Everyone likes to get a real bargain -- getting more than what they paid for. However, when it comes to diagnosing disease, no one wants to be over-diagnosed, in other words, diagnosed as having a condition or disease to a greater degree than is actually present.
This was the topic at conferences in Dartmouth in 2013, the University of Oxford in 2014, and the National Institute of Health (NIH) in 2015. The 2016 International Preventing Overdiagnosis conference will be held in Barcelona in September. Health professionals will meet to showcase some of the best global research on preventing overdiagnosis currently taking place. So in today’s technologically-advanced world, why is this research important for our health? Why is overdiagnosing even a problem?
One common way overdiagnosis can happen is when healthy people attend screening programs or receive tests during check-ups or simply have mild symptoms and are diagnosed and subsequently treated for the mild form of a disease which would never in fact have harmed them.
H. Gilbert Welch, a professor at The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, studied this issue and authored Overdiagnosed: Making People Sick in the Pursuit of Health. In a New York Times article, Welch said this about screening: “This process doesn’t promote health; it promotes disease. People suffer from more anxiety about their health, from drug side effects, from complications of surgery. A few die. And remember: these people felt fine when they entered the healthcare system.”
More and more, people are discovering that their thinking affects their health. For example, research shows that anger and resentment are detrimental to health, while gratitude and love promote health.
In fact, the University of Maryland Medical Center reported in a recent Spirituality study that, “the health benefits of religion and spirituality do not stem solely from healthy lifestyles. Many researchers believe that certain beliefs, attitudes, and practices associated with being a spiritual person influence health.”
Other studies increasingly show medical institutions are trying to catch up with the public demand for a “whole” – mental, spiritual and physical – approach to health. This approach definitely flies in the face of a model that uses whatever technology is available to look for the minutest evidence of disease.
According to that Maryland research data, it seems likely that when we are conscious of the goodness and love of our Creator and our beliefs about body are coming from that spiritual understanding, those beliefs -- not the diagnosis -- will produce the positive outcomes we all want. I am reminded of this scripture from Proverbs: “For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he.”
It certainly seems to be a “catch 22,” because overdiagnosis has the potential of making people sick in the pursuit of making them healthy. But that brings us to the question, What makes someone healthy? Is it because they have a scan or screening that says they are disease-free? Then, what makes someone diseased? Is it because they have a scan or screening that says they have some disease?
Recognizing that there is a more solid basis for well-being, health pioneer Mary Baker Eddy wrote: “Physicians whom the sick employ in their helplessness, should be models of virtue. They should be wise spiritual guides to health and hope. To the tremblers on the brink of death, who understand not the divine Truth which is Life and perpetuates being, physicians should be able to teach it. Then when the soul is willing and the flesh weak, the patient’s feet may be planted on the rock Christ Jesus, the true idea of spiritual power.” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures)
As Eddy saw it, man is the child of God and health is natural and normal under God’s spiritual laws, and this understanding was the basis of her successful practice of spiritual healing.
Isn’t this how Jesus approached healing? Maybe it’s time we looked into or rediscover some ideas about health that come from the greatest healer the world has ever known. Jesus’ counsel was to:
• focus on God (here and now)
• love our neighbor
• turn away from the body (food, clothing, etc.)
Because he knew that both goodness and health come from God, and that man could never be separated from that spiritual health, Jesus didn’t spend any time routinely diagnosing illness. In fact, he didn’t diagnose it at all. He didn’t ignore it, but he looked to God, not the body, for health, and this spiritual approach produced results far superior to those of any other healing method, then or now. He healed the blind, the crippled, and the diseased instantaneously. That is great news for us - that we can look to divine Love, instead of diagnoses, for genuine health and wholeness.
Debra Chew writes about the connection between thought, spirituality and wellness from a Christian Science perspective. She has been published in USA Today, chattanoogan.com, Knoxville News Sentinel, Memphis Commercial Appeal, UK Health Triangle Magazine, and the Jackson Sun & JS Health Magazine.