A magazine interviewer asked me why there are so many prescription medications for depression? Without hesitating, I answered “profit.” Drug companies make drugs to fight depression to make billions for their shareholders, and medical physicians often get a cut of the money from drugs they prescribe.

More to the point, though, is why do people take them? The easy answer is that more people are more depressed more often, and the reason for that is the increased stress of modern life. Yet we need to look deeper.

The New England Journal of Medicine has published another report about the appalling number of medical mistakes in U.S. hospitals—40,000 a day—and this is after years of concerted effort to improve hospital safety. The New York Times notes: “Instead of improvements, the researchers found a high rate of problems. About 18 percent of patients were harmed by medical care, some more than once, and 63.1 percent of the injuries were judged to be preventable.”

I was interviewed by a women’s magazine, and their first question was how I “as a chiropractor had become interested in preventative health care?” I appreciated the question because it exposes the common misperception about chiropractic.

When pimps and prostitutes get run off one street corner, they just move to another.

Reacting to public concern (and a spate of whistleblowers’ lawsuits) that its members are routinely bribed by drug companies, the medical profession has taken steps to reduce direct marketing to doctors. Many physicians now decline to see drug reps in their offices, and hospitals try to keep them from roaming the halls. Not only that, but a pharmaceutical trade association asks that marketers no longer pass out coffee mugs, pens, sticky notes and other trinkets sporting company logos. Physicians these days are less likely to have a computer mouse pad promoting Viagra.

The vitalistic perspective on life involves reverence for the natural. Just as a devout person may look to a holy book rather than arrogantly assuming he can figure out everything on his own, the vitalist looks to the book of nature for lessons about how to live. He believes that just being in nature is good for his health, and he believes that nature has much to teach.

That’s why we vitalists love magazines like Outside, which encourages its readers to “Live the Active Life.” It contains articles and ads for all kinds of outdoor activity—hiking, skiing, rock climbing, kayaking, scuba diving—you get the idea. It’s also a very intelligent magazine, with provocative and realistic articles on science and environmentalism. Last December’s cover story was about Wallace J. Nichols, a marine biologist on a campaign “to convince brain researchers to help him revolutionize ocean conservation.”

Walmart recently announced two decisions on the health care front. For one, the merchandising behemoth said that it could no longer afford to give insurance benefits to part-time employees. For another, the company announced (though later downplayed) its plans to expand in-store services to include more primary health care. Of course, profit was the motive in both decisions.

One of the joys experienced by Life University students, my grandchildren and other visitors to my Colorado ranch is seeing all the wildlife. Indian Paintbrush Ranch outside Colorado Springs is a crossing route for elk, deer, bear and smaller animals as well. These amazing creatures and others around the world are always going somewhere. Sadly, many are going extinct.

Our politicians seldom consider the animal world in their policy making, but they ought to. And we all ought to recognize that, when we rip apart the web of life, we strangle ourselves in the cords. Case in point: the fence between the U.S. and Mexico.

’Tis the season when people line up to get flu shots. I recently said on a video blog that those dispensing flu shots cannot guarantee that the shots won’t cause negative reactions nor prevent one from getting the flu anyway.

Santaro Kun responded on Facebook: “This argument doesn’t hold water because you can pose the same questions about ‘guarantees’ to chiropractic treatments and you cannot guarantee that there is 0 possibility of any harm and you also can not guarantee that you will fix your ailments.”

Coach Joe Paterno gets fired and a riot ensues because of lack of integrity in the Penn State football program. Presidential candidate Herman Cain joins the long queue of politicians accused of sexual misconduct. It seems that everywhere we look we find both individuals and institutions out of integrity.

Have you seen that ad for Corona? A frosty bottle of beer by a chair on a beautiful beach, and the caption is “No-Fi.” Is that great or what? Unplug from the ubiquitous computers and mind-numbing electronic chatter, from the insane stresses of our jobs and dizzying complications of our lives. Whatever the season, you can get yourself rejuvenated in the great outdoors. Our physical environment can refresh and enlighten us.

We chiropractors get frustrated when we start talking about chiropractic philosophy and our patients’ eyes glaze over. They’re probably thinking, well, my medical doctor is a good guy. These days he’s encouraging me to eat right, exercise, and, hey, at my last visit—I couldn’t believe it—he even said it would be OK to take vitamins! Don’t medical doctors and chiropractors really all want better patient health?

Like many of you, I’ve long been fascinated with the concept of leadership I’m intrigued, too, by how my own understanding of the subject has changed, and consequently how my efforts to lead—at Life University, in the chiropractic profession, and perhaps in even larger venues—have also changed.

Aren’t we amazed when a singer’s lyrics, a comic’s wit or a cartoonist’s pen sums up things better than rhetoric? That’s what Scott Adams—whose Dilbert comic strip routinely skewers corporate America—recently did to the health care industry:

TV’s Jon Stewart the other night introduced a book about corporations exploiting worker pension funds to pad pockets of retiring executives. Stewart told the author of the Retirement Heist, “I didn’t think there was another piece of information that I could learn [about corporate corruption] that could still make me angry.”

I can relate to Jon Stewart. I didn’t think there was another piece of information that I could learn about exploitation by drug companies that could still make me angry. Then I saw on TV that same night that the American Academy of Pediatrics has released new guidelines for diagnosing and possibly treating Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).

Life’s recent participation in the Rugy World Cup gave me the ideal motivation to rewatch Invictus. This Clint Eastwood film, starring Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon, is a movie to treasure. It’s about Nelson Mandela’s efforts to heal post-Apartheid South Africa, and Mandela has long been a hero of mine. When I went to see it in the theater, I wondered if the movie would provide further lessons in leadership. The fact it pivots on South Africa’s rugby competition—and Life University itself has the top rugby program, coach and teams in the United States—well, that didn’t exactly keep me away either. Incidentally, one of the cast, Patrick Bell, was a Life rugger.

A lot of people are confused by the recent recommendation from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force that men at any age should no longer have annual PSA tests to detect prostate cancer. Especially dismayed are the urologists, physicians and surgeons who make their living by testing for and treating prostate cancer.

They wouldn’t be confused and dismayed if they listened to their chiropractor. Oh, that’s right, many of them don’t believe in chiropractors.

At Life University we’ve built our curriculum around Eight Core Life Proficiencies™, and they relate to one another. For the complete list of the Eight, see our Web site, but for just one example of how they connect, consider how the proficiency we call Contemporary Scientific Paradigms relates to the one called Integrity & Citizenship. It’s worth thinking about because their relationship has implications for health.

A recent newspaper column by George Will points out the tendency of today’s therapeutic culture to medicalize perceived character “flaws.” The fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) contains a description of “oppositional defiant disorder” as a pattern of negativistic, defiant, disobedient and hostile behavior toward authority figures. Symptoms include “often loses temper, often deliberately annoys people or is often touchy.” Columnist Will wryly observes that DSM omits this symptom: “is a teenager.”

Here at Life University we’re not only doing innovative things in higher education, but we also now have our own childcare facility called Bright Life. It’s more than a place to babysit the children of students, faculty and staff – Bright Life is a phenomenal center for early personal development in harmony with our vitalistic philosophy. The results already are amazing.

I first got interested in applying vitalistic thinking to every level of education by looking at the spectacular success of schools founded by Maria Montessori, which now serve from pre-school through age 18. One school’s website quotes its founder: “A child’s work is to create the person she will become.” Wow! If that isn’t vitalistic thinking I don’t know what is.

When speaking to non-chiropractors—which as a university president I often do—I get blank stares when I bring up the word “vitalism.” Most people haven’t a clue what it means. It’s a scientific concept long thought to have fallen out of favor; only because of recent scientific discoveries is vitalism back on the table. So why bring up this seemingly esoteric subject? Because it has such radical, hopeful and practical implications not only for health care but for how we live our daily lives.

Abraham Maslow, the famous psychologist—you know, that guy who talked about the “hierarchy of needs”—once said, “When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.” That’s one of the things wrong with our health care system. Every time it sees something a bit unusual, it wants to hammer it into submission. The result is too many tests, too much medication and too many surgeries.

That was the thrust of an Associated Press article about a year ago bearing the headline “Americans Overtreated?” The reporter pegged her story to reactions to President Obama’s getting his regular physical. “Too much cancer screening, too many heart tests, too many caesarean sections. A spate of recent reports suggests that many Americans are being overtreated. Maybe even President Barack Obama,” the AP article said.

It’s been a few years since Michael Moore’s movie SiCKO excoriated the U.S. health care system, but I still think about how insurance companies put saving money above the needs of those they insure. Whether you like Moore’s sarcastic style or detest him for it, or for his politics, you have to admit the man knows how to stir the pot. Many of us applaud him for bringing the truth to light and demanding a dialogue about the important issues we face.

Now that social media has become a way of life, society is looking more critically at the challenges it presents. Many comments these days lament how young people and adults alike are wasting time in banal interactions with “friends” and “followers,” with a negative impact on educational progress and workplace productivity. Another challenge arises because the social media is inconsistently regulated, and that increases the temptation for character defamation. We’re trying to deal with that challenge at Life University.

Most professions that have been defined as “Complimentary Alternative Medicine” or “Alternative Health Care” (grossly inadequate titles for the health care revolution that is taking place), have a core philosophy that prioritizes human endeavor as the cornerstone of true health.

Their mission? A positive, uplifting, empowering belief that life and the human body/mind are inherently intelligent. The greatest scientist in the world has yet to create one cell from scratch, yet your body is creating trillions of them while you're reading this.

We've got a medical health care system that’s broken.

In fact, it's not even a health care system. It’s a “symptoms and disease treatment system” that’s pushed aside its responsibility and integrity in order to be financially funded by big pharma and educated on treatment protocols by drug reps. This is an era where "miracle" drugs have so many side effects they quickly become the new "nightmares."

Thankfully, a new system has emerged. One that starts with a focus on health promotion, wellness, prevention and safely protecting people.

There is an intellectual health care revolution going on and it's reshaping all of our lives.

Doctors don't like to admit it, but health care is a consumer driven industry and the consumer is demanding something new and radically different.

There are still many that refuse to listen. Some are struggling to understand, but many are hiding behind massive industries like big pharma and the insurance companies. That’s bankrupting our economy and hurting people.