One of the reasons I started Unified Health was to help people navigate the wildly disorganized world of wellness. I’m still a researcher at heart, so it’s always bothered me that we don’t have a lot of good metrics to determine when someone’s chronic low back pain, when not caused by something like a herniated disc or compressed nerve root, is due to a dietary thing (studies suggest that chronic low back pain can be due to gut health, including dietary intolerances) so that person would be better off seeing a naturopath, versus caused by a rotated tibia that is now compressing their common peroneal nerve (which is a very frequent cause of ‘throwing your back out while shoveling snow’ – I’ll write a post on ways to shovel snow safely shortly) which means you’d be better off seeing an osteopath, versus caused by contracture of the psoas muscles, in which case you’d be better off seeing a massage therapist – you get the idea.
I wanted to come up with an objective measurement tool that would be able to assess a person’s biomechanics, gait, movement patterns, etc, that would help to quickly and easily reproduce what I’ve spent years learning how to do for my patients. That way, we could very easily get this information into the hands of patients so that they weren’t wasting time and money on treatments that weren’t effective for what they had. It would also provide a way of collecting data around which treatments and therapists were the most affective for treating specific conditions.
That was the heart of Unified Health.
It was meant to be an evidence-based way of helping people navigate the world of ‘wellness care’. Because let’s face it, there are a lot of people who will just take your money and treat you for years without you actually getting better. And since the wellness world is all a for-profit industry, people can throw a lot of money at something and be no better off for it. That bothers me. And it should bother you too.
But, here’s the problem with that – there’s no money in the public system to focus on wellness. Because our current health care crisis means that people no longer have access to even base level care. That’s what happened while we were developing Unified. People can’t even get access to life-saving prescriptions right now. The people coming to us desperate for help had medical issues we couldn’t fully address because they needed access to medical care. So we’ve been trying to find ways to work with the traditional system as well. Which has been frought with difficulties and set backs. Much like any healing journey can be.
What I’m finding interesting about the traditional healthcare system is that it desperately needs some support right now. But it’s so used to being the thing that supports everyone else that it has no idea how to accept outside help. This is something I can really relate to.
When you’re the person in charge of keeping everyone else running, taking time and admitting that you also need help is like, the worst possible thing you could do. It feels like you have no choice but to just keep doing whatever coping things you have been doing for as long as you can and pray something changes. Which, sure, yeah, that’s one way of doing it. But the truth is, when you’re that person, if you crumble, everyone else crumbles.
The wellness world side of things taught me that the traditional way we go about ‘being strong’ is crap. The only way you help others is by accepting help for yourself. Otherwise you burn yourself out and no one gets anywhere.
That’s where our traditional system is right now – it’s learning how to accept help from outside sources. And that’s a wonderful and messy process, but I am very proud of it for taking those steps.
The super exciting and fascinating part of it for me is that we get to be along for the ride of that process. We get to help support it through its transition of learning how to be helped. Which, as a wellness care practitioner, that’s kind of like hitting the holy grail of helping.
So, for what it’s worth, I’m proud of you, Traditional Health Care, for taking the steps towards a healthier future. Just like I’m proud of every patient I get to help support on their own wellness journeys.