Chronic Diseases

Chronic Diseases and the Medical Industry: What You Need to Know
A Physician's View

Planned obsolescence keeps a lot of huge corporations in business and gives consumers plenty of new things to buy day after day. Longer-lived light bulbs or batteries, more fuel-efficient cars, shoes and clothing made to weather both the passage of time and the whims of fashion would help consumers to consume less. But this runs counter to the whole American way of doing business.

Medicine in America is a business, just as the making of tires or hairspray or dining room tables are businesses. It's an enormously profitable business, growing ever more so by the year as more and more people get chronically ill. Vast numbers of expensive medical technologies, procedures, diagnostic tests, screening tests, treatments, surgeries and prescription drugs exist today to diagnose and treat chronic illnesses - illnesses like heart disease, allergies, asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), type 2 diabetes, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, depression, anxiety, ADHD, cancer, arthritis, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia and psoriasis.

A chronic illness is a real cash cow for the medical industry because a chronic illness is seen as incurable. It generally requires medical treatment for months, years, or even the remainder of the patient's life. It's interesting to consider, however, whether all these expensive medical marvels are truly needed. Are they like the 60,000-mile tire - a status quo that could be dramatically improved and made much more efficient with a few changes in procedures and paradigms? Could it be that cures are being withheld and causes of disease ignored because the medical industry would take a huge financial loss if chronic diseases became curable diseases? Even worse, what if they told you the causes of these chronic diseases? One simple thing they don't tell you is that PAIN is not something you have to live with. It is very curable with minimal side effects and in most cases no side effects. They also don't tell you that getting off of drugs, including opiates, is very easy and can be done without suffering. Information is extremely powerful and there's always another way of doing something in a better way. Knowing the human body is half the battle in dealing with disease and prevention. Knowing the specific medical tests to request from your doctor could find the solution to your problems. The more knowledge you have when communicating with your doctor, the better chance you have in gaining his respect and receiving his honest opinion concerning your situation. Many problems have simple solutions. Unfortunately, the average person is sent down a trail of medication after medication which never cures them but just leads to further side effects which will need more medication in the future.

It sounds like a wacky conspiracy theory when you put it this way. I'm not suggesting that higher-ups in the medical industry are sitting in secret meetings plotting ways to keep Americans sick enough to need medical care but not quite sick enough to die. It isn't so much that any one element of the medical system is scheming to keep people sick. By and large, everyone in that system means well and wants to help, not harm. Despite these efforts, so-called iatrogenic illness - illness caused by medical procedures or drugs - is at an all-time high; no big surprise when you consider the complexity of the medical system and the difficulties that system creates even as it tries to give each individual patient the best possible care. Our medical system is reaching over 5,000 different drugs and climbing daily. How could any one doctor be able to know each and every drug available and if that drug is right for you and if it will conflict with your vitamins, herbs, foods, drugs, and lifestyle.

Our natural tendency, as we see the downward spiral of modern medicine is to look for a scapegoat, and doctors are too often made out to be the problem. Most doctors strive to do their absolute best for their patients despite over scheduling, insurance headaches and the speeding locomotive of medical research that yields some 1,000 new discoveries every single day. How could any mortal human - even one with an M.D. following his or her name - keep up without making a mistake here and there? Overwhelmed, doctors just tend to follow protocol, and most don't or can't take the time or energy to dig deeply enough to make a truly accurate diagnosis. They fall into a pattern of controlling disease symptoms rather than seeking a way to a cure.

Diagnosing

Examining the patient, reviewing the laboratory data and the patient's history helps to identify or determine the nature and cause of a disease or injury. At least this is the way the system was designed to operate. But the system has become so overwhelmed that laboratories cannot keep up with the demands and it is very easy for them to make mistakes. This is why the medical community always tells you to get at least 3 opinions before doing any invasive procedures. The key to getting 3 other accurate opinions is, never tell the doctors what the last test result revealed.

Laboratory Testing

Lab tests can be frustrating, unreliable and misread.

1. First the proper tests need to be requested. This is one of the big problems in blood testing.
2. Then the blood needs to be drawn properly. Yes there are many ways and times to draw blood. Remember blood draws are only a snapshot of the blood's condition at the time it is drawn.
3. Proper storage and delivery time plays an important role in diagnosing.
4. Reading the result is critical. The tests need to be read in whole to make up a complete picture of your health.
5. Having a past history of blood work is helpful and in some cases necessary.
6. Always request a copy of all blood work for your home files. This is critical.

There are well over 10,000 blood tests available and many more new ones are being invented each day. Did you know that there is more than one blood test for a single condition? Why would we need more than one test per disease? The reason is disease has many stages. There is the acute and chronic disease. There are diseases that make themselves easy to find while others are more difficult to find. Many blood tests are looking for antibodies. Other blood tests are looking for the antigens.

An Antibody is a protein produced by a host to bind to, and thus inactivate, foreign particles. The particle is called the antigen. It is frequently but not always a protein. The binding of antibody to antigen is very specific so that, if all goes well, the antibody binds to that specific antigen only. The part of the antigen molecule to which the antibody binds is called the epitope.

An Antigen is anything that can stimulate an immune response in your body. They are usually described as anything that your body recognizes as foreign, or not belonging to you. In one part of the immune response, the B cells manufacture antibodies to fight off the antigens. They are produced by your B cells and are shaped in such a way that they are able to attach to antigens and remove them from the body.

Past history with many diseases seems to show that if a condition is acute we may be able to detect the antibody. If the condition is chronic it seems to be more helpful to find the antigen. The problem is determining which diseases are in their acute phase and which ones are in their chronic stages. We cannot judge that by the length of time a person has been sick. All pathogens have their own time of maturity. The second part of this is some diseases only stay in the blood stream for a short period of time. They make their home in a blood cell or deep in tissue where there may be little or no blood. We have all heard of the skin - eating bacteria. To make things even more complicated, there are many diseases that create the same antibody or antigen response as other ones.

With all this information you now can understand why so many people never really get a definitive diagnosis. It is estimated that over 75% of all diagnoses is done by observation and the process of elimination. The medication prescribed is decided by the symptoms and the doctor's knowledge of their past history. This is why we call it PRACTICING medicine. There are ways of making medicine much less "practicing" and more scientific.

In many instances, doctors refrain from giving patients clinical tests that could help them make the most accurate diagnosis of the core problem. For example: a simple urine culture can identify the pathogenic bacteria that is causing a urinary tract infection. Instead of trying a broad-spectrum antibiotic - a common practice that is making a powerful contribution to the evolution of antibiotic-resistant bacteria - in hopes of eradicating whichever bug is at the root of the infection, doctors could culture the urine and target a specific drug to that specific bacteria. But the test isn't covered by insurers and takes extra time, so it isn't done. In the worst cases, the infection continues unabated even as the patient takes a course of broad-spectrum antibiotics thereby possibly causing a painful kidney infection or leading to a more serious disease later in life.

Due to no fault of the physicians who are its base of support, the medical business inexorably moves away from simple prevention and simple cures in favor of costly long-term treatments because it is a for-profit system, rife with costly bureaucracy and conflicts of interest. Business is business, no matter what the industry. These businesses are run by businesspeople, not humane health practitioners. Their interests are in finding out what keeps the money flowing, not what cures patients.

Since most of us were born into and have lived within this medical paradigm for our entire lives, we tend not to think that it could be any other way. We accept that some diseases can't be cured, and we accept the diagnoses that are handed to us, our family members and others we care about. We accept that we'll have to pay for medicine to treat those chronic conditions indefinitely. As the medical system currently in place becomes too costly to manage, it's time to look for simpler, less costly answers.

Standard Medicine

1. Emergency medicine, which is outstanding and saves lives.
2. Acute and temporary medical treatments, which most often are just a step below emergency medical treatments.
3. Chronic treatment, which might temporarily relieve symptoms, but allows the disease process to continue and leads to other serious side effect diseases.

Chronic treatments themselves can be dangerous; remember HRT? Vioxx? Fen-phen? Bextra? Commonly used drugs have a vast number of side effects that aren't serious enough (at least, not that we've discovered) to cause the drugs to be withdrawn, but can reduce patients' quality of life dramatically. From here on, I'll only address treatments and diagnoses of the chronic variety. Mainstream medicine is best for dealing with acute and emergency issues.

It's time to reconsider the idea of chronic disease diagnosis and the question of whether a chronic disease is really incurable.

Of course, the first key to curing a chronic condition is a proper diagnosis. This allows the appropriate application of mainstream and natural remedies. Diagnosing a chronic condition can be difficult; one can masquerade as another. It isn't as straightforward as many of us would like to believe. A chronic skin condition might be diagnosed in different ways by different practitioners. One patient I know was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis based on her signs and symptoms - despite a negative blood test. She was treated with methotrexate (a toxic chemotherapy drug) and steroid drugs (which cause many unpleasant side effects, including weight gain, sleeplessness, and loss of bone mass over time) which didn't resolve her symptoms. It turned out that she had Lyme disease and Mycoplasma, which are often misdiagnosed as RA. The real problem she faces with a delayed diagnosis is there's no Western medical treatment that will be successful. Her doctor may tell her that he can treat her but the truth will be known in a very short period of time.

My point here is that a doctor's diagnosis isn't gospel. Ask plenty of questions, get second and third opinions. When treatments don't work, consider that your diagnosis might be the problem. Research tests that might help better define the imbalance in your body that is causing you to be unwell. We have done a lot of research on appropriate but lesser-known medical tests and have advised hundreds of clients which ones they should try to help nail down the correct diagnosis. Most important, never be discouraged if there is no found diagnosis. Most conditions can be treated by just the symptomology.

A medical diagnosis is a different thing entirely from the diagnosis you will get from a naturally oriented practitioner like a homeopath or a naturopathic physician. Let's say you visit an M.D. at your local HMO-approved medical center, and you complain of constant sinus congestion and allergic runny nose. He's going to diagnose you with nasal allergies - a chronic condition. (Never mind that you didn't have it a year ago - it's chronic, starting now.) There's no cure, he tells you. He can offer you a referral to an allergist who will then offer you a series of costly skin-prick tests to identify the allergens you are sensitive to. Or, the doctor you're already talking to can write you a prescription for a steroid spray to shoot up your nose every day during allergy season (which may be all year if you're allergic to indoor dust or mold) and tell you to use over-the-counter allergy drugs and decongestants as needed.

Having spent a total of about five minutes talking to the doctor, you're set with a brand-new lifetime diagnosis and requirements for daily medications. Your life has just changed dramatically, and not for the better. You're still you, but you're You with Allergies - a mysterious invader into your life, without cause and without cure.

Now, let's imagine the same visit, but to a naturopathic physician. The naturopathic physician will spend a lot more time talking with you. He'll ask you about your diet, your stress levels, whether you exercise, and about your health history and your family's health history. He might describe your symptoms as allergies but his whole approach will be different because he knows that specific dietary changes can virtually cure allergy, given adequate time and attention. He may offer ideas about homeopathic remedies, herbs, and nutrients - all targeted at restoring the proper balance to your immune system which has fallen out of whack due to changes inside your body and in your world. If he recommends any medications, he'll emphasize that they are only to be used temporarily and as needed.

The M.D. will be providing the medical industry with yet another life-long customer. The N.D. is striving to make you well again and working to help you avoid lifelong dependency on prescriptions. Interventions recommended to balance your immune function - the kind that will be recommended by the N.D. for allergies - will promote your health in many other ways, while the M.D.'s approach will only address the mucus in your sinuses and nose.

There are more and more M.D's who practice medicine differently, with an understanding of how to use diet, stress modification, and other natural methods to balance physiology and address chronic conditions at their root. If you've found a doctor like this, consider yourself lucky; if you haven't, maybe a little doctor shopping is in order. The most successful doctors must have a clear understanding of the liver and brain. These two areas of the human body in most cases can solve many dysfunctions that can go wrong.

Fund Raising

Cancer and many other forms of research over the past 40 years have raised over 900 billion dollars and we are no closer to a cure for any condition than we were 40 years ago. In fact many pathologists claim we get further away from the cures every year. The reason for this is all the fund raising does not go to find a cure for disease. To find a cure you need to discover the cause of the disease. All fund raising for every disease goes toward the research to produce another drug for the disease. We now have over 80 drugs for cancer and our success rate of treatment is only 3%. This may seem confusing to many because most doctors tell you that you have a 30% chance or better in the cure or remission of the treatment. What they fail to tell you is that you also have a 27% chance of the cancer returning within five years or less. The problem with the return of the cancer is it comes back with a punch usually twice as aggressive, which lessens the time to fight it. But the 3% that do go into remission add up to 30,000 out of one million plus success stories yearly.

Medicine

We never want to forget the brilliant scientists and chemists that have invented some of the most amazing emergency drugs that saved millions of people. Let's also not forget those incredible surgeons that have performed the most unbelievable life-saving surgeries. Emergency medicine and surgeries are in a category of their own, separate from the daily prescribed medications.

The only way we will ever advance in medicine is when we take the word "business" out of the equation. Medicine needs to spend their profits in discovering what causes disease and look for preventions and cures. Taking a medication for a lifetime is not a cure, only a control. Taking a medication for a lifetime will only lead to side effects and altered genetics. Taking a medication for a lifetime will increase the already 400,000 deaths a year from side effects to even a higher number. We need to know why we get diseases and how to cure and prevent them. We already know that many of these diseases can be cured by alternative methods. It's about time for the Western world to get on the band wagon before some other country like Canada or Germany brings forth the cure to some of these serious diseases. It is time for the drug industry to communicate with the food industry and come to terms that they are dealing with human beings like themselves and their families. Humans are not a set of tires to keep kicking around before they rebel. Every year tens of thousands of medical doctors convert to integrated medicine. This should be a subtle hint that the people of the world are not getting the results that they need using Western medicine and it is time for a change. I hope it doesn't take the loved one of a top official of one of the drug companies to get deathly ill before they start looking for a cure. If Western medicine places even a small amount of energy toward the information listed above they will see amazing things coming their way from the Eastern world of medicine. Eastern medicine is here to stay and will continue to grow at an average of 22% a year. It is only a matter of time.

Doctors

Remember doctors are only human and they are trying their best to relay information that is passed down from the AMA, FDA, CDC, WHO, the drug industry plus the selective schools and training they have had and continue having. Their job is difficult and frustrating at times. Do everything in your power to research and help them help you get the health you want and deserve. One way you can help your doctor help you is by suggesting special blood tests that they may not be aware of. They will learn and also respect you for your motivation in the research for quality health.