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CHAPTER ONE
Where Are We?
Home Is Where The Heart Is
Growing up in a Caribbean family in NYC helped shape my mind in ways Iâll probably never fully comprehend. I owe my open-mind to the Big Apple! Although I currently reside in Florida, NYC will always be my home.
I loved learning about the different people, beliefs and cultures that surrounded me there. I could see that they all had a similar end in mind, and a seemingly infinite number of ways to get there! They all seemed so different, yet the same. I didnât understand what the âsamenessâ about them was at the time, but sensed it nonetheless. They all had a certain faith, but chose to express it differently. When we examine this faith at its core, itâs really the same for all philosophies. All major philosophies advise us to go within to seek the Truth: from Buddhism to Hinduism, to Christianity, to Judaism⊠so why all the discord and strife? I call this iceberg syndrome. We stay on the surface and ignore whatâs underneath. We focus on semantics rather than the core message. When we finally look beyond the semantics, we realize that the differences are so miniscule as to be ignored.
Our current health crisis is very similar. We focus so intently on whatâs on the surface that weâve forgotten to look beneath the surface to go within to find the source or root cause of the problem. This iceberg syndrome approach has led us astray with tunnel vision that has now reached disastrous proportions. The New England Journal of Medicine published a study in 2005, predicting that our children born of this generation are projected to have shorter lifespans than we do for the first time in 200 years! In fact, weâve already begun to see this unfathomable statistic coming to fruition. The life expectancy in the U.S. has officially declined for the past 2 out of 3 years according to the Centers for Disease Control.
50% of American children are projected to have at least one chronic disease before the age of 18 according to a study published in June 2011 by the Journal American Pediatrics. All this technology and information, yet we seem to be going backwards, not forwards. Whatâs going on? Some would have you believe that we should expect diseases because of all the great advancements that have contributed to us living longer. Weâre told that the reason we donât feel well and have diseases is because weâre getting older and living longer. This statistic published by the New England Journal of Medicine regarding the shortened life expectancy of our children is a sobering wakeup call that this idea that we get sick because we live longer is simply untrue.
Whatâs really going on? When the foundation of a system is flawed, all that comes from that broken foundation is equally flawed. When a system of medicine endeavors to look for diseases to treat using artificial and superficial means rather than preventing them and maintaining wellness, it keeps finding diseases after theyâve taken hold and soon becomes overwhelmed with more and more diseases. Weâve seen an explosion of new diseases in the past 100 years: allergic rhinitis, autoimmune disorders, asthma, autism, and attention deficit disorder, just to name a few. And many of these diseases are plaguing our children, making the argument that weâre getting sicker because weâre living longer a lot harder to believe.
Even diseases like cancer that have been around for thousands of years have seen an explosion of new cases. The latest estimates show that 42% of Americans will have a diagnosis of cancer by the year 2025. Cancer will soon surpass heart attacks as the number one killer of Americans.
As weâve focused on finding âcuresâ for cancers using artificial means such as chemotherapy, radiation, and now, immunotherapy, weâve paved the way for new types of cancers to take hold. While death from certain cancers such as cervical and breast cancer is improving, other cancers such as human papilloma virus-associated oropharyngeal cancer (a type of throat cancer), esophageal adenocarcinoma, pancreatic, liver, thyroid, and kidney cancers are on the rise! Why? Because weâre paving the way for cancer when weâre not focused on preventing it or maintaining a state of wellness.
Our current allopathic healthcare approach is akin to the game of âwhack-a-mole,â but this is hardly a game when lives are at stake. The focus of allopathic medicine is to prevent DEATH from disease rather than to prevent the disease itself. While that model works for acute life-threatening diseases like a heart attack or appendicitis, it doesnât work for the vast majority of health problems we face today. Our allopathic model excels at saving lives in the case of immediately life-threatening conditions like a heart attack or appendicitis, and has lost its focus on disease prevention and wellness. Instead, it waits for diseases, chases them, and treats them with superficial and often artificial means, which has been its downfall and the main reason that weâre currently losing the battle to regain our health. Our vision has become astoundingly myopic.
When your life is in immediate danger, itâs acceptable to save your life by any means necessary including using artificial and synthetic means, but it becomes dangerous when this strategy is employed across the board for all conditions and symptoms, both chronic and acute.
Allopathic medicine is hardly alone in the use of superficial and artificial means. We find this problem everywhere. Our household products such as cleaners, lotions, pesticides, plastics, genetically modified foods, pollution from industrial factories, and even some vitamins, are made of artificial ingredients and wreak havoc on the bodyâs systems. Our body isnât prepared to deal with the constant exposure to synthetic and artificial products that it endures today.
The long-term use of artificial products in allopathic medicine and the constant exposure to artificial products in our homes and workplace have led us directly to our current health crisis. Our health crisis has also led to a fragile economy. While latest reports claim that our economy is holding its own, itâs clear that Americans cannot hold onto their wealth as they age. Why? We cannot outspend disease no matter how much money we have. Our health IS our wealth. Health and wealth are inextricably connected in every way. Without an emphasis on wellness and prevention, weâll continue to spiral down into an unsustainable existence.
Our focus and foundation must change to prevention of disease using natural methods and a focus on wellness. Prevention and wellness are very different, and a distinction should be made. Science is showing us clearly that our thoughts and focus create our reality and experiences. The focus on preventing a disease still brings the idea of disease itself into our awareness which increases its likelihood to take hold; whereas a focus on wellness excludes disease from our awareness, which makes it less likely to take hold. Thatâs an important distinction to make when considering a wellness approach. I purposely de-emphasize disease in my integrative practice at the RiobĂ© Institute of Integrative Medicine in order to reduce the focus on disease and increase the focus on wellness. This doesnât mean that we ignore diseases. It means that we donât give them a stronghold in our subconscious minds, which is where we create our perceptions and realities. Iâll discuss this idea throughout this book because itâs the pillar of wellness and wholeness. We literally become what we think.
Whatâs the long-term solution? A true solution is to apply allopathic medicine only in the cases of immediately life-threatening diseases while applying more effective, already-existing preventive systems of medicine such as functional medicine and traditional Chinese medicine (collectively known as integrative medicine) over time to reduce the current disease burden that plagues our nation and increasingly, the world. Trying to twist our current American allopathic system of medicine into a âpreventiveâ system when that isnât, and will likely never be its focus, will keep this solution from coming to fruition. We must apply already-established systems of medicine whose primary focus is wellness in order to begin to move in a better direction and reserve our allopathic system for immediately life-threatening diseases like heart attacks and appendicitis.
The first step is to admit we have a problem. Our American allopathic healthcare model is failing, not because itâs too expensive, not because of insurance companies and government regulations, but simply because its very foundation is ill-conceived. We cannot focus on preventing death from disease because that plan is doomed to fail. We MUST focus on prevention of disease itself and shift to a âmaintenance of wellnessâ model which already exists in other systems of medicine. We have to begin to look underneath the surface using systems of medicine that are better equipped than our own - systems that have a foundation of wellness - to climb out of this crisis and find our health and wellness once again.
This takes FAITH: Fearlessly Affirming and Intending to Transform Health! Iâll discuss with you two systems of medicine that, when combined with allopathic medicine as practiced at the RiobĂ© Institute of Integrative Medicine, give us the ability to more successfully promote wellness and treat existing diseases from a firm and sound foundation rather than one that is fundamentally flawed. Iâll share these integrative principles to help you change your mindset to one of wellness rather than drinking the Kool-AidÂź that says we just have to wait like sitting ducks for diseases to treat.
The active promotion of wellness is paramount and consists of more than just getting physical exams, blood work, mammograms, and colonoscopies at the appropriate timeframes. We call the physical exam, screening tests, and blood work obtained in our American allopathic model a preventive exam. This notion is fundamentally flawed. Thereâs nothing preventive or wellness-promoting about getting a physical exam, blood work and a mammogram. A mammogram is designed to find abnormal breast densities on x-ray that may be cancer. Then a surgeon performs a biopsy of these areas of suspicion to either diagnose or rule out cancer. This isnât prevention. This is early diagnosis of diseaseâŠand itâs not even that early. The average breast cancer diagnosis is 7 years in the making! Prevention and wellness by definition are the absence of disease, not its early diagnosis.
So, the answer to the original question posed at the beginning of this chapter: âWhere are we?â The simple answer is weâre lost! How did we go so wrong in our allopathic medical system? Our allopathic system is a mirror of our flawed thinking in our modern western society. We seem to be trapped in the superficial and afraid to look deeply into ourselves. We prefer what we falsely believe is a quick fix to the work of prevention largely because prevention isnât even part of our cultural jargon here in the west.
We launch new technology such as the internet, then wait for all hell to break loose from the lack of planning, then scramble to fix the mess. We wait for bridges to collapse then pay out the lawsuits and move on rather than examining the infrastructure for weaknesses and flaws to correct. We move forward in the name of so-called progress even when we know that the potential consequences will be dire. While this approach seems immediately counterproductive, we see countless examples of this illogical thinking. Why? Because of the brainâs survival mechanisms, we prefer to be comfortable in the known rather than risk the discomfort of looking more deeply into the unknown even when the known outcome is potentially catastrophic. The most alarming and poignant example of this is addiction. Although we intuitively know that the substances weâre abusing such as alcohol, cigarettes or narcotics are dangerous and life-threatening, our brains trigger behavior that results in the immediate gratification of a perceived need for the drug despite the tremendous danger of this continued behavior. We know very clearly that cigarettes kill, narcotics kill, and excess alcohol kills, yet when addicted, we continue to exhibit this life-threatening behavior because our brains are wired to function in this way. For behaviors that are not as immediately life-threatening, our brains can work against us in many ways and we donât always make these connections because weâve been socialized to think from a fear-based perspective. So, although we know that smoking cigarettes is life-threatening, we do it anyway because it immediately relieves stress. There are some evolutionary advantages to this type of brain function that weâve now outgrown but continue to exhibit.
One of the many functions of our brain is to identify risks to our immediate survival - a critical function. Our brains which house our ego-based thoughts, are critical fight-or-flight organs. Theyâre one of the main reasons our species was able to survive in its environment hundreds of thousands of years ago. Our brains are expert at detecting rapid motion, threatening sounds, and other dangers so we can mount a defense. But when this fight-or-flight response is carried to an extreme and remains unchecked, this survival instinct backfires, leading to the framing of our experiences from a place of fear. Fear-based thinking tends to promote behavior that will be immediately rewarding regardless of long-term consequences. Itâs like comfort food! Itâs yummy now but weâll pay later. Itâs irrational, yet comfortable in the moment because it allows us to retreat from having to fix the problemâŠso we think.
We prefer a drug that masks a symptom so we donât have to experience it, only to have it haunt us later with an even more difficult situation. The fear of the pain leads to the use of the drug to mask the pain. The pain itself isnât the motivator, itâs our fear of pain thatâs the primary motivator.
During my 20 years of professional experience, Iâve come to realize that there are two categories of people who experience illness:
1. Those who see their illness as a means of learning and growth to more fully participate in their lives. These people are able to transcend the ego-based, fear-based thinking patterns that contribute to their diseases.
2. Those who see illness as a means of retreating from their lives. These people have not yet outgrown the ego-based, fear-based thinking patterns that contribute to their diseases.
The difference between these two groups is subtle, but profound. It all boils down to fear â the fear of life itself and the fear of the Truth that is buried deep within. Th...
