Or to put it another way: With all this money being spent on health care, why do so many people stay sick?

Part of the answer, I believe, is our over-reliance on drugs. Most prescribed medications cause side effects; they help relieve or suppress one problem but cause others problems down the track.

Toxins also affect our health. If we don’t take specific steps to help our systems detoxify and to limit our exposure to more toxins, our organs and eventually all body systems, including the central nervous system can be affected.

And there’s stress. If you still don’t know that stress is a major cause of illness and disease, including heart disease, you just haven’t been listening.

Our attitudes to illness and health can also keep us ill:

Symptom-based definition of health – Has this happened to you? You go to a doctor complaining of general unwellness or vague aches or pains, but you have no clear symptoms. Your doctor does a few tests, finds nothing and tells you you’re healthy. When we define health simply as the absence of disease we are considered healthy until we have recognisable symptoms. Yet symptoms often arise long after our health has begun to deteriorate and body systems have been affected.

Symptom-based treatments – Let me give you an example of how treating symptoms rather than looking for underlying causes can cause needless misery. Thousands of children with chronic ear infections had little tubes surgically inserted to help drain fluid buildup. Later research showed that most of the surgeries were ineffective or unnecessary. Because food intolerances or allergies can cause ear infections in small children, many of these problems could have been prevented just by avoiding milk or other problem foods.

Of course, there are many other reasons why people might remain unwell. For instance, they may not be aware of natural treatment options; they may be confused by conflicting professional opinions; they may not be willing or able to afford treatment or they may not consider real health important enough.