslaved.

We have abdicated the responsibility for our own health, and abandoned ourselves to the ministrations of a health-care system whose paradigm has failed.

We are drugged more frequently and at a younger age than ever before. We are poised to enter the third millennium with an aging population which places ever-greater demands on an already strained economy.

We can no longer afford our health-care system as it exists today. The crisis point has already been reached -- witness the slash-backs in hospital/physician expenditures.

This paradigm in which we ignore our bodies willy-nilly, then expect medical technicians to shore us up when the human machine breaks down, is both promoted with a vengeance and accepted with vigor:

• Pharmaceutical companies spend billions each year to convince us to consume their products
• 1 in 3 commercials we watch during prime time is dedicated to drug consumption
• Federal and provincial governments lower cigarette taxes even when this is known to increase smoking rates, especially among young people
• The average family has 29 different drugs in their medicine cabinet

Revealing in its language, orthodox medicine is, in current jargon, a "health delivery system." Inherent in this notion is that there is a consumer (the patient), who is lacking something (health) which can be purchased from a merchant (orthodox medicine). It is all too evident that this is not the case.

We live longer but are we any healthier?

Orthodox medicine best serves those individuals who are acutely ill and whose organ systems have such diminished function that without drugs and surgery they would not survive. The tragedy is that it is the same medical system which brings many people to these sorry circumstances.

If we would have results different than this, different than abdication of responsibility for our own health, different than uninformed reliance on a system that makes more people sick than get well, we need to understand what health is, where it comes from, and how we heal.

• Paradigm Found
• Taking Aim at Sacred Cows
• Life Heals