Envisioning Community Health Care
If you were seriously ill, who would you go to for help? What about if you had mysterious symptoms that didn’t quite add up to a disease name? Where do you go for advice about how to stay healthy, or what to eat?
Working as an herbal clinician for over 30 years, I’ve thought a lot about these questions because different modalities are better at different things. A hospital is great for broken bones or a stroke, but less helpful for chronic conditions, treating things that can’t be diagnosed, and not much for dietary advice. Even herbal medicine includes a broad range of practices, from folk herbalists helping out their families and communities to clinical herbalists seeing clients in an office. And all have a place.
To help figure out who would help the most in each circumstance, I’ve come up with a model called “circles of care” – overlapping circles of health care, which are not mutually exclusive but are supportive of each other. We go to different people depending on the level of our need; this is a way of understanding what level of care we need, including preventative medicine, because health care also needs to promote wellness and not just treat disease.
In this model there are five different care circles, starting with the smallest and most inward circle and moving outwards: first is knowing ourselves and what our body needs; then there’s the one who cares for our family or household; then our community care; then alternative or holistic practitioners such as herbalists, homeopaths, and acupuncturists, and finally conventional medicine.
This is not just about levels of training but also as we move outwards the interventions have a stronger effect on our bodies as well, and stronger medicine means more possible side effects. Why take a pharmaceutical when an herb or supplement will work? But then why take a supplement when you can change your diet? What’s best for our body is the gentlest remedy that will be effective.
I’m writing this because our society would do well to focus more on the inner circles of care before going to the extremes of drugs and surgery. Herbal medicine can’t replace open heart surgery, but herbs and diet can help a LOT during the 20 years before that person ends up on the operating table.
1. Self Care.
It all begins with us – you will always know more about your own body and your own needs than someone else. Pay attention to what foods make you feel better and what foods weigh you down. Do you need a lot of sleep or a little? Do you move fast or slow?
Everyone’s body is different and has different needs. What works great for one person might not work for you – I’ve seen people thrive on a vegan diet and I’ve seen others wilt. Same for macrobiotic, paleo, and almost any other diet out there. It helps some people and not others. The same is true for herbs, supplements, or pharmaceuticals.
This is the most important level of care – no matter who recommends something, whether it’s a magazine article, a holistic practitioner, or a medical doctor, you need to make sure it’s actually working for you.
2. Family Medicine
In almost every household there’s the family practitioner, who probably doesn’t even think about themselves as a practitioner but helps their family, whether that is blood family or chosen family. They’re the ones who make a soup when it’s freezing out and that bug is going around, or a pot of chamomile tea when everyone in the house is stressed out.
We all can care for each other, but often there’s someone who’s watching out for us and keeping us healthy, whether it’s a parent, a partner, or someone taking on a parenting role. Often this work goes unacknowledged so please remember to thank them.
3. Community medicine
There’s probably someone in your community who knows a bit more about health and medicine than the average person. Maybe their grandma trained them, or maybe they went to herb school, or they used to be an EMT. They’re the person you call when you’re trying to figure out whether you should spend the money to go to Urgent Care or not. Or when you’ve got a problem that’s not big enough to get an appointment but it’s more than you know how to deal with.
4. Holistic practitioners
There are times to see a practitioner. It can be humbling, but there are times to admit that we can’t help every problem. Holistic practitioners have training in their field to recognize the complexities of the human body and how to help people such as a holistic western herbalist, an acupuncturist, a chiropractor, or a homeopath, to name a few.
The great benefit of holistic practitioners is that they often have a form of assessment that takes the whole body into account and leads to getting to the root cause of the problem, whether or not there is a medical diagnosis. These practitioners often spend a lot more time with their clients than MDs can, and their interventions and remedies don’t just stop symptoms but also promote health.
5. Conventional medical practitioners (MDs, NPs, and PAs)
There are times to go to mainstream medicine, and as a holistic herbalist I am not afraid to recommend that to clients of mine when needed. Holistic practitioners are not trained in western diagnosis, so we can’t tell you whether you have skin cancer, appendicitis, or diagnose Lyme disease. And sometimes the problems are bigger than what we can treat with herbal or other holistic medicine.
If nothing else, modern medicine is great for diagnosing diseases and understanding the physical mechanism at work. On the other hand, once the problem is diagnosed practitioners will focus on treating the diagnosis and ignore the rest of the human. This works great for emergency situations, but is less effective to long-term health promotion. I bet most of us know someone who wouldn’t be alive if it weren’t for antibiotics and surgery.
What’s great about this is that you are not alone in caring for your health, and conventional medicine is not your only option. Remember to start working from the inside out, and don’t be afraid to ask for help. And most importantly, start taking care of yourself when symptoms first arise instead of waiting until they turn into a serious problem. That way you will live a healthy live well into your old age.
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