Dear Editor:
With the advent of the flu season, we are besieged with reminders from the medical profession to be quick to obtain our injections, while the fitness experts are overwhelming us with suggestions of additional supplemental dosages.
While the physicians and gymnasts urge us on how, they have already failed to focus on the primary goals for maintaining health. Our men of medicine insist on conquering disease rather than building health, on treating the symptom instead of fortifying the immune system, while the fitness advocates stress finding the best weight instead of discovering the best feeling, attempting to match diverse structures with rigid standards. Both approaches focus on the negative, the disease, rather than the focal point of everything, the body.
It seems that we will only begin to proceed toward proper health when we realize that the body speaks, it lets you know, if you give it just a modicum of attention. It will tell you when it needs exercise or when it needs rest, it does not need a new drug that has just caught the eye of the family doctor. If the triad of mind, body and spirit can be observed, perhaps the usual critical condition need not be reached, a state which is now hand led by our honorable physicians by either cutting, burning or drugging the diseased area. In a similar way, stress is developed many times by the inflexible adherence to normal levels of weight, cholesterol, blood pressure and sugar, while it is conceivable that these levels would be favorable if merely correct diet, sleep and exercise were followed.
It is to be said that the practice of medicine is undoubtedly of unparalleled benefit to mankind and anyone who would presume to doubt the wisdom and expertise of this esteemed profession would be unqualifiedly arrogant. However, I submit that some of the heretofore mentioned points might be allowed some degree of consideration, for the very fabric of our society is undergoing deep internalizing which is particularly analogous with our awareness of self. If by reaching down to the ground of our being, we make a discovery, then it is worth while in many areas. In fact, we are sculptors and painters of our own bodies, with flesh and blood as our tools.
It was Hippocrates who stated, "Natural forces within us are the true healers of disease", while Francis Bacon remarked, "There is a wisdom in this beyond the rules of remedy. A man’s own observation, what he finds good of and what he finds hurt of, is the best medicine to preserve health."
Howard Lawson