The Devolution of Medicine
Medicine has devolved into a standardized, paint-by-numbers approach, meaning healthcare providers emphasize a checklist to manage diseases rather than individualizing care. While this sometimes works for diseases of the heart and lungs, it’s quite another to say it helps in chronic diseases like migraines and back pain. Chronic pain patients are seeking pain relief and a return to normalcy, which can be achieved through individualized care, talking with the patient, regular visits, assessing the patient’s personal and family history, putting together the information from medical tests, and relying on the intuition of both the patient and healthcare provider.
Most Medications are Unjustified
Pharmaceutical companies have created direct-to-consumer advertising strategies costing billions of dollars to maximize profits. This results in increased drug prices and the consumption of medications. The number of Americans taking multiple medications nearly doubled from 2000 to 2012 from 8 to 15 percent. With nearly half of adults over the age of 65 taking 5 or more medications, we’re seeing a sharp rise in adverse drug events, leading to millions of unnecessary hospitalizations (Brownlee, 2008). Take rheumatoid arthritis as an example, affecting over 350 million worldwide, and the treatments offered (drugs, physiotherapy, injections, and operations) rarely change anything. Despite treatment, one study found that almost 75 percent of rheumatoid patients are dissatisfied with their treatments (Radawski, 2019).
What can be done?
Now, more than ever, is the time to rethink our approach to medicine. Ideally, we need a medical technique that addresses the root cause of diseases and intervenes directly within the origin of the ailment. Healthcare providers should focus on listening to patients and stop masking symptoms with chemicals. This pain is experienced in the flesh, and we must use it as a therapeutic guide. When experiencing pain, we must consider treating the body’s fundamental unit — our cells.
Whether you are suffering from chronic disease, take a moment to think about today's world. How is today’s pain different? Where does chronic disease originate? These are undoubtedly open-ended questions, but dramatic changes in socioeconomic status, population growth, and agriculture have culminated in imbalances in our bodies (Heying, 2021). Nearly everyone’s lifestyle has veered from the natural order of human development. Our evolution is for a world that hasn’t existed for hundreds of years; movement as a necessity for survival is a relic of the past. In the 1900s, manual laborers outnumbered skilled workers; but by the 1980s, skilled workers surpassed manual laborers (Heying, 2021). These transformations have manifested too rapidly, not giving our bodies time to strengthen and protect themselves. For example, antibiotics can have unintended consequences on the good bacteria in our intestines. Antibiotics are designed to kill all bacteria and don’t distinguish good versus harmful bacteria. Disruption of our good bacteria can result in diarrhea, malabsorption of vitamins, and affect immune function.
Our bodies are designed for adaptation, but this blink in the evolutionary lens is far too brief for natural selection to have updated the arrangement. These mutations influence the anatomy of our intestinal microbiota and, thus, the adaptation of our immune system. Moreover, psycho-emotional factors, such as stress, contribute to the weakening of our immune defenses.
Industrialization has radically shifted our environment marked by technological advances in medicine, religion, education, and work. Visionary entrepreneurs like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are sending tourists to space in commercial rocket ships. It’s now commonplace to work from home with smartphones and computers; the television and internet are endless; population growth has exploded. In the past two decades, some of the most substantial changes are the genome, quantum science, drugs, pharmaceuticals, food science, and climate science. Pharmaceuticals, food science, and climate science have contributed significantly to humans living longer — just 50 years ago, we were surviving into our 70s; today, we are surviving into our 80s and beyond. However, increased longevity and prosperity brings more chronic diseases. While humanity is inarguably better in many ways (e.g., reduction in global poverty), but it has also deteriorated in others (e.g., heightened risk of nuclear war).
We’ve adapted to the industrial and post-industrial world with software designed for living in the wild. We’ve forgotten that we’re completely connected to nature. Humans have become so technologically advanced in recent decades that we now have the power to both destroy the world and our health.
The costs of adapting to an environment where our bodies didn’t evolve are observable in today’s chronic diseases. For example, nearly one-third of the global working population is engaged in night shift work, especially among healthcare workers (Shi, 2022). Research has highlighted that night shift work disrupts circadian rhythms, disturbs sleep disturbances, and other behavioral changes, leading to an increased risk of chronic diseases, mental disorders, cognition impairment, and mortality in nurses (Shi, 2022). The World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer concludes that shift work is likely carcinogenic for humans (Erren, 2019).
We have more chronic diseases than at any time in history (Holman, 2020). It’s estimated that half of 65-year-olds can’t get up from the floor with one or two hands (Kubitza, 2022) — it’s worth pausing for a moment to let that sink in. We have surrendered to living with chronic diseases like arthritis, headaches, cardiovascular disease, gastrointestinal diseases, and cancer. Despite the last three American presidents, Obama, Trump, and Biden, having implemented policies to combat chronic diseases, nothing seems to change. Even billionaire entrepreneurs like Bill Gates and Elon Musk suffer from chronic diseases despite their vast resources.