5 minute read
The tide is turning, The future of healthcare for humans
David P. Boehm
Miskawaan Health Group (MHG) was established in 2018 with the objective of bringing to the world the medical insights of MHG Co-Founder and Chief Medical Director, Dr. Johannes Wessolly. In recent decades, medical science has made tremendous progress in the treatment of the human condition, and almost every day is a reminder of the incredible expertise of so many amazing doctors, scientists and health professionals on this planet.
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However, what makes MHG so compelling as a place to come for medical treatment is that Dr. Wessolly has been able to translate so much scientific medical knowledge into practical applications in the clinic. As he says: "At MHG, we treat your physiology, not just your pathology."
MHG considers each client to be a whole individual and not just a collection of body parts. Nowadays, conventional medicine typically involves treating one symptom at a time with one or more chemical drugs. Quite often this approach successfully mitigates the impact of the symptoms but does not rectify the underlying medical condition. Further, the consumption of chemically synthesised drugs can regularly lead to side-effects.
The proprietary (infusions) used by MHG to treat each patient have been tried and tested for effectiveness during the past 15-plus years by Dr. Wessolly and MHG scientists Dr. Rebekka Zirbel and Dr. Thomas Fink. This has also put MHG in a unique position and created the creditability that allows it to describe itself as a practitioner of Integrated Functional Medicine. The essential aim is for MHG’s doctors to release and support the inherent healing capabilities within our own bodies. To quote Dr Wessolly: "The best doctor is your own body."
MHG believes Functional Medicine to be a patient-centred approach to chronic disease management that seeks to answer the question, "why are you ill?" This enables MHG doctors to personalise effective care for patients’ individual needs by listening and gathering the relevant medical history of each patient in order to identify the broader root cause(s) of illness. Once MHG’s doctors have identified the triggers of an illness, they can customise a healthy living plan.
THE MHG APPROACH TO HEALTH CARE
However, this approach leads to a fundamental difference in principles, and to how MHG develops the treatment for each patient, as well as the outcomes that we aim for. The following comments do not refer to any particular medical establishment or hospital; they are based on the author's observations from many years of working with the "conventional" medical system. Health care in 2021 cannot do without the well-developed global hospital system, and MHG certainly recognises the inherent benefits of certain chemical drugs that are applied selectively and appropriately. In fact, MHG works every day with its partners at regular mainstream hospitals and clinics in co-treating patients.
The most recent evolution in medicine and treatment occurred in the early twentieth century. MHG believes that the time has come for the next evolution in the health-care model, and that MHG will be at the forefront of this innovation. Conditions that may be considered include:
• Treating the symptoms/disease versus treating the patient.
• Personalisation should be of a higher-order priority than treatments designed for the "average" patient based on statistical models.
• The financial model of Big Pharma versus "the treatment objective". Functional medicine seeks to establish a long-term health plan that prevents the disease from ever occurring in the first place, then treating if necessary with treatments that do no harm.
• Big Pharma and new synthetic drugs versus Functional Medicine with natural substances.
• Pharma efficacy studies do not always prove empirically that harm is not introduced elsewhere in the system.
• Many centuries of evidence of effective Functional Medicine treatments versus less than 100 years of modern pharma medicine.
• Modern medicine only works within the limits of the current understanding of ageing. Functional medicine aims to extend the quality of life by extending the time the body functions at a high level before aging leads to the system and cellular breakdown.
WHY THE HEALTH SYSTEM IS READY FOR "DISRUPTION"
Rather than pushing MHG to conform to modern medicine standards, people today should instead be questioning why "modern" medicine is not evolving rapidly enough. In our opinion, the Airbnb style of "disruption" is far overdue for getting health care to address some key objectives:
• The philosophy of how to approach each patient's quality of life over a lifetime, not just illness by illness.
• The breadth of investigation of a whole patient to arrive at a diagnosis and treatment.
• The expectation that patients are not just treated for how they feel today, but that prevention is also introduced to avoid chronic disease.
• Treatment should analyse the genes, epigenome, cellular state, gut microbiome, immune system etc. in order to solve problems – not just mask or artificially treat a symptom that will likely return to a steady-state condition once the medication is stopped.
• If a patient is treated for an illness, they should be returned to equal or better health, not compromised by the treatment.
• Reduce the dependence on highly leveraged 'invented drugs' that potentially may not be in the best interests of the patient.
If people are encouraged to question the principles to which hospitals are held, rather than expect MHG to conform to a system widely recognised as broken and in need of transformation, then MHG can be a catalyst for that change. The type of individualised precision medicine that MHG practices naturally and sustainably is the future of health care for humans.
David P. Boehm is Co-Founder and CEO of the Miskawaan Health Group (MHG)
Contact details: Miskawaan Health Group Tel: +66 2 086 8888 Whatsapp: +66 94 409 1844 contact@miskawaanhealth.com www.miskawaanhealth.com
