A while ago, I had a little rant on healthcare being a misnomer or oxymoron. Whatever you want to call it, I still contend modern day healthcare is anything but ‘caring for our health’.
At best, it is treating symptoms. Symptoms that are likely showing up from an overlooked root cause. In some cases, treatment can achieve some recovery. However, in a lot situations, those symptoms are treated with a prescription. Easy, peazy, right?
Maybe not so easy. Many prescriptions create side effects themselves. So your first prescription may create another issue in the body and you need another medication to treat the new symptom, and so the cycle of medication management begins.
If you aren’t managing your own health proactively, it’s very likely your doctor visits will become prescription checks.
The original ailment may seem under control but it now requires more medication to ease new symptoms. At the base level of this process, you have become an addict. You are addicted to drugs. It doesn’t look like that image of what a junkie looks like. You don’t feel like an addict, but your body is ‘jonesing’ for its medication.
Think about it. They aren’t illegal or illicit. Insurance helps cover the cost. It was prescribed by a doctor. None of those details matter. What I wish more people understood is it is not necessary for your body to be dependent on man-made chemical substances to treat an operating system developed by God.
Every person who’s ever been a patient should consider the goal of medical appointments. I started asking myself some hard doctor questions. Is my doctor trying to find the root cause of [my complaint]? Does my doctor ask about my diet and recommend cutting our sugar? Does my doctor ask how often I eat out? Do they ask about my sleep patterns and stress? Do they talk about my exercise habits?
Are they encouraging me to practice healthier habits and suggest how to eliminate any medication or just adjusting the dosage?
In my case, a cholesterol medicine showdown of 2019 led me to finding a new doctor. I’ve been on thyroid medication since about 2004, with occasionally adjusting the levels. He saw an elevated total cholesterol number of two hundred twelve and immediately called in a ‘statin’. The Cleveland Clinic recommends statins only when diet and exercise did not reduce the cholesterol. The NHS had this to say and my cynical side note is that YOU should read the information leaflet, because they are NOT going to warn you of some things.
The doctor who called in statin for me, was impressed that it worked so well when he next tested my cholesterol. The statin hadn’t worked. I didn’t take it. It just felt off for me to take a prescription for cholesterol when I knew how many eggs, cheeseburgers and shrimp I ate. I cut back on those and stopped drinking soda regularly.
My doctor never asked or recommended this though. At the time, I was forty-five, active and in overall good health taking one synthetic hormone for hypothyroidism. Another year passed, and my cholesterol had crept back up to two hundred eight and the doctor called in a statin. Once again not asking about diet or exercise.
As it turns out, my hypothyroidism wasn’t controlled very well, which can lead to elevated cholesterol levels. When my new doctor shared that with me and said he would suggest Red Yeast Rice if we couldn’t get it under control naturally, I knew I’d found the right doctor.
My previous doctor didn’t ask about my diet. He didn’t make the thyroid and cholesterol connection. He didn’t suggest exercise, he just prescribed! It’s time we question our doctors.
They learned to pass the medical boards years ago. It’s an achievement to become a doctor but that doesn’t mean I have to blindly trust everything they say. Sorry, not sorry. . . doctors don’t always know best, they just follow a pre-written protocol. In a profit driven, hospital-owned medical office quick visits and prescriptions are the preferred protocol.
Think about how much time we get to spend with our doctors, it’s short. They seem to want to chat quickly, write a prescription and on to the next patient. Am I right? Too many doctors are cogs in the BigHealth wheel and can’t practice medicine for trying to reach a profitability quota, not quality of care.
I ‘met’ a doctor on LinkedIn who consistently criticized his own profession. He realized doctors hadn’t been making people well, they were just making them functional but never getting to the root cause of illness and curing disease.
He went on a mission to address and change that. His name was Baber Ghouri. He regularly shared experiences on how standard of care was profitable for insurance carriers and hospital systems. He talked about over-prescribed patients and the things his practice did to help them eliminate medications. He often apologized to the general public for doctors not having kept up with good nutrition education, in favor of attending large medical conferences sponsored by drug makers.
Then in Fall of 2020, he became outspoken on the way the covid virus was handled. He disappeared from the site, but soon a ‘Bobber Gory’ appeared. He’d found a way to keep preaching praises of advocating for your own health. He continued to berate the way the ‘system’ had driven doctors to just follow orders. He was speaking for health, not for pharmaceutical profit. That profile vanished too. Censorship is real.
Through Baber, I found an entire community of healthcare professionals who questioned the banishment of early treatment drugs. They asked questions about the billions of dollars pharma companies have spent in adverse reaction suits, tagging the executives. One guy would go all data scientist on the VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System) data and question how things were being reported, or not reported. Many of them have been banned on LinkedIn, others fought it and have returned, but what a shame they had to fight for the right to speak truth about our health.
The world is funded by Big Pharma. If you haven’t noticed that, go back to the Oscars and see who all that was ‘presented by’. Healthy lifestyles would save in medical spending and improve lives overall. But healthy people do not generate profit for healthcare corporations or pharmaceutical companies.
Who does profit from a population that makes healthier life choices? We do. Our siblings do. Our parents and children do, uncles, aunts, coworkers and church family. Everyone around us benefits when we are healthier. Because when we are healthier, we are happier.
#Lifestyleasmedicine is a trending hashtag I love. Millions of others agree. I have read so many stories about people getting out of the medical system and never being more well. I’m not 100% where I want to be, but I’m so much closer than I was in 2019. Sleep, stress, diet, social connections and exercise are all considered medicine in a lifestyle approach.
If we don’t switch to a more lifestyle based approach, then we must at least question the prescriptions and side effects of any medication suggestion. It’s okay to question doctors. If you don’t get answers or you feel brushed aside, it’s okay to change doctors. They are supposed to be caring for oour health, which the key component of is our bodies.
Our bodies are a one-shot deal. We do not get any more. Taking the best care with it, really is up to us. That doctor that thought I needed to be on medication isn’t going to follow me around and bat cheeseburgers out of my hands. If my health is to be, it really is up to me.
It’s time to find a functional doctor, wellness or health coach and start making choices that turn your lifestyle into the medicine that will restore your health.
Nurture 
Leave a comment