Oftentimes we Americans bypass common sense and go directly into stress formation whenever the issue of personal health comes up.

Why turn to logical solutions when we can become obsessed by the astronomical cost of health care; how a single unplanned visit to the ER without health insurance can lead to economic ruin; or simply pull our hair out worrying about President Obamas health-care plan?

How the latter will be implemented, in fact how it would impact you or me, could provide an easy path to anxiety. Facts would be helpful, but until then

Remember, too, that slowly but surely third-party payers have constructed a lucrative wedge between patient and doctor. They are for-profit entities and will get paid.

Benjamin Franklin a politician, humorist, and humanitarian once said, God heals and the doctor takes the fees. Yet thats off bubble today because its not the doctors but the insurance and pharmaceutical companies that skyrocket costs.

Its my understanding that the per capita cost of health care in the United States nears the top among countries around the world. Still, our nations overall health ranks significantly lower.

Just goes to show you cant buy everything.

There is an argument that, in America, the overall health-providers goal of relief from suffering has tilted too heavily toward finding scientific answers to health concerns.

Does that leave something important out of the equation?

William Osler, considered by some to be the father of modern medicine, stressed that humanistic arts needed to be included in a successful healing regime along with cold, hard science.

Hippocrates, who might have known something about human physiology and the recuperative powers of the body, said, Natural forces within us are the true healers of the body.

Take cancer, for instance.

Unlike most natural cells in the human body that divide maybe 50 or 60 times and then die, cancer cells can divide unceasingly until they purposefully are killed.

Modern science is learning newer, often extremely expensive methods to kill those cells with decreased damage to healthy cells around them.

Thats good.

And yet, why not help the healing process along through proper use of nutrition?

Id guess the earnings of huge pharmaceutical companies might be slowed a bit were Americans to eat more apples and fewer Big Macs, but I doubt they would reach a point of financial failure like giant banks the government had to bail out for the economic benefit of all. But this comment is of a generic issue, not directly pointed toward cancer.

If cancer is a concern, like many other illnesses modern science is learning more and more about, proper nutrition and proper exercise can provide just as much on the healing front as pharmaceuticals.

The most potent anti-cancer foods include broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, celery, greens, kale, parsley, and spinach.

And the healthiest means of consumption is to blenderize them with water.

An avant-garde, and yet maybe old-fashioned approach to modern medicine is to discover methods that relieve suffering and death, apply them, and later discern why they worked.

This approach provides patients with health relief in real time, not in the hazy, distant future.

In America, any new treatment or drug must go through unbelievable tests and scrutiny before theyre made available to the public.

Maybe good, maybe bad, Im not one to judge. But I do maintain the status quo guarantees pharmaceutical companies a giant guaranteed income.

Dont fool yourself! Those giant companies may have to pay for studies, but dont you think they recoup that and more on prices we pay for their products?

Jabberwock II columnist Rocky Wilson is a reporter for the Chieftain.