Should medicine be approached from a preventative and disease focus, or from symptom alleviation and treatment?
There are a lot of new terms that are being bandied about as modern American Medicine attempts to address its internal conflict over the treatment of symptoms or the predictive and preventative efforts to avoid disease altogether. Some of those you will hear are:
- Alternative/complimentary
- Holistic
- Functional
- Disease focused
- Symptom focused
- Preventive Exercise, diet, weight loss, genetic, psychosocial treatments, hypnosis, meditation,
Years ago when I was learning to debate the first thing they taught us that needed to happen in a formal educational debate was to establish the definition of terms. It is very difficult to conduct a level -headed purposeful directed discussion without using specific terms commonly on each side of the argument.
Formal debate always has a proposal or title statement followed by a definition of terms then the presentation of an argument in support of the premise or argument topic. That is then followed by a presentation of the negative side of the argument rejecting the proposal. This is all followed by rebuttals and cross -examination of each others evidence, reasoning, and persuasive arguments.
One of the most involved discussions currently surging through the medical field is the question of approaching medicine from a preventative and disease focused approach or approaching medicine from a symptom alleviation and treatment approach.
Modern medicine is like a debate. There are so many different propositions being advanced and argued pro and con that it is very difficult to select the most relevant and or important ones to focus on. We would like to discuss what we do at BioBalance Health by defining some terms and formulating a proposal for the way modern medicine works best in serving the needs of the patient population and the health of the country.
Historically doctors have been trained to identify and treat symptoms of disease over the last half -century or so they have begun in larger and larger groups to recognize the collaboration of various symptoms into serious and chronic illnesses.
Many doctors who are emerging with a focus on practices utilizing some of the terms listed above are beginning to stress the importance of looking at a patient from a holistic perspective that includes traditional medical tests and interventions and also considering other factors such as life style, genetics, emotional stability, stress, and the indications or implications of the various combinations of symptoms focused histories which might be better treated from a disease and prevention perspective. Those doctors are looking into ways to provide understanding and care which encompasses various new paradigms and new scientific research information in order to provide care which supports healthy living for the duration of our lives rather than just focusing on immediate and acute care focused on presenting symptoms.
This Health cast was written and presented by Dr. Kathy Maupin, M.D., Bio-identical Hormone Replacement Expert and Author, with Brett Newcomb, MA., LPC., Family Counselor, Presenter and Author. www.BioBalanceHealth.com.
