Opinion - Saving money in healthcare

Saving money in health care: Starting with the basics in America, the dairy, meats and seafood battles are won, and in process, and the organics battle is near won, and in process.

The upcoming vote on the farm bill should actually build on the 1948 farm laws, thus aiding the sustainable farming movement, hopefully at the same time, putting an end to genetically modified foods.

Health food stores are on the rise, as are health food aisles at grocery store chains, and healthy dining can now include fast food drive-thrus and chain restaurants, like Applebee's.

There's what is a shortcut impression of the state of health care in America, while daily exercise at home becomes more and more prevalent for every person.

Renowned and holistic physicians, such as Joseph Mercola, meanwhile criss-cross the nation, and its television airwaves, pushing diet and lifestyle choices as key to securing healthful living, as the sustainable foods movement continues to be anathema to unhealthful living, and witness to unwell food processing practices, as they're transforming.

Cranialsacral osteopathy, also osteopathic touch manipulation, is meanwhile increasingly used for sports medicine and many more types of treatment, from helping newborns to the elderly.

A few suggestions, then, based on these beginnings, on how to save money on health care:

Use the know-how of holistic science and the sustainable foods movement to guide new laws that protect all people from all forms of unsafe and unfair food processing and packaging, and push legislation through the Food and Drug Administration simultaneously, tapping, in total, into the wisdom of the doctors who promote healthful diet and living beyond 'outmoded' dietary and medicinal practices, that is, whatever is the result of a fragmented science and imbalanced lifestyle that has led to foods and diets, and livelihoods, that are not sustainable.

As well, create a White House pledge that people of all ages begin using diet and lifestyle to guard against health problems, and, too, worsening of health problems, that works in tandem with holistic, immunological physicians, and the investigative source, the sustainable foods movement.

It should be said, children have healthy constitutions. They don't need drugs, in general, in almost all cases. This idea should be pushed, too, and also become a basis for a brainstorm for treating adults holistically as well. The White House could potentially work on this transformative effort for the globalized world in tandem with above-mentioned physicians, and other national and international leaders in healthcare. (By brainstorm, I mean arrive at conclusions that create a mindshift by which adults think of themselves as having inherently healthy constitutions, too, like children, that can make it to a very old age, through preventative and holistic living, typically including, exercise, fresh air, good sleep and whole and health foods).

The White House could work side-by-side with doctors, incorporating the wisdom of world renowned, Dr. Oliver Sacks, and the ancient schools, Ayurveda and Enneagram, in order to review environmental conditioning for kids, such as family life and school experiences, and what can be done to promote their healthful, and drug-free, living. It shouldn't be overlooked that mental health, if not cared for, can lead to physical imbalance. But care can be preventative, holistic and in tune with the unconditioned environment (an environment with unconditional love).

Have mainstream and holistic doctors, who might be combined in a global network of physicians pushing well-rounded, immunology-based wellness and care, push for aggressive change pursuant to our current overreliance on allopathic medicine to cure ails and illnesses, that can often times be, and minus surgery, both prevented and reversed all naturally. This push should include that there will be less testing, or better yet the elimination of unnecessary testing, like risk-filled cat scans and other strong x-rays, and repetitive or excessive blood testing, when symptomology and treatment, without side effects, including pulse diagnosis and touch, can instead be used, and the alternative, seemingly safe, saliva testing.

Create a “minimalist” framework nationally and internationally of doctors practicing immunology which is progressive, meaning it's at once holistic. Immunology must incorporate holistic practice, methodology and theory, as a foundation. See if doctors can agree. Then, implement treatments that derive from this new framework as rapidly as possible in place of less whole body solutions. Combine immunology with advanced surgery and prosthetics.

Minimalist implies, not overreaching or expensive, but needs-based, and inclusive of necessary training to also create the base for the framework of a body of doctors, including, and featuring, family practitioners, who are a reflection of the new mindset. Cost savings can be done with the realization research has been completed in this area for many thousands of years and so it's not a research and development intensive field. Immunology-based medicine, which should include diet, lifestyle and medicine that's squarely good for you, without side effects, including exhorbitant costs, is mostly ready to be applied and using affordable and environmentally friendly medical advice and treatment, and training that's in place, but not satisfactorily widespread.

Last, for now, but not least, solve the Asperger's versus left-brained and right-brained thinking riddle. I believe Asperger's, having come to understand the differences between left- and right-brained thinking, is chiefly dominant, right-brained thinking - the same should be said for autism. Right-brained and left-brained thinking, paradoxically, are accentuated and divided in modern techniques for living, or modern society. A happy middle path will translate to greater access to whole- brained thinking while not abandoning our left or right-brained ways (read more in my book, Holistic Living: Tips for Youth, which contains the education proposal, “Charting the Course,” meant to procure increasingly whole-brained thinking).

Asperger's, and autism, I'm suggesting, is right-brained thinking, a natural extension of the left and right- brained continuum, and doesn't require medicine in that case. There's no reason to label one side of a continuum and not the other. Left-brained thinking evolved over the last 50,000 years in order to aid humankind in the manipulation of tools, but it is still wanting without right-brained, associative thought as its balance. Similarly, dominant, right-brained thinkers achieve by way of graduated, whole-brained thinking, which means the use of both left and right hemispheres of the brain.

In addition to left and right-brained thinking and the continuum that develops from it, there are the Enneagram and Ayurveda closed, holistic systems, which both incorporate psychology. They should be adopted into mainstream, or immunological, medicine, along with an adopted, holistic understanding of the use of the continuum just mentioned. When we understand all of these completed frameworks, and compare them to holistically viewed human development studies, we can see that in rare cases there are the very highs and lows of bipolarity, for instance, and the illness, schizophrenia, both illnesses being avoidable and from which one can recover. Even the very highs and lows of bipolarity, by which I do not always mean bipolar as we think of it today, one can recover from.

But generally people achieve balanced lives, not illness – this new look at mental and physical health should save money and create more productive, whole lives, a natural extension of the economy.