The following overview of three medical models highlights how modern medicine can fall short in managing health problems.

Current Health Care Delivery

Introduction
The absence of disease does not mean the presence of wellness.
A study, reviewing patients being seen by medical internists, found that 75% of the patients were left without any definable diagnosis for their symptoms Ð no label, no disease, and no satisfaction for the patient.

The present health care system is ill equipped to handle these individuals, and thus, many are frequently labeled with a psychiatric problem. This diagnosis often leads to the use of antidepressants and mood altering drugs as a "solution".

The three medicine models below briefly show the history of medicine and some inherent deficiencies. A commentary on modern medicine follows:

1. Biographical Medical Model
This is an ancient model that states that illness is an event in the life of the individual, which results from disharmony or imbalance, and that because each person is unique, each personÕs illness is unique. In this model, the job of the physician is to not only to treat the disease, which is merely a part of the illness, but also, to help the person restore harmony and balance

2. Conventional Medical Model
Conventional medicine is built around the disease model of illness. This concept basically says that people become sick because they contract diseases.

These diseases are each distinct clinical entities with their own natural progression and are understood independently of the sick person or in the context in which the illness occurs.

In conventional medicine, the leading question is, "What disease do you have?" The treatments that result are geared to addressing the "disease" and not the illness being experienced by the patient.

Consequently, disease is what the doctor diagnoses; illness is what the patient experiences and often, the two may have little in common.

3. Integrated Medical Model
This model attempts to take conventional medicine and integrate it with the ancient biographical model of illness.

Basically, swapping herbs for drugs is still conventional medicine. The patient has a disease, treatment has been identified, but an herb or a large dose of a nutritional supplement is prescribed instead of a drug.

Modern Medicine
Finally, modern medicine has advanced and made many discoveries about the origins of disease that were not available in the ancient systems. These advancements and discoveries are of great value especially because they relate to the concept of causative agents such as infections (bacterial, viral and fungal), toxins and allergic triggers of illness.

Ancient systems talked about vague theories of causation such as; "external poeniceous influences", the influence of the stars and "noxious vapors" coming out of the earth, but the importance of allopathic agents has come from modern scientific study Although modern medicine has made significant advances as described, it falls short in addressing individual health needs. "Vertical Disease" is a product of this failure and is described in the section titled Integrated Medicine.