AN OUNCE OF PREVENTION IS WORTH A POUND OF CURE

Apr 29 2009

Here are a few examples of how the preventive approach has helped people in Europe to improve their health and prevent sickness.

At a German bathing spa I met a stout-looking executive, Mr. H.B. He is a director of one of the important industries in Hamburg. About ten years ago his doctors discovered that he had hypertension. After an unsuccessful attempt to control his high blood pressure with drugs, they sent Mr. H.B. to this famous watering spa.

“I have been coming here every summer for a week or two ever since,” Mr. H.B. told me. “My pressure usually goes down to normal during this time and I feel like a new man—twenty years younger. After a winter at my work, my blood pressure rises again, so I come back here, and all these baths, relaxation and good food put me back on my feet again.” Instead of endangering his life with powerful drugs, Mr. H.B. was controlling his blood pressure and restoring his health with three ancient—but not forgotten!—methods of preventive medicine: water cure, diet, and relaxation.

In Sweden, I have witnessed an excellent example of the value of preventive medicine in action. Visiting a dentist who had a family of four children, I was amazed at how healthy the children looked and especially at their beautiful white teeth. Dr. L. explained to me that the whole family was living on the so-called Waerland-diet, a lacto-vegetarian program designed by the Swedish nutritionist and health pioneer, Are Waerland. The children were raised on this program from birth. None of the children have had so much as a single cavity, although the eldest boy was already 17 years old. Knowing that this was a dentist’s family, I inquired if they did lots of tooth brushing.

“Never,” was Dr. L.’s answer. “I do not believe in toothbrushing. They rinse their teeth after meals, occasionally use toothpicks, and finish the meal with raw fruits or vegetables.” Needless to say, white sugar, white bread, and candies can never be found in this prevention-conscious family.

Russian and German reconditioning centers have demonstrated that diseases and physical deterioration can be prevented on a large scale by proper preventive means. Millions of people, perhaps as many as eight to ten million people in these two countries alone, visit spas and reconditioning centers each year, where their health is rebuilt and future illnesses prevented by programs of exercise, diet, and mental relaxation. Thousands of potential heart attacks are prevented in these centers. In one of the German cardiac centers I met a group of 60- to 80-year-old men who have been serious heart cases for 10 to 20 years. They visit this center for six weeks each year, and they told me that their condition is improved colossally during the six weeks of Spa treatment. “These mineral waters keep me alive,” an 84-year-old man, who has been coming here for the last 15 years, told me.

In the United States, we are basically cure-minded, and preventive medicine, in the sense described above, is a largely unknown occurrence here. While German industries send their executives to reconditioning health centers regularly, our economic system, with its chronic unemployment, does not favor the preventive approach. An executive who succumbs in his high-pressure job to a heart attack can be easily replaced. The rampant growth of heart diseases in the United States can be at least in part due to our neglect to take advantage of the European experience with the preventive cardiac programs.

We are still a great nation, with unmatched technological competence and a great capacity for scientific advancement. But if our economic, diplomatic, and military strength is not matched and backed up by the physical and moral stamina of our people, we may find the wheels of destiny turning to our disadvantage. Human history shows that decay from within in the form of physical and moral degeneration has brought about the fall of great nations. It is disheartening to witness the catastrophic health degeneration of our nation, when the scientific knowledge of how to build and guard health and prevent sickness is available.

A U.S. senator, concerned with the health of American people, once said that we are spending about $50 billion a year on health. I would like to make an important correction: virtually all of this money is spent on disease, not on health. If the American government would start spending money on health and the prevention of disease, the trend toward the rapid deterioration of the health of this nation would soon be reversed.