Here in Mississippi and across the Southern Bible belt, daily prayer lists and Facebook posts request prayer from family and friends. Seeking the intervention of a higher power is good medicine for many people, and especially important in religious cultures such as ours.
When accidents, sickness, and life in general get beyond our human means of coping, many believers turn to what might be called humanity’s most ancient form of ‘energy medicine’, a topic to be covered in a future post. Along with its tangible impacts, prayer also inspires hope among receivers and givers alike . . . hope itself being a valuable help with healing.
Yet, prayer does not explain why or how a cancer came or how a child becomes autistic. Likewise, neither does medicine when it focuses treatment only on symptoms. Without an understanding of how and why, we remain in a cycle of ‘treat and repeat’.
Chronic disease has reached epic levels in America, in part because neither medicine with its drugs nor prayer with its miracles and hope are providing the ‘why and how’ of the diseases that plague us. We can use medicine and prayer to save us time and time again, but if we want to stop the cycle, we have to take responsibility for going deeper.
Thankfully, we now have the science and the tools in lifestyle-based medicine to explain most of chronic disease. Since most root causes are under our control - diet, environmental toxins, lifestyle, stress - we become empowered to take control of our health and healing.
Understanding ‘how and why’ is also essential to preventing disease and creating healthy living for future generations.
So here’s an idea: let’s use the power of prayer to promote good medicine and the success of those who are helping us understand why we are sick. And while we’re at it, let’s include all the homes and farmers and local businesses that will be needed to support America’s ability to live well locally in the future.
Please explore our posts on regenerative medicine here, here, here, and watch for more to come.