Health Care versus Sick Care
“Sick care” sends you to your doctor. Most people call this “health care,” argue about whether all people should be entitled, and gnash their teeth about the expense of medical treatment and medications.
In my mind everyone should have access to sick care. Health care, on the other hand, is your responsibility, not your doctor’s.
Explanations
You have already noticed, no doubt, that I like to explain stuff. I have a dear friend in the health care industry who insists that people don’t want to know why. She believes people just want to be told what to do. Perhaps she is right.
This is the same friend I quoted in a June post, “All of us want to go to heaven but no one wants to die to get there.”
I have always struggled a lot with the idea of just telling people what to do – which explains why the number of words in my book, It’s All about the Food, and my posts are committed to how stuff happens.
Actually, my personal experience is that just knowing what to do might not make much impact on changing behavior if the change is uncomfortable.
So, if you don’t understand why that change might be important, it is certainly unlikely you will step outside your comfort zone. Further, so far, I find that looking at any one illness alone often doesn’t create enough incentive to motivate change either.
COVID-19
Now, unfortunately for some, the COVID-19 pandemic presents the importance of all of those illnesses in combination. What happens when there is a lot of stuff wrong beyond a COVID-19 infection?
Over the last few months I have done a lot of explaining. Over the last two weeks I packaged those explanations into a two part series about Insulin Resistance and Diet., here and here. The bottom line is that insulin resistance resulting from a poor diet creates the framework for ill health.
How healthy are you?
Healthy people are rarely sick. Unhealthy people lean heavily on sick care and the medical community. The message? It is your responsibility to maintain your health through diet, minimizing the need for sick care.
How do you feel? How much weight has crept up over the years? How much pain do you have? What other symptoms do you have? What reasons do you have for going to the doctor? How many diagnosed conditions do you have? How many medications do you take?
On average about 5% of people who die at a hospital with COVID-19 have no known underlying conditions. The other 95% will have, in addition to COVID-19, a series of conditions likely including hypertension, high blood sugar, high triglycerides and low HDL cholesterol, cardiovascular conditions.
The more of these you have, the more you are susceptible to a bad outcome with COVID-19. How healthy are you?
So, you ask,“Will you tell me what to do? Yes, starting next week. In the mean time, wear a mask, maintain social distance, and wash your hands.
Pat Smith is the author of “It’s All about the Food,” a book that guides nutritious food choices as the way to avoid illness and maintain a healthy weight. Proceeds from her book benefit the Montgomery County Food Pantry. Her website is http://www.allaboutthefood.org/ She can be contacted at patsmith2@live.com, 870-490-1836. Her Facebook page is www.facebook.com/patsmithbooks.