Modern healthcare is often referred to as more “disease care” than having anything to do with health. In this article I will briefly look at a the model of diseases care that we commonly think of versus natural healthcare.

How many times have you heard that the NHS has cured someone and then let them go home, cured from a life threatening illness, but depleted in vitality, spark and life force? Help with the recovery stage of fighting the illness is absent and instead they are left to fend for themselves often feeling seriously unwell despite not having their “named disease” anymore.

This article is in no way putting the NHS system down, I have personally used the NHS as have my family and friends and it has done a wonderful job for them. Instead I want to introduce to you the emerging movement of HEALTH CREATION that can be part of the mosaic of care you may choose for yourself and your family. This is where The Perrymount Clinc can step in and work with conventional medicine and help you recover after conventional medicine has done it’s bit.

I’ll look at a few common ways in which the “disease model” of health is really ingrained into us and compare these to another way of thinking that is a “health model” of health.

A health model is a more positive way of looking at your wellness. It looks at diet, sleep, relaxation, epigenetics, environment, movement and more to help you towards health, not just lack of disease. The help in this form may be taking you from illness to actually being healthy, or from being reasonably healthy into being healthier, fitter and having life force and spark!

So many times patients tell us they have been to their GP feeling unwell but the blood tests have shown nothing abnormal so they are sent home without any help. The NHS service doesn’t really have medication that make you healthy, they have medications that stop disease. So in these cases you are vertically ill i.e. walking around but feel rubbish, but have no proactive help offered.

Let’s start with having a diagnosis of a named disease, for example “acid reflux”. In the disease model you need this name to direct treatment at. But it becomes less needed when you are looking at overall health. Many patients come in saying they are tired, achey, not sleeping well, stressed, ratty / moody, have dodgy guts. These are not diagnosis names but they are complaints that natural health professionals can look deeper into for you.

For example, a common complaint I personally see is a patent that is tired. They have been to their GP and had blood tests. These have returned normal, no anaemia and the thyroid is functioning within a normal range, so they don’t have the diagnosis of “underactive thyroid”, which is what they thought they would get. No diagnosis then, no named disease to treat, so no help or treatment. This is where natural health comes in because we believe you can have an under-functioning thyroid that can still receive natural support to function healthily. There’s a difference, you don’t have a disease, but you aren’t functioning optimally.

We believe lots of other thing too, like you don’t actually have IBS but you can feel bloated and yuck, that you aren’t menopausal but you can get ratty and miserable in your cycle, you don’t have GERD but you do get regular indigestion, that you can have tension headaches related to stress that aren’t something more serious.

After I have completed an Avatar scan on a patients acupuncture system and it gets around to explaining what I think is going on I always say something like this “We have looked at you as a whole person, not just the named problem you have come in saying you think you have. In this way we can get a picture of WHY you have this SYMPTOM and we are aiming to fix the cause of the problem and you as a whole person”.

This is more of a process to re-creating health. We may look at vitamin deficiencies, hormonal health, detoxification, gut bacteria balance and how they all intertwine to give you the symptom you came in with.

I hope this has explained where the natural health professionals are coming from at The Perrymount Clinic when we look at you as a whole person. I also recognise our limits too. We actually love it when a patient HAS been to the GP with an issue and all the tests have come back negative. This is where we come in to our own! Looking at your health recreation through lifestyle factors.

We don’t have X-rays or MRI’s (we do have specialist blood tests and stool tests) so if you have been to the GP and have the all clear then we can really step-in and help you. We would always recommend and encourage you to visit your GP if you have any worries or anxieties at all about your health. If you have then been left with less help that you hoped for then please give us a call or email me on christian@theperrymount.com and I can advise you if we are able to help you as a clinic.

Next week, looking at your epigenetics not your genetics. Why you don’t have to have the diseases your parents have! And how you can beneficially alter your genetics.