The scientific method has given us all kinds of progress, and I would be among the first to admit it. I was raised in a family of scientists, and I have nothing but respect for science and its benefits. Yet the scientific method, which investigates the effects that changing only one variable at a time, leads to reductionistic thinking, and that may have serious consequences not only for our lives, but our health as well.

The scientific method isolates one item and makes small changes in that one item, and observes the results. This is great if we wish to know more about how that item interacts with its environment. And this method has led to sanitation in hospitals, and all kinds of wonderful advances. However, the danger lies in that when a new discovery is made, we think that changing that one variable in a vacuum will improve our lives.

And so we saw the low-fat diet craze, and now the push for pharmaceuticals. Take a pill, eliminate one problem. Have another problem? Take a different pill. People living in the United States now take more drugs than any nation or generation in history. And yet our health gets worse, because we assume that all these drugs, diet modifications, etc., work in a vacuum.

What we must do is learn to think about complex interactions. How does each item in our environment work to balance or support or inhibit each other item? Through reading the medical journals, I have discovered, that of all things, the song you listen to may affect the strength of the action of the drug you are taking, or that song may turn on or off genes in your body. It’s time to stop thinking about changes in isolation, and learn to think about more complex solutions to our health.