To quote author, researcher and clinical psychologist Dr. Phil Zediker, “We are in the midst of a healthcare revolution.”  Zediker and others see the future of medicine involving the power of the patient’s mind working hand in hand with modern medicine.  When patients become active participants in their own treatment and cure, medical doctors sometimes see astonishing health changes, gains far beyond what traditional medicine would predict.  Research and treatment suggest that these extraordinary cures involve development of new life patterns and structures, the release of body chemicals for joy and thriving, and lifestyle changes that turn on disease preventing genes and turn off disease promoting genes. *

The new standard for healthcare is about joy, thriving, and hardiness, as pioneered, for example, by Martin Seligman, PhD, in Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-being”.  Dr. Lissa Rankin, MD, is even more trailblazing — promoting “self-healing prescriptions”, where patients write their own self-healing plans in coordination with their medical doctors and with consultation and support from psychotherapists, social workers, clergy, life coaches, or other support persons.  The goals of the self-healing plans can be joy, thriving, and hardiness, objectives far beyond simply decreasing medical symptoms.

These health assets increase life expectancy, decrease the likelihood of disease, and improve the prognosis when illness strikes.  A whole new model of healthcare is unfolding.  The body has self-repair, self-maintenance, reproduction, and self-actualization systems.  Humans also have a drive to survive and stay on course, with cooperation, closeness, and community.  All these systems and drives can be harnessed for the reversal of disease and for good health.

The new breakthroughs have not come overnight.  They are the product of long and difficult research, research that often went unfunded until some form of success was achieved, research that was frequently met with distain and disapproval.  There has been great resistance to change.  There continues to be discussion about health-care reform, going further than Electronic Medical Records, The Affordable Care Act, changes in the healthcare delivery system, and Accountable Care Organizations to reduce costs and improve quality of care.  The change needed goes beyond Integrated Behavioral Care.  It is about a new way of thinking for prevention and wellness.

Frontline problems in healthcare include:

• Healthcare costs rising faster than the rate of inflation
• Patients passed from doctor to doctor and clinic to clinic with no one looking at the whole picture
• Doctors covering up for the mistakes and shortcomings of other doctors
• Difficulties obtaining patient medical records
• Diagnostic errors and medical mistakes
• Medical training that teaches “detached concern” and “un-teaches empathy”
• A malpractice system that, from the patients’ perspective, is too much influenced by the American Medical Association, but from the AMA point of view, needs to be revamped to bring down malpractice premiums.
• Lack of transparency in pricing of medical services
• Insensitivity to patient needs and satisfaction

Healthcare right now has its own momentum and direction.  “Business as usual” slows programs and systems designed to improve quality and reduce costs.

The value and power of prevention and wellness are widely acknowledged. There is an opportunity to move ahead boldly with a grassroots initiative for health and healing, a healthcare revolution for Joy Thriving, and the Reversal of Disease.

The seeds and roots of self-healing prescriptions come especially from Dr. Lissa Rankin’s, book, Mind Over Medicine: Scientific Proof That You Can Heal Yourself.  A very different but similar point of view comes out of the innovative work of Marilyn King with Olympian Thinking, translating Passion, Vision, and Action into Ideal Image, a Success Map, and Action Steps, creating a graduated series of experiments from start-up to breakthrough.  Although Marilyn King might not put it this way, Olympian Thinking harnesses the experimental method and power of science for goal achievement, healing, thriving, and transformation.

The very heart of the self-healing approach is endlessly visualizing wellness, letting go of images of stress and scarcity, with moment by moment experiments to see what works and does not work, to keep moving toward the better and the best.

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*”Changes in prostate gene expression in men undergoing an intensive nutrition and lifestyle intervention”.  Dean Ornish, Mark Jesus M. Magbanua, Gerdi Weidner, Vivian Weinberg, Colleen Kemp, Christopher Green, Michael D. Mattie, Ruth Marlin,  Jeff Simko, Katsuto Shinohara Christopher M. Haqq and Peter R. Carroll.  Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, June 17, 2008, Vol. 105, no. 24., 8169-8174.