In a world full of endless stimulation and urgency, most of us live reactively. We move through life in a reactive nature, in a state of catch up. The urgency means we chase deadlines rather than the long term goal. We respond to the noise rather than the signal. We seek shelter from the storm when the skies open rather than reading the gathering clouds on the horizon.
I went into medicine with a simple aim: to learn how to take good care of myself and those around me.
Instead I learned how to treat illnesses.
Two Parallel Paths
As I progressed through medical school, two distinct concepts emerged – one from the curriculum, one from my own exploration.
Medicine. And health.
Healthcare often operates in reaction mode. A patient presents with symptoms, a problem to be solved and then there is a choice selection of modalities from which to treat the symptoms. This reactive approach is undoubtedly essential and the intervention can and do offer significant benefit – I have seen first hand the merits of some of these interventions. To be clear I am not negating the value of my medical school education, I am very grateful to be a student doctor.
The Missing Toolkit
What I realised was lacking was the education of health. Pharmacological treatments are emphasised – using tools from another’s tool kit. I want the focus to be on tools to add your own tool kit. To empower and enable.
The medical school curriculum and general healthcare system doesn’t seem to marry treatment with prevention, and for understandable reasons, it is hard to: pharmacology and therapeutics are fixed, defined and examinable. They create a safe, regulated healthcare workforce working within established guidelines, protecting both the patient and practitioner.
What many are now exploring, particularly seen in the rise of healthcare influencers , is how to reclaim agency of your personal health and to understand why diseases occur in the first place.
This is where my passion lies.
Symptom relief definitely has its place, but it often feels like swimming upstream, fighting against the current rather than addressing the source of the river’s flow. Medicine treats the disease; health prevents it from taking hold.
The Proactive Alternative
The most profound healthcare transformation isn’t happening in hospitals or GP surgeries, it’s happening in daily habits, the small and simple choices that compound.
I aim to live, and eventually practice medicine, embodying a simple truth: the best healthcare system is the one that builds up your own toolkit rather than borrowing from another’s.
The Simple Medic 
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