Doctors are better at diagnosis than they are at fixing

What if you've been diagnosed with Type II diabetes? You have all the symptoms, and there's no denying it: your sugar is high unless you take steps to lower it. Usually those steps include a drug like Glyburide or any number of others.

Then you take it for the rest of your life.

Part of your routine might also be finger sticks and testing.

All of this is a life sentence - you have to do it faithfully or things can go bad very fast.

So you have a diagnosis, and a treatment that works - for now anyway.

But you are not cured!

If you stop your prescription, you find your blood sugar climbing. If your diabetes is bad enough, disaster soon follows.

Maybe you have accepted the life sentence of drugs and finger pricks and worrying about your sugar, testing and monitoring and changing your diet and habits. But remember - these things are not curing you!

Doctors are better at diagnosis than they are at fixing. Nothing the doctor tells you to do will make you permanently better.

Oh, yes. He may tell you to lose weight, and exercise. Good! These things actually build health. (The whole issue of weight loss is worthy of several more postings, which I'll put off to another day.) But they are almost always peripheral to taking a drug, testing, etc.

This post is not about diabetes, it's about diagnosis and prescription that don't result in a cure.

Mostly we accept that diagnosis, with resignation and regret to be sure. We have every reason to believe the diagnosis. But maybe we don't have to.

Are there options? Almost always. The medical model is not the only true model of health. In fact, it is not a model of health at all, but one of sickness and treatment. This medical model (diagnose, prescribe) is new, and it almost always means a life sentence of drugs and more drugs, apparatus and restrictions and no fun.

And the worst part of all is that it creates and maintains the image, in front of us at all times, that our body functions poorly.

Don't believe it! Don't believe the diagnosis more than you believe in your ability to be well!

The model of health - the belief that you are inherently healthy and your body can repair itself and become whole again - is different from that model of sickness and treatment, which basically says that without drugs the body would cease to function. See how different they are?

Which model have you adopted? This blog is devoted to the model of health. More to come.