Nature VS Modern Medicine and weeding out what truly works.

[Lexicon]

My vote: Science trumps turnips all day. Beets and apples won't keep you from having eczema hunny, sorry.

[MENTION=4939]kyuuei[/MENTION] - if you haven't seen Penn & Teller's show, Bullshit! - you definitely need to. Specifically, the episode entitled Organic Food is Bullshit.
It's somewhat relevant to this thread, in terms of people blindly worshipping "ALL NATURAL" without exploring studies or really analyzing.. anything.

I think *some* natural remedies are useful, but I always look into articles/actual studies on the stuff before using it. And, I go over it with my physician. My doctor gets paid for my appointment no matter what, she doesn't care about any 'big pharma' conspiracy nonsense. She tells it like it is.

A good example of a natural remedy my doctor encouraged I use in place of daily NSAIDs for joint pain is turmeric. Just can't take it before surgeries since it increases bleeding. My dermatologist has also applauded the use of witch hazel. Again, it's really important to discuss this stuff with someone well-versed in medicine- like your primary care physician- not simply believing everything you read that goes counter to modern medicine because you hate The Man. /sigh

It boggles my mind how people can even publish books on so many garbage holistic remedies. I wonder how many people have died over their willful ignorance in this context. Actually, no.. I don't wonder. I don't think I care enough to know, really. In the end people will believe what they need to believe, survival be damned. Perhaps it's simply natural selection at work.

 

[kyuuei]

My vote: Science trumps turnips all day. Beets and apples won't keep you from having eczema hunny, sorry.

[MENTION=4939]kyuuei[/MENTION] - if you haven't seen Penn & Teller's show, Bullshit! - you definitely need to. Specifically, the episode entitled Organic Food is Bullshit.
It's somewhat relevant to this thread, in terms of people blindly worshipping "ALL NATURAL" without exploring studies or really analyzing.. anything.

I think *some* natural remedies are useful, but I always look into articles/actual studies on the stuff before using it. And, I go over it with my physician. My doctor gets paid for my appointment no matter what, she doesn't care about any 'big pharma' conspiracy nonsense. She tells it like it is.

A good example of a natural remedy my doctor encouraged I use in place of daily NSAIDs for joint pain is turmeric. Just can't take it before surgeries since it increases bleeding. My dermatologist has also applauded the use of witch hazel. Again, it's really important to discuss this stuff with someone well-versed in medicine- like your primary care physician- not simply believing everything you read that goes counter to modern medicine because you hate The Man. /sigh

It boggles my mind how people can even publish books on so many garbage holistic remedies. I wonder how many people have died over their willful ignorance in this context. Actually, no.. I don't wonder. I don't think I care enough to know, really. In the end people will believe what they need to believe, survival be damned. Perhaps it's simply natural selection at work.

Yeah, I definitely use a lot of hippy stuff in my everyday life. Witch hazel is cheaper and more effective than fancy expensive toners at sephora. But dermatologists back that shit up, which is mostly why I switched. There's nothing wrong with someone rich, luxurious, and with nothing to do all day but eat to go on a 100% raw vegan diet like FullyRaw Kristina.. she's under the care of doctors and actually tests that shit. However, most of us do not have that same money, time, and dedication, and thus when I thought I was super smart and tried it, I actually gained weight and felt like garbage and couldn't figure out why I didn't look/feel awesome nor had color changing eyes.

I'll definitely check that shit out though. Reminds me of the sarcastic "natural foods" logo commercial made by fooderinas.

There's stuff that's just stupid--like organic cow's milk vs regular cow's milk (there's no real damn difference. Even with the antibiotics.) that's just a ploy to get money because people want to do the right thing for their health.

Your post reminded me of this site:

403 Forbidden

I went there just to check it out--it's a really super cool place. When no one else is there. It's also definitely a cult. Purple might have used to be the color of royalty, but now it only means two things in those amounts: there's a high school/college football day, or you're in a building ran by a cult.

 

[ceecee]

Did you watch "The Notebook"? I'm pretty sure the lady was diagnosed before she died. Anyway, nice talking to you.

Alzheimer's Disease can't be definitively diagnosed until after death. Probability of Alzheimer's? Yes. Not the same thing.

 

[Tellenbach]

So how accurate are Alzheimers Disease diagnosis? I had to find out, so I dug up this little gem:

Accuracy of the Clinical Diagnosis of Alzheimer Disease at National Institute on Aging Alzheimer's Disease Centers, 2005–2010

Sensitivity estimates have ranged between 41% and 100% (median of 87%), while specificity has ranged between 37% and 100% (median of 58%).

Sensitivity is a measure of how accurately you correctly identify someone as having the disease; specificity is how accurately you identify someone as not having the disease. 41% is lousy; 100% is a pipe dream; the 87% is closer to reality but I suspect it's too optimistic as well.

Still, the actual accuracy rate is irrelevant to my point that most doctors aren't paying attention to the scientific literature on topics like preventing Alzheimers.

Link between vitamin D, dementia risk confirmed

The team studied elderly Americans who took part in the Cardiovascular Health Study. They discovered that adults in the study who were moderately deficient in vitamin D had a 53 per cent increased risk of developing dementia of any kind, and the risk increased to 125 per cent in those who were severely deficient.

Similar results were recorded for Alzheimer's disease, with the moderately deficient group 69 per cent more likely to develop this type of dementia, jumping to a 122 per cent increased risk for those severely deficient.

 

[Mole]

The "anti-vaccination epidemic" has been in the news lately: Doctors are saying that refusal to vaccinate is on the rise and is causing unnecessary illness and deaths among children.

Yes, just yesterday we had a little girl die from whooping cough and she wasn't vaccinated.

 

[johnnyyukon]

Weed.

 

[Thalassa]

Nature is full of medicine and Western medicine is full of mistakes. Trusting innovation for its own sake is equally idiotic and outdated. In the 50s people thought science and plastic would save us all...and look at the unintended consequences it has wreaked. So a balanced approach is absolutely necessary. The cause of a lot of modern ailments I'd poor diet, lack of exercise, lack of sleep and over exposure to technology, which leads to depression and anxiety if not used in balance. It's all about the balance. Technology is good, vaccines obviously save children, but Western medicine is also the fuck hell out of control, it's largely reduced to pharmaceutical marketing, and many minor ailments and general health are better served with natural antibiotics like raw garlic and raw honey (still treats strep and MRSA and doesn't cause mutations). Same with treatment of tumors with some natural substances, when it's basically been proven in many cases chemotherapy just expedites death. But some modern medicine does save lives, naltrexone is practically a miracle substance used to treat a variety of conditions, and I think we should all be happy to not have polio.

 

[senza tema]

So I don't think eating right will fix cancer and/or ebola single handedly but I also wholeheartedly believe that people would be healthier and happier and need fewer multivitamins if they ate less over-salted, over-sweetened, over-fried food and more fruits and vegetables and yogurt ... and, you know, walked places a little more.

My family is into eastern medicine like ayurveda and holistic healing so I guess I was brought up that way. I have great respect and admiration for science and medical research but I do fear that the health market is captive to big pharma to a large extent.

 

[Thalassa]

My vote: Science trumps turnips all day. Beets and apples won't keep you from having eczema hunny, sorry.

[MENTION=4939]kyuuei[/MENTION] - if you haven't seen Penn & Teller's show, Bullshit! - you definitely need to. Specifically, the episode entitled Organic Food is Bullshit.
It's somewhat relevant to this thread, in terms of people blindly worshipping "ALL NATURAL" without exploring studies or really analyzing.. anything.

I think *some* natural remedies are useful, but I always look into articles/actual studies on the stuff before using it. And, I go over it with my physician. My doctor gets paid for my appointment no matter what, she doesn't care about any 'big pharma' conspiracy nonsense. She tells it like it is.

A good example of a natural remedy my doctor encouraged I use in place of daily NSAIDs for joint pain is turmeric. Just can't take it before surgeries since it increases bleeding. My dermatologist has also applauded the use of witch hazel. Again, it's really important to discuss this stuff with someone well-versed in medicine- like your primary care physician- not simply believing everything you read that goes counter to modern medicine because you hate The Man. /sigh

It boggles my mind how people can even publish books on so many garbage holistic remedies. I wonder how many people have died over their willful ignorance in this context. Actually, no.. I don't wonder. I don't think I care enough to know, really. In the end people will believe what they need to believe, survival be damned. Perhaps it's simply natural selection at work.

While I agree with a lot of your post, and it sounds like you have a good doctor if he or she recommended nutrition and natural options in conjunction with Western medicine, Penn and Teller is a biased source, they choose "experts" who share their far right libertarian views, so while some of it might be interesting, they are not a reliable source because of their obvious libertarian slant and have actually had to publicly apologize for at least one episode of their show. Organic food in reality is about half necessary, there are some food where it doesn't make a difference and some where it does.

They are on par with Fox News or the Guardian (the traditional conservative and liberal shitholes of insane political bias). They cherry pick people who will back their fiscal view of the world.

I understand that "all organic" may be extremist and unfounded, but their show in reality disproved absolutely nothing. They are entertainers, they set up the show to be entertaining and find ways to win. Anyone could do that if they don't use multiple sources, so they are right maybe half and half, they aren't all bad, but they are not an objective scientific source.

 

[Thalassa]

I don't think you can make this claim since I'm not aware of any human baby/toddler toxicity studies with ethylmercury. What may be a toxic dose for a child may be completely safe for an adult.



But you can make this argument with car safety or melamine laced dog food from China. I don't understand all the anger directed toward her for wanting a safer product.



This is a current scientific controversy. No one can say what role, if any, aluminum plays with Alzheimers.



We do know that essential hypertension (hypertension that's not caused by some other disease) is caused by a high sodium to potassium ratio. There are many papers on this.



This was a three year study. They surveyed several thousand people and then divided them into the supplement group and the non-supplement group. After three years, they found that those people taking vitamins C & E had 70% less Alzheimers.

I completely agree with you. Just because the FDA says this or that honestly means very little to me when other countries have banned or accepted a particular substance that ours will not. Multiple sources and perspective is key. Some people say, oh organic farming isn't necessary because of xyz, but the truth is organic farming is less cruel to animals, it is also better for wildlife, and preserves the integrity of the land, not to mention all those pesky links to cancer and infertility from synthetic pesticides. ..people say well we can't feed the world organically ..but that is because the world is already overpopulated and overdeveloped, not because organic farming isn't actually better for some crops and especially with livestock. There are very particular gmos that cause allergic reactions. Does that mean non organic food will immediately kill you or that all people have these allergies? No. But for goodness sakes there's a middle ground, there is not just one extreme or the other.

Same with vaccines. ...it's pretty plain that large numbers of children died before the age of six before vaccines. ...so vaccines aren't to be rejected per se, but why are there so many autistic children now...and is death actually nature's way, but no one wants to say things like that.

I stopped using deodorant with aluminum in it because of breast cancer risk in my family. My mother actually had cysts in her breasts before she ceased using aluminum based deodorant. Now she has no further problems.

I honestly feel like people want to trust doctors and science the way they used to trust religion. It's understandable but needs to be brought back into a more moderate phase when people were rightly skeptical.

 

[Thalassa]

[MENTION=4939]kyuuei[/MENTION]

I think you are too naive of a singular academic world view if you don't get that doctors can fail exactly because they went to school for twelve years and are made to think one certain way. A plastic surgeon friend told me it's not so much that doctors are brilliant but just that they're good at taking tests, and many honest academics and lawyers have conceded to me or by their own admission volunteered the fact that they were basically brain washed to think one certain way. So even the most sincere of physicians need to be questioned by other scientists and the general public for the validity of their beliefs.

Plus you must realize that some people are totally in it for the money. A dentist got my sister hooked on pain pills.

So yeah...some doctors do their best, some don't, and some don't even know how to consider information outside of their training.

Note though that I agree with you about the most hysterical of the nay sayers, because obviously that's not rational or truly informed.

 

[Thalassa]

You don't know this at all; it's a guess on your part.



You don't know this either. The only way to tell if mercury is harmful is to do experiments with young primates (monkeys). At least one study has shown that the mercury, at the concentrations used in human vaccines, does cross the blood brain barrier of monkeys and accumulates in their brain.



I support discovering the truth; you support sticking your head in the sand and pretending that problems don't exist.



We can do it with baby chimps. The key word here is "most". Why wouldn't you want to make sure the vaccine is safe for "all" babies?



How do you know that she's not just a concerned parent? You are aware that her son has autism, right?



The difference is that aluminum poisoning shares many of the same symptoms as Alzheimers and produces the same tangles of brain proteins. Also, carbs are needed in the body and aluminum is not.



We do know. Essential hypertension is caused by an imbalance of sodium to potassium which leads to increased calcium inside cells which then results in the contraction of smooth muscle cells in the arteries. You're wrong about the sodium intake. Go look up some of the studies. Populations that have a 1:2 sodium to potassium in their urine have almost no hypertension.



It's done using surveys. You ask people if they have Alzheimers.



Is that also why paint manufacturers don't put lead in their paints? No, that was done because lead in paint was banned due to public pressure.

I want to touch base on what you said about people who have virtually no salt or sodium in their diets....similar things can be said about other cultures where sugar is seldom used or overall nutrition is better. ..the people lack many of our health problems and some cultures actually live longer than others because of their diet, etc...people who are serious about natural medicine are trusting thousands of years of certain remedies working, for example in Asian cultures. It's not like it's "magical thinking" ...it's ancient wisdom. Western thinking is very conceited and black and white. It has its place, to be sure, thank God for some development of Western medicine, but Western medicine and pharmaceutical companies are babies compared to natural medicine that gives people long healthy lives in certain cultures.

I think both are needed, that Western medicine may pick up where Eastern medicine cannot, but Western medicine is still so new it actually makes people sicker part of the time.

 

[Thalassa]

What's even more of a joke are these diets that people cling to. I'd say there's a higher degree of bullshit in theorhetical fields, but with medicine, generally there has to be significant clinical trials. With something like particle physics, even though the people are highly intelligent, it's easy to make postulates because they can't really be tested currently.

You will certainly find wild claims made by PhDs, but for every one of those, I'd imagine there are 30 or so other anecdotes that didn't work or were harmful. It may be very well that he found a natural cure, but this hasn't been as researched as the substances he claims to rid of. In many cases, because of lack of specificity (e.g. instead of a chemical made to go through one or two layers of skin) other problems may arise. The diets I mention, prior to some investigation, were thought anecdotally to be healthy, but many weren't.


I can also think of lobotomies as an example of when anecdotes trumped "peer-review." In fact, many question if the creator's Nobel Prize should be revoked. There was no real research for its benefit at all, but a couple of doctors believed it worked, going by anecdotes of a few "40+" year practicing doctors. It went on for years, purely by anecdote, until studies started showing that it really just removed all but most of psychic life. This went on for a decade or so, with anecdotes of calmer, "happier" patients. Blood-letting, at a time where significant studies were not done, was also at once anecdotally linked to curing disease.

Also, some of these natural products are unregulated. Some may contain high degrees of "natural" compounds at contaminating doses because there's no real restriction on them.

Sometimes all there is is anecdotal evidence, but I'd sway in the direction of more research, even with people armed with some morre initials behind their names. I suppose we are just of differing opinions, however, as I think we've gotten each other's points by now.

Since aspirin was made from willow bark and lithium is a naturally occurring salt, and opiates also occur in nature, what is so terribly strange about exploring and testing other herbs and substances? Nothing. Except pride and profit. If it's a synthetic chemical the pharmacist or doctor gets to fulfill his or her god complex instead of accepting it as a fact of nature, and turns more profit. Valium costs more (much more) than valerian root.

I know that many of your posts empathize with skeptics and naturalists, but you still seem to trust biochemistry over herbalism, and that is largely politically motivated by the physicians and chemists themselves. They want to be our new priests, and failing that, want to turn a profit.

And I am all for that when it comes to brain surgery or modern treatments for schizophrenia, but frankly they over prescribe antibiotics, Ritalin, pain killers, anti depressants...I mean ....obviously the motive here is pride and profit.

Not that holistic practitioners aren't occasionally quacks too, but a lot of home remedies. ..work.

Doctors are often guilty now of inducing labor and practicing unnecessary C sections. They tried to do it to my sister, and she was like. ...FUCK YOU...because it was literally the day before her due date and she wasn't high risk. She gave birth naturally to a healthy baby boy yesterday.

We have to hold these people accountable and keep them in their place. They're public servants, not gods.

 

[kyuuei]

I think you are too naive of a singular academic world view if you don't get that doctors can fail exactly because they went to school for twelve years and are made to think one certain way. A plastic surgeon friend told me it's not so much that doctors are brilliant but just that they're good at taking tests, and many honest academics and lawyers have conceded to me or by their own admission volunteered the fact that they were basically brain washed to think one certain way. So even the most sincere of physicians need to be questioned by other scientists and the general public for the validity of their beliefs.

I am no more naive about being a doctor than naturalists are about herbal medicine. I believe in what doctors do, and the work they put into their careers and what they go through. And I'll be the first to tell you I've had some awesome horror stories with doctors nearly killing my mother with one-tracked thinking.

With that said, I'm not naive to say that doctors have to really want to be doctors. If people go in it for the money, it's because money is that strong of a motivator. The profession is a hard one, and 9 out of 10 doctors right now do Not recommend young people go to medical school because of the work load and craziness.

Yeah, they have to be good at taking tests. But they have to be good at a LOT of things to make those tests happen. Medical school is the first step. You spend years and years working under the supervision of other doctors to become a great one.

I'm doing the barney version of medical school right now with nursing school. And Yeah, some of those girs SUCK at their job in reality and are great at tests. But those girls also will gain that experience with time and effort. No one starts out great at their jobs. And you can't expect an entire population to be stellar. It's not naive, however, to say OVERALL doctors are not money-hungry lazy test-takers that can't think outside the box. That is just as naive, and a lot less founded in actual experience.

Plus you must realize that some people are totally in it for the money. A dentist got my sister hooked on pain pills.

First. A dentist is not a doctor. It's a god damn dentist. And second, your sister got your sister hooked on pain pills. I don't think that dentist was exactly forcing those down her throat. She could have decided to stop those at any time. I don't see what any of that has to do with the fact that I think people are giving doctors and modern medicine an unnecessary bad rep lately with not a whole lot of evidence backing it up, and that I think people are trying to take modern medicine 2 steps backwards with their hippy bullshit.


I'm almost positive somewhere in this thread I mentioned bad doctors definitely exist, so I don't see why you think I'm thinking doctors are all magical life-making machines of salvation. I just think that the stuff they do wrong makes more sense than hippies going bananas over vaccines because a celebrity thinks they're not cool. That hippy shit tends to catch fire like crazy with the internet, and before you know it, people are doing unsanitary and stupid things in the name of being 'natural' and pretending they're not super hypocritical the whole way home.

 

[johnnyyukon]

Man, this thread is still poppin' off yo.

So haven't read the whole thing, but there's arguments on both sides. Did you ever see Fat, Sick, & Nearly Dead?

100 pounds overweight, loaded up on steroids and suffering from a debilitating autoimmune disease, Joe Cross is at the end of his rope and the end of his hope. In the mirror he saw a 310lb man whose gut was bigger than a beach ball and a path laid out before him that wouldn't end well- with one foot already in the grave, the other wasn't far behind.

With doctors and conventional medicines unable to help long-term, Joe turns to the only option left, the body's ability to heal itself. He trades in the junk food and hits the road with juicer and generator in tow, vowing only to drink fresh fruit and vegetable juice for the next 60 days.

On one hand, it's very easy to dismiss a lot of western medicine as they usually throw pills at whatever ailments you have. Then throw pills at the side effects of the first pills, and more pills after that. I've seen it happen to family members. Sister with breast cancer, sister-in-law with breast cancer, and mom with seemingly never ending UTIs (cancer in remission using pretty western medicine).

And my sister used to get these chronic migraines for years before she got cancer and also was like having a BM ONCE A WEEK. I was somewhat flabbergasted that neither she nor her husband seemed to think this was a MAJOR problem that needed addressing.

Mom's bathroom cabinet looked like a pharmacy.

NOT saying that any of my relatives should have stopped taking pills and chemo and stuck to, say, a celery and carrot diet. But I think you can use both western and alternative medicines in conjunction.

The guy in the documentary was completely healed after his crazy ass juice diet of 60 days. You simply can't ignore stories like that.

He's australian but strangely met a guy in Arkansas (my home state) on his travels with the same "incurable" autoimmune disease he had and he helped out and was cured by the juice diet. It was somewhat of a miracle to see him go from 400+ lbs, alone in his apartment, depressed, sitting for up to 14 hours in a semi-truck drop down, never getting to see his son cuz he was so exhausted all the time, to a healthy 200lbs and beginning to rebuild a more normal diet and exercise regime, and more active with his son.

And there's other examples, plenty.

Like I said, you just can't ignore the effects of alternative diets like that.

I told my mom 2 years ago, when the very painful UTIs and infections of the digestive tract were chronic that she should also stop eating pizza and cheetos (she wasn't a pig, but little indulgences). And that she should incorporate some fruit/vegetable juices/smoothies. Also that she may have a gluten intolerance based on things she said. It didn't take.

Well 2 years later she says "I think I may have a gluten intolerance." haha, geez, better late than never, I guess. Plus after seeing me use my blend tec almost daily, she asked how it worked and stuff and my parents bought one and my mom has told me it helps a lot.

I tried every diet in the book when I was younger, more out of curiosity and also because I seemed really tired all the time for a phase. My family thought I was crazy, but I'm much more balanced now, but it's funny to see them talk about their very sick friends doing the same thing and my parents themselves utilizing some of the same diets.

Anyway, I think every case is different but the "here's some pills" "cure" most western doctors prescribe needs a rehaul. Not that medication isn't a miracle of science on it's own. VERY often you do need pills and they can literally keep you alive.

But in the east, they don't just ask what your symptoms are, but what your diet is, what kind of exercise you get. They look for the root rather than treating just the symptoms.

Eventually they may ask that stuff in the west, but it's a pharmaceutical/surgery motivated industry. Which is kinda too bad. But it also doesn't mean you should throw the baby out with the bath water.

p.s. and a lot of the medicinal marijuana advocates I know are just lazy ass stoners.

 

[johnnyyukon]

[MENTION=4939]kyuuei[/MENTION]


Plus you must realize that some people are totally in it for the money. A dentist got my sister hooked on pain pills.

Well I don't think the blame lies with your sister. At the worst, you could say she was just ignorant of the power of the pills. But really, she had just put her faith in a healer (strange that it was a dentist) and just did what the doctor ordered.

I told a story of when I almost broke my hands (don't punch holes in your walls, mmmmkay?? check out my blog for the story and pics and xrays if you're bored) and though the pain wasn't excruciating, my doctor gave me 60 of the strongest percocets. Normally that amount is prescribed to bone cancer patients according to my brother, The Surgeon. Which, if I hadn't flushed them after 5 days, I would have gone through some bad withdrawals. But I also know a lot about medications.

 

[kyuuei]

Anyway, I think every case is different but the "here's some pills" "cure" most western doctors prescribe needs a rehaul. Not that medication isn't a miracle of science on it's own. VERY often you do need pills and they can literally keep you alive.

The thing is, society wants to blame the doctors for that--but society shapes things heavily. Doctors are that way because SOCIETY wanted them to be that way. No one wants to hear, "exercise, eat right, maybe take a more extreme diet, etc.etc." My father will take pills faithfully everyday if it means he gets to eat salt with dinner. Which, he shouldn't be, but he won't give that up. My father would rather feel lousy and mask it with pills than fix his lifestyle. And sooo many Americans are like that. It's a mentality fostered generations and generations back. It's our way of doing things. We want instant results. And doctors have been under pressure for far far too long to make those results happen. No doctor ever has said, "sure, eat whatever you want, being fat isn't bad for you actually." Of course they advocate those things. But do people want to be nagged about going in for treatment each time? No. They'll stop going. Doctors are sort of forced to shut up and try to fit things in where they can.

It isn't ALL society, but it most certainly is not all doctors, and it is not a mentality doctors fostered into creation.

Well I don't think the blame lies with your sister. At the worst, you could say she was just ignorant of the power of the pills. But really, she had just put her faith in a healer (strange that it was a dentist) and just did what the doctor ordered.

I told a story of when I almost broke my hands (don't punch holes in your walls, mmmmkay?? check out my blog for the story and pics and xrays if you're bored) and though the pain wasn't excruciating, my doctor gave me 60 of the strongest percocets. Normally that amount is prescribed to bone cancer patients according to my brother, The Surgeon. Which, if I hadn't flushed them after 5 days, I would have gone through some bad withdrawals. But I also know a lot about medications.

I got about 30 from my dentist when I got my wisdom teeth pulled--I only needed 2. And again, doctors are over-prescribing and it's a problem. But it is also not a problem doctors alone created. Doctors have been sued for a long time now for under-medicating patients and for not managing pain properly. They'd rather prescribe too much than not enough.

I dunno what dentist the sister went to, or what crack she was prescribed, but anything past a day or two of pain management is too much.

People HAVE to be proactive about their OWN health. You threw those pills away... you questioned the prescription and you decided something on your own as an adult. You also got a second opinion on the topic from another professional. Those things are simple, and effective, measures that any adult can take for themselves to protect their own health. You don't follow anyone blindly. If I had, my mother might have died from her disease, and I'd have had an unnecessary surgery on my hips that would have caused me to be unable to run for the rest of my life.

You can't blindly follow people. But if someone offers you too much of something, and you eat it all and get upset you had too much, is it really their fault? If you don't have suspicions and listen to your own body, why do you expect other people to do it for you? I'm not saying her sister's a bad person or anything.. but she didn't make good choices and decisions in regards to her own health. She didn't question. She just said, "Oh, hey, yeah sure" and kept on going. That isn't really the dentist's fault. You might could say he's a jerk that overprescribes, but really people's health is in their hands.

Doctors are people. They cannot know everything, and more and more those people are specializing--meaning they KNOW they don't and can't know everything in medicine, and so they pick niches to know and master versus being a jack of all trades. Nurses are overwhelmingly becoming the gatekeepers of medicine, directing them to doctors depending on what they notice. At the end of the day, if you're not an educated person, you're at a disadvantage in life... In all aspects. And medicine is one of those aspects. That's just how it is. If you are educated, and you don't take measures to further gain insight and utilize resources.. what can I say?

But we live in a society where it is the doctor's fault. I got angry and blamed the doctor I was taking my mother to because she wasn't listening to us. At all. She wasn't seeing what I saw. I had a gut feeling I was right, and I went with it, and asked another professional doctor opinion, who lead me to another doctor that saved her life before we lost her because she had a rare disease that hardly anyone has heard of before. The reality is... I should have listened to myself sooner. I should have kept asking questions, pressuring the subject. I learned from that.. and when I had my appointments for my hips, instead of jumping into surgery I went to another hospital, got evaluated from the ground up, and found out what I truly have wrong with me.. and that surgery would not have helped. Those doctors are not BAD doctors. They help people all the time. But they're human. They can only know so much. My mother's 'bad' doctor was a total hippy and didn't think she had anything wrong with her except that she needed vegetables. My mother would have definitely died. My other doctor didn't believe in physical therapy long term as a cure for issues with the joints. And that's fine, there's not enough evidence to prove him wrong yet. But. It's up to me to take my health into my own hands. I can't blame them for doing their job the best they knew how at the time.


I'm doing my health treatment the hippy way so far, and that's working for me because there's evidence it works... and my mother couldn't do that, and there's no evidence that lack of vegetables were her problem.

I'm saying evidence is everything. I think hippies are too ready to believe anything pinterest will feed them. I think people blindly following anything is a stupid decision. I'm almost positive I've said as much of all of this before on the site, and probably even here in the thread.



But there are definitely more and more people getting high and mighty about 'farmacy' and healthy lifestyles and shit as if it goes against what doctors want. And it isn't. At all.

 

[johnnyyukon]

[MENTION=4939]kyuuei[/MENTION]

Yeah I agree with most of that. Especially the hippies on pinterest, lol.

But I'm not saying "blame the doctors." That's why I mentioned "the west" so much. It's kinda like the chicken and the egg. Are doctors and the health field like that cuz we demand a quick fix, or did they cause it because of the big bad evil pharmaceutical corporations plus our health system not advocating a more holistic approach?

I think it's a combination.

But you're right, you HAVE to be PROACTIVE. That's the key word. And it's relatively easy to do, what with that internet super highway thingy.

But even older, "wiser" people just seem to take advice without blinking. That is a real mentality for so many. It's a "he's the expert, I'm in my underwear" sort of psychology. But, like we've mentioned, the buck definitely does not have to stop there.

You don't have to repeat anything else, I think I got the gist, just haven't been following

WebMd!!!! Yayyyy!!!!!

 

[Tellenbach]

It only takes a few doctors in high places to discourage use of a particular vitamin or treatment by the entire medical community. For instance, the American Cancer Society has an 'Unproven Methods List' that's essentially a blacklist/quacklist. If any doctor gets on this list, he's not going to get any papers published or have his treatment evaluated by a clinical trial. In the book "Vitamin C and Cancer", it's revealed that of the 58 methods on the quacklist, none were evaluated by a double-blind randomly controlled clinical trial. They were rejected and dismissed a priori because the powers that be just know better.

When an alternative treatment is evalutated, it's frequently subjected to poorly designed and seriously flawed experiments like the 2 Mayo Clinic experiments on treating cancer with Vitamin C. The doctor, Charles Moertel, gave oral doses of 10 grams of Vitamin C instead of administering it intravenously. The claims of benefit were all done by treating cancer intravenously with Vitamin C. So the establishment managed to suppress a potentially life-saving treatment and a very cheap course of treatment by deliberately screwing up 2 experiments.

Since the 2nd Mayo Clinic trial (1985), we know that intravenous Vitamin C results in a plasma (blood) concentration that's up to 70 fold greater than can be achieved with oral administration. If you check on the Mayo Clinic website, they'll claim that both of the Mayo Clinic trials were well-designed, lol.

I've also seen attacks by internal medicine doctors on using Vitamin E using poorly (deliberately so) designed meta-studies. Make no mistake about it; many in the medical establishment don't want people to get well.

 

[AphroditeGoneAwry]

Yeah, if you want to be healthy, it's best not to go to a doctor. Don't get surgery unless you absolutely cannot function. And don't take any medications.

Oh, you think you must take some medications? I say you don't. You tell me what you think you need to take and I'll tell you why you don't.