Andrew Weil is a pioneer in integrative medicine (IM) and one of its most respected spokespersons in the USA. As simply stated by him: “We have a disease-management system – one that depends on ruinously expensive drugs and surgeries that treat health conditions after they manifest rather than giving our citizens simple diet, lifestyle and therapeutic tools to keep them healthy.”
This same model is being propagated worldwide, with people blindly believing that high tech is better medicine by default. Health is not the absence of disease, nor can it (health) be ensured through intake of medicines, dietary supplements, etc. Health comes from personal insight, taking responsibility for oneself – how to (diet and lifestyle) maintain balance within oneself and in relation to a dynamically changing environment (or health influencing variables). This is the Ayurveda way – the knowledge of longevity and a fulfilling life through the life cycle of man/woman.Globally, the burden of disease has shifted to non-communicable diseases and chronic diseases. The disease becomes chronic because typically the symptom is being treated and not the root cause. High tech medicine or big data can address this only partially or should I say very limitedly. What is needed is not more technology but awareness and education on what constitutes health and how to stay healthy. Dr. David Agus in his book ‘End of Illness’ says much the same thing. Medical technologies and digital technologies are perhaps enablers for treating some diseases/condition, mostly at a mature-acute-emergency stage, and not correction/prevention of the root cause.
