Preventive Health Care: the only way forward?

Old is Gold they say, but are these just words or can we actually extract some meaningful wisdom from this ? Since the advent of time, at least time as we know it, living beings have been striving for survival. Whether it's surviving a calamity or surviving a bad meal, we humans have found our way through numerous obstacles on our journey to becoming the evolved beings we believe we are today. Although in today’s social media obsessed world the word survival is taking a completely new meaning, some things like healthcare still remain a priority.

The term healthcare itself is not so old though (Etymonline, n.d.), however the concept of medical practice is ancient. In the modern world, being used to all the amenities and creature comforts, we find it easier to just pop-in a pill or pay a visit to the doc's office. These approaches however are more like patching a ship with duct tape and chewing gum. Experts call these approaches Curative Healthcare & Palliative healthcare (Culyer & Newhouse, 2000, #). These approaches either try to find a cure to a health issue after it has happened or just try to manage the symptoms (pain, etc.) caused by the health issue. But what if we could prevent the health issue from happening in the first place? Here comes Preventive Healthcare.

This is something our ancestors had figured-out a long time ago. Things were not all hunky-dory back then but people knew that building a strong ship is more important than having a fancy one which needs patching often. Back then they didn't have a plethora of medical diagnostic devices like MRI Machines, ECGs etc, but they had the super power of acute observation and patience. We see the reminiscence of this in old sayings like “You are what you eat” & “good old elbow grease” etc. All pointing us towards building a healthy body instead of trying to repair it afterwards. Critics of preventive healthcare usually frown upon such natural practises but the results speak for themselves. In the US, over 85% of Yoga Practitioners reported reduced stress (Yoga and Wellness | NCCIH, 2012) . Nowadays we see more Natural therapy clinics, Yoga Centres, and Nutritionists than we ever did, which is good, but most of the people go to these centres only after modern medicine has failed them, thereby negating the concept of Preventive healthcare.

Preventive healthcare advocates doing something for your body proactively so that future health issues can be avoided. Preventive healthcare should complement your lifestyle not supplement it. Probably the present day pandemic situation is the wakeup call we need to work towards making a better and healthier self. With modern diagnostic technologies and a little bit of proactiveness we can make old and new healthcare approaches work together to help us lead a healthy life. If modern lifestyles offer unparalleled fun, living a healthy life helps to make this fun last longer. It's not the easy way but it is a very rewarding one.

References...

Culyer, A.J., & Newhouse, J.P. (Eds.). (2000). Handbook of Health Economics. Elsevier Science.
Etymonline. (n.d.). health-care | Etymology, origin and meaning of health-care by etymonline. Etymonline. Retrieved February 15, 2022, from https://www.etymonline.com/word/health-care.
Yoga and Wellness | NCCIH. (2012). National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health. Retrieved February 15, 2022, from https://www.nccih.nih.gov/research/yoga-and-wellness.

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