Bringing Health Back to Healthcare

How Medical Advocacy Can Help Patients Look Beyond Symptom Management

Why are chronic disease and mental health challenges becoming more common at a time when medicine has more sophisticated diagnostic tools, targeted medications, and advanced treatments than ever before? This is the paradox of modern medicine: we have become extraordinarily good at treating disease, yet we are still struggling to help people truly get well.

THE TRUTH: We have become remarkably skilled at managing symptoms, but managing symptoms is not necessarily the same as addressing the problem. A prescription may reduce pain, improve sleep, or control a lab value without answering the bigger question: Why is this happening in the first place? For too many patients, the healthcare journey becomes a cycle of symptom management and “watch and wait,” while the underlying problem remains unresolved.

Monitoring can be appropriate, and not every abnormality requires immediate intervention. And symptom management plays an important role in medicine, helping reduce suffering. But shouldn't we also be asking what we can do to address contributing factors, preserve health, and improve outcomes whenever possible?

Why Symptom Management and “Watch and Wait” Isn’t Enough

The “Watch and wait” plan is a common recommendation in healthcare, but it perfectly illustrates the gap between managing illness and actively pursuing better health.

A therapy client of mine had been diagnosed with a monoclonal blood disorder involving abnormal plasma cells. She had a specialist, had been thoroughly evaluated, and had access to some of the best medical care available. Yet her care plan was essentially to monitor the condition and wait.

Wait for what?

In essence, the message was: Let’s wait and see if this becomes cancer.

Years before, I found myself asking the same question when my father was diagnosed with chronic kidney disease. He wanted to know what he could do. The answer focused primarily on monitoring his kidney function and discussing when dialysis would be appropriate.

To be clear, neither physician was doing anything wrong. They just weren’t doing anything.

But that raises a question: if nothing needs to be aggressively treated right now, does that mean there is nothing we can do? I don't think so.

The Space Between “Aggressively Treat It” and “Do Nothing”

There is an enormous space between aggressive medical intervention and doing nothing.

That space is where health lives.

There is an opportunity to improve what is within a person's sphere of influence. What If “Watch and Wait” Doesn't Have to Mean “Do Nothing”?

While a physician monitors a condition, we need to inquire about addressing nutrition, lifestyle changes, physical activity, metabolic health, environmental exposures, underlying pathology, gut health, mental health, and medications. There are also evidence-informed functional medicine and complementary approaches that may safely support our well-being alongside conventional care.

These inquiries don't require us to reject modern medicine. They require us to expand the conversation and address underlying factors that may be contributing to our disease.

Putting health back into healthcare doesn't mean turning our backs on medicine.

This is not about choosing sides, nor am I suggesting that patients abandon their specialists.

Quite the opposite.

I believe patients need smart doctors and qualified healthcare professionals who are curious and willing to test, ask why, address underlying causes and provide additional treatments. And ones willing to collaborate when appropriate, bringing in different areas of expertise to address the whole person.

We need to stop losing sight of the original destination: Health.

“What would it take to make this patient as healthy as possible?”

The next generation of medicine may require us to rethink not only how we treat disease, but how we understand health itself. The goals are to keep the individual patient at the center of the conversation, and not just see them as a set of symptoms or a diagnosis.  To help people become stronger, healthier, and more resilient. And to stop thinking of healthcare as something that begins when disease becomes severe enough to demand treatment.

So, What Can We Do?

That question is at the heart of my book, When Smart Doctors Get Lost in the Woods: A Modern Medicine Survival Guide.

The book is about what to do when the path forward isn't clear: how to ask better questions, understand your options, recognize when something may be missing, and become an informed participant in your own healthcare. Because even when nothing needs to be treated today, there may still be something worth doing.

What if the problem isn't that your doctor doesn't care? What if the problem is that no one ever taught you how to navigate a complicated healthcare system?

Healthcare is complicated. Doctors are human. And there is a difference between treating disease and pursuing health. When Smart Doctors Get Lost in the Woods was written to help patients navigate that space and become confident advocates for their own health. Get your copy now on Amazon by CLICKING HERE.