A Values Based Wellness Health Model

The science and technological advances that have occurred over past decades, and especially those over the past few years have dramatically changed the landscape of modern healthcare and have reshaped the meaning of health or what it means to be “well”.

Past concepts of “wellness” have been more about the absence of disease rather than the enjoyment of wellness in its truest sense. Historically, the default thinking for most is that if a person was not “broken”, did not hurt, and was not otherwise “sick”, then the conclusion was that they were “healthy”. This is not true anymore, if it ever was!

Simply put, health is more than the absence of disease!

The traditional models of mainstream medicine have always been about “fixing” something after-the-fact, as opposed to preventing them from happening in the first place. As scientific understandings have improved, modern healthcare is beginning to embrace a true prevention and wellness mindset. This includes managing the factors and variables which promote disease and ill health, and has created a new awareness for reducing modifiable risk-factors and compensating for those that can’t be modified.

While it’s true that not everyone seeks or accepts wellness or preventive care, and that not every healthcare office provides it, modern understandings at least make it possible. It is almost always a personal decision on the part of the individual and wise health consumer to want to be healthy. Even in times and circumstances of limited access to healthcare (financial, geographic, etc) people and families in the modern world generally know enough to realize they have an important role to play in eating healthy diets, exercising, tobacco and harmful drug avoidance, and in matters of personal hygiene. Each of these areas and many more, are under the total power of the individual to control, to reduce risk factors of disease and improve health and well-being.

Preventive medicine and health maintenance has now emerged to rightfully take its place on center stage. This is one of the reasons why an increasingly number of concerned and informed people are beginning to expect, if not demand it. Why? Because people are learning that they don’t have to wait to be sick to take action, and that even though death comes to all, sickness and disease aren’t inevitable.

The management of disease risk factors has been a concern of medicine for a long time. Most disease conditions have associated risk factors which create a higher likelihood for developing the associated disease. Medical laboratory and genetic testing allows physicians and dentists to develop better strategies for managing risk factors as well as for better treatment and maintenance plans to prevent the diseases in the first place.

This is now driving an entirely new awareness in not only what can be diagnosed and treated, but in what can be anticipated and prevented – before it takes its toll on our bodies and minds. The emergence of this new wellness and health-maintenance model enables us to maintain true health at an optimum level. Preventing future problems through the better management of risk factors is fast becoming a central focus in medicine and dentistry, especially in an era of uncertain public health policy and increasing costs for treating disease,. This is smart because it saves money and lives, and empowers people to be more in charge of their health and wellness.

With this new oral health model, the dentist’s and hygienist’s ability to proactively diagnose and treat – even prior to the onset of disease or tissue destruction, is now an integral part of patient health.

This new vision will involve new diagnostic and treatment protocols: DNA testing for pathogens, tests for genetic susceptibility for inflammation, diabetes risk assessment, caries risk management, cholesterol assessment, C-reactive protein testing, Hemoglobin A1c monitoring, Vitamin D deficiency assessment, nutritional counseling and recommendations, and airway/sleep apnea screening.

These new philosophical and wellness-centered groundings are driven by both the scientific ability to approach health in an entirely new manner, as well as the demographics and expectations of a population now obsessed with preventing and avoiding disease - and in not wanting to be old when they become old, if that’s possible.

Physicians and dentists are now beginning to work closer together to co-manage their patient’s reducing risk factors has become a major objective today for all parties in the health care arena and especially including you the patient!

Because genetic and metabolic testing can discover predisposing conditions which promote the development of certain diseases and health conditions. Knowing about these uniquely individual tendencies are allows for intelligent planning for disease prevention, as well as active treatment and ongoing health maintenance.

Knowing your genetic susceptibilities, information about your genetic traits allows your physician and dentist to develop prevention and maintenance strategies which reduce your chances of developing disease, as well as for treating them if or when they develop. This is especially important in light of the “oral-systemic” link which connects infections in gum tissues with heart and diabetes problems, to name a few.

Maintaining the health of the mouth means controlling and eliminating harmful bacteria, managing the “mouth chemistry and acid levels in the mouth, and managing the biting forces of the jaws to protect the joints, teeth, nerves and muscles.

All of this has altered the expectations which physicians, dentists and their patients now have for the health and wellness of their mouths and bodies. The new wellness model recognizes the extensive “mouth-body” connections which exist and promise new levels of wellness and risk reduction to those who take seriously the health status of their mouths.

This new wellness health model and its attendant capabilities have empowered the individual to do more to reduce their risk factors and to step-up to the responsibility they each have for being healthy – as opposed to simply not having disease.

The future indeed looks bright.

(Disclaimer: This information cannot be relied on for individual circumstances or substituted for medical advice from qualified health professionals.)