Never heard of “healthism”.
No neither have I. I just made it up. But it should be a word and we should all know about it.
There are many different approaches to health today. Some stick strictly to the mainstream Western style medicine, whilst others prefer the alternative therapies and nutritional/herbal approaches. I personally am a natural health advocate and like to keep chemicals (including pharmaceutical medicines) out of my body as much as I reasonably can. I believe that good diet and health supplements can keep you healthy and isa good preventative strategy to many ailments.
Having said that, there are somethings that only Western medicine can deal with and it would be foolhardy to dismiss it when you need it. Whatever your beliefs, you should have the choice.
However, it is not uncommon to see people who promote alternative health practices/products being denounced on the internet as liars or fools, or both. The attacks are especially nasty if somebody makes there living (or supplementary income) from it promoting these practices/products.
First of all, it the right of any patient to choose for themselves what treatment they want. Secondly, nobody questions that a doctor or surgeon has the right to make money from their trade, so why should those involved in alternative health practices be different.
Now before anyone jumps, I know that there is a lot of room for abuse here, so I realise that there should be some sort of control and patients should look for evidence supporting the therapy/product they are considering. I have discussed that elsewhere on this blog so I will not repeat it here. But that aside, it is not acceptable to call people liars and fools because of their race, religion, gender or age; so why is it a free for all to attack people for they health beliefs? That is healthism and there is a lot of it about.
I have been personally attacked on one forum for promoting the advanced colloidal silver solution. The starting point for some people was that they don’t agree so I must be lying. That has no logic. I’m not lying about all the trials conducted in many top US research institutes, I’m not lying about the claims made on the patent (independently validated by the US Patent Office), I’m not lying about the human trials conducted in Ghana and I’m not lying about the quotes from specialists in their field who have personally experimented with it. These are all a matter of record, they are not my opinions or beliefs.
Just as it is not right to attack people for race, religion, gender or age, it is also not right to attack people for their health beliefs either.
Many therapies are based on the Chinese idea of chi energy (life force energy) moving around the body. Some, like acupuncture, have been around for thousands of years, but are now denounced by many as rubbish. It would be reasonable to argue that modern methods are better, but it is not reasonable to dismiss the likes of acupuncture all together. If it has been round for thousands of years, do you think that if it didn’t work it might of died out after maybe a few hundred years? Do you think it is a few thousand years worth of placebo effect? If so, then the placebo effect should be the next great health craze 
Whether you agree with the idea of chi or not, some mechanism is at work and is getting results. In ancient China families used to pay the doctor to keep them healthy. If a family member became unwell, they would stop paying the doctor until that person got well again. Do you think that those doctors would have kept using herbs and acupuncture if they didn’t work? They would have surely lost a lot of money.
Many people will only consider taking a medicine approved by the FDA (or other countries equivalent). That’s fair enough, I respect their choice. However, getting a medicine or remedy approved by the FDA is enormously expensive and needs the resources of a huge company to do so. That is why it is not possible to get most herbal/nutritional remedies tested as the cost is prohibitive, not necessarily because the effectiveness of the herbal/nutritional remedy is limited.
At the end of the day it is about choice. Respect the other persons choice.
