Health - is it time to combine streams?
Good health is a dream goal for everyone. Perhaps, for this reason, our world has evolved to deal with it through different prisms. We have medicine, alternative medicine, wellness, fitness, diagnostics, and so on.
It is not uncommon for a few to throw in spirituality and belief as a means to good health.
Depending on which stream you are passionate about, you might dismiss the rest as quackery. So you might find a doctor dismissing an Ayurveda practitioner or a vegan dismissing anyone who eats meat as a fool.
Of course, it is entirely one thing to say something and another to live by it. So often, you find a doctor resorting to Ayurveda to heal their loved one or a vegan who is a closet fish eater. So, amidst this noise, what should you be doing?
My personal opinion? Craft your own religion!
Over the last decade, I have seen my opinion sway, leaning one way and then another. It wasn't dishonesty. It was the outcome of constantly reading, learning, and discovering new things.
"Flowing like water," if you like Bruce Lee's famous quote.
Dogma, I learned, is easily the most dangerous attribute to possess. I differentiate between dogma and belief. You could strongly believe in something but be willing to amend or alter your opinion, especially when confronted with a better one.
Dogma often becomes the unwillingness to change regardless.
I recently read an article about the fitness and wellness industry coming together to create a studio.
Instead of gyms mocking the wellness industry or vice versa, they are finding merit in collaborating with the same objective: making you healthy and helping you live a long life.
In my humble opinion, this is how it should be. We test the value of a concept or belief, regardless of which stream offers it for consideration—medicine, naturopathy, or alternative healing.
We then subject it to a qualitative filter. If it passes our test and does little or no harm,
Of course, this requires us to have more than a basic understanding of health.
Is it time to make health an important part of our education?
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