18 Areas of Improvement for Modern Medicine (Part 3)

Here's the last installment of 18 areas that modern medicine could use some improving!

13. We don’t recognize or understand the correct use of supplements to optimize health.

A lot of people think that we can get all of the nutrients that our bodies need from the food that we eat.  Well first off, we are not getting it from our food...most of us don't even eat what would traditionally be classified as food.  Secondly, our farming methods are extremely questionable.  The soil that the raw material that our "food" is made from has been so degraded from improper farming and the overuse of pesticides and herbicides.  Our seeds have been genetically modified.  We have over farmed our crops.  Studies show that our fruits and vegetables have less nutritional value than

14. We don’t recognize the importance of toxicity on our bodies nor know how to boost the body’s own detoxification systems.

Traditional Indian and Chinese medicine have been developed very much around the theory of toxicity and the need of balance in the body.  Modern medicine ignores this idea and we are getting sicker and sicker for not only that reason but also because our world is getting more toxic between our lifestyles and our environment. 

15. The Doctor patient relationship is not emphasized and the role of the patient as a partner in their own health care not encouraged.

How many of you can say you have a relationship with your doctor?  And how many of your doctors have asked you what you think about your health?  Nuf said.

16. The placebo has a negative connotation and ignored. The placebo is really the body healing itself and should be encouraged.

"“From 2001 to 2006, the percentage of new products cut from development after Phase II clinical trials, when drugs are first tested against placebo, rose by 20 percent. The failure rate in more extensive Phase III trials increased by 11 percent, mainly due to surprisingly poor showings against placebo." Wired Magazine (from this article)

17. The Drug Industry is too enmeshed in the medical system The Pharmaceutical Industry has WAY TOO MUCH power and is “bribing” Doctors to use their drugs and researchers to produce positive results for their drugs.

Big Pharma is mixed in with not only the medical system, but also the government.  How does it make you feel when your government sponsored insurance will pay for medicine but not preventative measures like massages or chiropractic adjustments?  How does it feel when you walk into your doctor's with an ailment, spend 5 minutes with him and walk out with nothing but a prescription for a drug you saw advertised on TV?  The issues with our medical system are much deeper than just the fact that our society is getting sicker.

18. More than 80 percent of all medical treatments used have been untested by rigorous peer reviewed study, yet the Medical establishment insists that alternative health treatments must undergo these before they can be used. The system of evaluation needs to be changed. 

As I've said alternative health treatments, which oftentimes originate with traditional practices, have far more validity and already gone through centuries of "testing."  Did you know that Iatrogenic Disease is the 3rd most fatal disease in the US?  Never heard of Iatrogenic Disease?  Me neither until yesterday.  Iatrogenic is defined as "induced in a patient by a physician's activity, manner, or therapy. Used especially to pertain to a complication of treatment."  Although this statistic includes  alternative medicine, complications from modern medicine make up the majority of these deaths.  Here are some really eye-opening info:

A study carried out in 1981 more than one-third of illnesses of patients in a university hospital were iatrogenic, nearly one in ten were considered major, and in 2% of the patients, the iatrogenic disorder ended in death. Complications were most strongly associated with exposure to drugs and medications. In another study, the main factors leading to problems were inadequate patient evaluation, lack of monitoring and follow-up, and failure to perform necessary tests.
In the United States, figures suggest estimated deaths per year of:

• 12,000 due to unnecessary surgery
• 7,000 due to medication errors in hospitals
• 20,000 due to other errors in hospitals
• 80,000 due to infections in hospitals
• 106,000 due to non-error, negative effects of drugs

Based on these figures, iatrogenesis may cause 225,000 deaths per year in the United States (excluding recognizable error). These figures are likely exaggerated, however, as they are based on recorded deaths in hospitals rather than in the general population. Even so, the large gap separating these estimates deaths from cerebrovascular disease would still suggest that iatrogenic illness constitutes the third leading cause of death in the United States, after deaths from heart disease and cancer. And these estimates are for fatalities only, and do not include nonfatal harms associated with disability or discomfort. (Source)

Have these points got you thinking about modern medicine?  Want to give me your two cents?

18 Areas of Improvement for Modern Medicine (Part 2)

Continuing on with the 18 Biggest Areas of Improvement with Modern Medicine (check out Part I if you missed it)...

(photo source: http://www.mitchellcommunityhealthpartnership.org)

7. We look for a magic bullet instead of all the possible factors that make up the total load which are causing the underlying imbalance. There is no understanding of the total load.

The magic bullet is often in the form of a pill. Strange that it sorta looks like a bullet too, huh?  People consider pills to be "medicine" that are the end all be all and solves all of their issues when in reality, pills mask the symptoms of the underlying issue.  

8. No belief that the body has a self-healing capacity and no ways to boost that capacity.

"Given half a chance, the body will heal itself."  I believe that my teacher, Joshua Rosenthal, says it best.  Time is often the best medicine.  Water is probably second on the list.  Our bodies are intelligent machines.  It  has adapted over hundreds and thousands of years to know when and how to heal cuts, self-regulate its temperature, and adjust our eyes to light (just to name a few examples).  Symptoms like fevers and headaches should not be dismissed as issues but as signals and clues from the body that something is not in balance.

9. Everyone with the same disease gets treated the same way, patient uniqueness ignored.

People are individuals and our bodies are governed by a whole mess of factors.  These include our parents, grandparents, genetics, ancestry, ethnicity, injuries we have experienced, bad habits we picked up, diet, and lifestyle. Our bodies are a combination of many factors and should be treated as individuals.  For instance, I learned today that Asians naturally have straighter spines which makes total sense because the average Asian's body type is different from that of a European or a Black person.  

10. We treat the disease, not the patient.

The cause of a disease, disorder, or discomfort is not the same for everyone, even though the body may have a similar reaction.  For instance, stress, hormonal imbalance, allergies, and dehydration are all possible causes of a migraine.  How can a cookie cutter prescription treat all of those causes?  The patient needs to be part of a health consultation, not just their symptoms.

11. There is a reliance on numbers and tests rather than how the patient is feeling and what is found on examination.

Patients are classified into certain categories according to their weight, BMI, cholesterol level, heart beat, blood pressure, x-ray results, biopsies and other "measures of health."  Just because someone may have a BMI of 26 does not necessarily mean that they are less healthy than someone with a BMI of 20.

12. We don’t take into account the importance of diet and lifestyle on health. How could we? We get a total of 6-8 hours of nutrition lectures in medical school.

This number absolutely ASTONISHES me!  What we eat and how we live are central to our health!  How can a doctor, someone that you entrust with your health, not have the knowledge to give you advice on eating and living healthier-the basics of living well?  I think that we need to increase knowledge of diet and lifestyle throughout our population starting with healthcare practitioners!

Stay tuned for the last installment tomorrow!

18 Areas of Improvement for Modern Medicine (Part 1)

Before I dive into today's post, I wanted to send out a huge, grateful "THANK YOU!" to the readers of my blog. I have over 1,000 views of this site in less than 2 months and it's all thanks to you! Spread the word as it's the thought that I am sharing my knowledge to avid readers that really keeps me coming back and posting. ♥

So I came across an awesome article that outlines the "18 Biggest Problems with Modern Medicine."  So we aren't too negative, we'll call these "problems" "areas of improvement" instead.  I have my personal views of modern medicine and I think it has its own merits but what I really liked about this article was what modern medicine didn't offer vs. traditional medicine.  Modern medicine has been around for centuries but traditional medicine has been developed over generations and generations.

Over the next three days, we'll review the 18 points that Dr. Lipman highlights in his article and I'll, of course, put in my two cents.

18 Biggest Problems with Areas of Improvement for Modern Medicine

(photo courtesy of care2.com)

What are the biggest problems you see with the way Medicine is practiced today? Here is my list, I am sure there are more:

1. Modern Western Medicine is based on a narrow “scientific” model, and arrogantly ignores and rejects therapies and entire medical systems that don’t fit this model.

Traditional therapies and medicine have been developed through a combination of instinct and trial and error since the dawn of time.  How can we  dismiss the intelligence of those systems that have treated the body for that time and allowed humans to advance to where we are today?

2. Doctors are trained in hospitals in “crisis care” medicine, not to take care of the “walking wounded,” which is the majority of people. They need to be trained to take of the “walking wounded” as well.

 I think that modern medicine has done wonders to help people survive unpredictable crises like amputations and car crashes.  They also help people survive strokes, cancer, and heart attacks, but they are not doing the back end work to prevent the strokes, cancer and heart attacks. We need doctors to care about preventative care!

3. Instead of treating the underlying causes or imbalances, Doctors often merely manage symptoms.

We are a group of "walking wounded" with many many bandages around all of our body parts.  Bandages are good if they allow the body to heal, but when they only mask and cover up the appearance of the disease, it doesn't mean the disease still isn't there!

4. Symptoms are seen as something to be suppressed rather than a pointer to some underlying imbalance.

The body is smart enough to give us signs/symptoms of when we are ill.  For instance, a fever indicates that something is wrong and the body is raising its body temperature to kill bacteria.  The fever is not the issue and should not be suppressed because it's there to help treat the ultimate problem.

5. Doctors see the human body as a machine with separate parts that can be treated independently rather than as an integrated whole. In addition the mind and body are also seen as separate independent entities and emotions are often ignored.

I've had my fair share of conversations about modern vs. traditional and this is my biggest argument.  The scientific method tries to scientifically "prove" the validity of theories by recreating the same reaction minus all variables.  This may work in proving gravity but with a human body, it is too complex to try to do this.  There are a billions of moving parts.  The body cannot be considered as a variable-free zone in scientific experiments.  There are still relationships in the body that doctor's have not discovered!  And when you throw the mind into the mix, it gets even more complicated. 

6. Man is not seen as part of nature, and how what happens in nature effects humans.

This is going to sound a little hippie, but "we are all one."  Our ancestors lived off of the earth and the earth provides us with the appropriate foods and tools to survive.  For example, after a long winter of eating heavy foods, the earth provides us with fresh, detoxifying greens as an indication that this is what we should eat to rid ourselves of the extra  pounds put on over the winter.  We cannot continue to dismiss nature in our everyday lives!

...to be continued