As much as we may want to believe that our healthcare system maintains the health of our communities, it does not. The system first lets us get sick, nurtures the sickness, and maintains a level of sickness that feeds the dollar-driven industry.

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"We have the very best sick-care system in the world, we just don't have a health-care system." -Joycelyn Elders, US Surgeon General, 1993–94

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Former Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders was perhaps the first one to challenge the ethics of the prevalent sickcare system[1], and the result was she was fired within months. What she voiced was very inconvenient to the Sickcare industry, and obviously, the power prevailed over ethics.

How wrong Leo Tolstoy was when he said "wrong does not cease to be wrong because the majority share in it", and how down-to-earth Hitler was when he said, "success is the sole earthly judge of right and wrong." Success indeed blinds us to anything that conflicts with success, dominance or power. Wrong indeed ceases to be wrong when it is at loggerheads with power. In the struggle for existence we do only what is convenient and definitely not what's right but inconvenient.

Even the ethics of primary health care is blinded with the rule of convenience, and that's the principle reason it has miserably failed during its entire four decades of existence. The epidemic of lifestyle diseases is on the rise. The tragedy is that the healthcare spending will increase from $7.6 to $18.28 Trillion in next 2 decades, cardiovascular deaths will actually increase.

As much as we may want to believe our practice of medicine today is ethical and evidence-based, it is not.

As much as we may want to believe that our healthcare system maintains health of our communities, it does not.

The system first lets us get sick, nurtures the sickness, and maintains a level of sickness that feeds the dollar-driven industry.

By deploying technology like biomarker trackers as wearable, or implantable hardware, we can monitor the whole body and manage the basic lifestyle factors like diet and exercise, better. This way, we would be in a much better position to tackle some of the root causes of the world's most common conditions.

Prescription Zero

The human body is a marvelous self-correcting homeostatic machine, yet the power of homeostasis has never been used in clinical practice. Homeostasis maintains stability by adjusting conditions that are optimal for survival.

If homeostasis is successful, life continues; if unsuccessful, disaster or death ensues.

We are pioneering the use of homeostasis in tackling cardiovascular diseases. REDOXER is the device that makes it happen. Redoxer is a non-invasive wearable device based on ORIP (Optimal Remote Ischemic Preconditioning) technology that triggers a cascade of cellular events in one organ tissue (upper limbs) by subjecting it to alternate cycles of ischemic stress followed by reperfusion. Such treatment triggers homeostatic redox signaling, releasing protective molecules in circulation, which travel to all vital organs and protect them from subsequent ischemic or oxidative stress / injury.

Redoxer ensures that homeostasis succeeds and disaster is averted. Stress induced by reduced oxygen/blood supply (ischemia) to one organ triggers molecules (redox signalling) that protect all organs from damage or death. Redox signaling is cellular communication within a living system and is an essential enabler of homeostasis. Its most pronounced effect is on endothelial function. Endothelial dysfunction is one of the most important causes of cardiovascular diseases.

Redoxer is our humble baby step nudging our ailing sickcare towards the goal "Rx Zero", a state of community health in which medical interventions serve the purpose of weaning out those who are taking medications, and keeping those who are not, away from medicines.

"Let "Rx Zero" be the new oath of every sickcare practitioner if we need to transform sickcare back to healthcare"

Reference:
"Let "Rx Zero" be the new oath of every sickcare practitioner if we need to transform sickcare back to healthcare. Raheman, F. J Epidemiol Community Health 2010; 64:477

The article is simultaneously published on Medium

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