Fitness Triumphs over Medicine -- one Aussie's thoughts

Here's an article from an Austrialian talking about the Triumph of Fitness over Medicine.  The article is his but I have to say I agree with a lot of what he has said.  I am looking forward to hearing what you think.....

.......You're not wrong.



Here's an article I drafted recently based on the Australian experience - where despite record levels of spending on medical care, the health of the population continues to decline.


I don't like the word 'prevention'. 'Preventive health' is medical speak.


You don't prevent health you create it yourself.
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FITNESS TRIUMPHS OVER MEDICINE


If you ever you wanted evidence that the best bet for departments of health throughout Australia was fitness not medicine, all you had to do was watch the final of the Biggest Loser.


In the race to improve the health of Australians the Commonwealth Government continues to spend infinitely more on medical research, surgeries and hospitals that it does on fitness. However, you can put down the glasses, the race is over, it’s fitness first, daylight second, medicine a distant third.

I’m a big fan of the Biggest Loser. Where else can you see people go from fat to thin, unhealthy to fit, sad to happy, all in a few short months? Certainly not in many surgeries and pharmacies around Australia


The Commonwealth Government’s timid response to the epidemic of personally generated body system dysfunctions - metabolic, musculo-skeletal and psychological - is to set up a toothless Preventive Health Agency with the bulk of the ‘illhealth’ budget still ending up in the pockets of an increasingly ineffective, expensive and bloated medical industry: preventive health $145m versus Medical industry $68B.


So, here’s the blue print for health, fitness and wellbeing in this country.


* we need to make a distinction between what's medical and what's not. Too many people are going to doctors for things doctors can't fix and for things that would best be attended to by someone else, like a nurse, naturopath, counsellor or fitness practitioner.


1. Then we need to make the distinction between what's a disease and what's a personally-generated body system dysfunction. If you've got a disease, a medical complaint or your dysfunction is too far gone, you need medical treatment. Otherwise start working on yourself.


1. Anyone with any of the personally generated dysfunctions who is prepared to donate 4 weeks of their time to work on their fitness can have free access to fitness instruction at a fitness centre close to their home. Getting fit becomes their full time job. No pussy footing, no molly codling, just 8 hours a day devoted to restoring poor function to good with a balanced health, fitness, wellbeing and nutrition program.


* the health of Australians to improve, departments of health around Australia have to lever the fitness industry into the front line of primary health care.


You know that the bulk of the illhealth problems in this country are fitness problems and you know you can’t solve a fitness problem with a medical solution.


* the current Department of Health into two to form a Department of Health, Fitness and Wellbeing on one side of the ledger and a Department of Medicine on the other, with the current budget for general practice being split evenly between general practice and the new Department of Health, Fitness and Wellbeing.


* Commonwealth Government has to publicly acknowledge that in a toxic, sedentary society, that’s under nourished, over fed and stressed to the max, the medical model is the wrong model for improving health, fitness and wellbeing. Over the last 35 years it’s had a good trial and come up short.
* Commonwealth Government has to recognize the effect that the practice of junk medicine is having on health standards, junk medicine being the prescription of medications which mask symptoms rather than restoring poor function to good.
John Miller


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