March 2nd, 2008 at 05:13pm
Under CAM+ Food & Nutrition
The days of the kindly old family doctor who would come to your house whenever called and prescribe medications compounded by your local pharmacist (who likely knew you by name and also dispensed penny candy from the case) are long gone. For many of us, we are either going to a public clinic or attached to an HMO for our basic medical care. That care is, for the most part, cookie-cutter and limited to 15-minute sound bytes.
To blindly place our trust solely within the realm of conventional medicine is often a poor choice. We all know of and can attest to unfortunate results from not exploring alternative options. We need to ask specific and often difficult questions in order to make the most informed decisions, and if a doctor is alienated during that process, perhaps he/she is the wrong doctor.
But neither should we trust only in alternative methods … delaying proven treatments have also resulted in serious consequences. It’s clear there is room for both conventional and alternative treatments in our health care.
While conventional medicine certainly has its uses (I recently had abdominal surgery and am thankful for my competent surgeon), many doctors openly admit to treating disease or illness “symptomatically” rather than holistically. It’s not their fault … it’s how they are trained by our medical schools.
“What’s wrong with that?” you ask. Well, nothing on the face of it … an illness can usually be identified by its symptoms. The doctor will then hand you a prescription for a best-guess medication to treat that symptom and tell you to come back in two weeks if you don’t improve. And if that drug doesn’t work, they’ll prescribe another. So they are basically telling you to get sicker before they can help you!
To me, there seems to be a fundamental flaw in this concept, and that is: Understanding and interpreting symptoms has its place, but if you’re invested in only treating the symptoms, you aren’t really looking for a cause and/or prevention. The medical establishment (at least here in the U.S.) may give lip service to prevention of illness and disease, but in reality they’re saying to just trust them to eventually figure it out. In the meantime, you are also supposed to believe that they know what they’re doing … after all, you are only the patient. And as they plod through their protocols you may get worse before you get better.
This is how folks end up taking a whole sack full of prescription drugs. Take for example, high blood pressure. Wouldn’t it make more sense to first look at the possible causes as to why an individual has developed high blood pressure in the first place? (These things seldom happen overnight). Once the reasons are understood, you can explore avenues such as changing diet and lifestyle habits, eating certain foods, or taking supplements that will more naturally keep the arteries and veins elastic and healthy.
I believe, as the old saying goes, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”, so I feel it important that we do all we can to help our body take care of itself. It has a remarkable capacity for self-healing and regeneration, given half the chance, and that help doesn’t always come in the form of a prescription drug with a myriad of negative side effects (and a high price tag).
But then the medical establishment (and the drug companies they service) couldn’t keep prescribing more drugs and tests, could they? And that’s the real name of the game.
Yours in health …
By admin
February 27th, 2008 at 08:09pm
Under Food & Nutrition
Florida calls itself the Sunshine State … California also falls into that category (well, usually). Washington state … not so much. I do miss the California sunshine since moving north … even if it’s not pouring rain, the “gray days” of winter seem neverending. Life here has caused me to pay attention to a number of things I once took for granted … one being my vitamin D intake.
Its “liquid sunshine” not withstanding, I love the Pacific Northwest with its clean air and water, evergreen trees, and snow-covered mountains. It has wonderfully mild summers with (surprise!) plenty of sunshine and temps that rarely top 85 degrees, at least here in Western Washington … hot enough to grow a healthy crop of tomatoes in my garden without causing me to keel over from the heat. But winters? You must be kidding.
One of the main ways to get our daily dose of vitamin D is thru our skin via sunshine … about 15 minutes daily up here where the sunlight is weaker and a bit less in sunnier climes. So during the winter I can either 1) scurry to the deserts of California or Arizona or 2) get my vitamin D through food sources and nutritional supplements. Although salmon is king up here in the PacNW, I confess that I don’t eat salmon (or mackerel, or sardines), so I get my vitamin D through daily doses of high-quality Omega-3 fish oil capsules, a calcium supplement containing D3, and fortified soy milk.
In a well-researched article, Jane Brody, health columnist for the New York Times, notes: “In addition to fortified drinks like milk, soy milk and some juices, the limited number of vitamin D food sources includes oily fish like salmon, mackerel, bluefish, catfish, sardines and tuna, as well as cod liver oil and fish oils. The amount of vitamin D in breakfast cereals is minimal at best. As for supplements, vitamin D is found in prenatal vitamins, multivitamins, calcium-vitamin D combinations and plain vitamin D. Check the labels and select brands that contain vitamin D3, or cholecalciferol, because D2, or ergocalciferol, is 25 percent less effective (than D3).” *
Her article goes on to state: “… a growing legion of medical researchers have raised strong doubts about the adequacy of currently recommended levels of intake, from birth through the sunset years. The researchers maintain, based on a plethora of studies, that vitamin D levels considered adequate to prevent bone malformations like rickets in children are not optimal to counter a host of serious ailments that are now linked to low vitamin D levels.”
A team of nutrition experts noted in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition that “randomized trials using the currently (govt) recommended intakes of 400 I.U. vitamin D a day have shown no appreciable reduction in fracture risk.”
“In contrast,” they continued, “trials using 700 to 800 I.U. found less fracture incidence, with and without supplemental calcium. This change may result from both improved bone health and reduction in falls due to greater muscle strength.” * So it sounds like we’re not just talking about women and children’s needs here … if you aspire to be a jock, take your vitamin D and you’ll have more bone AND muscle mass.
In addition to the benefits to bone protection, in animal studies vitamin D has been demonstrated to strikingly reduce tumor growth, and other studies have shown it to be a factor in reducing the incidences of M.S. and diabetes in humans.
So get out there in the sunshine and soak up your vitamin D, everyone. I’ll just continue taking my supplements and dream of California.
Yours in health …
*Personal Health, “An Oldie Vies for Nutrient of the Decade” by Jane Brody; New York Times; February 19, 2008
By admin