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Health & Fitness

Zombies are only Skin Deep

The makeup comes off at the end of the day.

There are scary creatures all over the place! AMC’s, The Walking Dead is filming it’s second season in the Atlanta area and Scary Movie 5 has been filming practically in my backyard.

A friend of mine enjoys working as an extra on movie sets. She is an extra, one of those folks in the crowd in the background of movie scenes. She recently worked on a horror movie as a zombie. She showed me the pictures of herself in various stages of makeup. The photos made her look awful. Her “brain” was exposed. Parts of her arms and legs looked like they were rotted. She had oozy kinds of sores. Here was a beautiful woman who was made up to look terrible.

The photographs made it look very real. But it wasn’t. It was just the only picture the camera had when it snapped while she had all the makeup on. To get a real view, my friend would have to take off her makeup and the videographer would have to shoot her without the makeup.

Well, aren’t people looking for a real view - a more natural and complete picture - when it comes to their health care? Aren’t they looking for a view of health that looks for wellness rather than one that only looks for sickness and then treats it?

It’s a desired, and needed, shift in our approach to health care, according to Dr. Lawrence Rosemund in a recent piece that outlines the problems of the current disease-focused health care system. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lawrence-rosen-md/children-health_b_2007430.html


And, more people are beginning to seek out a different view of health and possible preventative measures and treatment for when they are sick. One way to do this is to educate themselves. Hundreds of apps and millions of websites feed the public’s hunger for information. With all this information, comes an awareness of the need to focus on wellness and prevention as well as of a greater range of methods for treating sickness and maintaining health. In the past this has brought improvements to our health care system. For instance, when Dr. Eizabeth Kubler-Ross first introduced her ideas for the care of the terminally ill, they weren’t readily accepted. But today hospice care is widely available.  

Amid the call for shifting to a health-focused system and the explosion of health apps is an additional trend – seeking alternative or complementary approaches to care, including spiritual care.  The effect of spiritual care has been researched in a variety of studies over the past 50 years. Across these studies there are some consistent outcomes that indicate clear benefits, including:

 -Shorter hospital stays
-Improved pain management
-Improved experience of a patient’s stay
-Improved motivation to complete the tasks of healing
-Improved sense of well-being
-Improved physical health
(http://www.umm.edu/pastoral_care/spiritual_care.htm


For many decades, the focus of health care and health maintenance has been to look for sickness and then alleviate or treat the symptoms. Often, prayer is a method of last resort. Yet, including prayer as a daily practice has been shown to have many beneficial effects. Perhaps this is because prayer often begins with looking for, and acknowledging, wellness as a natural state of being. It’s a bit like taking off the makeup and getting the right picture.

Over the course of my life I have seen first hand the effectiveness of prayer. My half-sister was diagnosed with and treated for cancer. When it was determined that nothing more could be done for her and medical treatment was at an end, she decided to use prayer. Turning to her Bible, she found great comfort and inspiration from Jesus’ healings. She began to pray as he taught his disciples.Through prayer her strength, soundness and health returned. Found to be cancer free, she returned to her normal life and activities.

At  the end of the day on her movie shoot my friend, the actress, had all of the makeup removed. She was back looking like her normal self. She had the right information and, more important, the right view.

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