Did Steve Jobs Unique Decision Making Approach to Innovation Shorten His Life in his Health Decisions

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October 19, 2011--

The world morns the passing of Steve Jobs who was taken from us at a much too young age of 56. That complex persona did it 'his way' in inventing products and in treating his cancer.

Steve Jobs, the founder and recent CEO of Apple was cut from a different cloth than the rest of us. He will probably go down in history as the greatest computer visionary of our times, more so than either Bill Gates or Paul Allen, both founders of Microsoft.

A genius may have miscalculated, perhaps we can all learn something, perhaps our Western medicine is not all that bad in critical situations.

But, was his complex blend of Eastern culture, mixed with his ability to simplify complex technological trends his undoing when he utilized those precepts to his personal health?

Steve Jobs was the visionary leader of Apple and introduced the world to personal computers, then the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad, died much too young at age 56, following a long battle with cancer.

Jobs was psychedelic in his youth, traveled to India and was a Buddhist and a vegetarian. With his unique world view he took an alternative approach to treating his early diagnosis of pancreatic neuroendocrine cancer. Where, perhaps the rest of us, who may embrace western medicine more favorably - a predilection toward surgery and pharmacology - Jobs was a minimalist in that vain, he decided on an alternative approach beginning with a "special diet" .

The initial biopsy revealed that Jobs had a treatable form of the disease back in 2003. Experts agree that if the tumor were surgically removed earlier, Jobs' prognosis would have been a lot better.

9 months after his initial diagnosis, when a subsequent scan showed that the tumor had grown (and his alternative approach clearly was not working), he finally underwent a modified Whipple procedure, which removes the head of the pancreas along with parts of the stomach, bile duct, and duodenum .

Jobs believed that the procedure got all of the cancer and declined any follow-on radiation or chemotherapy. But his condition grew steadily worse. He went on to undergo a liver transplant in 2009, which led many to speculate that the cancer had spread beyond his digestive system. He became increasingly gaunt and fragile, having lost a considerable amount of weight.

It is pure speculation as to whether Jobs would still be alive today if he had undergone surgery immediately after the initial diagnosis. But in this world of Eastern medicine vs Western medicine, alternative medicine, integrative medicine, it causes us to re-think our approach to health.

A genius may have miscalculated, perhaps we can all learn something, perhaps our Western medicine is not all that bad in critical situations.

In his now famous commencement address in 2005 to Stanford University graduates, Jobs said: "No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it."

Posting date: 10/19/11

Source: Every Day Health

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