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| | November 2008 Body Mind Spirit Article By Dr. TwoMoon | | | | Prevention, a simple word that most adults would say means doing something to keep an adverse event from occurring. Yet prevention in the medical world has come to mean two very different things. We have come to a point where major advertisers are using the word prevention to sell all manner of products including pharmaceutical medications. Which begs the question is medicating a problem preventing another one? Medications in general are used to “falsely” alter body chemistry in order to change lab values and subjective symptoms into the “normal” range. However, often their mechanism is misunderstood. For example, take statin medications. These are a class of drugs that work via varying mechanisms to lower cholesterol. Some work with the liver, some work by inhibiting cholesterol absorption from the gut and some decrease cholesterol synthesis. It is very important to recognize a few facets of the flawed thinking behind what has become the most commonly used class of drugs in modern medicine. First, these drugs do not lower the incidence of hear attack because the most significant risk factor for heart disease is not cholesterol levels but insulin resistance and elevated blood sugar. Second, they do not address the reason for elevated blood cholesterol which is excess consumption of refined carbohydrates and sugar in the diet. So, this effort of what is called preventive medicine is actually doing nothing to “prevent” a serious consequence like heart disease. If the goal were truly prevention, doctors would look at cholesterol, fasting glucose, and Hemoglobin A1C; a marker for long term glucose control. With this information a person’s diet would be assessed for frank and hidden sources of simple carbohydrates, then specific dietary advice would be given to change the content of a person’s diet and supplementation would be given to control any adverse blood sugar and to improve how the liver processes cholesterol. True preventive measures start before lab values have been altered. General medicine practitioners have the chance to be heroes with their patients. Each time someone gets a yearly physical a few simple questions can identify weather various systems are showing signs of stress. Every time disease develops the signs existed years before frank illness developed. For example, bloating after meals can indicate a low hydrochloric acid content in the stomach which leads to poor mineral absorption which leads to poor detoxification, brain function and immune function to name a few. There are very linear relationships between commonly accepted symptoms and dysfunctions that over a long time can cause more significant disease. Disease develops over a long time in which the body has not had the building blocks of basic cellular function. Therefore to prevent disease, it takes proper nutrition on a macro and micro scale. Good quality food is imperative for proper cellular function. In addition, the body needs sunlight, fresh air, a balance between work and play, some kind of practice that supports physical, spiritual and mental wellbeing and love. For many people simple changes would bring about dramatic change, but unless someone works to identify these small dysfunctions they often go unnoticed. It is imperative that as consumers of medicine every person becomes an advocate for their own disease prevention. We need to stop accepting that medications that are simply masking a real problem are going to handle our health; we need to demand that real medicine be applied in every case. We need to demand that prevention be used to identify solutions that heal and change the picture, and that we are evaluated as individuals based on our unique chemistry, history and lifestyle. |
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| November 2008 Body Mind Spirit Article By Dr. TwoMoon |
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