What paradigm you exist in is everything! This forms your understanding of everything you read and thus your beliefs. Your beliefs drive your actions. So if you’re someone who is struggling with your health, then it’s time to investigate your paradigm and see just what foundation your beliefs rest upon.
To me, there’s two paradigms when it comes to health. There’s the Sickness & Disease paradigm which is most prevalent in our society and there’s a Wellness & Prevention paradigm. That’s the bubble I personally live in. (It’s why you may look at me like I have four heads.)
However, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results…so if you ‘prescribe’ to the Sickness & Disease paradigm and you’re frustrated with your results, well, you’re either insane or you need to do something different.
Let me help you do something different. Let me help you move to the Wellness & Prevention paradigm.
The primary premise is that the body is self regulating and self healing. It is innately intelligent and always acts in its own best interest.
What’s that mean?
Well, let’s imagine you’re on an iceberg. How would your body respond to this? Primarily, your body will shunt your blood away from your extremities (arms and legs) and move it to your body and head, to your organs and brain. Is this a stupid thing to do or is it intelligent? Does this represent health or sickness? Is it a pathological error or an adaptive response?
This actually does represent sickness, because without blood your fingers and toes will eventually fall off. But, this is still a very innately intelligent, adaptive response. Why?
Because it buys you time to get off the iceberg, to survive! Why would your body create a state of sickness that will cause your toes to fall off (eventually)? This is the question to shift your paradigm. The only reason your body would create a state of sickness for survival is that it’s an alarm response.
Remember, your body is self regulating. It will not self destruct. It will always act in its own best interest. Therefore, it’s willing to sacrifice your big toe if that means it can save the vital organs that are necessary for survival.
How is this intelligent? This is key, because no matter how smart the response is, there is a limit to our adaptive capabilities. The response to shift blood toward vital organs is NOT the solution. This only happens to buy you time to get off the iceberg. TO BUY YOU TIME TO CHANGE YOUR ENVIRONMENT – YOUR LIFESTYLE. That’s the only reason your body will enter into a stress response. So that you have some extra time to get off the iceberg…or the couch.
In the popular and ever-prevalent Sickness & Disease paradigm, shunting blood away from the extremities and to the organs is pathological and you should ask your doctor if ExtremiFlow is right for you – that doesn’t exist, and if if did, you shouldn’t ask for it. Taking a medication to divert blood flow back to the extremities does not move you off the iceberg. In fact, it lessens your time to get off the iceberg. And, you forget that being on the iceberg is a problem because your fingers and toes aren’t falling off because the medication or surgery ‘saved’ them, at the expense of the body as a whole. This means you’ll die sooner rather than later, although your fingers and toes will be more comfortable while you die. Great.
Sickness & Paradigm ignores the iceberg and insists that the body is flawed and needs regulated with drugs. It focuses on treating the effects of the environment with drugs and surgery.
The Wellness & Prevention paradigm sees the iceberg as a pathological environment and considers the body’s response as adaptive, deliberate and intelligent. It sees the intervention as necessary environmental change to a more suitable one. This intervention is change in how you eat, move and think on a daily basis, towards a lifestyle that is more congruent with our genetic design. A lifestyle that truly enhances health and thus your quality of life.
This concept will continue to be explored in future blog posts. However, in the mean time, you can research and learn about this in much more detail by reading The Wellness Prevention Paradigm by James Chestnut
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