REGENERATIVE FUTURE

7 Routes for Professionals and Citizens to Transition Our Health Care

The Great Transition needs us all

All of us are suffering from some health conditions or other. Our world is just not healthy enough with all the pollutants in our houses and chemicals on our food to expect otherwise. My own pitfall has been bad skin. I suffered from my teenage years until I was well into my 40s.

The skin is our largest organ, adults carry some 8 pounds (3.6 kilograms) and 22 square feet (2 square meters) of it. And I knew that in my case it was not exactly a healthy wrapping for my full-life-embracing being. But I also didn’t know how to change that.

I ate my veg. Drank enough water. And had never been overweight. What’s more to change?

My huge insight came when I was going to the dermatologist with some bad inflammation again. He was blunt and clear. I was one of the rare people keeping inflammations far beyond my teenage years. He invited his intern to join us and showed us the ‘dirty pictures’ (his words, not mine…) in his big books.

“Look, she’s a good example”, he said. “The inflammation is just the tip of the iceberg. See what a huge pocket of inflamed filth is underneath.”

Yes, I saw. And the intern and I both shivered.

The knowledgeable skin-doctor said he could imagine how it affected my life socially to be so handicapped. I’d never thought of myself as handicapped, I must confess. I managed quite well with a flourishing career, love-life, and friendships despite my inflamed skin.

But he also had the solution for me. If I went the route of vitamin A treatment, I would be cured. He sat me down, gave me a leaflet, and talked me through it. The side-effects list was long. Vitamin A would reduce the oil glands in my skin so the oil could no longer become inflamed. But I would get peeling, dry skin for sure. And risks of liver and kidney damage. I had to take double anti-conception because the treatment was super-bad for babies.

Wasn’t there anything less heavy, I asked? The specialist doctor said no. This was the only route to be cured.

I went home devastated. Feeling a victim. Why me?

Regeneration

Long story short, I didn’t go through with it. I found other routes by changing my lifestyle. Two years later I learned about regeneration and all the opportunities because cells are able to heal themselves when they break during life’s journey. Whole bodies are able to heal themselves. Whole ecosystems are able to heal themselves.

A whole planet is able to heal herself when broken

Healing happens in connection to all the other body organs though. And in connection with all other environmental factors. It is a systemic process in which all functions are connected and all flows define if the spiral goes positive or negative.

I made my mission out of this knowledge and wisdom from then on and am now helping governments and businesses to transition our broken world with new business models, economies, and democracies. All based on the clear science of Systemic Design, Symbiosis, and Flow.

Three pillars. Three basic scientists. Arne Naess, James Lovelock, and Lynn Margulis. And all the others in science who are now changing our whole outlook on life. Vast knowledge emerges. Vast wisdom returns.

7 Transition Routes

So, what can we change about our personal health and our health care systems with regeneration? Here are 7 transition routes.

1. Zoom Out

To all health professionals and citizens I want to say: zoom out. See the bigger picture. Feeling a victim is as damaging for our health as a wrong lifestyle and living in a polluted environment.

Doctor and nurse, don’t victimize your patients. And to all of us: you are good enough just as you are. Start learning how to become wiser beings. Tap into the positive spiral of growth and heal yourself.

See the bigger picture and don’t victimize anyone

2. Responsibility

Take responsibility for your own learning and doing. Learn about what’s broken in our current reductionist sciences and business models. Learn about regeneration and become more and more clear about what it means to live in a self-healing environment and body.

If you feel a longing to change the broken western health system, create awareness about what’s broken. And about how it will be when we’ve learned how to do better. Change the system from the inside out.

If you feel a longing to take control of your own health, learn. And implement your wisdom in practical ways. Learn and do better. You have a unique metabolism. It’s no use following gurus blindly. You have to experiment and stick with what works for you at a certain time. It might become different when you grow. So keep learning, doing, and changing.

Take responsibility for your own learning and doing

3. Catalyst

All knowledge we have gained with western medicine is very valuable. But it should be a catalyst. A short reset to assist people to regain their energy to tap into the positive spiral of regeneration independently.

Please realize that western medicine is based on business models with toxic triggers. Pharma is not about keeping people healthy considering all relating factors of a human being living a certain (often stressed) life in a certain (often polluted) area and house.

Pharma is about diagnosing illness instead of health (the other side of the spectrum) and making cures for the biggest flows of illnesses. They even earn their money with for-the-rest-of-your-life-needed cures for chronic diseases (e.g. insulin for diabetes, pills for high blood pressure), which are mostly the result of lifestyle and environmental pollutants.

Because pharma and doctors combine that with victimizing patients, it has become a toxic cocktail that is definitely not curing us.

Medicine should be a temporary catalyst with the corresponding business models and business triggers

4. Flexibility and Readiness

In corona-times we now see that our health and hospital systems are choking. Well, let’s do something about that as well. The extremes of climate change and zoonose diseases, need our health systems to be flexible and ready. Sorry to say, we have not seen the last virus or pandemic yet.

Extremes in the environment mean higher peaks and lower lows for health care needs. Infections caused by many respiratory viruses, including influenza and some coronaviruses, swell in winter and drop in summer. Only the flexibility of our health care systems can deal with that.

Let’s transition our current static hospital-based system towards flexible, layered systems that we can scale up quickly close to people.

First layer: people’s own responsibility for health and body — lifestyle and community

Second layer: teams of professional nurses in the villages to raise awareness, be a catalyst when necessary, and give supportive care for as short a period of time as needed

Third layer: good access to hospitals. That means: adopt the methods used in temporary refugee camps or military hospitals. Flexible. Quick to upscale or downscale. Many smaller units with general doctors who can connect dots of connected problems and support people with catalyst medicines so they can be independent again as soon as possible. All people need good access to the broad bottom layer that supports them. Layers of specialists will be mobile and adding their deep knowledge whenever necessary to the broad bottom of the pyramid.

Organizations like the World Health Innovation Summit in the United Kingdom work hard to get healthcare closer to people and more layered.

Build the systems layered and flexible. Be ready for extremes

Where Western Science Meets Eastern Wisdom

Combine western medicine with the deep wisdom of Ayurveda and Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM).

I know that the suggestion to combine western medicine with the so-called ‘alternative medicines’ is like cursing in the church.

Zoom out, my friends, zoom out.

If we want people to be healthy, it needs to be a joint effort of the health system and wise, intelligent, active people themselves. As citizens, we need to understand what we can do independently to tap into the positive spiral of what our bodies know. What our cells know. And take action.

If we want people to be healthy, we cannot let them live in houses full of toxic gasses and VOCs. We cannot have them inhale polluted air day in and day out. We cannot have them eat food with fewer and fewer nutrients and more and more chemicals.

Recently, I had a talk about that with an ex-Minister of Health who is now very active on the front of combining health of people with planetary health in Earth Medic and Earth Nurse.

They use AI to look into health patterns. Creating upstream solutions when patterns spiral in the negative direction. Using tech for distance diagnosis. Creating a lot of awareness about lifestyles and environmental action on the vulnerable islands where health care is minimal and the hit of climate change can already be clearly felt.

In the past, my sparring partner had worked with Deepak Chopra (western qualified Dr. of Endocrinology) trying to get a Vedic Lifestyle into our western minds. They only partly succeeded. We, westerners, only accepted meditation as valuable. Resulting in apps designed to make us feel somewhat more relaxed.

I hope the time is ripe now…

Well, let me tell you, there’s much more to it than meets the eye. Let’s learn. And combine. A Vedic lifestyle means nothing more than living your life in a way that contributes to life. All life. Instead of destroying it. Ayurveda and TCM have huge health wisdom to offer.

We can create new medicines with the wisdom of micro-organisms and quantum flows through the water like Wise Use and Fytality do and create business models that respect the role of medicines as temporary catalysts.

Combine western medicine with Ayurveda and TCM wisdom

6. Communication

If we want people to change, it’s wise to show how it can be when the change has happened. It feeds the longing. But we also have to make everyone aware of the brokenness of the current systems.

People have often been in these environments for so long, educated with what we have always known. They just don’t see it. It takes careful communication and training to help people uncover their own wisdom. If people get confused and anxious about change, being selfish and staying stuck in what they know is the easiest option.

So, give them honest routes to heal the past. And create the future. Be firm in zooming out when out of habit they return to what they know. Unleash their own wisdom more than telling them what to do. And speak their language.

For the health professionals, this means that we can communicate the many connections between Ayurveda and TCM wisdom with modern science like epigenetics which shows huge potential now that it has been proven that certain genes can switch on or off in the body based on environmental factors.

For diets, we can use the metabolic state of ketosis as an angle to get ourselves off sugars and too many carbs. We also know by now that humans have three brains. Think about what that means for lifestyle, loving, and living. We know by know what mindful breath flow and meditation do in our body. And thus heal our past traumas and calm our minds to become wise again.

Communicate in the language doctors, nurses, investors and changemakers understand

7. Environment

Let’s combine everything we do with ecosystem restoration. The time has come to be radical. The transition of our planet is in full flow now with possible flipping poles and polar vortexes but humanity is still going in the wrong direction. Thinking we can control it all as humans. Thinking we must fight each other. Oppress the enemies (who just have a different perspective). And be right ourselves.

Think again, my friends. We have passed the philosophizing and ethics-first phase. We know what we should do. Deal with complexity. Accept chaos as the current normal of the transition, resulting in new patterns. In the meantime making our human systems flexible and wise.

With COVID-19, we can no longer deny that we have entered the existential phase of the Great Transition.

Take time to mourn what’s lost, my friends. But don’t take too long. The regenerative world is waiting for us. And all we have to do is learn how to take up our rightful space in a wise way and leave space for other people and other species. Yes, it comes with modesty in our western world. But it is a mighty fascinating time to be alive as well.

Combine people health with planet health

Everyone a Role

We have to create a regenerative future as a team. All with our own roles.

• Governments can make dashboards with clear KPIs balancing the health of people and the planet
• Subsidies and impact investors should only be funding regenerative action with benefits for the health of people and the planet. Phase out all funding of destructive systems as quickly as possible without throwing out the baby with the bathwater. We can keep what can be used in the new, regenerative systems
• Laws should not be based on incidents, but on trust and creating life. Giving rivers as many rights as human beings
• Entrepreneurs should become ecopreneurs with regenerative business models based on synergy and what’s already locally available. Focusing on the basic needs of humans and other species
• Technology people and designers should be connecting the dots and create the technology with which we can make moonshot leaps into the future
• Citizens should be active community makers. Finding the connection between people. Creating awareness about all aspects of regeneration. Healing the broken past together. Creating the regenerative future
• Educators should be wise guardians. Supporting youngsters to tap into their own inner wisdom and teach them to take responsibility for all of their actions.

Happy transitioning my friends. And, as always, you are very much invited to add your wisdom to my story. There are so many lakes of regenerative wisdom out there. Let’s share our horizons of a regenerative future.

Want to connect? You can find me somewhere on our beautiful planet, with my hands in the soil and my eyes gazing at the stars. Or find me via Linktree.

Thank you, Mike, for adding your wise energy to my words.

© Désirée Driesenaar