Aug 10, 2009

Hardcare: The American Way

All healthcare practices, techniques, treatments, devices, and medications can be placed on a spectrum ranging from softest to hardest.

At the softcare end of the spectrum we find such approaches as massage, herbalism, diet, yoga, and emotional counseling, as well as broader social factors, such as public sanitation, sufficient access to pre-industrial food, and income equality.

At the hardcare end of the spectrum we find surgeries, most prescription drugs, acute and traumatic injury care, chemotherapy, radiation therapy, organ transplants, vaccinations, and extreme psychiatric practices, such as electroshock.

The basic premise of commonhealth is that to the extent that an individual, community or nation has over-committed to hardcare approaches, its heathcare expenses rise precipitously, fewer community members have secure access to regular care, and overall outcomes — as measured in such areas as infant mortality, life expectancy, and iatrogenic illness — worsen.

Conversely, when we commit time, money, energy, and attention to softcare approaches, expenses fall, everybody has secure access to quality care, and medical outcomes improve.

An ideal medical system would affirm the importance of both approaches and would utilize mostly softcare, while resorting to hardcare practices only when necessary.

Hardcare: The War on Germs

Hardcare is especially efficacious in cases of acute, traumatic injury and when dealing with infectious diseases in softcare-challenged communities (poor, over-crowded, under-nourished, inadequate sanitation). Hardcare views health and sickness in reductionist terms: every illness has a specific cause, typically microbial, for which medicine strives to find a specific remedy, either via a drug that kills or neutralizes the causal agent, or via the surgical repair or removal of unhealthy organs and tissue.

Hardcare takes a purely “hard science” approach to the study of medicine:

it eschews all personal experiences of healing, as reported by practitioners and patients
it ignores all of the softer causes of illness, such as the individuals’ thoughts and emotions, childhood experiences, family and personal relationships, diet and exercise, and status in society
it discounts the broader issues of income inequality and the proliferation of toxic chemicals in the environment

While some hardcare practitioners will acknowledge the importance of softcare, and while many even ascribe to a “complimentary medicine” that better combines hardcare and softcare, in actual practice hardcare approaches to both diagnosis and treatment tend to trump and overwhelm softcare approaches.

For instance, once a cancer patient begins chemotherapy, they have rendered softcare’s primary approach to cancer — changing diet to strengthen the immune system — a far less effective strategy.

Or, as with the recent swine flu outbreak, we do not investigate the lifestyles of those who died, drawing comparisons with those who contracted the flu, had a mild experience and easily healed. Rather, the flu bug is viewed as an enemy to be killed, and a vaccine is mandated for everyone, regardless of “soft science” factors.

Softcare: The Terrain, Not The Microbe

The ultimate in softcare is doing nothing at all and allowing nature to run its course. Doctors call this the natural course of a disease. Most of our aches and pains, along with many of our more serious illnesses will resolve, in time, with little more than bed rest and adequate food and water.

Softcare affirms the primary importance of the individual body: the human organism has an innate ability to resist potentially infectious microbes — indeed, does so all the time. When a person gets sick, the challenge is not to find and destroy the offending microbe, but to strengthen the terrain — the body and its immune system.

Since unresolved stress and tension have been identified — by hard science methods — as causal factors in many of our illnesses, anything that reduces stress and tension serves as effective softcare. Thus, when a mother kisses her child’s wound “to make it better,” she is practicing the best of soft medicine: the child stops crying, anxiety levels reduce, strong feelings of love start flowing, and the child’s immune system functions at high levels.

Contrary to hardcare practices which often hurt (needles, scalpels, chemo- and radiation therapy), softcare typically feels good. Receiving a massage, practicing yoga, making love, exercising, eating well: the pleasure that we feel at such times is the internal experience of our body — the terrain — healing, or becoming stronger.

Softcare derives from the softer sciences of psychology, sociology, anthropology, and philosophy:

it affirms and seeks to strengthen the innate healing powers in everyone
it listens to and learns from the individual stories of patients and practitioners
it sources the responsibility for healing in the individual, not in the doctor

Softcare is ultimately more a lifestyle than a medical system. Rather than view sickness and health as a complex mystery that can only be solved by doctors and medical researchers, we must each take charge, becoming our own personal medical system.

Whither the American Way

While America’s healthcare crisis is in part due to its inane aversion to “socialized medicine,” even if we remove the insurance companies from the equation and adopt the single-payer system that works so well for other nations, many of our problems will remain. Indeed, the proponents of “anti-socialized medicine” may be proven right: there’s way too much hardcare in our current system to fund with a tax-based approach, so there would definitely be long waits and/or rationing for hardcare treatments.

Whether we manage a shift to a single-payer system or not, America must undergo a total rethink of its medical practices. As we lessen our reliance on hardcare and commit to a softcare lifestyle, we’ll all feel a whole lot better.

Michael Sky | CommonHealth