Outside the box healthcare?

I woke thinking about this this morning. Outside the box healthcare. What is outside the box healthcare?! Maybe it's because I'd watched a TEDx talk on outside the box marketing this week. Maybe it's because I'm reading Russell Brand's Revolution. Maybe it's an awareness that we're told what to think by the media all the time. And looking at who is funding that. Because what I see, experience, and hear from people certainly doesn't correlate with the opinions you're, we're fed about homeopathy, it does make me question other things. What if we're inside the box, being fed half truths, or even no truths. And lapping it up. What if we don't even know there's a box there?

Looking at who is funding the research is an interesting one. Coca cola reportedly funding a large scale study to show sugar wasn't a bad thing for us. The Dairy Council, McDonalds and several other milk orientated organisations funded a study last year that showed how beneficial milk was for us. Funny that. Milk from another species, that no other species does in nature, but we've set up the system to abuse and violate cows... now there's becoming a greater awareness we need studies sponsored by the people who have a vested interest to tell us that it'll help us.  Who sponsors the report that says a glass of prosecco a day is better than an hour in the gym?! Nice idea but still...

I'd never thought about it really in the past. Colin Campbell's book Whole was illuminating though and his explanations that there is no funding for whole food research but you can isolate nutrients - study away and discover what that can have benefits from. Is that the real world though? Not in my view - it's all about a beautiful interplay of vitamins and minerals together.

Similarly in homeopathy. Who will benefit (on a massive scale) from these medicines? Well, if they do what I think they do, there'll be greater health, so the individuals would do. Less strain on the NHS. Another benefit. But then less drugs bought. So who might benefit from homeopathy being less available? Thinking about that one for a moment it's not that hard to figure out the answer.

The Guardian used to share pro-homeopathy articles, and now won't do anything of the sort. So we are told what to think by the papers. But is that the truth? What if we stepped out of that, spoke to real people, with real health concerns and found out how they'd handled it. The Mail and The Sun seem more positive about natural healthcare and this article was published in You Magazine, though it took someone having a great experience with homeopathy - and connections - it appears - to get it written. Great to have it out there though.

Back to outside the box. Trying solutions we haven't used before... Desperation in each instance drove me to it - migraines that weren't going away, a horse's eye that we might just have cut out, and me being for want of a better word, a mess. So we'd been pretty stuck in that box. And didn't even know it. I'm proud of my parents stepping out of the box before the vegan trend got big (although timing makes no difference really, I'm just proud of them).  Taking pro-active, and not always easy, steps to improve their health naturally. At nearly 70 years old (ouch that feels old, let's start that again). At 67 and 68, on no medications, physically active daily and contented people. 

'We've always done this' doesn't seem to be good enough to me as a reason anymore. I ate meat for 30+ years, guzzled the painkillers like my sanity depended on them. It may have done. Time to step away from doing what I'm told. Getting out of the box healthcare suits me. Maybe when we realise there is a box, a way we've always been told we should do things so we accept them as normal and then step away from that, things will start to change. Until then, have a peek over or through the box and know there might be a different way to sit along what we've always done.

As I said recently, I don't eat my dog so I don't expect to eat a pig. I've been a breastfeeding mother for two years and I was lucky to not have my baby taken away from me. The happy cows bouncing around for Tesco's milk aisle? Less so sadly. And the bouncing would be really painful - I walked past grass-fed dairy cows yesterday that could barely walk - their over-swollen udders getting in the way of their leg's natural movement.

Lastly I think it's important to say that I'm happy to have conventional healthcare available to me, I think it can be lifesaving, but I also think it's incredibly shortsighted to think that that's the only way and to try to trample anything else. But if we're stuck inside the box I guess there's not a long view available.

Be skeptical but learn to listen.
The Fifth Agreement.

With love,

Em x