Are You Trying to Heal or To Cure?

What’s So?
Defining Our Terms

The definition of “healing” and “curing” have very different meanings, although they are used synonymously in our culture. Merriam-Webster’s defines curing as “a recovery or relief from a disease such as a drug or treatment.” Healing defined is “to make sound or whole and to restore to health.” By definition, healing and curing are not the same; not in what they require of the patient, not in their approach and not in their intended results.

Advances in medicine are undeniable, but unfortunately still based upon the premise of restoring the body to the state it was before a given symptom or ailment. The goal of curing is to relieve aches, pains and discomfort and to fix the body; very little to do with the underlying cause of the ailment. The curing model also rarely takes one’s emotional-mental state into consideration.

The true power of healing lies in assisting the body and mind to become better than who and what we were yesterday.

By removing obstacles interfering with one’s state of health, healing sets the stage for the body and mind to integrate. Healing takes into account one’s physical, emotional, mental and spiritual states of being.

Healing is not about fixing. Starting with awareness, healing cultivates healthier decisions and greater responsibility regarding one’s own path. The outcome usually ends with an expanded view of past perceptions, new behaviors and a sounder structure – a true integrative life experience.

“Instead of being meaningless, people’s problems become diseases of meaning, enabling people to see that things are not necessarily “going wrong” but are in fact, helping them become stronger, to live more fully and with more understanding.” (Jobst, Shostak and Whitehouse, 1999.  Association for Network Care Research, Longmont, CO.)

So What?
The Outdated Model

Modern medicine offers us great value in the way of acute injuries, trauma and other life-threatening situations. Unfortunately, current statistics shed light on the current biomedical model’s negative effects. It was well documented by Barbara Starfield in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2000 that doctor errors and wrongly prescribed medications are one of the leading causes of death in the U.S. (source)

By the way, these numbers are unfortunately still true today!

Despite the fact that we have the best technologies in the world and that we spend the most money on health-related services than other industrialized nations, we still rank very low. How low? Dead last according to some statistics (pun intended!)

So, is it “health care” or “sickness care” that we are spending money on?

“If you get run over by a bus, the modern emergency room is a blessing. But when it comes to promoting health and treating most chronic diseases, conventional medicine still has a long way to go, and, more often than not, will send your health into a downward spiral.” Dr. Mercola

A few statistics from our current sickness care model:

1. In the journal “Clinical Evidence”, a recent study found that only 11 percent of all conventional treatments are actually estimated to be beneficial!
2. Prescription drug use causes an estimated 700,000 emergency room visits a year in the US alone.
3.  According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), adverse drug reactions from drugs that are properly prescribed and properly administered cause about 106,000 deaths per year, making prescription drugs the fourth-leading cause of death in the U.S.
4. Johns Hopkins Medical School discovered that if you add medical errors and prescription drugs together, the conventional medical system may actually be the LEADING cause of death in the US!
5. Medication and iatrogenic illness are the leading cause of death in America, according to Dr. Dean G. Null, M.D. N.D. as cited in his work “Death by Medicine” 2003 – New York, Nutrition Institute of America).

Source: http://www.webdc.com/pdfs/deathbymedicine.pdf

The intention of sharing these startling statistics is to highlight the need for a change in a model that is obviously not working as “primary health care.” I hope to inspire you through awareness and education to develop healthier habits and greater responsibility for your own healing journey.

Now What?
A Model Whose Time Has Come

When a thing was new, people said, “It is not true.”

Later, when its truth became obvious, people said, “Anyway, it is not important.”

And when its importance could not be denied, people said, “Anyway, it is not new.”

Michel de Montaigne – 1533-1592

Our beliefs shape our realities, as examined in Dr. Bruce Lipton’s book, “The Biology of Belief.” Our beliefs are essentially a collection of our perceptions, which are learned over our lives through direct and indirect experiences. Parental, peer, academic and cultural beliefs can be limiting and may or may not be true. Science has proven that our biological expression (behavior, gene activity and even rewriting of the genetic code) is a reflection of our perceived physical and energetic environmental stimuli.

“New edge science reveals how our thoughts, attitudes and beliefs control our abilities and create the experiences of our lives.” – Bruce Lipton, PhDI hope you found this information empowering. By helping you perceive your body and mind differently (expanding your beliefs), I am in essence helping you to expand your biological expression for greater success with the healing process.

“New edge science reveals how our thoughts, attitudes and beliefs control our abilities and create the experiences of our lives.” – Bruce Lipton, PhD

I hope you found this information empowering. By helping you perceive your body and mind differently (expanding your beliefs), I am in essence helping you to expand your biological expression for greater success with the healing process.