Australia’s quest for increased health and longevity

MAKING GAINS: Australians' life expectancies have increased due to a decline in the incidence of chronic health problems. Courier Mail, June 20, 2011

There’s been some good news in the media about the health and longevity of Australians.

The national news media, including The Courier Mail, The Australian and The Daily Telegraph all carried this report: “The number of people dying early because of chronic health problems is falling, boosting Australians’ life expectancy, a new government report has found. The report, released by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare today …… found the number of people aged under 75 dying from chronic illness such as cancer, diabetes, heart disease and mental illness had dropped by almost 20 per cent in the 10-year study period which ended in 2007.”

My interest was sparked by the report and I went to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare website to learn more. What really interests me is the Australian Government’s National Preventative Health Strategy that is currently being implemented. It is presented as a comprehensive approach by the Government with seven strategic directions, including shared responsibility, act early and throughout life, engage communities, reduce inequity, contribute to closing the gap for indigenous Australians, and refocus primary healthcare towards prevention.

We can already see the effects of this strategy in our advertising on television, addressing obesity, smoking and drinking.

I feel that the more our legislated policies and practices are based on love for mankind and the realisation that spiritual solutions are available, the greater effect they will have.

The seven strategies are not necessarily interpreted to be implemented from either a basis of Western medicine or alternative health practices, but are based on spiritual, eternal qualities – the qualities of responsibility, care, alertness and proactivity, inclusiveness and equity. And they apply both to individuals and agencies.

In a recent video recording of a talk by one of Australia’s leading thinkers on spirituality, David Tacey, he stated that the current research shows that there is a marked movement from the Western model of health care to the use of complementary medicines that embrace the mind, body and spirit, both around the world, and increasingly in Australia.

Scientific spiritual healing, or Christian Science, is based on the premise that God is Mind, Spirit, Truth, is All, and is expressed or evidenced in the perfect man and universe. There is a spiritual reality that is not evident to our material senses.

So how can illness be prevented?  “To prevent disease or to cure it, the power of Truth, of divine Spirit, must break the dream of the material senses” writes Mary Baker Eddy, the discoverer and founder of Christian Science in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (412:16).

Mary Baker Eddy wrote from her remarkable, consistent experiences with scientific spiritual healing. Over many years she laboriously worked to put into understandable language this provable spiritual science, or Christian Science as it became known. She found that Christian Science could be practiced consistently and with certain results.

So, how is this relevant in today’s Australian context? Can Christian Science be compared with the National Preventative Health Strategy?

Addressing the Government’s seven strategic directions: We have a shared responsibility for ourselves and each other to act early and throughout life? Christian Scientists pray daily and throughout the day to see the perfect, spiritual man in themselves and in others. They engage the whole community by providing church services, Sunday School and mid-week Testimony Meetings where reports of healing are shared and explained. Christian Science churches provide informative talks to the community regularly and a place where resources can be read, purchased, borrowed and explained in the Reading Rooms. Christian Science is a religion that is predicated on the provision of equal rights and opportunities for all. Christian Science Practitioners provide easily accessible, scientific healing prayer to anyone in the global community who asks for it.

And is disease really preventable through spiritual means alone? Is longevity increased by spirituality?

Christian Scientists in Australia (and elsewhere) can attest to both the preventative and curative properties of this scientific method of spiritual healthcare, and many throughout their active and long lives. Check out some recent healings.