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Discover Wellness
Read by co-author Dr. Jason A. Deitch

We are witnessing a significant shift away from
conventional medicine and towards an ongoing
wellness lifestyle. The “outside-in” allopathic
model of disease-care is being superseded by the “inside-out”
wellness model of health care. At the same time, we see our
country transitioning from a manufacturing-driven economy to
an idea-driven economy. These changes are not unrelated. It
is increasingly clear that Americans have made the decision to
take greater responsibility for their health and their quality of
life.

Some have called this trend “the human potential
movement,” and others refer to it as “the wellness revolution.”
Whatever you choose to call it, the premise is based on having
a profound respect for the body’s ability to heal itself; people
have been teaching this core principle of wellness for thousands
of years. Now, in our idea-driven economy, wellness is an idea
whose time has returned.

Traditional “health care” is really a sickness business:
it only functions reactively, after people have become sick.
Enormous sums are spent treating existing disease: according
to Paul Zane Pilzer, a leading economist and author, approximately
one-seventh of the United States economy, or about
$1.8 trillion, is devoted to this sickness business, what we
erroneously call “health care.” But now the idea of wellness,
of focusing health care on staying healthy, is gaining prevalence.
The significant shift away from conventional medicine
and towards the wellness model of health care has been and
continues to be fueled by the information revolution and by the
aging Baby Boomer generation. According to journalist Anna
Quindlen, the greatest advance in health care in our lifetime has
not been transplants or new pharmaceuticals: it has been the
rise of the informed consumer.

In the past, people who chose to breast feed, exercise
daily, meditate, take vitamins, and/or go to the chiropractor
on a regular basis would be scoffed at for being “health nuts.”
Today, it is the people who do not participate in these types of
activities who are considered to be out of step. Yes, Americans
are increasingly obsessed with health and with maximizing
their quality of life.

Moving Away from Medications

We are learning and relearning daily that the old maxim
“better health through better chemistry” is not a solution.
Examples of conventional medicine’s failure abound in the
press. One study by researchers at the University of Texas
Southwestern Medical Center tracked more than 300 cases of
acute liver failure at 22 hospitals and found that 38 percent
of the liver failures were associated with excessive acetaminophen
use. What is considered excessive? According to the
New England Journal of Medicine, excessive use is defined as
“taking more than 1,000 pills in a lifetime, or more than 365
pills in a year.” The people who dose themselves daily with
these over-the-counter “pain killers” find their medicine has
been killing them.

Every day in North America, millions of children
diagnosed as suffering from attention deficit disorder (ADD) or
attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are chemically
“lobotomized.” Yet more than 30 years ago, the World Health
Organization classified methylphenidate (Ritalin®), one of the
most popular pharmaceutical “solutions” to these conditions,
as a Schedule 2 drug—the same class as cocaine and PCP—
because of its highly addictive qualities and high potential for
abuse. Should we, as Americans, be okay with this? Should our
children be put on medications like this with little research into
their long-term effects?

The American Medical Association has estimated that 40
to 60 percent of the more than 2 billion prescriptions written by
doctors each year are provided “off-label”: this means that the
drugs prescribed are not tested or FDA-approved for treating the
condition they are being prescribed for. Dr. Richard Greene, the
director for the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research,
has said, “The public is shocked when they learn that there isn’t
a shred of evidence for a lot of medical therapies. They just can’t
believe their doctors are doing things they can’t back up.”

“You need to know that the current health care system is
designed to create fear,” according to Dr. Joe Mercola. We need
to become better educated about the dangers of medicine and the
benefits of wellness. Dr. Mercola, the founder of Mercola.com, is
a pioneer of using the Internet to bring natural health and wellness
information to the public. Mercola.com has become the world’s
most visited natural health Web site in the world with almost
one million subscribers and over five million page views every
month. “Over 80 percent of the people on the Internet search
health information, but unfortunately there is as yet no destination
spot for health information—and the field is loaded with
fraud and deception,” says Dr. Mercola. His newest Web site,
VitalVotes.com, is a treasure trove of knowledge and health
wisdom. We all need more resources to help us learn what most
of the media is not yet reporting on: how to have better health
through better living.

Better Health through Better Living Is the Answer

So, if better health through better chemistry has failed,
what other options exist? Millions of Americans are discovering
and adopting a new health care paradigm, which is “better
health through better living.” What was once considered
“alter native medicine” has become increasingly accepted into the
mainstream: it continues to grow into the preferred form of true
health care.

In the United States, 36 percent of adults use some form of
“Complementary Alternative Medicine” (CAM), according to
national study results released in 2004 by the National Center
for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM),
a division of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). When
megavitamin therapy and prayer specifically for health reasons
are included in the definition of CAM, that number rises to 62
percentage. The study also included a survey to discover why
people use CAM. Here we see a sample of the responses:

• 55 percent of adults said they were most likely to use
CAM because they believed that it would help them when
combined with conventional medical treatments.
• 50 percent thought that CAM would be interesting to try.
• 26 percent used CAM because a conventional medical
professional suggested that they try it.
• 13 percent used CAM because they felt that conventional
medicine was too expensive.

The survey also found that approximately 28 percent of
adults used CAM because they believed conventional medical
treatments would not help them with their health problems.
As reported in The Trends Journal a few years ago, “A
growing number of prominent doctors are bucking establishment
dogma. They allege that physicians, once seen as approaching
the divine, can’t help 80 percent of disease. They also say that
medicine and surgery only cure ten percent of disease and that
at least another ten percent of diseases are caused by accidents
of surgery and side-effects of medicine.”

Prominent physicians who have successfully shifted to a
more natural and body-respectful focus on wellness care include
Dr. Andrew Weil, Dr. Dean Ornish, Dr. Julian Whitaker, and Dr.
Deepak Chopra, to name just a few. One of the most powerful
statements on this health model comes from Dr. Chopra:
“Inside your body is a wonderful pharmacy. You name it, and
the human body can make it... tranquilizers, sleeping pills, anticancer
drugs; the right dose at the right time for the right organ
with no side effects. And all the instructions you need come
with the packaging, which is your innate intelligence.”

What Is Wellness?

Wellness can be defined as the quality or state of being
healthy; especially as the result of deliberate effort, or as an
approach to health care that emphasizes preventing illness and
prolonging life, as opposed to emphasizing the treatment of
diseases. Additionally, Dr. Patrick Gentempo, CEO of Creating
Wellness, defines wellness as the degree to which an individual
experiences health and vitality in any dimension of life.

Wellness requires you to be a proactive agent for your body.
You need to treat it well and not wait until you hurt before you
decide to take care of it. As I’ve said before, health is not merely
the absence of disease any more than wealth is an absence of
poverty. Let’s remember health is not simply “feeling fine,” for
we know that problems may progress for years without causing
any symptoms whatsoever. As you know by now, heart disease,
for example, often develops unnoticed for many years before
it strikes: in fact, the first symptom of heart disease that many
people experience is a heart attack or death.

Now let us be clear that I am not under the illusion that
everyone who creates a wellness lifestyle will be immune from
pain, sickness, and disease. There are many people who do
everything right and still get sick and die. Some will argue that
there are many people who do everything wrong and live long,
seemingly healthy lives. However, since we have no way to
predict who is who, we have to do our very best to reduce our
risk and promote our health.

Over the years in private practice, I have seen how
neglecting their health has drained people of thousands of
dollars, sometimes to the point of bankruptcy. I have seen
people who have saved up and waited their entire lives to take
a dream trip or to send their kids to college, whose savings and
dreams were siphoned away to pay for health care expenses. I
have seen people with work injuries like carpal tunnel syndrome
or neck and back pain who have been unable to work, unable
to drive, and even unable to sleep without pain. I have seen
family members whose entire lives become dominated by the
necessity to care for another family member who is sick or in
pain. The effects of long-term illness or disability on a family
can be devastating: in many cases, it happens to families who
are already over-stressed, under-loved, and emotionally maxed
out.

On the other hand, I have seen people who have been
unemployed due to their pain or health condition choose to
adopt new healthy habits: within a short period of time they
are back at work making money, taking care of themselves and
their families again, and are able to put away savings for their
retirement.

I have heard every excuse you can imagine as to why
people believe they can’t afford the time or money to invest in
their health. But the truth is that you must invest in your health
today, or disease may bankrupt you in every way later. If you
don’t have the time and money to improve your health while
you feel good, what makes you think you will have the time
and money to improve your health once you have lost it? As
Anthony Robbins once said, “you can make time for wellness
now or you can make time for sickness later. The choice is
yours.”

With regard to your wellness, the three main ideas that
I really want to drive home are: 1) health is not merely the
absence of disease; 2) the body has an innate intelligence that
runs a series of complex systems that rely on proper balance
and coordination in order to function correctly; and 3) by
living a wellness lifestyle, you can enrich your life with vibrant
health. In the chapters that follow you will learn about the five
components of wellness: alignment, exercise, nutrition, healthy
thinking, and healthy lifestyle habits.

In addition, you will learn great strategies on how to create
your own all-star wellness team, about our favorite essential
wellness products, and how wellness is impacting America
today and in the future.