To Treat the Symptom or the Cause?
Imagine there is a forest, and its trees are felled to make way for farmland. Crops are then planted and fertilized to improve yields. Next, comes a huge downpour of rain. While the farmers love it, there is a catch. The farmland lies next to a river, and rain has pushed the chemicals into the river. This process repeats itself for several years, and the river is now polluted.
The polluted river is inhabited by aquatic life who ingest the chemicals through the water and their food. The community living in this area survive mostly off fish, so they too, are now ingesting the toxins. As a result, they begin to experience symptoms associated with poor health.
What would you do to correct this issue?
Would you prescribe the community drugs to relieve the symptoms they are experiencing as a result of the chemical toxicity? Or would you seek to correct the problem of deforestation so that the causes of their symptoms may be corrected, for them and future generations?
Healthcare Faces the Same Question: To Treat the Symptom or the Cause
Now, you may be wondering where this is going. Well, healthcare faces this very question; do you suppress the client's symptoms or do you aim to correct the cause? Unfortunately, modern healthcare chooses to suppress the symptoms. This is what we call disease model thinking. It is a process where symptoms are assessed, a label is assigned, and then based on orthodox training, a drug, supplement, herb or diet is prescribed to treat the assigned label. Never, at any point, is it asked ‘why’ the symptom is occurring.
Disease Model Thinking
Instead, disease model thinking leads with the question;
“I have low vitamin D - should I be supplementing with Vitamin D”?
“I’m mercury toxic - should I start taking a chelating agent, algae, bentonite clay or see a holistic biological dentist?”
“Should I take turmeric to treat my arthritis?”
“Should I be taking Ubiquinol (Coenzyme Q10) to treat my mitochondrial dysfunction?”
"What about my copper and zinc ratios"?
"My doctor said my B12 levels are low"?
“Do I need to take folinic acid or better yet methyl liposomal lipospheric tri-quatre-deca-nano folate for my faulty MTHFR gene?”
The Problems With Disease Model Thinking
The Disease Model is based on the assumption that health is simply the absence of disease or known 'risk' factors. When medicine is practised in this way, a doctor is expected to assume that disease is mostly the result of flaws in the genetic pool. Once again, the focus of treatment is on making a diagnosis, putting a label on the diagnosis and then treating the label. This approach works well in crisis care, such as a heart attack, but fails miserably when handling chronic disease.
This approach can never correct the underlying causes, and because of this, it often leaves people in a state of perpetually poor health. It also disregards the links or common denominators between certain conditions and the homeostatic links found in chemistry.
This is the issue with disease model thinking - it becomes too complex and time-consuming for many health professionals to consider the linkages between diseases and how they’re both underpinned by the same problem - one or more of the six subclinical defects. Instead, it’s easier to relieve symptoms or ‘slow’ things down with medication.
The Disease Model Fails People With Chronic Disease
Just like the environment, everything in the body is linked. Where something goes wrong in the liver, it can also be felt in the brain. This model works well in crisis care or for insurance purposes but fails miserably when handling chronic degenerative diseases such as mercury toxicity.
The disease model is the model for crisis care and it is what (health and medical) students are taught at university. So entrenched is disease model thinking that it is even employed by practitioners of alternative therapies. They seek to treat symptoms by prescribing herbs or a trending diet. In this instance, the herb is merely a natural derivative of a drug - the thought process of suppressing symptoms is still the same and the trending diet conforms to a lifestyle/ diet tribe or a one-size-fits-all macronutrient profile where everyone has the same nutritional requirements. We know this is not the case.
Health Model Thinking is a Better Approach
At Nutrition Diagnostics, we subscribe to health model thinking. We understand that the body is made by design and that by supporting its intended design, we can correct the fundamental imbalances that underpin all diseases. By using the health model, we correct the cause, not just the symptoms. This is the recipe for lasting health.
Health model thinking must observe the six subclinical defects that underpin all diseases and thus balance body chemistry.
This thinking extends to our range of naturally formulated supplements, which are designed to support body systems and bring body chemistry into balance as opposed to treating symptoms.
