Medicine in The Western World – Health Care or Sick Care?
By Barbara Rotthaler
Editor’s note: The following article appeared in the Ojo del Lago, a local English-speaking publication.
Aging without quality of life is not exciting. Despite modern progress in dealing with acute illness, the proportion of chronic disease in the general population has increased. Modern therapy is often helpless when faced with crippling chronic disease and is consequently reduced to providing merely palliative rather than curative treatment. We live in times, when scientific and technical progress of medicine is at its highest point of development, and we spend a lot of money on health care. Despite this massive expenditure on treatments, people are not necessarily healthier and suffer from illnesses that are largely preventable: heart disease, arthritis, cancer, depression, allergies, fibromyalgia, immune deficiencies. The question is, how can it be that conventional medicine is treating people for years as they develop obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, sleep disorders or depression? And they just get pain killers, sleeping pills, antibiotics, anti depressants? Basically this approach only enables them to continue a lifestyle that make them sick in the first place. Why are preventative therapies not initiated when there is still time to do that?
What is going wrong? Did we all lose our common sense when it comes to illness? Why do we no longer trust our perfect, naturally designed defense system? There are many questions to ask and many answers to give. But one answer is simple: When we are sick, it is highly profitable to a number of giant corporations. When we are well, it does not profit them much at all. Food and pharmaceutical companies are using very subtle brain washing to make people think it is okay to continue living in excess, disregarding the consequences because they can rely on these same people for the quick easy solution to their symptoms instead of teaching people how to help themselves and think about what they can do to treat the causes of their illness. People are being lulled into taking no action to keep themselves healthy. It's as if it's wrong to take care of yourself but it's okay to indulge and over indulge.
Alternatives therapies, exercise and healthy lifestyle changes are often perceived as a competitive threat to the drug manufacturers. The problem is very complex and has different factors. But I am convinced that it is mostly the lifestyle in our modern civilization that leads to chronic sickness. And it is not only the overmedication with drugs or the processed, chemically overloaded food that is causing the problem. It is the stress of our daily life with running after money, status and material things, watching TV for hours, and being exposed to the bombardment of commercials and violence. It is also the disturbance of and losing contact with our natural environment, the failure to develop healthy personal relationships and support systems. It seems that we have given up responsibility for our own health and body; we are not connected with our inner doctor's voice, our intuition, when it comes to illness. Pain and ailments are very often the first sign that something in our body or life is out of harmony. If we don`t listen to these warnings, the next message will be stronger. They are like a friend helping us to correct things in life. And, when we take good care of ourselves, then we can trust our own natural healing and defense mechanisms and we don`t have to be in a state of fear and worries.
There is a lot of doubt, skepticism, mistrust going on between these two positions of medicine. I see the advantages of the conventional medicine, the wonderful results we have through modern surgery, heart and eye operations, diagnostics and of course – life-saving and supportive chemical drugs. But I also see that where this medicine fails is exactly where Alternative Medicine comes into the picture. Health and illness is often enough just a mystery. There is no single answer and there is no single cure that serves every condition or every person. We have to have an open and critical mind to look through the confusion that exists in our medical world.
I am convinced that through the use of preventative methods and natural medicine, millions of people could be healthier. I believe that the costs of health care could be reduced to a minimum, and I am committed to the idea that conventional mainstream medicine and alternative medicine have to come together to serve humanity in an optimum way
Information or questions: Barbara Rotthaler, German licensed Naturopath,
Tel. 01- 376 766 1987, e-mail: b_rotthaler@hotmail.com, www.geocities.com/rotthaler.health/ Barbara’s office is in the Lake Chapala area of Mexico, in the city of San Antonio Tlayacapan near the city of Ajijic.Please note that this is not intended to be a substitute for medical advice. Please seek the help of your medical practitioner before embarking on alternative complementary therapy. Obviously, this is not intended to be a scientific document.
Barbara Rotthaler has been one of Focus on Mexico's Expert Speakers and is originally from Bavaria, Germany. Barbara has lived in Mexico since 1997 and her practice is in San Antonio Tlayacapan, a village on the shores of Lake Chapala. She sees clients, offers health lectures and works in a clinic for Natural Medicine in Guadalajara. She is a Naturopath, Homeopath Massage therapist for deep tissue and trigger point massage, reflexology and lymphatic drainage.
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