Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Criss Cross Crash Crisis

Say that three times fast. How’d you do? What does it matter?

Well, there are those in healthcare who refer to the coming financial challenges to this country, starting in the year 2011, as the Criss Cross Crash Crisis.

What’s significant about 2011?

That’s the year that the first of the baby boomers will begin accessing the benefits of Medicare. The economic impact of this will hit full force around 2016.


If you’re in the workforce in 2016, you will be supporting the healthcare costs of not only the generation above you (much like we do now), but also the generation below – the first time this will have happened in the U.S. economy.

How we are going to pay for this has yet to be determined.

Another unnerving issue?

It has been estimated that one of every three children born after the year 2000 will develop Type 2 diabetes. This is the most expensive chronic disease to treat, and once it’s developed, it can take 10-15 years off your life. The annual cost for each diabetic patient is $10,000/year. The current total of worldwide diabetic populations stands at 246 million, and it was only 30 million twenty years ago. We are looking at a literal crisis situation, both in individual health and national financial stability.

Twenty-one million Americans have diabetes, 6 million of whom don’t even know they have it.

The numbers for other chronic diseases are just as overwhelming.

One in five people have arthritis; $1.5 TRILLION is spent annually on the diagnosis and treatment of chronic illnesses; and seven of 10 people die prematurely due to chronic diseases.

Read that again, 7 of 10 people.

And that’s just in the U.S.

Maybe you’re wondering what this has to do with you.

Well, most (but not all) chronic diseases are PREVENTABLE through appropriate lifestyle changes – changes that address your body, mind and spirit and the overall balance between these areas.

And that’s what we specialize in at the Hansa Center for Optimum Health.

Yeah, right, you may be saying, it’s not that easy.

Well, consider this.

A study published in the American Journal of Cardiology concluded that many patients with conventional risk factors for coronary heart disease can reduce their risk without medications within 12 weeks of starting a therapeutic lifestyle change program. Read that again….within 12 weeks….three months….reduced their risk WITHOUT medications.

The evidence is overwhelming that care addressing lifestyle can have incredible value in reducing your risk for chronic disease.

Our unique approach is to quite literally investigate and support every area of your life, whether body, mind, spirit, some of the above or all of the above.

The focus at The Hansa Center is YOU – it is all about you. Your history, your life, your beliefs, your values, your perceptions, your relationships, etc.

Why is this focus so intent on you?

Because this comes down to choices (largely yours) and because chronic disease is unacceptable.

It’s unacceptable because so much of it is preventable by making different choices, and making different choices is ultimately about understanding you and what makes you tick…what pulls you toward the choices you make.

True healing of a chronic disease comes not so much from a managing of or suppressing of symptoms. It comes when the person who has been living with it is at peace once again, not drug down by a sometimes overwhelming group of symptoms.

Our true mission is to balance you in body (joints, organs, glands, tissues, fluids), mind (what you think, understand and believe) and spirit (how you feel and believe).

We know it can be challenging and can sometimes take time.

We’re here to help you through it.

Please call us if you want to start making different choices and start living a well life.