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Conventional medicine attempts to heal illness and alleviate suffering in the patient. When it it successful, success is often accomplished at the expense of overall wholeness and well being in the patient. Most doctors focus on the symptoms of the illness and not on the underlying cause.

Alternative therapies focus on the whole patient and employs methods to treat not just the body but the mind and spirit as well. Practitioners of naturapathy and other alternative methods recognize that the human being is more than just a collection of cells and tissue and that the state of mind can effect the healing process. It is understood that given the proper tools the human body can heal itself. Healthy lifestyles are encouraged. The focus is not on just treating illness, but on preventing illness.

One of the tools that is necessary to total health is proper nutrition. Conventional medicine recognizes this to some extent but does not often teach the basic principles of nutrition and preventing disease in the first place. Only when diabetes or heart disease strike is the patient encouraged to change their lifestyle. Often it is to late to bring about a state of health again.

Medical schools teach nutrition as an afterthought; therefore, most doctors do not have a knowledge base to pass on to their patients concerning healthy diets. Only if they are overweight is the word "diet" ever spoken. Prescription medications are dispensed hoping to "heal" the patient. Little or no teaching is offered concerning lifestyle and food choices in the role of preventing disease. Doctors are taught in medical school that most people can get the nutrients they need by eating a balanced diet. Research showing otherwise is ignored or belittled. Their patients are uneducated as to the reasons they are ill and continue to struggle to find wholeness and health.

It is up to the patient to find the facts concerning the role diet and food choices play in their overall health. This is made more difficult as the media announces almost daily a new "fact" and conflicting theories abound. Common sense must prevail in any attempt to find balance and wellness. The alternative health movement struggles to educate but is hindered by the pharmaceutical companies and allopathic medicine's disinformation in general.

The public has been programmed by the mainstream medical community to believe that our physicians are altruistically committed to our well being, that they have at their disposal "the cure" and that the alternative practitioners are backward and superstitious.

This mind set has cost us dearly in health and well being and in our pocket books as well. Consider the fear we now have of pandemic flu and super bugs brought about by the indiscriminate use of anti biotics.

Consider the fact that obesity is epidemic and is effecting even our children.

Consider the fact that in the last generation heart disease and diabetes have become the norm, not the exception in our aging population. Toxins and pollutants are killing us, causing cancer and early aging. Yet most people resist any alternative way of looking at their lifestyle and health care choices.

I have heard people remark that taking dietary supplements just makes for expensive urine. My answer to this remark is this: You go to the market and spend hundreds of dollars on food that is killing you. You consume this food and it eventually goes down the toilet as well.

Why not at least give your body what it is crying out for in the process?

We have made much progress in understanding the disease process in our modern times. It is now time to return to the wisdom of the past and relearn the wellness process.

Learn more about this author, Debra K. Carey.
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