Dr. Mom Online

A little while back, I had the honor of doing a health and lifestyle consultation with an old friend of mine. I hadn’t seen him since college. He’s a vibrant, dynamic, gregarious “young” man of 40-ish years.

 

During the course of his consultation, he shared his health concerns and challenges with me, as well as his stresses. He’s in a crisp white-collar position, at the helm of a highly successful company, overseeing hundreds of others like him.

 

Although he is being quite handsomely rewarded for his time and effort, his stress levels are truly through the roof! He works insane hours – not so much because he ‘has’ to, but because he feels he ‘needs’ to in order to stay ahead in his business. Most week nights he doesn’t get home to his wife and young children until after 8 p.m. and is back at work by 7 a.m. or earlier the next day.

 

His candle’s flames are about to meet right in the middle!

 

He came to see us because he has finally had enough of his physical aches and limitations. He has some rather chronic challenges, including severe headaches and pain in a variety of places.

 

As always, I dug deeper into the patterns of his lifestyle: his nutritional choices, his movement, his mindset, his stress levels, his sleep cycles, his ‘down’ time, and so on. Time and time again, he’d actually interrupt himself to reiterate how completely stressed out his was!

 

As far as nutrition goes, he felt he was on the right track because he had started a weight management program to help him lose the extra pounds he had gained in recent years. He was logging everything he was eating. Good start. But, he was choosing things like egg whites only, diet foods, diet pop, “protein” milk for breakfast with his cereal (“for the fiber”), as well as more salads and wraps (than burgers, etc.) from fast food restaurants for lunch. His new favorite dessert at lunch is the apple “fries” from McDonald’s… ‘cuz they’re ‘healthy’.

 

Sometimes, it’s very challenging to only gather information on the first visit! I just wanted to start helping him right away!  I knew him “back when”, so I felt especially inclined to help him look and feel the way he used to. Patience…

 

Next, we got into movement and exercise. “I don’t”, he said. “You don’t what?” I asked. “Move – at all” he said! “Oh.” He explained that he sits in his car for almost an hour on his drive, then he sits all day long at work, then in his car again for his hour long drive home. He fully admitted that he knows he should exercise, but he just doesn’t. He used to, many years ago. I remembered him as an athlete. But not now. Not for a long time.

 

I’m thinking, “Houston, we have a problem.”

 

This is the part that really irked me…

 

When I thought we were nearing the end of our consultation, he shared with me that he’s doing really well though because he was recently given a “clean bill of health”. I began to wonder, in my curious little mind, what kind of a moron would give this guy a “clean bill of health”??!! He’s eating fake, toxic foods; not moving at all; stressed out to the gills; has chronic issues with headaches and some other physical pain; drinks a LOT of coffee; smokes… and that’s “healthy”??!!

 

It gets better.

 

Apparently, his company sends its top level executives to this fancy schmancy private medical clinic for their annual check-ups. It’s one of these up-and-coming diagnostic centers where you spend the entire day there going through a variety of medical tests in posh surroundings. Then you sit down for a “board meeting” with the doctors at the end of the day to review your test results. As you can imagine, these places are quite popular with the “in” crowd. I like to call them the “elite diagnostic day spas”! Much pomp and circumstance!

 

After going through umpteen blood tests, urine tests, and scans of all sorts, his team of doctors reported that everything looked pretty good… except his cholesterol. It was ‘borderline’ high. They suggested that he “lay off the smoking”. Then his doctor said, “I’d like you to start taking Lipitor for the cholesterol. Here’s a prescription.”

 

My friend asked the doctor, “But I thought you said it was just borderline… do I really need to take this?” Doctor-for-the-elite said, “Absolutely. We want to keep it borderline or less… we don’t want it to get any higher. We’ll follow up. If it gets higher, we’ll up your dose.”

 

So, my old pal concludes his story with, “So, that’s it! I’m good, according to “XYZ Clinic”… and they’re the best, so they would know!”

 

Huh?

 

You have NO idea the dizzying number of thoughts, questions, remarks, concerns and outbursts that were swimming through my head as he finished this story! Just breathe….

 

As far as my friend goes, he’s doing better. He’s taking baby steps toward adding truly healthy choices to his lifestyle. I won’t even attempt to detoxify his off-kilter mindset that places such ridiculous paradigms of “health” on a pedestal. As long as he’s getting healthier, that’s what matters most… for now.

 

The bigger problem is the countless numbers of people – in the regular “slum dog” clinics, doctors’ offices, hospitals, all the way up to these executive clinics – who are being led to believe the exact same thing.

 

If these tests aren’t showing anything outside of the parameters we’ve been taught are normal… then you must be healthy. Don’t do anything… yet. Once you teeter outside the parameter, then we’ve got a potpourri of drugs for you to choose from!

 

This is the mindset… the paradigm. There’s no need to “do” anything until there are test results that directly connect to a specific classification of drugs we can use to change the test result. These isolated tests are next-to-never combined to give a picture representative of overall physiological function… or health. They’re simply snippets of a system here, an organ there… scattered bits of information.

 

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it’s only this friend… and every other friend of mine who has shared their ‘health’ stories with me… and hundreds of our practice members… and my own parents… and far too many of my loved ones. Yeah, maybe it’s just us.

 

Time and time again, I hear the same story. And it almost NEVER includes, “I’m not going to give you any drug AT ALL for this test result which shows a change in your (cholesterol, weight, discomfort, blood pressure, moods, sleep, headaches, menstrual cycle, sexual function, energy, etc.). Instead, I want you to take the next month and do this: exercise daily – resistance training 3x/week, cardio 3x/week, and do some stretching daily, and yoga-type movement several times per week; cut the crap out of your diet this month – lay off fast food, pop, diet foods, fake foods – eat real, whole food that is fresh and as pure as possible, drink nothing but pure water this month; go to bed every night by 10 or 10:30pm; every morning, put something positive and inspirational in your brain before ever starting your day and do something every night to relieve your stress of the day; take no medication whatsoever, unless it is unequivocally keeping you alive! Come back in a month, and we’ll re-evaluate. I don’t ever give someone drugs unless, (a) I know they’re making excellent lifestyle choices consistently, and they still need some medical assistance temporarily, and (b) I’ve run the most appropriate tests and I know exactly what the test results mean, as far as your overall health and function.”

 

The story, sadly, normally includes drugging before making lifestyle changes… or instead of making lifestyle changes. Or, drugging before the test results are even back from the lab.

 

We’re not sick because of a shortage of medication in our systems. We’re sick and dysfunctional because of our toxic and deficient environments (internal and external) and toxic and deficient lifestyle choices: how we eat, how we move, how we think, how we handle stress. Drugs cannot fix that.

 

Countless scientific journals for years now have reiterated that virtually every disease we’re suffering from today is a “disease of lifestyle”… an extremely low percentage (less than 1%) are truly genetic. That means that the answers – the “cures” – lie in our lifestyle choices and our environment.

 

Conventional, allopathic medicine is not the correct paradigm to turn to in order to create health. It is the perfect paradigm to turn to for emergency care, traumatic care and for life-saving procedures when lifestyle changes are too little, too late. My family has been on the very grateful receiving end of excellent medical care in these cases. I believe the people in that paradigm are great people. I even believe the paradigm is a great one… WHEN it’s used properly. Unfortunately, I see massive abuse of power and information in that paradigm. People, like my friend, are the victims.

 

I know when to use this system, and when to avoid it like the plague. To get the right answers, you’ve got to ask the right questions… to the right people… in the right paradigm.

 

I’m wondering what would have happened to my friend, had he not decided to do something more proactive about his health and lifestyle. I completely understand the concept of “watchful waiting”. But putting someone on drugs, and making virtually NO lifestyle recommendations, and just waiting for things to get bad enough to “do something” is not an intelligent choice.

 

A somewhat paramount understatement!

 

You know what? On a certain level, I completely understand that traditional docs aren’t giving lifestyle advice. That’s not their area of expertise… so why should they dabble with it? Fair enough. If you’ve primarily studied pathology and symptoms (and how to change it with drugs and surgery), as opposed to studying normal, healthy physiology (and how to create that), we shouldn’t expect you to give us answers that will create health. We should expect you to tweak our symptoms primarily using drugs and surgery. Fair enough, again.

 

I just wish more innocent “consumers” were aware of this when they turn to the perceived one-and-only source for “health” information and care.