1. The Relationship Between Health, Education, and Welfare
Must be Restored
The equating of “health” with "health care” is the most insidious barrier to effective health maintenance and promotion. Life is the only prerequisite for health, which is the fundamental prerequisite for learning. Human productivity and creativity vary directly with health and education. Every American, indeed America itself, has an interest in the maintenance and promotion of health as these are foundational to the general welfare of an individual, a family, or a nation.
It is obvious that population health increases the national productivity; likewise, the number of chronically ill and disabled Americans reduces the national productivity relative to an ideally healthy general population. But it is the chronically ill and disabled population, comprised of some of our most knowledgeable and experienced citizens, which is most likely to require government assistance to pay for healthcare.
In fact, our healthcare system exists to the extent that people are not productive. When a healthcare provider treats a sick patient the money paid to the former, by or in the name of the latter, does not contribute to the general welfare unless the intervention by the healthcare provider effects the removal of the patient from the healthcare and social welfare rolls to a payroll. But this cannot happen if the healthcare system continues to treat symptoms rather than causes; thereby, converting symptoms into chronic illness.
Every human experience constitutes psychobiosocial change. Every human thought or action is mediated by chemical changes within a psychobiological system, itself integrated with a larger social system. Such changes are either homeostatic or problematic. Problematic changes may be solved through homeostatic processes triggered by biological feedback loops or behavioral ones triggered by psychobiobehavioral inputs. In any event, the goal of problem-solving is to promote and maintain optimal functioning of the human being.
Health, education and the general welfare are fully interdependent regardless of the size of the population.
2. Health is Maintained Through Education
and the Behavioral Management of Stress
Let us imagine that Adam and Eve have comparably optimal genomes and reside in a paradisaical environment called Eden, which is essentially stress free insofar as, Eden poses no apparent challenges (objective stressors) unmatched by its inhabitant’s individual or collective capabilities. Let’s also add that Adam and Eve are free agents, each at liberty to choose whatever course of action is preferred individually or jointly. So, Eden is a dynamic environment, to which Adam’s and Eve’s respective DNA is homeostatically and behaviorally responsive. In other words, Adam’s and Eve‘s mental, behavioral and physical health is optimally matched to the actual demands of their circumstances.
Under such a scenario it might be expected that both Adam and Eve will maintain an essentially stable, healthy genome; that is, until subjective perceptions diverge from objective reality. Such is the most likely fate of our Edenites. Eden and its inhabitants are imperfect, and while Eden poses no particular challenges of its own for either Adam or Eve, one of them, as interpreted from the perspective of the other, is bound to make a ‘mistake’ sooner or later; one for which either or both may be mentally, behaviorally or physically ill-prepared to cope. When this happens, new edits (aka epigenetic and/or mutational changes) may be written into the DNA instruction manual. Of course, under certain conditions gene replication and reproduction may proliferate such adaptations, healthy or ill, eventually expressing them as genetic polymorphisms.
Arguably, given their state of optimal health, their identical cognitive capabilities, and their stable external environment, Adam and Eve might always agree with each other, so long as they do not lose sight of their shared truth. On the other hand, even identical twins simultaneously observing the same environmental event cannot share an identical physical perspective without sharing the identical spatiotemporal coordinates. Perspective is always the rub that leads to disagreement, but factions develop when perspective (from which opinions are formed) is mistaken for and defended as truth. When disagreements are resolved rationally there may be minimal or no stress and therefore, minimal, or no downstream genetic consequences to the disagreeing parties. On the other hand, when perspective is defended in place of reason, bias subverts truth in favor of opinion, and psychological stress can change the DNA.
Although genetic change may be random in nature, it is always responsive to subjective stress. Prior to acting upon an objective stressor, one’s subjective response to it varies with one’s self-perceived capacity to neutralize it and vice versa. Of course, we should strive to ensure that health care is accessible to all that need it. But, it essential that we, as the human race, begin in earnest to reduce the need for health care, through health promotion
3. Medicine Takes Over When Health Begins to Fail
For more than half a century, health scientists have been aware that genes and behaviors are transmitted transgenerationally. Suffice it to say that powerful forces have overemphasized the link between heredity and genetics. Even such fields as “behavioral genetics” emphasize the impact of genes on behavior, rather than the other way around. Succumbing to similar pressures, the term “behavioral health” has become a synonym for clinical psychology, clinical psychiatry and clinical social work rather than the scientific field that studies all behaviors related to health. Thus, when some of the brightest minds consider ways to impact “the future” of health, their perspective biases their vision.
The key to long term success is the ability to see the big picture and be right.
The big picture is unbiased. It begins and ends with truth and facts; it does not treat unfounded assumptions or popular opinion as either. The current healthcare system began and is contained in a box called medicine. Its big picture is in that box. Any picture that can be boxed cannot be the big picture. Inoculitics, and potentially others, stands outside of that box with a rational and scientifically supported view that can be built upon and lead a real health promotion system for the centuries to come.
Philosophy, science and clinical practice support several practical, foundational conclusions, which Inoculitics understands intuitively. These are conclusions toward which so many, often-well-intentioned, healthcare leaders, policymakers, and businesspersons have cast unproductive stares over the past century-and-a-half. Please forgive the necessary over-simplification as I list the referenced conclusions here: (1) Atoms, molecules and tennis balls do not change unless acted upon by external forces; (2) DNA is the molecular instruction manual, which tells our bodies what chemicals to manufacture in order to maintain homeostasis in response to an external force or cascade of external forces (i.e. those forces which can influence DNA structure, but are external to DNA itself); (3) Given (1) and (2), if there existed a perfect human genome in a perfectly static environment, there would exist neither human beings nor genetic polymorphisms; (4) There is no perfect human genome and no static environment; (5) An environment, which is not static is stressed; (6) Stress results when matter is subjected to external force; (7) The physical changes caused by any force may be observable sensorially and objectively quantified (within the limits of current technology); (8) Physical changes caused by stress may be psychologically experienced, which experience may be quantified subjectively; (9) The physical and psychological consequences of stress are always expressed physically at some level; (10) Although stress is always expressed physically, it is not always perceived psychologically. In other words, health is all about managing stress in an imperfect world.
When we leverage and share with our community, through education, our ever-accumulating knowledge about humankind, we will prevent or reduce disease. Health promotion is an education discipline, health care is the domain of medicine. We need a bigger picture.