Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Prevention, Predisposition and Cure: Some Basic Misconceptions Which Need To Be Clarified

Prevention, Predisposition and Cure: Some Basic Misconceptions Which Need To Be Clarified

by

Maria Teresa De Donato, PhD, RND, CNC, CMH, CHom



“…it’s not the scientific knowledge that should be eliminated, but the power which originated from it.”
(“Preface” by Giorgio Bert to Noboru Muramoto’s Healing Ourselves, 1993)


During the last few decades we have been literary bombarded with the term “prevention”.  Despite prevention should absolutely be a must when it comes to our health, it is nonetheless fundamental to clarify what it really consists or should consist in and what it does not.

Pre-vention – from the Latin word “Pre-venire”, literary means ‘to come before’ and implies playing an active role by doing everything possible to avoid that something, assumingly negative, may occur. The very fact that all checks and analysis we may undergo aim at verifying the presence of something, in order to establish that a condition already exists, is, in fact, an indication that the exam itself has nothing to do with preventing something from happening.

Laboratory tests, blood analysis, scans, and whatever still included under the generally used term “prevention” are NOT a form of prevention at all.  They are only means through which – from an allopathic point of view – a state of disease or lack of it can be diagnosed, that is, only instrumental to prove the presence or absence of an issue.  Clinical checks and analysis can, however, also be quite useful even when using alternative therapies for they allow the holistic health practitioner – as well as the physician – to have more information about the actual condition of the individual.  Though it is very important to undergo clinical checks and analysis when there is a problem or when we feel and fear that something might not be right with us overdoing and exaggerating this practice is not advisable in the long run. 

That said, when a person goes through clinical checks he/she is NOT preventing anything from happening. To the contrary, he/she is just going to verify WHETHER a certain health issue is already in place or not.

True prevention can only occur when the person does his/her very best in order to avoid to incur in some health problems, especially those running in her/his family history through healthier and more balanced diet and lifestyle habits.

Furthermore, having the so called “high risk of predisposition” does NOT necessarily mean that the person is going to incur in the genetic problem running in her/his family, but only that she/he has a higher probability than another person whose family genetics does not present that specific issue. Consequently, being predisposed, or more predisposed to “something” should be a greater incentive to be very active and do one’s very best in “preventing that particular sickness from happening”.  This, as previously stated, can be done primarily through a healthier nutrition and lifestyle habits.

Unfortunately for us, modern conventional medicine not only has for long time denied the efficacy and the need to have a holistic approach to life in general and health in particular, as done, to the contrary, for millennia by the most ancient medical systems such as Ayurveda and TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine), but ended up seeing the “removal” of body parts and organs as a way to cure… The removal of something has absolutely nothing to do with the process of treating and/or curing.  A removal is a removal, neither a treatment nor a cure.  (Muramoto, 1993, p. 11)

By saying that, though, we do not want to undermine at all the efficacy and the importance that surgery plays considering the fact that in some cases an operation may, in fact, be absolutely indispensable. We want, however, become aware that in many cases operations are not really needed and that before undergoing them we should get all the information we can.  This may require doing our own research and, most likely, hearing more than one opinion, possibly both from allopathic and holistic health practitioners to evaluate all the possibilities we might have and to make an informed choice about how to take care the best we can of our health condition, should that be the case.


Maria Teresa De Donato©2013-2015. All Rights Reserved.


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