Read Superhealing: Engaging Your Mind, Body, and Spirit to Create Optimal Health and Well-Being (ARC) for Free Online Page A
Authors: Elaine R. Ferguson
of disease. The research clearly indicates that when consumers take responsibility for their health and actively participate in lifestyle modifications and decision making, they usual y don’t get as sick in the first place, and when they do get sick, they heal
Introduction
15
faster. Throughout this book, I will present evidence of this to you.
The truth is that modern medicine has made minimal progress
with its purely physiological approach to healing, except in the treatment of infectious diseases and of acute and traumatic illnesses.
In fact, many see that technology has played a significant role in disrupting the cornerstone of the practice of medicine: the doctor-patient relationship. There is an increasing awareness that our medical system—contrary to its mandate—is actual y the leading cause
of death and injury in the United States. Each year, 7.5 million unnecessary medical and surgical procedures are performed.31 The
number of people exposed to unnecessary hospitalization every year is 8.9 million.32 The total number of iatrogenic deaths (those inadvertently caused by a physician, by surgery or other treatment, or by a diagnostic procedure) is calculated at close to 784,000 a year.33
The number of people having adverse drug reactions to prescribed
medicine while in the hospital is 2.2 million a year.34 And this doesn’t even consider the adverse reactions that take place outside hospitals, which aren’t official y recorded.
In addition to the alarming rates of drug interactions, medical accidents, and harm caused by a technological approach to patients
that appears to have run amuck. Ironical y and tragical y, despite all of our culture’s prescription-drug taking and technology, diseases are not being cured. In 2009, the annual heart disease death rate was 599,413, and the annual cancer death rate was 567,628.36 In addition, because there are currently more than 78 million baby boom-
ers in America, we have a large aging population and are therefore seeing an increase in dementia from Alzheimer’s disease and other
conditions.38 Around two-thirds of seniors (age sixty-five and older) in the United States have at least one chronic disease and regularly see seven physicians.40
16
Introduction
Our healthcare system is disease oriented and does not adequate-
ly treat chronic diseases because of its primary focus on the physical aspects of those diseases to the exclusion of all other considerations.
With rare exceptions, doctors typical y omit and ignore any consideration of the psychological, emotional, environmental, and spiritual factors at play in the development of disease.
Was it always this way, or did physicians simply change their
minds?
REMEMBERING WHAT
ONCE WAS COMMON SENSE
Some of our predecessors understood the truth about the unity of
mind, body, and spirit. In 1909, Sir William Osler, long considered the father of modern medicine, stated, “The care of tuberculosis depends more on what the patient has in his head than what he has in his chest.”41 It took almost eighty more years for other scientists to catch up with his groundbreaking observation. During the last fifty years, but in particular since the early 1980s, medical researchers across the globe have expanded the horizons of medical research by exploring healing vistas and theories beyond the current approach of modern medicine.
The findings of thousands of groundbreaking studies now confirm
what the ancient healers knew: your body, mind, and spirit are one.
Since the last half of the twentieth century, scientists have been shattering the ideas that for centuries served as the foundation of Western science. In exploring how mind, spirit, and emotion are connected to the body, they learned that these aspects of our being form an intelligent integrated system that functions in a dynamic state of harmony. Our thoughts, feelings (defined as physical sensations),
emotions (defined as physical sensations that
Introduction
15
faster. Throughout this book, I will present evidence of this to you.
The truth is that modern medicine has made minimal progress
with its purely physiological approach to healing, except in the treatment of infectious diseases and of acute and traumatic illnesses.
In fact, many see that technology has played a significant role in disrupting the cornerstone of the practice of medicine: the doctor-patient relationship. There is an increasing awareness that our medical system—contrary to its mandate—is actual y the leading cause
of death and injury in the United States. Each year, 7.5 million unnecessary medical and surgical procedures are performed.31 The
number of people exposed to unnecessary hospitalization every year is 8.9 million.32 The total number of iatrogenic deaths (those inadvertently caused by a physician, by surgery or other treatment, or by a diagnostic procedure) is calculated at close to 784,000 a year.33
The number of people having adverse drug reactions to prescribed
medicine while in the hospital is 2.2 million a year.34 And this doesn’t even consider the adverse reactions that take place outside hospitals, which aren’t official y recorded.
In addition to the alarming rates of drug interactions, medical accidents, and harm caused by a technological approach to patients
that appears to have run amuck. Ironical y and tragical y, despite all of our culture’s prescription-drug taking and technology, diseases are not being cured. In 2009, the annual heart disease death rate was 599,413, and the annual cancer death rate was 567,628.36 In addition, because there are currently more than 78 million baby boom-
ers in America, we have a large aging population and are therefore seeing an increase in dementia from Alzheimer’s disease and other
conditions.38 Around two-thirds of seniors (age sixty-five and older) in the United States have at least one chronic disease and regularly see seven physicians.40
16
Introduction
Our healthcare system is disease oriented and does not adequate-
ly treat chronic diseases because of its primary focus on the physical aspects of those diseases to the exclusion of all other considerations.
With rare exceptions, doctors typical y omit and ignore any consideration of the psychological, emotional, environmental, and spiritual factors at play in the development of disease.
Was it always this way, or did physicians simply change their
minds?
REMEMBERING WHAT
ONCE WAS COMMON SENSE
Some of our predecessors understood the truth about the unity of
mind, body, and spirit. In 1909, Sir William Osler, long considered the father of modern medicine, stated, “The care of tuberculosis depends more on what the patient has in his head than what he has in his chest.”41 It took almost eighty more years for other scientists to catch up with his groundbreaking observation. During the last fifty years, but in particular since the early 1980s, medical researchers across the globe have expanded the horizons of medical research by exploring healing vistas and theories beyond the current approach of modern medicine.
The findings of thousands of groundbreaking studies now confirm
what the ancient healers knew: your body, mind, and spirit are one.
Since the last half of the twentieth century, scientists have been shattering the ideas that for centuries served as the foundation of Western science. In exploring how mind, spirit, and emotion are connected to the body, they learned that these aspects of our being form an intelligent integrated system that functions in a dynamic state of harmony. Our thoughts, feelings (defined as physical sensations),
emotions (defined as physical sensations that
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