Taking Responsibility For Our Choices

By Tamela Thomas, Wellness Manager

I really love this month's Wellness article by Brad Thompson. It reminds me of some important life lessons that I have had occasion to re-learn several times. Lessons such as: "I am totally responsible for the decisions I make"; "Keeping an open mind enhances opportunities"; and certainly, "When facing something challenging, try strategies that have the potential to do the least harm before trying something drastic."

Our members have always sought the best products and services both professionally and personally. The Wellness Center is all about offering treatments and information to enhance your quality of life. In the following article, Brad Thompson offers a pragmatic approach to making the best choices for optimum health. It's a prioritized process of risking the least to gain the most.

Split Decisions

When it comes to wellness, the choice is yours

By Brad Thompson, Licensed Acupuncturist, Herbalist & Massage Therapist

The desire for good health connects us all. We regularly, diligently strive to look good, feel well and maintain the promise of a healthy future. Exercise regimens, diets and myriad services assist us—think about all the random food fads and exercise gimmicks we've heard about over the years. Regardless, our collective zeal for new approaches and genuine panaceas has seldom waned. We continue to hope for simpler, more efficient, more convenient ways to stave off disease, postpone aging and heal injuries.

Choosing the services, products and practitioners we need to enhance our health is a difficult task; so is obtaining the medical knowledge that can help us make these choices. Isaac Newton stated that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. With medicine, a field lacking in the luxuries of mature scientific laws, we often find that many treatments have several, equally effective alternatives with opposing philosophical or methodological foundations. So how do we choose?

Richard Dawkins, author, scientist and Oxford University professor, states that humans gather knowledge in four ways: through evidence, tradition, faith and revelation. In the realm of science, value lies solely with evidence. Nevertheless, in the pursuit of health and well-being, patients and practitioners consistently seek knowledge from the other three epistemological sources. With so many options, often founded on competing paradigms and value systems, we find it difficult to make well-informed choices. Facial acupressure, or plastic surgery? Prozac, or St. John's Wort? Cortisone, or prolotherapy?

When you consider the competitive interests of scientists, businesspeople and consumers, what emerges is a complex network of provable, unproven, miraculous, questionable, laughable and even treacherous options for healing ourselves. So how do we choose which method will help us build better abs, stop migraines, eradicate toenail fungus and erase wrinkles?

For starters, we can accept that health choices are a purely personal responsibility and warrant just as much skepticism and speculation as other personal choices. In short, wellness enhancements are seldom, if ever, guaranteed. Whether purchasing a Thighmaster, a series of Botox injections, a colonoscopy or a hip replacement, it's all—malpractice not withstanding—caveat emptor, or buyer beware. Just try activating that money-back guarantee for the Thighmaster.

Each and every choice has risks. Choices can cost us money, time, hope—even body parts—and can  damage our trust in standard as well as new practices, ideas and institutions.

Knowing that each of us is responsible for the choices we make, we more urgently seek infallible information supported by a safety net of experts. Unfortunately, no such body exists. Passionate research often suffers from methodological and financial limitations. Fresh ideas lack support other than common sense. We keep revisiting traditional practices, but not without encountering modern prejudices. There is simply no method of healing that is 100 percent effective for all people all the time.

Open the yellow pages in search of a psycho-neuro-immunologist specializing in arthroscopic surgery, acupuncture and Reiki, and you won't find one. No Yoda figure hides out in the top of the Smith Tower to silently heal the masses. There is no infallible flow chart for how to solve every health issue. So, we have to shop around. Caveat emptor...

If we adopt a curious but conservative shopping strategy, we may find the cure for an ailment in the second, third or fourth product or practitioner we see. What works for one person may not work for another. What worked last year may not work this year. We must be curious and consider all options, but also weigh benefits against potential consequences.

We have made substantial medical progress since Newton made his famous declaration. Those of us who currently have access to quality health care are enjoying a longevity and quality of life that Newton would have deemed miraculous. We've eradicated polio and smallpox and are closing in on colon cancer. We're transplanting human faces and mechanical organs. We're even taking all of our teeth to the grave! With progress, we've gained many options for maintaining health and treating disease. Yet as long as multiple ideas compete for our interest and there are no clearly appropriate solutions, we cannot expect uncomplicated choices. As we navigate this landscape of options that meld new ideas with old, common sense may be our best weapon.