How to Heal in a Society that Profits from Our Illness: Reclaiming Wholeness in a System Built on Disconnection  –  Summary

In a world saturated with wellness advice and health products, many still find it painfully difficult to truly heal. Why? Because the deeper structures of our society — our food systems, healthcare models, economic pressures, and cultural narratives — often work against genuine well-being. This blog explores what it means to seek health and wholeness in a system that profits from chronic illness and disconnection. More than just a critique, this piece offers a hopeful reminder that healing is still possible — and radically powerful — when we begin to remember what wholeness truly means.

How to Heal in a Society that Profits from Our Illness

Reclaiming Wholeness in a System Built on Disconnection

by Mark J Kaylor

The Quiet Tension Beneath It All

There’s something quietly unsettling about trying to be well in a world that so often seems structured around everything but wellness.

Most of us feel it, even if we haven’t fully named it — that tension between the personal desire to heal and the collective current pulling us away from wholeness. We sense it in the rising costs of care, the food that depletes, the jobs that drain, and the constant background noise of modern life.

And yet, we keep asking: What does it mean to truly heal?

What if the real struggle isn’t just about finding the right supplement or practice, but about healing inside a system that quietly benefits from imbalance?

A System That Thrives on Dis-ease

It’s tempting to believe that the rising rates of chronic illness, anxiety, and burnout are a consequence of accidental missteps or isolated failures. But when you zoom out, a clearer picture emerges. The system is working exactly as designed: to prioritize productivity over presence, profit over people, and symptom management over root cause resolution.

Our healthcare model

Our healthcare system is reactive, not proactive. It waits for people to break before offering care. Instead of supporting lifelong vitality, it focuses on disease codes, billing cycles, and pharmaceutical interventions. A headache is treated with painkillers — not with questions about sleep, diet, trauma, or stress. Chronic conditions are managed, not resolved. And often, the deeper roots of suffering are never even explored. Preventive care is marginalized, holistic modalities are sidelined, and the wisdom of the body is ignored in favor of standard protocols that fit the system — but not the person.

Our food systems

In a world where fast food is cheaper than fresh vegetables, food becomes both a symptom and a cause of dis-ease. Industrial agriculture and government subsidies prioritize high-yield, low-nutrient crops like corn and soy, which are processed into shelf-stable, addictive, and nutritionally empty products. These end up in every corner store and cafeteria, disproportionately affecting lower-income communities. Meanwhile, organic, regenerative, whole foods are priced as luxury items. The result? A food system that fuels inflammation, metabolic disease, and malnutrition — even among the overfed.

Our work culture

We live in an economy that worships overwork. Productivity is equated with value, and rest is viewed with suspicion. Success is measured in how much we produce, not how well we live. This glorification of hustle creates chronic stress, emotional exhaustion, and a deep disconnect from our own bodies and rhythms. Burnout isn’t a glitch — it’s a predictable outcome. And when rest is finally taken, it’s often forced by illness. Our nervous systems, designed for cycles of activity and recovery, are being pushed to the edge without the space to recalibrate.

Our education system

From an early age, we are taught how to memorize, compete, and comply — but not how to feel, nourish, or relate. Emotional intelligence, body awareness, and the art of self-regulation are rarely part of the curriculum. Children learn to sit still for hours, ignore their internal cues, suppress their emotions, and strive for external validation. This leaves them vulnerable to stress, anxiety, and disconnection as they grow into adults who have no roadmap for healing, rest, or community support. A truly healing education would teach not just facts, but how to live well.

Our environment

We cannot separate personal health from planetary health. Polluted air, contaminated water, toxic soil, and a collapsing climate create a constant background of physiological and psychological stress. Communities near industrial zones suffer higher rates of asthma, cancer, and developmental disorders. Microplastics enter our blood, PFAS disrupt our hormones, and endocrine disruptors hide in everyday products. The natural world — once our greatest healing ally — is under siege. And as we sever our relationship with the earth, we lose a critical source of balance, regulation, and nourishment.

The media we consume

Mainstream media rarely tells the whole story. Health is often portrayed as a matter of personal choice, ignoring systemic barriers. We’re inundated with stories designed to sell fear or fantasy, leaving little room for nuance or critical thought. Suffering becomes sensationalized. Healing becomes commercialized. And the complexity of real human experience is flattened into clickable soundbites. Instead of empowering us, much of what we consume drains us.

The social media effect

On social media, curated perfection becomes the norm. We see filtered lives and influencer wellness routines, not the messy truth of healing. This breeds comparison, self-judgment, and shame. The nervous system is constantly stimulated, pulled between dopamine hits and digital overwhelm. Algorithms prioritize outrage and distraction over depth and connection. And in the scroll, we lose touch with our own internal rhythms and real-world relationships.

The impact of racism

Racism is a public health crisis. Communities of color disproportionately experience environmental toxins, food deserts, inadequate healthcare, and generational trauma. Black and Indigenous women face higher maternal mortality rates. Access to care is riddled with bias. And historical violence leaves scars that shape how healing is approached — or denied. True healing requires not only individual work, but a deep reckoning with systemic injustice and collective repair.

Spiritual disconnection

Perhaps the most silent wound is spiritual disconnection. In a world fragmented by speed, distraction, and division, many of us feel untethered — from purpose, from source, from meaning. We lose the sense that life is sacred, that our bodies are temples, that we are more than our productivity or pain. This disconnection creates a void — one that we try to fill with consumption, control, or noise. But what we truly long for is belonging. To something timeless. To something whole. Healing invites us to remember that we are not separate — from each other, from the earth, from the sacred.

This isn’t a flaw. It’s a feature. The socio-economic system functions as a kind of anti-healing field: one that ignores root causes and continuously fertilizes them.

Each of these factors doesn’t just make healing harder — they actively shape the conditions that keep us unwell. And yet, naming them is not about despair. It’s about clarity. Because once we see the system clearly, we can begin the sacred work of stepping outside it.

The Economics of Illness

Health is not just a biological state; it’s an economic engine. In our current system, illness is far more profitable than wellness.

Pharmaceutical companies generate billions annually by treating symptoms of chronic diseases, many of which are preventable with better nutrition, safer housing, cleaner environments, and less toxic stress. But those upstream solutions don’t generate recurring revenue. A patient who recovers fully is no longer a customer.

Likewise, hospitals and insurance companies function within a for-profit model. From expensive diagnostics and onging treatments to insurance premiums and deductibles, every stage of illness becomes a marketplace. Even the food industry plays a dual role — selling the very products that contribute to disease, then pivoting to offer “healthier” alternatives for a premium.

Preventive health, by contrast, is economically disruptive. If people eat well, rest deeply, live in clean air and water, and have strong community bonds, they spend far less in the system. That kind of healing isn’t incentivized — it’s inconvenient to profit.

And so, we live in a paradox: the system says it wants us healthy, but its survival depends on us staying just sick enough to keep coming back.

Trauma Isn’t Just Personal — It’s Cultural

Trauma has become a buzzword lately, often reduced to personal experiences. But trauma is also cultural. Generational. Environmental. It exists in the policies that shape our lives, in the racism embedded in medical systems, in the erasure of Indigenous healing practices, in the exploitation of the land that sustains us.

When the air is unbreathable, the food is laced with chemicals, and the labor of your life is seen as disposable — how could that not be traumatic?

And yet, we’re told to meditate more. Drink more water. Buy another tracker or adaptogen to manage the impact of a system that refuses to change its deeper structures.

Mindfulness, hydration, and herbs can help. But when offered as substitutes for justice, they become band-aids on a societal wound.

Coping Is Not the Same as Healing

One of the system’s cleverest tricks is offering endless ways to cope while making it nearly impossible to heal.

• You feel anxious? Take a pill — but don’t question the instability of modern life.
• You feel burned out? Take a vacation — but don’t challenge the 60-hour workweek.
• You feel disconnected? Sign up for a program — but don’t ask why true community is so rare.

Coping is survival. Healing is reclamation.

Healing means reconnecting with what was severed: your body, your rest, your food, your breath, your sense of belonging.

And in a world that teaches us to numb and normalize, healing becomes a revolutionary remembering.

When the Wellness Industry Mirrors the Problem

Even the wellness industry, which should be a sanctuary, often mirrors the extractive dynamics of the larger system. Healing becomes something to purchase. Self-care becomes something to perform.

• Ancient traditions are stripped of lineage and sold as lifestyle brands.
• Practices that once centered community are individualized and commodified.
• Wellness is repackaged as luxury — priced for the few and marketed with exclusion.

To be clear, wellness isn’t the enemy. But when it forgets the why and the who behind the work, it becomes another mask for the very system it seeks to soften.

What Healing Really Asks of Us

To truly heal, we must ask different questions:

• Not just: What should I eat? but Why is healthy food so hard to access for so many?
• Not just: How can I reduce my stress? but What kind of society makes rest feel unsafe or lazy?
• Not just: How do I fix myself? but What does it mean to be whole?

Healing in this context becomes a form of activism. It means challenging the systems that cause harm while reclaiming your right to live in rhythm with life itself.

The Role of Community, Belonging, and Land

Disconnection is one of the deepest wounds in modern life. And it is at the heart of most illness. We have become severed from our ecosystems, our bodies, and each other.

But healing is relational.

Many Indigenous healing systems don’t view illness as a failure of the body, but as a rupture in relationship — to land, to ancestry, to purpose, to spirit. This is wisdom we must remember.

We begin to heal when we:

• Share meals grown and prepared with care.
• Gather in circles that restore connection.
• Tend to soil, soul, and story.
• Prioritize presence over productivity.

These practices don’t require permission. They require remembering.

A Radiant Reclamation

If you’ve ever felt like healing shouldn’t be this hard, you’re right. It shouldn’t be.

But healing is still possible. Not perfect. Not always linear. But real. Powerful. Transformative.

And every act of healing — every bowl of soup made with love, every boundary honored, every truth spoken, every breath reclaimed — is a step outside the system that thrives on your forgetfulness.

You are not a machine. You are not a project to be optimized. You are a living, breathing, cyclical being. You are not broken.

You are remembering.

Healing as Remembering

In the end, healing is not about becoming someone new. It is about remembering who you were before the forgetting.

Before your worth was measured in productivity. Before your rest had to be earned. Before you were sold the lie that you had to do this alone.

Beneath all of it, you are already whole.

Healing is the slow, sacred process of reuniting with that wholeness — not to escape the world, but to move through it awake.

And a system built on disconnection cannot survive a world full of people who remember.

Mark J. Kaylor is a passionate advocate for holistic health and natural remedies, with a focus on extending both lifespan and healthspan. As the founder of the Radiant Health Project and host of Radiant Health Podcast, Mark blends in-depth research with traditional wisdom to empower others on their journey to vibrant health. Through his writing and speaking, he shares insights into the transformative power of herbs, nutrition, and lifestyle practices.

Disclaimer: All information and results stated here is for educational and entertainment purposes only. The information mentioned here is not specific medical advice for any individual and is not intended to be used for self-diagnosis or treatment. This content should not substitute medical advice from a health professional. Always consult your health practitioner regarding any health or medical conditions.