what are you doing ?

[PonoBill]

PDX is having a bit of fun, but I suspect, Ninja, that you'd find a lot of Doctors coming around to your way of thinking. One of my good friends is a Doc, and he says all Doctors are equipped to do is push pills and cut. An oversimplification, but it makes sense.

But a lot of doctors say the way to get control of healthcare costs is not some bureaucratic mess with universal insurance, but making the populace more healthy, with better nutrition, exercise, better personal healthcare, better choices. People who eat nothing but fast foods, get no exercise, smoke, drink, never floss, don't take care of infections like athletes foot, yeast infections, bladder infections, take antibiotics instead of dealing with underlying health issues--are going to be expensive to insure. The only way they won't be is if their bad habits kill them young and quickly.

[pdxmike]

I agree. A lot of medicine is aimed at eliminating the symptoms rather than treating the underlying problem--true in everything from cold pills to surgery.  I remember in the 70s with running when sports podiatrists finally started convincing people that you could put people in better running shoes and eliminate most foot and knee and hip surgeries.

The idea of pain being your friend is the same thing.  It tells you that something is wrong.  Yet people rush to kill the pain, and never address why they hurt. 

I just wouldn't put all the blame on doctors.  We have a medical and insurance system that doesn't address nutrition or exercise, but will pay for the $100K surgery that someone needs because they didn't eat right or exercise.  People ignore their own health, then show up in the emergency room after they've destroyed their own bodies.   Doctors don't get paid to get to know their patients or talk to them long enough to do proper diagnoses.  But then I'm  reeaally starting to talk about what doctors (or medicine) is doing, versus what we are doing. 

[headmount]

MDs are limited as to what advice they may give by the specter of mal-practice.  In the movie Love and Other Drugs, they poke fun at people who get info online but the fact is MD's won't give that advice and folks are motivated to find all the info they can.  When I had an A-fib, they told me nothing about nutrition and supplements that might help.  In fact the nurse stated that I'd be back in a few months with another A-fib like having a spastic ticker was going to be a fact of life for me.  Well I was rather ticked off and went to the net.  So far so good with what I learned.  For A-fib that was max amount of magnesium, Co-enzyme Q-10, and fish oil.  Now I'm doing coconut oil as well and some hippie concoction for joint inflammation... and I don't help people push start their cars anymore.

[PonoBill]

For me it was Rollerblading with my son-in-law. No way I was going to let him beat me. Likewise him. We went way past simple exhaustion and later my pulse got weird. Ten years later, no repeat.

[stoneaxe]

Not to get too far off topic but I'm very thankful for great Docs. I know where you're coming from ninja because I've seen and experienced that too but I also owe much to the skills of a great Doc whose sole focus was getting me well enough to get back to a normal life.

[Pureadrenalin]

Ok guys to clear up things I am not blaming or completely saying all doctors are full of it. Just trying to point out with my personal experience throughout the years with long term health decisions they ere not the prime experts to seek out help from period. I do believe there are a few good ones out there that don't treat us like guinea pigs and they do know there stuff but I haven't found one myself that truly helped me when it came to long term health issues. Doctors,Nutritionist and commercial trainers has told me that metabolic typing diets does not exist or is bunch of b.s. but I have practiced it and fine tuned it accordingly to me and my family for the past twelve plus years. Lastly look at all these other commercial systems like Jenny Craig and nutrisystems they are now based off of metabolic typing diets and a glycemic index. Reason is they used real foods not something in a box or a sipping straw that will produce only short term results and in the next eight weeks you hit a wall and gain all your weight back or even gain twice the weight than when you originally started.

[pdxmike]

Ninja--the thing I think you really got right is that doctors are really not health experts, and healthcare is not very good at keeping people healthy.  PonoBill's doc friend said doctors are trained to push pills and cut, one I knew said they're mechanics--basically the same comment. 

In fact, if you look at doctors as mechanics, and medicine as automotive care, it makes a lot of sense. 

The surgeon who operates on your heart is like the body guy who repairs your fender.  The body guy's job is to fix your fender, and you want the best one you can get.  But he's not going to inspect your car and tell you if you hadn't let your tires go bald, you wouldn't have slid into the telephone pole.  And the system is certainly not set up for the body guy to tell you months before the crash that you need to get new tires, or suggest that you take him for a drive so he can see what your driving skills are, so that you can make corrections so that you'll never cause the future crash that will require his services to repair.   

You have to learn all that stuff on your own--how to drive, how to maintain your car, etc.  That's pretty easy with cars, but not as easy with health.  So people do nothing, or the wrong things, until they crash, then the doctors come in to fix the immediate crash damage.  Add to that that you're responsible for your own costs for doing the preventative stuff, but if you skip that and crash your body, someone else will pick up most of the tab, and it creates a mess.  We have a nation of people who don't change their oil, then get their engines overhauled over and over again.

So once you have some real damage--a broken bone, cancer, etc.--doctors can do amazing things.  But the health system is not set up to keep people healthy, so it really does come down to doing your own research and living your life correctly.  (Note that I'm not saying there's not plenty that can go wrong with your body that even the healthiest living can't prevent.)

[stoneaxe]

Very well said PDX.
Understanding and education extend even to when things do go wrong though. Docs are like anyone else...they'll tend to recommend what they know. Unfortunately there are some (rare I think) that make ninja's point though....some will recommend what they'll get paid for. I found in my own case the former...depending on the specialty of the Doc I spoke with it was cut the sucker out or nuke it untill its dead. It wasn't that they were dishonest...just focused on what they know. I just wish someone could have told me it was a bad wire all along....

[pdxmike]

Docs are like anyone else...they'll tend to recommend what they know.

I can't believe that!  Although personally, I think you probably could have made just as good of a recovery if you'd skipped all the medical treatments and just built yourself a new custom house. 

[PonoBill]

I'm still working on this Xtreme Geezer site--probably getting too wrapped around the axle with adding cool technology, I should just roll it out--but one of the test posts is one I wrote on nutrition. specifically the approach I'm taking to get rid of this fifty pound backpack o' blubber. I'm extremely pleased with the results so far, and it is a lifestyle that I believe I can maintain the rest of my life.

Here's the link: http://www.xgeez.com/category/health/nutrition/ Glycemic Index is a big part, and the nutritiionist I used did metabolic typing to get me going.

I also wrote an article on coping with injuries. When I get my ducks in a row I'll cross post these to Ke Nalu, but they are here on Xgeez now acting as filler to let me get the bugs out of the site: http://www.xgeez.com/2010/12/team-advil/

[gorgebob]

Taking notes on geezerdom, its book marked. Could prove useful. Will let you know on its effect on my 5 and 8 year old family members. Their starting to catch me. Run away, run away.

[PonoBill]

Just keep running.

[pdxmike]

That's the best. most concise article on healthy eating that I've ever read.   

Also inspiring, because it makes sense, it isn't weird, and it's not a lot different than how I eat now anyway, except for the cookies and Halloween candy.  And pasta. 

And I like that it is about healthy eating, versus "dieting". 

[pdxmike]

Here's the link: http://www.xgeez.com/category/health/nutrition/ Glycemic Index is a big part, and the nutritiionist I used did metabolic typing to get me going.

This is working pretty well for me, as long as Reese's Peanut Butter Cups count as lean protein.