If I'm Not Sick, Am I Healthy?

 

   One of the often quoted sayings in regard to health care is that health care decisions should be left solely to between the patient and her (or his) doctor.  But what if your doctor is so conditioned by a system that regularly compromises what is best for you that his "doctoring" is put through a filter that removes your best choices before you even hear them?  The next time you are in a crowded waiting room of any health care facility, take a moment to disengage from your own immediate problem and take a serious "big picture" look at what is observable.  It is very likely that you may begin to see that the "sanctity of the doctor-patient relationship" is hardly operational in practice when the managed maximum average minutes with a patient dictated by insurance reimbursement is 15 or 20 minutes.  If this is the reality (believe me, it is), how does one make important life decisions regarding one's personal health and future years' quality of life when we are cranked through a system pushing "maximum billable patient contact minutes per hour"?

 

   If one starts with the idea that "What Exists" has a design, then it follows that design and intent should be easily observable in a part of creation as incredibly complex as the human body. Indeed, the complexity of the human body that is observable in and of itself powerfully argues in favor of intelligent design.  If we look at the sum of the details of the human organism, at least a couple of things become immediately obvious. First, it is the normal order of the body for all parts of the whole to work together in striving for the body's health. Second, disease and aging are together examples of the breakdown of this normal order. This breakdown can occur on as small a level as the the inner workings of a single cell, or can be the failure of a large sub system such as a heart or brain.

 

   Our health care system by design responds to the symptoms of disease, or in other words when something is broken. The whole data system is designed around pre-determined diagnostic codes which categorize disease. If one can’t write down the number, one can’t assign time and money to the treatment. Here's the bad news: Health doesn't have a diagnostic code number. Philosophically within the system, it's as if as soon as one talks preventative health outside of the “standard of care”, one is labeled an anti-aging quack. For example: if I wish to avoid lower back surgery or the need of same like my father and brother have had, I may eat well, exercise, be careful. I may even supplement my diet with calcium and glucosamine. But, the moment I talk about testosterone being a major preventative factor in osteoporosis, the wagons begin to circle and "Gee, I'm sorry but my schedule dictates I need to move on. Maybe you'd prefer a referral to an endocrinologist."

 

   It is vitally important to clearly comprehend the bias in thinking most healthcare professionals have as a starting point. If one is a Darwinist, one begins with deciding whether or not a presentation of symptoms is caused by a “disease” or the “aging process”. If, like my sister, one is diagnosed with a combination of an intermittently low heart rate and random life-threatening ventricular tachycardia at age 45, one is said to have severe heart disease. It is totally normal to prescribe the strongest antiarrhythmics possible and to surgically implant a combination pacemaker-defibrillator. If one has the same conditions at age 85, we simply ascribe the diagnosis to the normal aging process.

 

   During the last century, the average age an American young person is physically capable of procreation and bearing children dropped into the early teens. The "age of consent" varies legally a lot state to state, but generally in years is around 16 to 18. We call an individual a “legal adult” and eligible for military service at age 18. We allow the individual to drink alcoholic beverages at age 21. Car rental companies use the dispassionate measurement of actuarial tables to dictate a surcharge on rental fees for anyone under 25. Many from an intellectual/philosophical point of view put the portal of the real maturity of a human being at approximately age 30. Yet before this age is reached, it is a verifiable fact that due to the “normal aging process” males begin to lose their high-frequency hearing. If we were able to look at these observable facts without preconceived bias, as if they were new and fresh, our natural reaction would be that this is not fair. And indeed, in reality is, it isn’t. Again, one can look at the cause from two perspectives. One would be that time plus chance plus natural selection has resulted in this phenomenon and that we simply must accept the way things are. At some point in the future, nature or some “gee-whiz” medical discovery may correct the situation. If this position is correct, we are at liberty to personally pursue any corrective avenue we determine valid and there is no ethical limitation save doing no harm to others. The other perspective would be that there was an original design, and that we are looking at the results of its deterioration through decay, environment, and natural selection over a few millennia. If this second perspective is correct, then it follows that morally, and ethically, there is no difference between “disease” and the “aging process”. Officially allowing this position serious standing in the world of medicine will remain a wholly fringe view long into the foreseeable future, if for no other reason that the necessary fundamental changes to the underlying diagnostic criteria of the entire health insurance industry would cause an industry wide earthquake on the order of losing the west coast of the United States into the Pacific Ocean. In other words, "Ain't gonna happen anytime soon."

 

   It is the norm, not the exception, for the medical establishment to be wrong about medical breakthroughs. Dr. Robert Atkins was a controversial man who directly challenged the American medical establishment’s viewpoint on general health. The public came to know him with the publishing of his first book in 1972. Recently released studies from research universities have documented what Atkins argued all along; that his nutrition program improved the full gamut of measurements of diabetes and cardiovascular disease risk. More recent and mainline acceptable variations have been the Paelio Diet and Dr. Mark Hyman's 10-Day Detox Diet and his crusade against “Diabesity”. Yet still you may tune into a television talk program where a mainline AMA doctor is speaking and you will generally find him or her ripping the Atkins program as unsafe. This is the same medical establishment that for reduction of cardiovascular risk factors persuaded the general population to ingest over decades massive amounts of hydrogenated trans fat, mainly in the form of margarine and commercial cooking oil. Scientific literature suggested as early as 1988 that consumption of trans fat was a major contributing factor in the rise of coronary artery disease. In 1994, it was estimated that American consumption of trans fat was causing 30,000 deaths annually in the United States. Only the threat of banning Procter & Gamble’s Crisco from the marketplace caused the company in 2007 to reformulate their product to meet the FDA’s definition of “zero grams of trans fat per serving.” I have never seen anyone in the AMA Standard of Care, healthcare profession stand up and say, “We all are all so sorry. We didn’t know. You were right Dr. Atkins. Butter was better, everything wasn't better with Blue Bonnet on it. We all really should have stopped eating margarine.” This is of course only one in a grossly embarrassing litany of examples. The system almost never takes any responsibility for their collective error. They just move on.

 

   It is my intent to use safe and reasonable means to live better quality and quantity of life. This means for example not only will I hopefully get to see my eight year-old grandchild go to Disneyland, but I will have sufficient muscular strength and skeletal health to lift him or her on my shoulders for a parade. I do not look at striving for such health as unreasonable. If I am not going to fight for my health, then I may as well lie down and try to get comfortable while I watch my health deteriorate. It is my intent to work hard using all reasonable means to attain and keep good health. And, it is only sensible to want my body to be as optimal as is possible, not just barely make it into a "normal range" on a lab result by touching the bottom end of a statistical bell curve.  Stated slightly differently, It is not immoral to desire a very high quality of life over the last 30 or 35 years of my lifespan. It is critically necessary for those who may choose to join me in this endeavor of personal wellness to possess clarity of thinking from the outset. Without such, a person will most surely be greatly frustrated at every turn. What actions facts bear out to be sensible, when in conflict with the establishment's “Standard of Care”, will not be easy to accomplish. The overwhelming pressure of the system to keep the masses docile and conform will be great. It is even more powerfully overwhelming when healthcare is government-run. (Medicare, ObamaCare, "Medicare for all") At times one will be well outside of the mainstream. A practical and cost-effective course of action may even cause one to run afoul of government regulations.  Voltaire put it this way, "It is dangerous to be right in matters where powerful authorities are wrong." In my native state of California, the majestic California Condor is an extremely threatened species of bird, very nearly extinct, recently reintroduced into the wild artificially. If a person were to willfully, or even negligently, take the life of such a bird, one would have broken federal law and be in a great deal of trouble. Yet, by deploying huge-bladed wind turbines in the middle of Condor habitat between Bakersfield and Barstow in the southern part of the state, the state and federal governments willfully set up machines they know will kill these birds. So, while you or I would be arrested for killing a Condor, they exempt themselves from the protection laws as the government deems generating electrical power by wind turbines to be of greater public good than preventing the loss of some nearly extinct Condors. The wind turbines have been built and installed on a massive scale knowing that it is likely that such birds will be killed, as well as most certainly a considerable number of hawks, bald eagles, and the like. The reality? Current reasonable estimates are that wind turbines kill over 1 million birds a year in the U.S. This state of affairs as applied to your freedom of choice in your own health care may be colloquially summed up by saying that your government will gladly gore your ox while using the force of law to protect its own. My advice to you? Best you keep watch on your ox. In the case of your health, you only get one ox, no do-overs. And that one ox literally is...  your life.