Comments on: Reports from Health Care Practitioners

By: michaelsbennett01

michaelsbennett01 — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 00:48:01 +0000

Reblogged this on permintic health & wellness and commented: This is a piece published last year on the Health After Oil blog

By: From the Archives: 7/17/2012 Edition « whatsjohnreading

From the Archives: 7/17/2012 Edition « whatsjohnreading — Tue, 11 Sep 2012 01:27:49 +0000

[...] http://healthafteroil.wordpress.com/2012/07/16/reports-from-health-care-practitioners/ [...]

By: artofearth

artofearth — Wed, 25 Jul 2012 12:42:35 +0000

Erich,

All good points. This is part of what I had in mind when I began changing my dietary habits years ago. GIGO applies here, but also thermodynamics. The more unusable junk we eat, the more taxed our bodies are at having to deal with it. Of course, this applies to the quality of our water and air, not just the soil in which our food is grown. Don’t know whether anyone has done studies, but it would be interesting to see the net energy plus or minus for someone eating a whole foods diet versus someone whose diet is mostly junk — and I mean studying not just impacts on air/water/soil but also the subject’s quality of health and life. The closer we can get to basics, I believe, the better off we are all around. Not to mention, most of the stuff that sends people into the healthcare system can be prevented.

By: Erich

Erich — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 13:14:15 +0000

The maintenance of complexity in any system, whether it be societal, informational or a biological organism, must, as dictated by the universe’s immutable laws of thermodynamics, rely on inputs of high quality of energy and the export of of lower quality energy or waste.
Put another way, to avoid increased disorder in a system, disorder must be exported, and this requires energy.
A house, a newspaper, a refrigerator or a human being, all require inputs to maintain order, i.e. paint, dry storage, electricity and food, respectively.
The discussions relating to the ACA are merely a debate over how society chooses to control and deploy resources to maintain negative entropy in citizens. Money, at the end of the day, is a proxy for energy, the ability to do work.
The bigger issue amidst this discussion, alluded to by some, and rising above partisan politics, is “Where will the energy come from to maintain the health standards we have become used to?” in an era of declining energy availability.
When healthcare sucks up 15-20% of GDP, that’s a lot of energy that has to keep coming from somewhere.

By: artofearth

artofearth — Fri, 20 Jul 2012 03:01:48 +0000

Responding to Michael Bennett: I’m a new herbalist, and part of the reason I became an herbalist is because it truly is/can be “green medicine.” To be clear, I always tell people: The United States has about the best emergency medicine in the world. If you are in a collision, go to a hospital, not me. But if you’ve got digestive issues, want to improve your reproductive health, are under a lot of stress, I may be able to help you. BTW, no insurers cover what I do; but thanks to ACA and rising costs, they are beginning to work more on prevention, which IS the greenest of medicines! The plants — the original, non-patented medicines — are there for us (of course, they have their own reasons for being, too). I don’t believe the status quo will continue. What concerns me most now — I live in the Mid-Atlantic, where we, like many around the country, have had higher-than-usual temps this summer — is the convergence of the chronic diseases (where herbalism can help a great deal) with heat- or cold-related illnesses that have taken a back seat over the last 75 or so years, thanks to air-conditioning, heating and refrigeration. I’m not a PA or an NP, so I’m not doing injections, running drip lines or the like. But tincture bottle lids are plastic. We are all vulnerable and have to face up to that and consider how best to change.
Leigh Glenn