The existing healthcare framework encourages delay on addressing health issues in this middle stage. Doctors concentrate on people already in a sick phase. If something doesn’t feel right but you’re not past the threshold of what qualifies as “sick,” the common reaction “Let’s keep an eye on this and see if it gets worse.”
But something is happening inside your body now. What if we had better insight into what that is and what its potential impact could be as we “wait and see?”
Doctors only have treatment protocols for the sick phase. Because there’s relatively little scientific examination into the potential or non emergent phase of illness, we don’t have the benchmarks for diagnosis and related treatment protocols.
Healthcare professionals are trained to look at data points, not continuous states. For example, they can run a test on your ketone levels and, based on the number, they can make clinical decisions. What the healthcare industry, research and clinical, doesn’t look at is how ketone levels in a patient’s body fluctuate over days. Without research identifying benchmarks touching on when changes will occur and what their impact could be, they can’t establish preventative protocols.
A healthy middle state isn't getting researched to develop diagnostic tools and protocols for these interim stages. Without the data and analysis, the healthcare profession really can’t do much more for the healthy middle than wait and see until the illness becomes acute, and more dangerous and expensive to address.
Now, we need to take our share of responsibility. We play “wait and see” with our health too.
How often do we feel some foot pain or excessive tiredness and think, “Well, I can walk it off. I’ll be fine.” Nobody enjoys going to the doctor. We’re all eager to push that off. The appointment is inconvenient and possibly costly. If there really is something wrong, that will be even more inconvenient and costly - and now scary. So we wait until we can’t put any weight on that foot or until the fatigue causes an accident.
Because we avoid the healthcare environment if we can and keep our low-level aches and pains to ourselves, we may use home remedies or seek alternative treatments. We often do nothing. I get it. Most healthcare clinics, offices, and hospitals aren’t very hospitable. But we have to admit, our lack of participation in understanding and managing our personal state of health also contributes to why the healthcare industry overlooks us.
Fortunately, that mindset is changing. People in the healthy middle are interested in using the health devices available to them. We’re getting more curious about what’s happening inside our bodies that we can’t discern for ourselves. As the tools and technology improve, we all - individually and within the healthcare system - can work together to maintain a healthy state longer and slow down degeneration.