Healthcare Today
Americans spend billions of dollars every year in a search for “cures” for everything from heart disease to cancer to depression.
The National Cancer Institute (NCI) alone has received approximately $4.9 billion per year over the past six years. Federal government agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Defense, fund cancer research. In addition, state and local governments, interest groups such as Susan G. Komen, private donors, institutions, and industry spend substantial amounts of money on cancer-related research. And the National Cancer Institute is just one of 27 institutes and centers that form the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Yet clearly, health is not something money can buy; if it were, citizens of the United States would be the healthiest in the world. According to the World Health Organization, the United States spent more money per capita in the year 2011 than any other country—$8,608 per person for each of our more than 318 million citizens, or over $2.7 trillion dollars.
We have become a pill-popping society. Not only is there a name for every malady, there is a pill to help control it.
Many people find it easier to take a pill than to change an eating habit or make a lifestyle change. Patients approach their doctors asking for prescriptions, and doctors find it easier to prescribe a pill than to lose a patient. Ultimately we are responsible for our own health, and sooner or later, if we are not careful, the number of pills we take each day and the cost of these pills will catch up to us.
Businesses and organizations use advertising to get us to “buy into” a way of thinking—one usually rooted in fear. For example, an ad campaign may suggest that if you don’t buy a certain type of tires, your child will be at risk when you’re driving. If you don’t buy a certain brand of smoke detector, your house could burn down without sufficient warning. Fear sells. Someone typically makes money as a result of a sale, and it’s usually not you.
Take a look around. Have you noticed how many major buildings today belong to hospitals, cancer treatment centers, rehab centers, outpatient clinics, pharmacies, and other “care” centers? Have you noticed the amount of advertising being done not just for pharmaceuticals, but for health care institutions as well? Have you noticed the number of buildings carrying the name of a major hospital or health care provider? How about the number of billboards, signs on buses, and even advertisements that come right to your door via the mail? There are constant reminders everywhere you turn.
Cancer is big business. And who do you think is funding all this? Money raised for "awareness" is not money used for research.
At the root of every dis-ease is an emotion; at the root of every dis-ease is a life lesson. If the lesson has not been learned, and if the behavior has not been changed permanently, the dis-ease will return when the same emotions are experienced again.
The physical body is only one aspect of who you really are. It is not who you are. In order to truly heal, the mind, body, and spirit must be healed.
--Excerpts taken from the book, Self-Empowerment - The Only Way to Heal by Patricia Zimmerman