With its focus on health maintenance and disease prevention, demand for greater knowledge and use of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) throughout the world continues to increase.

EXERCISE
Move or Decay
Program
Frequency

DIET
Approach
Food Pyramid

LIFESTYLE
Emotional
Spiritual
Support

HUMAN SENSES
Hearing
Touch
Vision
Smell
Taste

HEALTH CENTRES
Circulatory
Digestive
Respiratory
Reproductive
Endocrine
Immune
Skeletal
Muscular
Nervous
Urinary/Elimination
Skin

Perhaps many of you will feel that the title I have chosen above (Caring for Your Own Health) is incorrect, as you believe that the doctor and the medical profession are the 'health-carers' in our society. Well that is not strictly correct. Doctors and the medical profession know a lot about disease, and should you succumb to disease they are well trained and experienced in treating that disease.

However I believe health is more than simply the absence of disease. Yet there seems to be no agreed and accepted definition of health even amongst the medical profession. You too can search to find it if you don't believe me. I did, and found these definitions of health:

• a healthy state of wellbeing free from disease

• can be defined negatively, as the absence of illness, functionally, as the ability to cope with everyday activities, or positively, as fitness and well-being
• in any organism, health is a form of homeostasis
• the absence of disease or injury along with physical, mental, and social well-being
• a dynamic state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being
• soundness of body or mind
• the overall condition of an organism at a given time
• the condition of an organism with respect to the performance of its vital functions especially as evaluated subjectively or nonprofessionally

In our contemporary scientific culture which purports to have made significant advances in medicine and other scientific endeavors isn't it rather surprising that we have lack of clarity about our own health, to the extent that we don't seem to have clarity of definition? Particularly if it is as important as spending 16% of the country's GNP, as is the case in the USA (see graph from US-CDC at top right).

Despite the significant expenditure on health care, life expectancy in the USA is near the lowest of all the developed countries according to the WHO Life Tables. So what's going wrong?

First lets consider the major causes of death in the USA, which are heart disease, cancer and stroke. But it was those same three causes more than 50 years ago (see graph from US-CDC at right)! The application of these simple measures would seem to indicate that perhaps 'progress' in our health-care system is indeed questionable, particularly when we consider that these three prevailing leading causes of death are preventable according to many from the medical profession.

More disturbing is the prevalence of deaths due to iatrogenic (i.e. physician induced) causes. Understandably it is difficult to obtain accurate information about this from within the ranks of the medical profession. However there are a number of reports available and also an association in the USA that promotes accountability in the medical profession. Some of the formal reports include:

• 44,000 to 98,000 people die each year as a result of errors during hospitalization
• 90,000 people die each year from hospital-acquired infection

Well that alone is the equivalent of almost one jumbo jet every day crashing in the US with no survivors. So the human cost of 'reported' medical errors is indeed very high. In 2003 a group of researchers (mostly medical doctors) reviewed available evidence about iatrogenic illness and published their findings in an article named "Death by Medicine". As you can imagine there has been much dispute over these findings. But if the conclusions are correct (see statistics at right) then it is the equivalent of four jumbo jets every day crashing in the US with no survivors, and makes modern medicine perhaps the leading cause of death in the USA. Irrespective of whether you believe the figures, whichever way you look at it there would seem to be a real problem.

If the jumbo jets were crashing there would be a major enquiry hopefully leading to prevention and resolution of the problem. We give significant emphasis to improving the safety of automobiles in the face of large numbers of accidents and fatalities, and also minimizing cigarette smoking. So why not our health? Is the medical system caring for your health or attending to your illness, or is it really the same thing? Should you be doing something to care for your own health?

I am not berating the medical profession here. I come from a family of medical practitioners myself, and have known some very dedicated and competent doctors (my own father included). But there are many questions to be asked to improve the situation and introduce much-needed accountability. It may be a matter of life and death.

US National Health Expenditure
The US spends about US$2 trillion annually on health care, which comprises 16% of its GNP (a greater share than any other country), and the graph above shows that it has increased more than threefold in the last 40 years.

USA - Leading Causes of Death
Today we have the same three leading causes of death as we did more than fifty years ago. Yet these causes are perhaps all preventable!

USA - Iatrogenic Analysis
If this is true then modern medicine is the leading cause of death in the USA.

A talk by Jon Barron on cancer - its prevalence, causes and treatments (13Mb MP3) - click her to listen or right-click to download which is likely to be faster