Understanding the Broken Healthcare System: A Holistic Perspective

One of the things I often hear from friends, family, patients, and even providers themselves is the word “broken” as they describe the healthcare system that we have today in America.

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Why is that? Well, mostly, it’s because our healthcare system is severely reactive instead of being proactive. While the system excels in acute care and trauma management, it often falls short when it comes to managing and preventing chronic lifestyle diseases.

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This fragmented care is largely due to the impact of “siloed medicine,” where healthcare professionals specialize in specific areas without considering the interconnectedness of the human body. To truly address the health needs of individuals, it is crucial to adopt a holistic perspective that recognizes the importance of addressing the whole person.

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This need for education and holistic treatment is the heart and soul behind Dr. Cheryl Wellness. As a member, you’re already familiar with The Score and The Plate, tools I created to educate and empower individuals to own their own health journeys. I believe we can change the brokenness in our health system and that the key is education every step of the way.

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More than anything, it’s an ongoing community that supports and encourages your health journey that will help you achieve your goals. As a member, don’t forget to tap into our community member forum for advice and inspiration and to submit questions for my member-exclusive podcast “Ask Dr. Cheryl.”

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Shifting Focus: Prevention and Education

If I could change one thing about our current system, it would be to shift our focus to prevention and education.

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Currently, the system focuses heavily on treating disease once it has already manifested in our bodies. This is like swimming upstream! We could do so much more to prevent the disease from ever occurring, or at least delay it by 10-12 years.

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With proper holistic treatment and prevention, we could improve your daily quality of life, one where you can fall asleep without medication, where you wake up clear-minded and rested, and where you have the energy to live a life of purpose with the people you love.

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That’s the good life, isn’t it?

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Education plays a pivotal role in promoting healthier lifestyles and preventing disease, and I would suggest that it’s the area our current healthcare system lacks the most. Providing the public with evidence-based information about nutrition, physical activity, stress management, and other lifestyle factors empowers them to make informed choices.

Limitations In The Insurance System

Insurance plays a significant role in the healthcare system, but it also has its limitations. Mandates and referrals within the insurance model can create barriers to accessing timely and appropriate care.

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Many times we can only get coverage for treatment if our symptoms match a specific diagnosis, timeframe, or level of urgency. For ongoing, holistic treatment and nutrition and lifestyle medicine, we are often forced to pay out of pocket or to seek out our own sources of information, like health influencers.

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So how do we change this?

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There is one great example I can think of in the insurance world that gives me hope that things could change to include more preventative-type models.

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Kaiser Insurance took a bold stance when they decided to take a prevention and education-based approach with their patients. So, suppose you were given a first-time diabetes diagnosis. In that case, you may be required to take eight classes on diabetes management, which would include information on both medications as well as holistic approaches.

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Other insurance companies took notice and have started investing a little more in their education models. There’s still a lot of room for growth in this area, but I am encouraged to see the start of a change in some of the major insurance providers in our country.

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But health is not a static point in time or a moment of diagnosis with a few nutrition therapy support classes, and then we can call it “good.” Health is a lifestyle and an ongoing lifelong wellness journey. We, as health professionals with expertise in nutrition, lifestyle medicine, and health behavior change, need to be there to inspire people to keep on track to reach their goals so they can live younger longer.

How Do We Contribute To The Broken System?

But we’re part of the problem, too. As individuals, we also contribute to the brokenness of the healthcare system.

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How?

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Our desire for quick fixes and reliance on medication often overlook the importance of addressing the root causes of disease. We desire magic pills, supplements, or overnight solutions that don’t require a long-term commitment.

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Since we desire a quick fix or magic pill and don't really like the word "change" or "healthy,"  -- our healthcare system and healthcare providers want to give us what they know will keep us safe for the short term with medication that can make our blood pressure measure look better or our blood sugar look managed for the day. But this does not come with the outcome of improvement in quality of life today or adding healthy years to our life.

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But, we have to take ownership of our health choices and actively participate in our own well-being. One of the most effective ways to do that is to focus on eating, something we all do every single day, multiple times a day. This is where we can see true, lasting change.

The Power of Nutrition and Lifestyle Medicine

Health is a lifestyle.  Health is not a static point in time or a one-time blood pressure or blood sugar number, or body weight. Being healthy is really doing healthy. It's actionable behavioral changes that we do every day. And when we do more of eating the foods that make us well and healthy habits that are healing, that's being as healthy as we can be today.

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Here’s what I know to be true: preventing and delaying chronic diseases can be achieved through lifestyle modifications, like adopting a healthy diet, engaging in regular physical activity, managing stress, and getting sufficient sleep.

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Making healthy daily choices not only reduces the risk of developing chronic diseases but also improves the quality of life for individuals already living with these conditions.

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The Heart Behind Dr. Cheryl Wellness

Access to nutrition and lifestyle programs and education is definitely not created equal. It’s mostly up to us, personally, to seek out our own sources of information. My goal in creating Dr. Cheryl Wellness was to offer a plethora of free resources to individuals who wanted research-backed information about how to live a truly healthy life.

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Dr. Cheryl Wellness is all about taking the best of what I learned from traditional medicine about nutrition, the foods we eat, and the best habits to live, and putting those in that 20-point score for the world to access.

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As a member of Dr. Cheryl Wellness, you get individually-tailored content for your health questions, and you get to be a part of our dream to sponsor the mission of wellness worldwide. Submit your personal questions to our member forum, and I’ll address them on our member-exclusive podcast, “Ask Doctor Cheryl.”

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On our blog and our podcast, we’re going to continually address the best ways to live in a healthy way. What are the best foods to eat? What if I have diabetes, what do I do? Or if my mom was just diagnosed with breast cancer, am I going to suffer that same disease? Can we change genetic expression?

All of these conversations and more will be accessible here to you on Dr. Cheryl Wellness. Stay connected and inspired with our amazing community! Head to your Wellness Dashboard for your daily dose of inspiration. I’ll see you in there!