Just what should a man or woman know in order to be "in the know" about health?  Is there some inside information kept secret by some special elite, some special knowledge, or some secret formula that most health professionals either do not know or will not tell?  If there is some special knowledge, where is it contained?  If some secret formula exists, what is it, who has it, and how much does it cost?  Can it even be bought?

With the arrival of advanced medical technology, society as a whole should be getting healthier.  On the contrary, the overall health of the general population is declining.  Advanced imaging techniques, billions of dollars of pharmaceutical research, new and improved medications, and advanced surgical procedures, all of which promise a healthier society, appear to have left the health of millions in ruins.  In the wake of the modern medical paradigm failure, these millions are left on the never-ending path searching for the precious keys to health, striving to obtain the elusive keys that always seem just out of reach.

The standard-brand healing methods, whether it is traditional allopathic medicine (your medical doctor), chiropractic, psychology, acupuncture, massage, naturopathy, herbalists, reflexology, or homeopathy, are all traditionally sought when a health problem arises.  The health problem is usually accompanied by some symptom, pain being the most common complaint.  We are taught from a very early age that, when a symptom appears, whether it is pain, a runny nose, or anything that makes us feel uncomfortable, we are now sick.  When we are sick, we visit the doctor, and we expect something to be given to us, either a prescription, a treatment, or some advice to eliminate the symptoms and make us feel better.  In most disease processes, however, the symptom is the last thing to appear.  The disease process has been going on for quite a long time, most likely on several levels, long before the first symptom even became evident.  This puts the modern health care system in the position of operating in the realm of damage control, rather than in the prevention of disease.  Rarely, if ever, does a patient enter the health care office saying "I am young, healthy and strong, teach me how to stay that way,” or “do you offer any courses in wellness?”  Should that scenario ever happen, the doctor would most likely think of it as quite odd, wondering why someone with no health complaint is in the office.  The doctor would probably be thinking that the patient is playing a joke or something.

With some exceptions not too easily found, the health practitioner, who is supposed to be a well-versed expert in healing and health, is harboring his or her own unhealthy state.  Secretly on his or her quest after hours for the same elusive path to health that everyone else is, the health practitioner can often be found searching the internet or medical journals for the solution to their own health problems.  Their own notions of good health do not seem to fit in with what they learned in school, or with an environment that is changing so rapidly that much of what one learns today is either obsolete or completely contradicted tomorrow.  The medical doctor, with years of education, medical training, and many hours of continuing education classes, has even murkier water to see through in his or her search for the truth.  This water has been made murky by misinformation, bad philosophy, and the defective medical paradigm.  If the learned medical professional has difficulty in finding the real answers, how much more difficult, then, is it for the nonprofessional?

We must be aware of the fact that the disease process begins long before a symptom ever appears.  In treating only symptoms, we are treating a disease from the wrong perspective.  Should the symptom disappear because of the treatment, we think that all is well and that the disease has been cured.  All we have done by treating the symptom, however, is to hide the disease, allowing further damage to occur undetected.  When we stop treating the symptoms, the symptoms are thought to have somehow magically reappeared, and we think the disease has returned, or has “come out of remission,” to use a popular medical phrase.  The truth is that the disease was never cured in the first place.  Tracing the disease process back to its origin, and discovering when and why the disease began, will reveal the appropriate treatment to reverse the course of the disease.  When the root cause of the disease is finally identified and appropriately treated, the disease is then, and only then, truly healed.  This is the only true way to restore health.