Life is a giant vending machine
When something's convenient, we want more of it, use it more frequently or consume more of it. It's just the way. Psychologically, there's less friction to attain it.
Today, our dinner, shopping and entertainment can all be selected and delivered in a few clicks on an App. But when we transfer this on-demand culture and thinking to something like healthcare it changes our understanding of how our body fundamentally works in response to infections, injuries, stress or lifestyle habits.
Our expectations can become out of sync with the realistic life-span or trajectory of a particular imbalance. So, we see issues such as people taking quick fixes and returning to work too soon when what the body really calls for is for us to lift the lid on the underlying issue and taking time to support its recovery.
Not just that, but we lose sight of how long it might have taken symptoms to develop in the first place. Convenience culture and the on-demand life has narrowed our perception of time so that we see instant results, deliveries and outcomes. When transferred to health, we can incorrectly assume that something we did or that happened in the last 24 hours might be the causative factor behind today's symptoms. But sometimes it's a slow build-up of multiple factors over time, making it harder to pinpoint without taking a 360 look at our lifestyle, interactions, stress levels and nutrition.
Modern medicine has gifted us many health benefits. But, we did not always have structured health care services and somewhere between then and now, we have outsourced our healthcare to the extent that we are losing our ability to understand our own bodies. Many times, I’ve asked patients in clinic to tell me the quality of their mucous or stool or the type of pain they are experiencing and I’ve been met with blank faces or people saying “I don’t know”. Well, my message is that we need to get to know. Otherwise, we’ll find ourselves in a perpetual revolving door scenario of short-term hacks for health issues that need our time and attention.