Posted on 01/07/2007 7:32:51 AM PST by shrinkermd
For most Americans, the biggest health threat is not avian flu, West Nile or mad cow disease. It’s our health-care system.
You might think this is because doctors make mistakes (we do make mistakes). But you can’t be a victim of medical error if you are not in the system. The larger threat posed by American medicine is that more and more of us are being drawn into the system not because of an epidemic of disease, but because of an epidemic of diagnoses.
Americans live longer than ever, yet more of us are told we are sick.
How can this be? One reason is that we devote more resources to medical care than any other country. Some of this investment is productive, curing disease and alleviating suffering. But it also leads to more diagnoses, a trend that has become an epidemic.
This epidemic is a threat to your health. It has two distinct sources. One is the medicalization of everyday life. Most of us experience physical or emotional sensations we don’t like, and in the past, this was considered a part of life. Increasingly, however, such sensations are considered symptoms of disease. Everyday experiences like insomnia, sadness, twitchy legs and impaired sex drive now become diagnoses: sleep disorder, depression, restless leg syndrome and sexual dysfunction
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
I must have ADD.
Reduction in the need for services should be an indication of the success of a program, but alas, not so in our day and age.
Reduction in the need for food stamps, subsidized school lunches and welfare payments during the 90's was viewed as a crisis. There just HAD to be people out there who desperately needed those services--we just have to find them, the thinking went. So an ad campaign was undertaken to get more people, who had obviously been doing just fine, to apply for these services.
I can go along with the author's proposal that the success of our health care system might be based on how many people don't need it, rather than how many do.
Being normal can be considered an affliction in need of attention. ; )
NO!
I need to go look for that one :)
So how does that make you feel? /snicker
NO!
I need to go look for that one :)
It shows a man locked in a phone booth full of snakes and suspended over the edge of a tall building.
My dad is 78, only takes high blood medication, has for years. My mom is 75, takes no medication. Hope that I got those genes, knock on wood, I take no medication.
Oh that's cold!
I think you make great points.
My daughters are alive because of medical advances. They would have died if they had been born even 30 years ealier.
Unfortunately, one of them has brain damage. It's amazing how little doctors really know about the brain. They thought she shouldn't be able to walk, but she does. She has horrible anger rages, and no one has ever been able to help me with that. Her rages are much better now that she is older, but that is not thanks to doctors.
I do believe that people try the quick fix with drugs for things, especially ADD/ADHD.
There's good and bad with almost everything.
God bless you and your parents. Pretty much the same with my folks.
There's a fair amount of disease that's genetic, but so many health problems are the result of bad lifestyle choices, e.g. excesses in cigarette, alcohol and food consumption and lack of exercise.
"I see they have lowered the goalposts for serum cholesterol again down to 100 mcg/Dl.
This should triple statin sales, and fund more suppertime TV advertising for Lipitor™ etc."
And that is my biggest concern, they keep changing the standards by which "Healthy" is judged.
Ten pounds overweight? Now you are "Obese"
A few points too high on your blood pressure one afternoon, you are forever on a regime of high blood pressure meds.
To the average layperson, it appears as if its ALL about sales of drugs, and who if you are really sick or not.
Going to a doctor is getting downright scary.. you walk in healthy and leave with a laundry list of tests and prescriptions.
I thank the Lord every day for good health, the health care system is getting way out of control.
ping
His simple message is: "Doctors should stop trying to moralise their patients and concentrate on treating them", and he enlists the help of the microbiologist Renee Dubos to reinforce his point. Dubos commented in his book The Mirage of Health, written way back in 1960:
"In the words of a wise physician, it is part of the doctor's function to make it possible for his patients to go on doing the pleasant things that are bad for them – smoking too much, eating and drinking too much – without killing themselves any sooner than is necessary."
And that, for Fitzpatrick, is the real job of the General Practitioner – not meeting 'lifestyle education' targets set by the state. Nor refusing to treat those who have allegedly brought ill health upon themselves. His job is that of the doctor, not the priest.
"I think we, as a people, need to embrace more natural deaths once again."
I agree. Death is part of life but our culture doesn't want to deal with that.
"Cholestrol is what insulates your nerve cells. That's why animal brains have so much cholestrol in them, and why it's recommended that you not eat them."
It's also why one of the side effects of cholesterol-lowering drugs is dementia.
Has anyone looked at the possibility of food allergies? Sometimes eliminating a food (or a dye) can make a night and day difference in behavior.
Well,
I am an RD and we have in the past used the Feingold diet,
but it's now considered archaic..... It's great for those with true salicylate and dye allergies, but not with ADHD.
With ADHD, it's a brain firing issue. You can actually see the brain pattern differences. Check out the Amen Clinic page, and the ADHD forums etc on the net.
"The worried well" - I like that! There is a TV commercial now for Zymbalta (sp?) that asks, "Who suffers from depression?" ... and answers, "Everyone."
It also goes on to say that all of "Everyone's" aches and pains are caused by depression, too.
There you have it. All solved.
Two things that might be of interest: See the talk by Dr Raxlen on this page: http://www.ctlymedisease.org/videoclips.htm He talks about the neurological effects of Lyme disease. He's a shrink and has learned to check every patient for Lyme.
Second, look at: http://www.marshallprotocol.com/view_topic.php?id=7287&forum_id=2 and search for 'Mother of Matt', to see what dramatic improvement can be made when the neurologic troubles are caused by Lyme (or other autoimmune troubles), and addressed with an antibiotic protocol.
For example, one can compare TV of 25 years ago including commercials (and particularly commercials) in the United States with today.
One only need to go to the TV Museum in NYC or L.A. and punch up a few family shows from the 60s and 70s and watch for awhile.
Then go home and watch about two or three hours of 2007 American TV.
What will emerge is that we are (at least being told we are) SICK, SICK, SICK, SICK. In need of this pill. In need of that pill. In need of this drug, that drug. For this, and that and this and that. Sleeplessness, headaches, depression, erectile dysfunctions, acid stomach. Etc etc etc. We are the richest nation, yet our spot on the "World Happiness Index" is quite low, along with Japan, with all kinds of stresses, insomnia, overreating, and pill abuse (highest per capital purchaser of anti-depressants). You would have to be absolutely BLIND to not see that there is something wrong, and growingly so, with the United States and it's collective national psyche and national characteristics. We can blame many reasons for this, and debate them, but we are foolish if we ignore or dismiss the phenomena itself out of denial.
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