The Elephant - Part Two

The Elephant (Part Two)

A person is ill, goes to a doctor, gets a diagnosis for something, and is given a pill.  Supposedly he will get better. 

How reasonable is this?

THIS SUPPOSITION IS THE BASIS OF NEARLY ALL OUR HEALTH CARE.

Take this basic scenario out of our health care system and we nearly don’t have a health care system.   Other than acute care for accidents, and for some operations. 

We take it for granted this is the path to health and recovery.  I am going to contend this framework has nothing to do with healing, or recovery. 

About thirty five years ago, following eight years of very hard work and very stressful work, and then two serious car accidents, my health fell apart. 

I could not get better.  I tried everything.  Nothing worked.  I was a mess.  After a number of years of conventional medicine I went to the ‘quacks’, as I referred to them.  The Alternatives.  None of them worked either, although surprisingly I got more from each ‘quack’ than I did from any of the doctors.  Not enough to get better, but at least enough to give me some hope.

Eventually, I worked my way down to Ayurveda, the indigenous form of medicine from India.  It worked.  For me, for what ailed me.

This post is not about Ayurveda, although I will write about this on a later post.

I grew very disillusioned with Western medicine during these years.  This led me down a number of paths.

The alternative path for one, but also I looked into the basic problem with a pharmacological based approach to healing. 

During my Western medicine forays I saw a number of specialists.  I had blood work done.  I had tests run.

I asked a few questions of a doctor who said my thyroid was in the normal range, but a bit low:

1.   I had my thyroid test taken before lunch.  I was hungry.   Would it have been the same result should I have had it taken after lunch?  How about first thing in the morning versus end of day? 

2.  If I had taken the test from my leg, not my arm, would I get the same result?  How do we know the markers for thyroid are evenly distributed throughout my blood?

3.  What about emotional factors?  If I just had a great belly laugh, or just hung out with two or three really funny friends would the results be the same as if I just had a serious argument with my wife?

4.  How about in the heat of summer, or very cold times in the winter?

Huh!  Good questions.  My doctor didn’t have a clue.  For that matter, when I went a bit further and said ‘is my normal range the same as everyone else’?  He didn’t know.  Very obese people?  Very thin people?  Those with heart rates of 70+ BPM, or me with a resting heart rate of 42, same?   He didn’t know.

And, on and on.

Our testing is sketchy, to say the least.  I have had three buddies get a series of heart tests.  They passed with flying colours.  One person was told at the heart clinic he’s ‘got the heart of a young lion’.  His wife was picking him up at the ER entrance.  While waiting for her he collapsed with a massive heart attack.  He only survived because he dropped onto the sidewalk in front of two EMTs who whisked him into ER.  He would have died at home they said.  Something similar happened to a second buddy.  I told him, ‘They’re wrong.  You look grey,  your lips are grey.  Go back to your doctor ASAP.‘   He did.  He didn’t make an appointment, he walked in to his doctor’s office the next day.  The doctor was a bit miffed, but said he would squeeze him in as soon as he could.  My friend had a heart attack waiting for the doctor.   My third friend?  Something similar, but he died. 

We trust our testing when in fact, these are snapshots that might or might not mean anything.

I was prescribed a few medications.  I asked what their actions were, and what mechanism was causing these actions.  One, if I recall correctly, was a Beta blocker.  I asked if beta cells were throughout the body.  They were.  I asked how the drug ‘knows’ to go specifically to the area it needs to, to the beta cells in question?  He didn’t know.   I said where else are there beta cells?  They’re all over.  I looked into the side effects, many of them could be directly related to beta reactions.  I asked if the side effects are not ‘side effects’ but just beta effects?  Good question.  He didn’t know, but thought that might explain all the side effects.

And, so on! 

We take a medicine often, if not usually, orally.  It goes into our digestive system, and then is absorbed into our   system after a rigorous twenty-four hours of digestion.  From there it must get to the specific neurons, or cells affected.   And, not go elsewhere. 

We think a medicine, like serotonin, might be related to depression.  So, we give people serotonin, or dopamine, or something, and expect that will ‘cure’ depression.  Yet, we have no idea of how serotonin interacts with dopamine, or our adrenal glands, or how it interacts with endorphins, which might be needed, or not needed.   Or how it might interact with someone obese, or very thin, or someone with an overactive thyroid, or an underactive thyroid.

EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENS IN THE BODY INVOLVES BILLIONS OF INTERACTIONS.   SOMETIMES TRILLIONS. 

If you don’t understand what the effects of these interactions are you cannot know the effect of the drug in question.

We can’t even calculate the number of chemical compounds we have in the body; it is likely in the tens of trillions. 

I would be surprised if we know 1/10 of 1% of what we need to know to understand how a medication will be used by bodies, in general.  And, orders of magnitude less on how it will interact with any specific person. 

Yet we believe this is the path to health.  To supply our body with something someone posited might have something to do with ______________, (that is whatever we are dealing with).  As far as all the other myriad factors involved, mental ones, emotional, spiritual, psychological, etc.  THEY’RE NOT EVEN CONSIDERED!  Yet, this ‘medicine’ is supposed to fix us, to heal us.  To make us better. 

Do you see the problem?

Dr. John Ioannides from Stanford University has been testing the big sellers in Pharmaceuticals.   He reproduces the exact same study on which the Pharma received its approvals.  He has yet to get the results they got.  He has yet to BEAT PLACEBO!  In other words, they don’t work.  They might be worse than doing nothing. 

He has looked at a long list of medicines.  The total yearly sales of these are in the multi-billions of dollars. 

They’re all worthless. 

If you get into a car accident, ER will save your life, if it is possible.   Pain killers can be helpful.  As can antibiotics.  And, insulin has saved many, many people.

Much of the rest of medicine is nonsense, and I’m being charitable, and likely harmful.

I’m not saying this to diss doctors.  What they are attempting to do is verging on impossible.  It isn’t their fault they are unable to grasp and work with the complexities of a human body, a nearly infinitely complex system.  But, I am saying they seemingly don’t get this.  They seemingly seem to think ‘we’ve almost got this nailed’, when in fact they are throwing mud at a wall hoping something sticks. 

THEY DO NOT UNDERSTAND WHAT THEY ARE DOING. 

And, that’s fine.  But, they should be honest.