Health beyond clinical protocol: institutional traps and limitations of modern medicine

SIARHEI KANDRYCHYN, PhD in Sociology, autonomous scholar, Graduate School for Social Research, Polish Academy of Sciences (72, Nowy Świat St., Warsaw, 00-330)

kandrych02@yahoo.com

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8509-2554

The article is aimed to describe the ineffective health care mechanisms and find ways to overcome them. Some variants of institutional dysfunctions (or institutional traps) in medical practice are considered. The resort to natural methods of healing and self-healing is regarded as a way to overcome various institutional dysfunctions. The work combines several qualitative methods: a non-standardized survey of experts (doctors), included observation (25 years of work as a doctor and independent use of natural healing methods for the past 12 years), and analysis of documents, literary sources and messages on the topic of self-healing in relevant Facebook groups. The themes of the talks with doctors were health self- management and alternative healing practices (intensive physical exercises, medical fasting, and breathing exercises). During conversations with the doctors found that only some senior doctors have positive experience of using therapeutic fasting and breathing exercises (both personal and clinical), and young doctors who have been working in medicine for over 10-20 years are not familiar with these methods ("because this treatment is not carried out according to the approved clinical protocols”, and “we treat according to modern protocols"). The most problematic points of the use of such health practices and the reasons for their increase in society are discussed. It is concluded that both in the institutional and ideological aspect, the essential component of the public health institute should be outside the scope of official medicine, which is aimed at the use of medicinal and high-tech means of treatment and prevention.

Keywords: modern medicine, institutional traps, self-healing, therapeutic fasting, respiratory gymnastics

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Received 18.11.2022