{"id":267,"date":"2016-02-26T00:24:44","date_gmt":"2016-02-26T00:24:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/healthicine.org\/wordpress\/?p=267"},"modified":"2017-04-23T13:59:51","modified_gmt":"2017-04-23T13:59:51","slug":"theory-healthicine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/healthicine.org\/wordpress\/theory-healthicine\/","title":{"rendered":"What is Healthicine? What is the theory of Healthicine? What is the philosophy of Healthicine?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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What is healthicine?<\/p>\n

Is it a word? (it’s not in the dictionary).\u00a0Is it theory? Is it a practice? \u00a0Philosophers contemplate the difference between theory and reality – and wonder if reality is just another theory.\u00a0Mathematicians and scientists define everything as a theory, to be tested. \u00a0That’s their theory, and they practice it diligently.\u00a0Eastern philosophies and the martial arts teach that the difference between theory and practice is “practice”. \u00a0Practice, practice, practice.\u00a0Comedians joke “in theory, theory and practice are the same, in practice, they are not.” They are right, and funny too.<\/p>\n

Is\u00a0healthicine<\/strong>\u00a0a theory. \u00a0No. \u00a0Healthicine is a lens.<\/strong> \u00a0A way of looking at things. A tool we can use to see things differently, thus more clearly, and \u00a0farther.<\/p>\n

Medicine is not a theory. \u00a0It is a practice.\u00a0Medicine is a tool<\/strong>, a set of tools that we use to diagnose, prevent, treat and sometimes cure illness. \u00a0Medicine is a powerful lens, or set of lenses, that we use to zoom in and focus on illness, on diagnosis, on treatments, and cures. When we zoom out, take a wider view, we can use our analysis for prevention.<\/p>\n

However, when we try to use the medicine lens to view, create, and enhance healthiness, or worse, to ‘diagnose’ healthiness, – it’s like looking backwards through the telescope. \u00a0The closer we get to the truth, the farther away it appears. \u00a0And our vision is always distorted by the medical lens.<\/p>\n

How can we tell if SOMETHING is ‘good for your health’. \u00a0Is drinking coffee healthy? \u00a0Is chocolate good for you? \u00a0Does red wine make you healthier? \u00a0You will find consistently that the answer is yes it is, and no it is not, yes it does, and no it does not. This happens because we are using a medicine lens to analyze a healthy action.<\/p>\n

Medicine is designed to detect, measure and treat illness. Healthicine’s goal is to measure, enhance, optimize healthiness, and therefore to prevent and even cure illness.<\/p>\n

Medicine is like a telescope, or a microscope. \u00a0It focuses on specific details, it magnifies them, searching for danger.<\/p>\n

Healthicine is like a wide angle lens. \u00a0It views the landscape as well as the trees. Healthiness is about wholeness, not about a problem in a specific area. By studying from a whole viewpoint we will see specific areas more clearly.<\/p>\n

Did you ever wonder how someone who is ‘healthy’ can suddenly become very sick – even die in a short time?\u00a0When we use the medicine lens to search for healthiness, we search and search, but we don’t find any illness – so we assume health. It’s like the Star Trek spoof, where the doctor reports: “I\u2019m not picking up anything on my tricorder scan. He seems perfectly healthy.<\/a>“<\/strong>\u00a0The tricorder is a medical tool – it only measures illness and cannot find healthiness.<\/p>\n

Medicine cannot see the forest, for the trees. Medicine cannot see health, for all the illnesses it finds. There are many cases where unhealthiness exists and builds for year and years – and the patient is judged ‘healthy’, because no illness is present. \u00a0Then suddenly, when illness is diagnosed – illness does not exist until it is diagnosed – it is too late.<\/p>\n

Then the medical experts say “we need early detection tools”. \u00a0Duh… Earlier detection makes the problem worse, not better. It sees more trees, and less healthiness. \u00a0It soon starts to see more trees (illness) where there are no trees (false positives), but it still doesn’t see healthiness.<\/p>\n

We need to study healthiness, we need to measure healthiness – in order to learn to optimize our health.<\/p>\n

We need to use a health paradigm, a healthicine lens, not an illness paradigm – to learn about health.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

We need a science of healthicine. \u00a0We need tools of healthicine. We need principles of healthicine and healthiness.<\/a> We need many different views of and opinions about of healthicine – today we have but one (this blog)<\/a>. I will be happier when I actually have someone to disagree with.<\/p>\n

to your health, tracy<\/p>\n

Tracy is the author of two books about healthicine:<\/p>\n