How must our thinking around human healthcare change? 2025 update (expanded)

The body has the intelligence to heal itself. Medicine should start with this fact ~ Andrew Weil, MD (1990s)

In April 2025, in Google, within conventional healthcare-medicine, if you search for “What is current mainstream-thinking about needed change?” virtually all contemplated changes are technological:

- implement digital health,

- AI to improve patient outcomes,

- Telehealth consults,

- technology integration, and

- data-driven decision-making.

There’s not much about prevention, “patient-centered care” or “allowing patients to play a vigorous role in safeguarding their own health.” Existing papers on these topics are scant (little corporate profit to be made from implementing them).

My recall is the “What needs to change in medicine?” conversation has been stuck as above since 2010. Why? Perhaps corporations wish not to kill the goose who lays golden eggs.

On the healthcare fringes, in functional, complimentary, holistic healthcare, is the view any different? You bet it is. How different? It’s more bold; and, gets at the root of problems, not just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, for a better view of the coming iceberg.

To grasp the new view of how our healthcare thinking can and must change, propose we consider these factors:

- The character of Germ Theory is based on how a child views health; an adult view is missing,

- Health from the outside in, must be replaced with at least equal attention to health from the inside out,

- Re-teaching of homeostasis: away the metaphor of a steady state thermostat; and, towards the metaphor of the dynamic internal activity of a gyroscope, the sole force which keeps a gyroscope upright and balanced.

- Re-emphasizing yin~YANG in Chinese philosophy is not steady-state; rather, it too is a dynamic, moving natural alternations of two complimentary, dualistic forces.

- Lastly, our immune system self as “unconsciously competent.”

Germ Theory is how a child sees health

Germ Theory is the view, only germs (microbes) cause plant, animal and human disease (Germ Theory of Disease). Any reader exposed to child development literature knows the younger the child, the less able they are to claim personal accountability and personal accountability for anything. Developmentally we don’t expect big changes here until after puberty has completed.

Prior to puberty, the child sees themselves as the receiver of adult actions and external conditions outside their personal control. The child may even perceive themselves as a victim. Germ Theory encourages a childish view of human physical health. It is literally health only from the outside in; health comes outside: parents, doctors, drugs, hospitals, remedies.

Educated Cultural Creatives, active in healthcare, recognize the exact converse is a stronger, more mature, more empowered stance, “health from the inside out.” Instead of passive acceptance of victimhood, internal competence is celebrated.

“Health from the inside out” shifts our viewpoint from a child bombarded by microbes, toxins and poor nutrition the child has no control over — to — the adult view of taking charge of your own physical health — as much as practical.

Hopefully every year we each learn a little more how to support our immune-suystem-self:

- To unburden it from toxins,

- To feed it higher quality food, and

- Increase our time spent in quality, deep healing sleep.

Readers wishing to learn more about the above are encouraged to put these ideas into your own words. Ideally two or more learners do this together; write for 5–10 minutes; then, share with each other what each has written. Take notes and suggestions to make your version more inspiring for you and your family. This exercise is probably age-appropriate for persons 16 years and older.

2025 characterization of Pasteur’s Germ Theory

Pasteur’s Germ Theory limits us to only a child point of view. How then did it persist unchanged into the 2020s? In my words, I point to two aspects.

One aspect is the “naive scientist’s” view, only germs (microbes) cause plant, animal and human diseases (Germ Theory of Disease). We now recognize this as not very observant, more in aligned with, “flies are born from decomposing matter,” the classic logical error of “correlation equals causation.” The more accurate observation, promoted by all post-Pasteur terrain healthcare clinicians is, “while microbes are always found in dead and dying living tissues, they are not the cause of pathology.” Rather, microbes appearing in dead and dying tissues are simply Nature’s Clean Up Crew, Her Decomposers. For what purpose? So new living forms, meeting Nature’s criteria of excellent vitality and function, can be made from exhausted, worn out materials.

The second limiting aspect of Pasteur’s Germ Theory is its one-sided dictum, ‘only by studying the pathology of sick plants, animals and humans — and their corpses — can we increase our knowledge-base about wellness and health.’

The view of learning about health-wellness thru studying death and dying is a most surprising lack of logic! Yet, in the 1850s that’s what academic males in charge of medical training and selling of patent drugs, had to work with.

What preceded Germ Theory?

In the 1850s, Pasteur’s Germ Theory was an authentic creative cultural-scientific breakthru. Western minds were ready for a progressive alternative to the preceding healthcare pradigm:

- Superstition and witchcraft (plus many, many failed attempts to update alchemy),

- Having no control over diseases and plagues, to

- Documented pathologies; and, evidence-based remedies which suppressed specific symptoms.

Progressive doctors also promoted sanitation, physical hygiene, raising standards of cleanliness in hospitals, homes, schools.

Tho a number of significant innovations and breakthrus occurred prior to 1970 (Drs. Reams, Revici, Reich, chiropractic, et al), all these were successfully pushed out of mainstream medicine, exiled to the cultural fringes. Not until 120 years later, the 1970s, did alternative, complimentary holistic methods reach mainstream audiences for the first time. The big boom in holistic healthcare activity was 1970–1995.

Why then? In the 1970s, the Baby Boom generation was in its 20s and 30s, at the peak of their creative vitality. They realized 50% of the knowledge-base defining optimal physical health and wellness had been ignored.

“Health is the absence of disease”

. . . is how a child thinks. Children only know how to go away from pain and discomfort. A child can’t compose and focus on an intangible, positive goal the way an adult does. Only adults can focus on abstract goals towards a better, desired state.

Ultimately the best metaphor for holistic clinicians to use to critique pathology-based healthcare is probably a gyroscope demonstration.

Spinning gyroscope metaphor for health

From Andrew Weil, MD I was reminded, a non-spinning gyroscope cannot stand up on its own. To stand up on its own, the gyroscope has to have its insides spinning at a rapid rate (flywheel).

Our metabolic health, our immune system, is the same way. Resistance to non-beneficial microbes, etc. comes from inside, not from outside. What keeps us healthy is internal, on-going, dynamic intelligence and activity. “Gyroscope Tricks and Physics Stunts ~ Incredible Science” — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9zhP9Bnx-k

Q: Are there any Western or non-Western ideas compatible with the gyroscope metaphor for the dynamic, dualistic forces; which when healthy, give us optimal resilience and safety from external threats and insults?

A: Yes, the Chinese yin~YANG symbol.

In the US, prior to 1970, the I-Ching was a fringe-underground meme. Starting in the early early 1970s, the first UCLA doctors went to China to learn Chinese acupuncture. This brought the I-Ching and the yin~YANG symbol into mainstream journalism and culture. The symbol was and is frequently cited as depicting physical health, as a dynamic equilibrium of dualistic forces, endless moving, in rhythmic alternation. In the opening of a cornucopia holistic health methods, physical health began to be discussed and written about as an internal, dynamic equilibrium of dualistic forces, in rhythmic alternation.

Reference

“The I Ching in America” — https://daily.jstor.org/the-i-ching-in-america/

Our immune system as intelligence

How has this rhetoric evolved? Where are we now in 2025? I believe we are here: the body contains healing intelligence. To paraphrase Dr. Weil from his audio book, Guide to Optimum Health (2002), ‘I saw my job as a medical caregiver to diagnose what was blocking the body’s healing intelligence from doing what it wanted and needed to do. What was missing? Adequate and sufficient support. What kind of support? Both nutritional and mental-emotional support. This was especially true for chronic diseases and pain.

As nutritional and mental-emotional support are restored, our body goes back to doing what it know how best to do, correcting problems; and, producing vitality (ATP). Given adequate support, our body spins up its internal, living, dynamic, “gyroscope.”

NOTE ~ I find all of the above can be summed up in the phrase, ‘Mother Nature’s Plan for human health.’ See Bibliography for more.

The above ideas are what’s missing from the childish, simplistic concept, “health is the absence of disease.”

NOTE ~ If you wish the above to make more sense to you, I recommend you put the above ideas into your own words, on paper or laptop; then, share with at least one other learner for comments and suggestions.

Our immune system as “unconsciously competent”

Another idea pertinent to how the medical establishment must change its concept of healthcare is the Four Learning Stages:

The Four Stages of Competence ~ Noel Burch’s model outlines four stages of learning and skill development:

Unconscious Incompetence: You don’t know you don’t know something (the unknown unknown).

Conscious Incompetence: You become aware of something worthwhile learning, which you know is outside your current repertoire of habits-behaviors,

Conscious Competence: As a beginner, you understand the new behavior; however, it is not yet a habit. Practice requires conscious attention and focus,

Unconscious Competence: The new behavior becomes a habit, almost automatic, and requires less and less; or even, no conscious thought to perform.

The above models how we learn any new behavior or skill, from infancy; then, thruout our life.

The model is most often attributed to Noel Burch, an employee at Gordon Training International (the Active Listening people), who developed the model in the 1970s.

The four stages of competence describe how we learn new behaviors and memorized material. The stages are an absolutely reliable template for improving yourself in any skill area. Learning always goes in the same sequence. A person can always tell exactly where they are in the sequence.

The Four Learning Stages accurately tracks how a new behavior — such as a five year old learning to tie shoelaces — goes from “outside” us to “inside” us, into memory, like walking, talking riding a bicycle. When a new skill, like learning the times tables to 10 X 10 becomes virtually automatic, you have developed unconscious competence.

Your Habit Body as unconsciously competent

Each person’s Habit Body is our personal collection of every memory and behavior which has evolved to the final two stages.

Q: How does this change how we think about health and healing?

A: First, outside of emergency life-saving situations, it suggests giving non-nutritive drugs to repress-suppress symptoms, does nothing to support our immune system with raw material to repair tissue and build new cells to replace dead and dying cells. Nor do drugs support our immune system learning how to defend, resist and repair from insults to our physical body.

Newer holistic thinking emphasizes exactly the two lines of questioning, establishment doctors typically dismiss altogether:

1) “What authentic nourishment does this person’s immune system need at this time, to increase its ability to fight back and throw off this pathological condition?,” and

2) “If in your mind, go back in time, to the year prior to the onset of your specific symptom. What was happening in your life? What mental-emotional shock, trauma or injury did you suffer?”

Reference

“It’s Time To Give Noel Burch Some Credit” — https://www.theleaderlab.com/blogs/its-time-to-give-noel-burch-some-credit

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Since about 2010, the dangers of extreme one-sided thinking have been widely discussed from another angle.

Iain McGilchrist’s contribution

In his books and video interviews, Iain, gave the fad of right-brain~left-brain (1975–1985) grounding in scientific research; and, in natural philosophical dimensions and ramifications. Unusual in either modern medicine, psychology or medicine, Iain, reached down into the roots and the future of Western civilization. Nothing less.

If Iain is new to you, I recommend this video interview. FYI Iain in France is his worst video technically yet his his best presentation on his thrust and platform. “The Divided Brain” by Iain McGilchrist https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMfybIoFxH8 Among Iain’s 30 or so videos, this is one of the most accessible.

Two commenters on Iain’s efforts:

1) @bavingeter423 — Ever since I was a child, I knew in some unfathomably deep level, essentially I am here because there is a soul sickness. I need to be a part of the movement re-enchanting the world and our outlook on it. Iain McGilchrist, his ability to articulate his philosophy and insight, is a nectar and balm to our soul sickness.

2) I have nearly finished The Matter with Things. It’s been my crash course in all the disciplines Iain mentions. The breadth of his knowledge is both staggering and compelling.

I will never know enough to take an intellectual position on his assertions. I only know what he proposes resonates with me. Intuitively I have always felt values are essential. There is something more to life than the concrete world we experience through our five senses. Iain’s work is, to my mind, a validation of a way of living honoring the very nature of existence.

After the 1970s, the changes needed in our healthcare thinking became more clear to more clinicians and consumers. Male academicians had only viewed healthcare one-sidedly, from a myopic view, from only our left brain hemisphere.

Many readers will know right hemisphere attends to the wholeness of what is perceived, the “gestalt” of things perceived. Left hemisphere attends primarily to only what it can control and manipulate and languages for this purpose.

The missing parts, attention to a vision of optimal human physical health and wholeness were exactly what our right brain hemisphere is talented at.

Q: In real life, does it matter how visions of optimal human health remain amorphous and primarily subjective?

A: Any vision of optimal health remains necessarily subjective. The measurements, knowledge of the nutrients, remedies and supplements remains necessarily objective. Can you see how one alone, without the other is one-sided?

Q: If both work, does it matter which “hand” we use?

A: Yes. I call an exclusive focus on intelligences on only one side of our brain, ‘living with one hand tied behind your back.’

If you live with only the left-hemisphere dictating what’s real and what to do, you are stuck two ways:

- You are stuck in a child view of health from the outside in, a victim point of view, and

- You are stuck in an endless trial and error fitting game, trying to match each symptom with either a drug a homeopathic, or an herb. You are never able to see the whole forest because your attention is 100% on only one tree at a time. To switch metaphors, you are stuck playing “whack a mole.” To switch metaphors again, you are trimming the leaves and tall stalks of the weed which must be pulled up instead of digging up the roots, getting to first causes.

Q: When we view symptoms as pointing to “first causes,” what patterns are revealed?

A: Pretty much all the primary, chronic causative disturbances Dr. Mercola points to in his Cellular Energy book (Dec. 2024). It’s a text on the first cause problems underlying virtually all epidemic health symptoms today.

Setting aside Dr. Mercola’s book, in my own words:

1) Blood tests can only measure minerals in solution in the blood, nothing about what’s inside tissue cells and bones. Blood tests — valuable as they are for many purposes — are virtually useless for assessing the mineral content of cells and tissues. Hair Test Mineral Analysis 2.0 (HTMA) by Drs. Eck and Watts is destined to play a much large role in patient intake for chronic conditions.

2) On a scale of 100, if your optimal mitochondrial function is 50/100, not too much nor too little where is your ability to produce cellular energy today? How do you know? We are at early beginnings of conceiving of optimal mitochondrial function; and, how to measure current status against optimal range.

3) Metabolic Typing (1970s-ongoing) has among its many simple, non-invasive assessment methods:

- tests to gauge oxygen use (relevant to mitochondria too),

- questionnaires to determine the best ratio of healthy fats to healthy carbs to healthy proteins each person needs. (This is a “three body problem,” three moving indicators in constant motion. There is no one ratio between these three optimal for everyone. Each person’s optimal ratio is somewhat individual).

4) The many holistic assessments possible using acupuncture meridians and Chinese Medicine — which is beyond our scope here.

To Learn More

Google: How is mitochondrial function measured?

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The above Big Picture Views physical health, which our right-hemisphere can show us, contrast with physical pathology and Big Pharma drug culture. The latter is highly objective, physical, specific; and, detailed — activities only our left hemisphere excels at.

To view the specifics of acute pathology, we use left-hemisphere intelligences. To view the hidden, underlying patterns of chronic disease, we use right-hemisphere intelliegences.

Given all of the above, it’s easier and easier to understand how the mainstream Western model of medicine became and continues to be a one-sided product of left hemisphere activity.

Care for chronic diseases is most effective when it employs BOTH sides of our brain.

The deficits of Western medicine — still active in 2025 — are almost wholly due to the willful denial of; and consideration of, right hemisphere perspectives.

The above updates the needed change in our thinking and psychology around human physical healthcare. Comments and corrections invited.

NOTE ~ For readers who wish to expand on these ideas, I invite you to put part or all of the above into your own words. Then share with at least one other learner.

April 21, 2025 — Bruce Dickson — HealingToolbox atttg male c-=om Okay to share, copy, revise, no restrictions.