Why not an integrated healthcare system?

It makes me sad that our healthcare system is so dichotomised.  We have 'mainstream' medicine, consisting of GP practices, hospitals, surgery (fantastic, I'm all for it) and pharmaceuticl drugs (sometimes useful and life-saving, but very often causing users a host of unpleasant and avoidable side effects and worse).  Then there is all the 'alernative' stuff: herbalism (no idea why this is considered alternative when it's been the main system of medicine in cultures all over the world; China, India, South America and yes, even Europe, for hundreds if not thousands of years), homeopathy, osteopathy, chiropractic and acupuncture, to name but a few.

Why, I ask myself, can the practitioners of all these systems of medicine not work together, sharing their knowledge and experience and offering patients healing from a huge toolkit of potential therapies.  Why is 'alternative' medicine so often considered only as a last resort for people, who having had years of conventional medicine which may have alleviated some of their symptoms but has rarely, if ever, brought about deep and lasting healing, finally take themselves along to a holistic practitioner.  By this stage people are often very ill and weak from the impact of lots of different pharmaceutical drugs which may have helped them in some ways but caused problems in others.  A couple of examples of this would be long term use of NSAIDS causing problems in the digestive tract and liver, or statins causing fatigue and muscle pain.

If patients suffering from arthritis or high cholesterol (for example) were treated holistically from the beginning, these problems further down the line caused by long-term drug use could almost definitely be avoided.  If they had been given more than ten minutes at their initial consultation (an hour and a half would be ideal, and is the standard length of a first appointment with an 'alternative' practitioner), with time being taken to look at their diet, lifestyle, stress levels etc, and some gentler therapies being considered that work in harmony with the body and do not cause side-effects, perhaps thousands of people every year could begin the journey back to full health without having to jump onto a roundabout of pharmaceutical drug after pharmaceutical drug, most of them bringing as many problems as they offer solutions.  But with GP's and conventional medics having so little to offer apart from pharmaceutical drugs, it is hardly surprising that these situations are so commonplace.

I know there are a few more enlightened doctors' surgeries and clinics dotted around the place where individual doctors have done extra training in homeopathy or acupuncture for example, and are able to offer these to their lucky patients, as they are aware of the limitations of pharmaceutical drugs and want to offer their patients a more holistic approach, or where complementary practitioners are employed by the surgery and patients can be referred to them by doctors.  These examples, sadly few as they are, do give me hope.

It might take longer initially ('how could the NHS afford hour and a half long consultations?' I hear you cry!).  Well it may seem like a big investment of time in the beginning, but I think you'd find that a lot more money would be saved in the long term if people could be gently helped back towards good health with diet and lifestyle advice along with gentle holistic therapies that actually addressed the deeper causes of dis-ease, rather than just chasing symptoms around with single-action allopathic drugs.

And with all those medically trained doctors whose expertise on diagnosis and patholgy is invaluable, and all those holistically trained folks with their expertise on helping bodies and minds return to good health by natural means, surely with the right partnerships and collaborations we have everything we need, between us, to have a kick-ass health system that really could help people.  It would take humility, co-operation, innovation and courage, but it's definitely possible.  Where there's a will there's a way, but is there a will?  With so many vested interests and so much money to be made by the pharmaceutical industry it's easy to feel cynical and pessimistic, but I for one am not going to stop hoping.

The first post...

I'm in the grip of that particular existential confusion I often experience after finishing a beautiful or compelling novel (in this case, The Speech of Angels by Sharon Maas), where my own life suddenly feels inadequate and two dimensional compared to the lives of the characters I've been hanging out with.  Or maybe I'm just feeling slightly disembodied, or depressed, or directionless.

Perhaps it's no bad thing this time, as it seems to have finally prompted me to start a blog- hurrah for that. 2014 is the year I have committed to write, and while much of what I write will be personal and private for quite some time, I imagine, I'm doing this blog thing to share the thoughts/rants/ dreams I have along the way that are fit for human consumption!

That's enough for now...over and out!