Quaternary prevention, metaphors and popular proverbs

Abstract

The avalanche of health care has followed a paradoxical growth, difficult to explain in the face of the generalized cultural improvement of societies in developed countries that, after all, look like a bunch of fugitives terrified by everything and nothing! The relationship with the body seems to be mediated by fear and only calms down with so-called “normal” results, otherwise the doors of over diagnosis, over medicalization, overtreatment, over screenings, over information are wide open, then we have the diagnostic cascades that begin and never again you know where they end up, accompanied by countless curative / preventive therapies, not giving the body the opportunity, per se, to find its balance again! Evidence-based medicine and the person-centered clinical method are part of quaternary prevention, which aims to establish new margins and new directions more suited to different personal moments contextualized with the environment, goals, economy that evolve in a permanent adaptive sense towards Homeostasis. Some popular proverbs support what is now unsustainable: they legitimize the medical practice based on irrational fear, compulsion and obsession that in the end promote billions of profits to the big pharmaceutical companies! Others, however, help and promote health globally. As long as there is health, the saints are away. Going to bed early and rising early gives health and makes you grow. Prevention is better than cure. Cared for health, preserved life. Who has iron health, can one day rust. Whoever has health and freedom is rich and does not know it. Cared for health, preserved life. Time heals everything except old age and madness. Fear old age because it never comes alone” These aphorisms, social representations of health and disease, can be used in health education and promotion, even in a new public health.