The health care of the future should be based on prevention of disease and health maintenance.

According to the US Surgeon General 68% of all diseases in the United States are diet related. This would be similar for other countries such as Australia, Canada and the UK. If proper diet could be taught in schools and hospitals and people could learn to prepare and eat foods that promote health then this would help with an enormous amount of people and their health problems. Imagine the savings to modern Western countries if these 68% of diseases could be stopped. We are talking about savings trillions of dollars in medical costs plus trillions of dollars in lost work hours due to ill health.

The best diet for humans is a whole food natural diet of plant foods according to most modern research and groups such as the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. Ayurveda, the traditional medicine of India provides further insight into developing different diets for people depending on their constitution or dosha. If simple healthy diet habits alone were taught to young people in schools this would result in a long term savings of billions or trillions of dollars to different economies.

As well as diet being a huge major cause of disease stress would be another factor. According to The American institute of Stress (http://www.stress.org/americas-1-health-problem/ ) 75 – 90 % of visits to doctors are for stress related problems. Of course many diseases such as heart disease and cancer and high blood pressure can be related to both diet and stress. So if we acted to reduce the role of stress in our life this too would be a major source of a better life for many people and also save huge amounts of money in health care costs as less people would have high blood pressure, get heart attacks, have mental health problems, turn to alcohol and other drugs to alleviate stress and there would be less marriage and family problems and suicides as some of these are caused by stress.

So what are the best remedies to get rid of stress? Meditation, yoga, chi gong are all very useful. One of the most powerful remedies is deep tissue massage such as Raynor massage or shiatsu. Raynor massage can get rid of deep seated emotional stresses that store in the body and cause constriction of muscles particularly intestinal muscles but all muscles of the body. Not only does stress cause muscular tightness in the body but when these muscles get tight they cause vertebrae and other bones to become misaligned which can in turn cause pinched nerves, sciatic pain, headaches, digestive and reproductive problems.

Getting rid of the tightness that is caused by a build up of the effects of stress on the body is a key ingredient in health that is poorly understood by many in the health profession today unfortunately. Raynor massage fills this gap in the health care profession and can provide much needed help to the billions of people in the world today whose lives are so badly affected by too high levels of stress.

Between these two relatively inexpensive natural health approaches, Western countries’ economies could be turned around, billions of people’s quality of life could be massively enhanced and a huge amount of suffering reduced.

Another two major contributors to the health care of the future are herbal medicines and the flower remedies that Doctor Edward Bach made popular, which have now spread in use all over the world. Herbal medicine has been the main medicine of humanity since the dawn of human existence. Every culture in the world has its own traditional system of herbal medicine looking at local herbs and understanding their effects on the human being. Herbal medicine is an inexpensive form of medicine that is commonly called “barefoot medicine” in China due to the low cost of the herbs and the humility of the simple village healers that have been practicing it for thousands of years. Humanity has had thousands of years of experience using herbs and we are now at such a great time in human history that we can gather all of this information and also plant and use many herbs from different parts of the world or import them from where they can grow and use them in our medicine. We can also study the traditional medicine philosophies of cultures such as China and India to see how they view the human being and our interaction with these plants.

Flower essences are another great medicine for the future. Dr Bach discovered that flowers have an impact on the human psyche. He prepared these essences by infusing the flowers in water in sunlight for a day then using this “essence” to give to his patients for various emotional problems. This research has been continued on for the last 75 years by various organizations such as the Flower Essence Society of California and the West Australian flower Essence Society as well as by the Bach Centre in the UK.

The use of these flower essences for almost any emotional problem, depending on the flower used, has profound implications for treating not just diagnosed mental health problems, which are on the rapid increase, but also for common emotional problems of stress, anxiety, depression, anger, jealousy, apathy, tiredness, pride and other emotional imbalances. They should be used as an emotional first aid kit in every home.

These major systems of natural medicine which are all cost effective should be the medicine of the future and our countries would come back into balance not just from a physical and mental health perspective but economically too as the huge budget drain that current health policies are having on all Western budgets.

Western technological medicine can be reserved for the special cases that can’t be treated by prevention and natural medicine and can be used for the 3 to 10 % of cases where it is really needed. Emergencies such as car accidents, extreme diseases etc. Western medicine is better at treating these sort of conditions and that is its strength and that’s what it should be used for. We should free up the other 90+% of health care patients filling up the health care system by using preventative and natural medicine to keep them healthy.

For more information on courses in Raynor massage and Naturopathy see www.raynormassage.com

Brandon Raynor Naturopath

www.raynormassage.com/brandon-raynor-naturopath/