Saving Lives and Cultivating Health

In this episode, I step into what I’m calling the season of the amateur - asking big questions without claiming expertise. I explore how medicine is shaped by culture and worldview, what “evidence” really means, and how different systems - from biomedicine to Ayurveda - understand causation, illness and health.

This isn’t a rejection of modern medicine - it’s an attempt to widen the lens. To ask what keeps us well, not only what makes us ill. And to consider whether we can hold scientific rigour and relational depth in the same conversation - without collapsing into superstition, and without dismissing mystery.

Topics include:

1. Gratitude for what keeps us well: walking, breathing, rest, friendship, safety, purpose and for the years of disciplined study that form a psychiatrist: medical school, clinical rotations, exams, and over six years of specialist training.
2. What counts as knowledge in medicine - and who decides? Holding expertise and personal sovereignty in the same frame.
3. Medicine across civilisations - Babylon, Egypt, Ayurveda, Chinese medicine, Greece - each emerging from a worldview, none “primitive,” all culturally shaped.
4. The rise of the biomedical model - anatomy, cells, pathogens, biochemistry and its extraordinary success in acute care and life-saving intervention.
5. Evidence-based medicine and the power of Randomised Controlled Trials - what they measure brilliantly and what they struggle to capture.
6. Psychiatry’s measurement dilemma - symptom clusters, self-reported scales, and the question of whether symptom reduction equals flourishing.
7. The placebo effect, expectation, relationship and meaning - what actually creates change?
8. Ayurveda as the “science of life” - balance, prevention, daily rhythms, and cultivating health rather than only treating disease.
9. Green prescriptions and nature-based practice - bridging biomedical legitimacy with relational, ecological models of wellbeing.
10. Safeguarding, discernment and humility - widening causation without abandoning rigour, and asking what it truly means to be well.

Shownotes:

https://theoutdoorteacher.com/podcasts/episode-86-saving-lives-and-cultivating-health/

Music by Geoff Robb: www.geoffrobb.com

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Mentioned in this episode:

How to Teach Climate Change

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