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Dumb Doctoring

By On · Add Comment · In acid reflux, doctor, heartburn, hip fractures, indigestion, lifestyle drugs, lifestyle habit, medication, proton pump inhibitors, smoking, symptoms

You want me to let you in on a little secret? It’s called dumb doctoring. Here’s how it works: Patient comes into doctors office with symptoms. The symptoms are of a normal physiological process gone awry. Doctor prescribes medication to relieve the symptoms, ignoring the cause (usually a faulty lifestyle habit). Patient gets relief as long as the medication is continued (lifestyle drug), but then develops more symptoms related to the long-term drug use. The patient goes back to the doctor with new symptoms…and gets more medication.

But where does it end?

Well let’s see. How about I finish the story like this: Um…study comes out…yeah, uh…showing that…the medication used to treat initial symptoms…uh, increased the risk of hip fracture! Yeah, that’s it–better than a freakin’ movie of the week, because IT”S REAL!

A recent study shows that women who take popular heartburn and indigestion medications (read: commonly prescribed) may put themselves at a higher risk for hip fractures. Long-term use of proton pump inhibitors (PPIs), may increase that risk by 35-50% for current or former smokers. Prilosec, Nexium and Prevacid are some examples of these heartburn/indigestion medications.

Can I give you some Prilosec?

Dr. Hamed Khalili, clinical and research fellow in gastroenterology at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, and lead researcher of the study says that postmenopausal women, particularly with a history of smoking should be closely monitored on these drugs. These results coincide with a recent FDA revision of labeling of PPIs “to incorporate concerns about a possible increase in risk of fractures with these drugs,” he said.

Khalili’s team looked at over 80,000 postmenopausal women over the course of eight years, from 2000 to 2008, and found that nearly 900 hip fractures occurred–with a 35% increased risk for women using PPIs compared to women who didn’t take the drugs. And the increased risk of fractures among women who smoked was even higher, reaching 50%. The longer a women took a PPI, the more her risk increased.

But back to dumb doctoring. The data showed that the number of women in the study taking PPIs increased from 6.7% in 2000 to 18.9% in 2008. Duh! Couldn’t the dumb doctors have gotten the numbers higher than that?! Consequently, the researchers expect hip fractures to rise even further in upcoming years.

What’s so laughable about this story is that it’s simply an everyday occurrence in the world of modern medicine. The story I described above is the way it’s done in 99% of medical practices in the country (g’head, prove me wrong). The only fools not seeing it are the doctors themselves; so blinded are they by their backwards ideology.

Listen, drugs are useful–but in moderation! Short-term drug use is best, Trapper–not a freakin’ decade-long habit. Duh! But that’s what we call dumb doctoring here in the western world. Most indigestion and heartburn issues are diet related. The body responds to foods it doesn’t agree with (or activities, like lying down immediately after eating, or smoking) with acid reflux. The long-term answer is not drugs! On the contrary, it’s finding the real cause and correcting it. But oh no…that would be far too much work, wouldn’t it?

And when patients return with more symptoms…? Why, let’s give ’em more drugs. May I repeat…DUH! And people of the general public you are not off the hook, either, because you don’t ask yourself why? Why does the body respond with heartburn for months…years? You think it’s normal? You think you just don’t have enough drugs in your body?

I know that not everybody cares about maintaining health–that many people want to just live their lives and deal with their illnesses as they come. I get it–I really do. But I also know that some of you reading this do care about your health, because it allows you to live more fully; it allows you to do the things you love. So this post is really for you. If you have symptoms lasting for more than a couple of months, then just understand that you are disrupting your body in one way or another. No biggie–find out what it is and make the necessary changes, that’s all. But understand that if you ignore it; or worse if you ignore it by quieting it with drugs, but never really solve the problem, then you will pay later. And not that much later, either.

As for you dumb doctors–whoops, your bad. Maybe no one will notice…

Hail My Symptoms

By On · Add Comment · In body aches, cough, fever, immune system, Innate Inteligence, medicine, microorganisms, sneezing, swine flu, symptoms

Well, I’m feeling under the weather today. Swine flu, I think. Again. Third time this year. I’m feverish, body aches, severe runny nose, sneezing, not sneezing but feeling like I have to (hate that), and slight chills.

But it just reminds me that my symptoms are welcome. Yes, welcome–thank god for symptoms–because they are my body’s way of protecting me from dangerous microorganisms.

The fever increases my body temperature to a level not safe for many microbes. The runny nose, sneezing, and cough expel any unwanted germ from my mucous membranes, where they like to attach before invading. The chills and body aches are the environment’s response to the ongoing war between my immune system and the invaders it’s fighting. Think of it as the beating any battlefield takes during wartime–Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima, a Sumo dohyō, you get it.

I’m not generally a drug-taking guy. Saying that, I will take a med if it’s useful to me at the time. So, you all remember when I cracked my tooth a year ago? Motrin’d it. Didn’t mess around–I was hurtin’ big time. Then there was the time I had appendicitis. Morphine’d it. Thank goodness for narcotics–they’re useful, no doubt. But I don’t run to antibiotics, or cold medicine, or anything like that when I’m sick because I’m really of the belief that the body knows what to do and when to do it–it has an incredible innate inteligence directing it. And I’m confident in my body’s Innate Intelligence to handle most things that come its way.

So I’m celebrating my innate ability to heal by embracing my body’s symptoms. I’m at work today and everybody coming in knows my status. If they are freaked out about it, they are not required to stay. I wash my hand one thousand times a day, anyway…but I double that when I’m symptomatic.

Anyway, I kind of value the times when I feel under the weather, because, frankly, it allows me to get some much needed rest, so I ain’t complaining. Five more hours and I’ll get to become more intimate with my bed.

Antibiotics for Viruses: Overprescribed and Useless

By On · Add Comment · In antibiotic resistant bacteria, antibiotics, bacteria, bacterial infections, common cold, health, medical, medicine, overprescribe, prescriptions, sinusitis, symptoms, viral infections, viruses
Something must be wrong with me–I love to see people squirm. Not just anybody, mind you, but mostly people who have lied, cheated, or acted hypocritically in one way or another. And I especially love to see it in people, or groups, that act arrogantly. C’mon, you know you love it too. We all get a sense of satisfaction when the chickens come home to roost, and these people have to squirm and lie some more to rationalize themselves. Pure comedy.

Take, for instance, the latest study to be published in the medical journal, The Lancet, which has reported that doctors routinely overprescribe antibiotics for viral infections. You don’t say? Really? Wow. Seems like that same idea was reported right here in this blog back in October. According to the study, 80% of sinusitis (inflammation of the sinuses) cases in the U.S. are prescribed antibiotics despite the fact that the majority are due to the common cold virus. And just like I said in my October post: Antibiotics don’t do diddly against viruses–they’re meant exclusively to fight bacterial infections.

OK, here’s the good part: The study’s authors then attempt to explain the inordinate amount of antibiotics prescriptions by stating that when the patient has had the symptoms for a long time, doctors assume it’s due to a bacterial infection….(Pause…silence)

Ah, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha….what a joke. Do any of you buy that baloney? Let me tell you the real deal (and this information comes straight from a medical doctor who taught me in chiropractic college): Doctors prescribes medications at nearly every doctor’s visit regardless of the situation because, and I quote, “the patient expects it”. That’s the truth in a nutshell: Doctors prescribe antibiotics full well knowing they’re useless against viral infections, precisely because the patient expects something, not because it’s the right thing to do, but because they know the patient wants it and will go somewhere else to get it. In other words, there ain’t much of a market for non-prescribing M.D.s, period.

The only reason this study has come out at all is because of the explosion of antibiotic resistant bacteria that have penetrated our world, otherwise, trust me, the practice would continue. Antibiotic resistant bacteria is a growing and severely dangerous phenomenon. There is no longer time to play around, so now the medical community is asking how. But, unfortunately, you’ll never get to the truth by hiding it, or in the case of these authors’ conclusions, by asking the wrong questions.

I’m going to end this by being as fair as I can to my medical brothers and sisters–it’s not totally their fault. Overprescribing antibiotics really is a consequence of what the public wants, and demands–like most things–and people really do yearn for a magic bullet. But what makes the medical clinician at least equally responsible is that they know better. It may be true that a medical business which doesn’t prescribe medicines will soon have to close its doors; however, it may be time to start pushing a more health-responsible agenda, which would be to teach patients that their bodies have everything necessary to fight the common cold virus, and that antibiotics are unnecessary, and useless, in these cases. Still–I just love to see them squirm.

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