Modern Medicine's Approach to Health Issues

Before I start off with my topic, I would like to clarify a few things first:

1. The content of this blog post is purely my personal understanding of Modern Medicine's Approach to Health Issue. It is by no means a scientifically proven theory, nor a hypothesis made by any health experts. I am just sharing what I understand and believed to be true about modern medicine's approach to health issue, through my personal experiences, which I gained through books, health seminars and personal researches.

2. I am not a doctor, surgeon, nutritionist, MD, PhD, or well-known health expert. I am just an ordinary individual with 2 Engineering degrees and Master in Sociology, and is aiming to build my career in the health field. The reason for my interest in health is simple and straight forward; I was tortured by health problems since young, and I do not want my parents, siblings, friends, and our future generations to be tortured by health issues, which could be prevented.  Modern medicine's approach couldn't help my family, relatives, friends and myself much, but I am grateful that it helped me to survive until I found my answer to health - the holistic health concept, Molecular Reform Therapy.

3. This topic is a sharing of my knowledge regarding modern medicine's approach in health issue, so I do welcome all experts from various medical or nutritional background to share your honest opinions regarding the conclusion that I've reached so far.

4. I am not trying to deny the importance and achievements of modern medicine, nor am I trying to badmouth it. I am just trying to clarify what modern medicine actually do to our body as well as what it doesn't do to our body.

Modern Medicine's Approach to Health Issues

In the ancient days before modern medicine came into the limelight, people have been depending on supernatural power/rituals, mixture of herbs and some other traditional practices to fight against illnesses/diseases. As science advances, modern medicine quickly overtake the traditions and with its great success in "curing" diseases, everyone starts to hail modern medicine as if it is a gift from heaven. Drugs, vaccine, surgeries, chemo therapy, radiation therapy, x-ray, and many more high-tech discoveries of modern medicine stormed the hospital and become the one-stop solution for patients, seeking for help to battle their health issue. Since very young age, we are all taught to look for doctors to get healthy, but does modern medicine really make you healthy?

The first most important message that I would like to emphasize here is, "Modern Medicine may cure your illnesses/diseases, but it doesn't actually makes you healthy". It is very important to know the difference between "not sick" and "healthy". Being healthy doesn't just mean being free from sickness/illnesses/diseases. It is also important to realize that the names/terms that we used to call a certain sickness/illness/disease are actually just a label that is used by doctors to identify/classify a special group/groups of symptoms. These symptoms do not always means that we are sick. These symptoms are actually the only way that our body could communicate with us to inform us that they are in the process of fixing some issues or they are trying to tell us that we are not providing our body with what it needs to carry out its tasks. Due to our ignorance towards our own health, many of us never even bothered to try to understand the root cause or the real meaning behind these symptoms. Instead, we just look for any quick-fix solutions that could eliminate these symptoms. When we experience headache, we look for pain killers, when we experience stomach discomfort, we look for drugs to soothe the discomfort, when we have inflammations, we are given anti-inflammation drugs, when we are infected, we are given antibiotics, and so on. Most of them work wonders, stop the pain, kills the virus, lowers your blood pressure, makes you feel better, but no matter how effective it is in eliminating/suppressing the symptoms, it doesn't change the fact that it doesn't make you any healthier.

So what are modern medicine actually doing if it is not making us healthy? Let us first defines what it means to be healthy and what are the conditions that we need to fulfill to be considered as healthy.

According to WHO (World Health Organization), they defines health with the following 3 conditions:

1. The individual's body must not experience any discomfort or pain

2. The individual must be energetic and is able to concentrate well on whatever they are doing, from morning till bedtime.

3. The individual must have a healthy social life.

From Molecular Reform Therapy's point of view, health begins from the smallest part of our body, our cells. Therefore being healthy simply means that every single cells in our body and the environment that our cells live are healthy. Cells form tissue, tissues form organ, organs form a system, and systems operates our body. If our cells are healthy, our body is healthy. In order for our cells to be healthy, they must meet the following conditions:

1. Balanced nutrient intake, including sufficient oxygen and drinking water

2. Healthy lifestyle (regular aerobic exercises, good sleeping habit, good eating habit, good working postures, and no bad habits such as heavy drinking, smoking or taking illegal drugs)

3. Psychologically & spiritually healthy (good social life, peaceful mind and free from stress)

With these information, the definition of health should be quite clear. Now, let us move on to see how modern medicine has been tackling health issues all these while. Generally, modern medicine only uses the following methods:

1. Any health issue related to pain, you will be given pain killers. What does pain killers do? Stop the pain, obviously. Does pain killers cure the root cause of the pain? The answer is definitely, no. Everyone who has taken pain killer knows very well that the pain will return once the drug's effect wears off. So how do we actually recover from sickness such as headache after taking pain killers? It is all thanks to our body's self healing ability, not the pain killer. What pain killer does is that it temporarily suppresses the pain you are experiencing, by cutting off the signals that inform your brain regarding the issue. Imagine that your body is a building and your body's immune system is the fire alarm system of the building. The pain you experience is the ringing sound of the fire alarm bell. When you take a pain killer, you are actually chopping off the cables to prevent the fire alarm from ringing. By preventing the fire alarm from ringing, you are not only unable to put out the fire that started the alarm, but are also risking other's life as they may be staying inside the building, thinking that it is a false alarm. This is exactly the same scenario as taking pain killer to suppress the pain. It is not only useless (in terms of curing the actual cause), but also bad for your health. If you continue to take pain killers to suppress the actual issue, you will end up taking stronger and stronger version of pain killers until they finally doesn't work anymore no matter how much you take.

2. A more complicated disease such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, heart attack etc., are well-known to be incurable diseases through modern medicine approach. Although incurable, modern medicine came out with solutions that allows them to keep these diseases under control via their functional drugs. These drugs could command our body to perform specific functions such as increasing/decreasing heart beat, reducing red blood cell's concentration, lowering blood pressure, increase/decrease the production of certain substances, etc., and some of these drugs are imitation of the substances in our body, such as insulin and hormones. Whenever you seek for modern medicine's help regarding these incurable health issues, you will be advised to switch to a healthy diet and lifestyle while using drugs to suppress the symptoms of these diseases to a safer level. If you chose to ignore the advises to switch to a healthy diet and lifestyle, and just continue to control the disease with drugs, it is as if you are trying to wrap fire with paper.  Doctors had done their part - telling you to switch to healthy lifestyle and prescribed you medication - but the former is often neglected, partly due to the lack of nutrition knowledge among doctors.  It is definitely not their fault because they are just following whatever knowledge that they were taught and told to be important, but unfortunately, nutrition is not in the important list.

3. As for life threatening diseases like cancer, regardless of what type of cancer it is, there are basically 2 treatment options to choose from, non surgery and surgery. For non surgery options, we are all too familiar with the treatments - chemo therapy (making use of strong poisonous drugs to attempt to kill the cancerous cells) and radiation therapy (making use of radiation technology to attempt to kill the cancerous cells). Both of these methods are unable to distinguish between cancerous and non cancerous cells, so these treatment approach is basically asking the patients to pray that the non cancerous cells will miraculously survive these deadly treatment and re-produce new healthy cells. Having the guts to fight cancerous cells with poison and radiation is quite a bold approach, but bear in mind that these approach is never meant to help the patient to regain their health in the first place. These approach is just an extreme measure taken by modern medicine to attempt to prolong or increase the patient's survival rate by destroying the cancerous cells. Therefore they should never be mistaken as a cure for cancer.  Modern medicine's cancer treatment is akin to bombing the entire neighbourhood (without evacuating anyone) when one building is being identified as housing dangerous terrorists.  Would you call that an act to rescue (cure) the city?

4. As for any other diseases or health conditions that require surgery options, this is again another drastic measures to save life. Unlike machines, human body cannot be replaced easily. There is a saying, "replicas can never match the originals in performance & quality". Even if organ transplant surgery is successful, the patient needs to be monitored consistently for after surgery complications, and they need to be extra careful with their food and drinks. Modern medicine has advanced so much in their surgery knowledge and this is indeed something to be proud of because it could save life. However, removing or replacing a part of your body will not make you healthy. Every single parts of our body is there for a reason, once they are removed or altered, there are bound to be some side effects. Surgery approach's main objective is just to save life, so health concerns are casted aside because being unhealthy is better than being dead. Side effects of health could be controlled or suppressed, but the dead cannot be resurrected.

5. When dealing with diseases related to microorganism (virus, bacteria, fungus, etc.) infection, antibiotic and vaccines are modern medicine's answer. These methods have saved countless of life throughout medical history, but what are they actually doing to our body with antibiotics and vaccines? Antibiotic is also a drug that imitates the antibody that our body produces, but at a far inferior quality. Unlike the antibody that our body produces, antibiotics are designed to kill off microorganism through a limited number of methods and since it is an artificial version it is also a foreign substance in our body. As a foreign substance,antibiotics are beyond our body's control, so it is also unable to distinguish between good and bad microorganism. It is just a bomb that kills off the terrorist together with their hostages. Recent cases of H1N1 has also proven that antibiotic approach has a major flaw, which is, it causes harmful microorganism to evolve into stronger breed while weakening our immune system. Antibiotic approach is like a double edged blade without handle, it is still capable of killing the enemy, but you will not escape unhurt. Vaccines on the other hand, are actually weakened version of the original microorganism. Vaccines are injected into our body to force our body to develop antibody blueprints so that when the specific microorganism attacked our body, our body wouldn't be in a shocked state and will be ready to produce the specific antibody to resist them. Vaccination is actually a very clever approach, but I wouldn't consider injecting viruses into our body as a healthy approach. It is undoubtedly a brilliant approach with "prevention is better than cure" in mind, but it will only work if your body is healthy enough in the first place.  Besides, how were the viruses weakened in the first place?  Vaccination comes with hidden risks.

6. Medical checkup technologies and detailed human body knowledge are probably the only truly healthy part of modern medicine contributions.  Unfortunately, healthy diet, regular exercising, drink plenty of plain water and living a healthy life are something that many people had difficulties to implement back into their life.  Life is just too busy for most people, so it is understandable that they would go for the convenience of modern medicine's 'magic' pills.

Having gone through all the different modern medicine's approach in tackling health issue, it is very clear that modern medicine's approach focuses on life saving measures over health restoration measures. In most approaches, modern medicine is willing to sacrifice patient's health in exchange for a temporary release of sufferings or a drastic life saving measure. It is undeniable that modern medicine is doing its best to ease patient's sufferings, suppress life threatening symptoms, increase/prolong patient's survival rate, and saving life of patients, but it is just not making you healthy. Modern medicine may be your life saviour, but it will not make you healthy. Therefore, if you are seeking for health, you should stay away from modern medicine because it doesn't provide your body with what it needs to be healthy. From a doctor's point of view, as long as you are not bed-ridden sick, even if some of your blood test results exceeds/are below normal level or you are having a mild illnesses you are still considered to be 'healthy', but are you really healthy?  It could be too late to restore your health or even life threatening when doctors told you that you are not healthy.

Thank you for reading my blog post on "Modern Medicine's Approach to Health Issue". Hope that you enjoyed the reading and have a clearer understanding of health and where have modern medicine gone wrong in terms of health restoration.