With the signing of the Healthcare Reform Bill, millions of Americans of Americans (47 million uninsured, not 32 as has been tossed around in the final throes of the process) now have some measure of hope for medical care, and all of us have some added sense of security.

The noose of the insurance companies has been removed from our necks. Our insurance coverage cannot be canceled because we’ve reached the maximum payable due to a catastrophic illness. If you’re alive and over 20 yo you probably have  pre-existing conditions—it will take four years before that limitation is removed for adults—but immediately youngsters cannot be denied coverage for pre-existing conditions.

And our young adults entering the workforce, many earning minimum wages or in jobs not providing health insurance, can remain on their parents’ policy until age 26. The group ages 19-29 have been one-third of the population without insurance coverage; many will be helped by this new law.

Despite all the posturing and rhetoric in the Capitol, having protection for our health isn’t a matter of which party you vote for. When you have to declare bankruptcy because you cannot pay the medical bills, nobody asks whether you’re Democrat or Republican. And medical expenses are the biggest cause of bankruptcies. Health care is a universal right, even in nations with far less resources than the United States.

Necessary to Improve How we do Health

With the insurance industry being reined in, it should now be in everybody’s interest—the patients, government, and the even the for-profit insurance industry—to improve how Americans do health.  And very few health consumers/patients are knowledgeable or responsible in managing their own health.

Just 11 percent of Americans over age 50 are not using daily doses of pharmaceutical drugs. In senior communities I’ve observed, visits to various physicians two and three times/week seems to be the social calendar. Yet a friend in her 30s, who seeks natural routes of practicing health, reports that her colleagues are all regularly using pharmaceuticals and are surprised that their (one) colleague isn’t “taking anything”.

Americans haven’t been taught any methods of taking care of their health, other than pharmaceuticals, and neither have our M.D.s. Here’s my recommendations on reforming how we do health:

Consumer/patient education & responsibility

The foundation of the WMB reform is to educate the consumer/patient and hand them responsibility for their well-being. Good health—wellness—requires a wide variety of healing modalities, and few Americans know anything except pharmaceutical drugs. “Ask your doctor if any/every drug is right for you.” That’s what heavy daily television advertising has been telling us since 1998. And we do ask—or demand! In a survey of MDs, 37 percent complained that their patients insisted on prescriptions—and they usually relented whether or not it was advisable.

Ban Drug Advertising to Consumers

If we’re going to improve the population’s health and dramatically lower costs, reliance on pharmaceuticals must be reduced—dramatically. With the exception of New Zealand, the U.S. is the only country that allows direct-to-consumer drug advertising. Being a part of the British Commonwealth, New Zealanders already use homeopathy, herbs, and a wide variety of medical treatments. For the past decade Americans have been told there’s a drug for every twitch, inconvenient menses and—the latest—to improve our eyelashes. Earlier in this decade 40 percent of broadcast advertising revenue was from pharmaceutical advertising. At least two bills have come up in Congress to end it, but to no avail. Perhaps with new cost figures on the nation’s health bill, Congress will see that this advertising folly has to end. But the advertising works! (And higher drug prices pay for it.) We’re four percent of the world’s population using 50 percent of the world’s drugs.

Are we any healthier than others with this reliance on drugs?  On the contrary, the latest World Health Organization (WHO) survey of nation’s health outcomes didn’t even consider the U.S. among the 19 industrialized nations. We’re ranked 37^th in the world, two notches above Cuba and below such countries as Colombia (22^nd), Morocco (29^th), and Dominica (35^th). Congressmen proclaiming on TV during this health reform debate, “We have the greatest healthcare system in the world” are about 25 years behind in their facts.

Public Health Promotion on Natural Medicines

Maybe this is “counter advertising” paid for by Big Pharma if Congress can’t muster the votes to ban drug advertising. The ideal would be to ban drug advertising, and to broadcast public health messages as Public Service Announcements (PSAs) required by the Federal Communication Commission for stations to maintain their licenses. Television advertising of cigarettes was banned decades ago due to the impact on the public’s health. The annual death toll of 100,000 due to pharmaceuticals and 700,000 visits to America’s ERs due to contraindications of drugs should qualify as a public health menace worthy of banning advertising of the substances.

Reform Medical Education

As many other nations do, the government should provide free medical education for primary care physicians (in return for n years of service). Eliminating the quarter million dollar debt for the medical students should influence medical students’ choice of whether to specialize (and make more money to pay off the school debt) and reduce the nation’s shortage of primary care physicians.

Expand medical education to include nutrition (more than the current one course); according to the CDC, 73 percent of deaths are diseases of (nutritional) deficiency. Our doctors need to learn more about nutrition. Introduce homeopathic treatments to medical students; in the European nations 20 to 40 percent of MDs refer patients to homeopathic doctors or recommend homeopathic remedies (prescriptions aren’t necessary for routine treatment).

These reforms won’t be welcome by Big Pharma. You can bet funds for buildings, programs, departments will be withheld from medical schools if curricula are revised to teach any healing modalities besides pharmaceuticals. Great!

To improve the nation’s health, we need the pharmaceutical companies TO GET OUT of medical education. One university is changing its name from Faculty of Medicine to Faculty of Health! Presently, over 90 percent of continuing education seminars/workshops of the nation’s doctors are sponsored by drug companies. They’re not teaching nutrition, herbs or homeopathy!

Limit Medical Malpractice Awards

A significant cost of medical care based upon drugs is liability insurance for all the death and harm the chemical medicines cause. Healthcare practitioners not using drugs (Naturopaths, Homeopaths, Traditional Chinese Medicine doctors) don’t have the legal liability issues of members of the AMA because they’re not using deadly medicines.

Vola! With patients educated on ALL OPTIONS of treatment and physicians trained in healing modalities other than drugs, the patient (and her family) takes more responsibility in making choices.

Since this is a proposal not accountable to political or business interests, I will add a single-payer system as the most efficient mode of health delivery (Office of Budget Management studies have already shown this to be true). Electronic medical records and patient medical diaries (they’re now responsible for their own health) will reduce costs and improve efficiency.

In the end, the WMB mantra, “You’re an Experiment of One (with anything you take) and the Only One that Matters” is always true.

Salud!

Beverly A. Jensen, Ph.D.

President, www.WomensMedicineBowl.com

Years ago on a radio talk show regarding health, the host asked the guest, an M.D., “What is pain?” The doctor’s response, “Whatever the patient says it is.”

Hallelujah! Only the patient is experiencing the pain and knows his/her body. Likewise, only the patient, that is you and me, know–or at least have a clue–when we’re well or not, in other words if we’re feeling “healthy.”

H. Gilbert Welch, a professor of medicine at Dartmouth, wrote an essay in the NY Times this week (7/28/09) on the need to redefine what is “health”. Professor Welch, who is an MD, writes that what constitutes “health” for years has been defined by health professionals who have a financial interest in the answer.

These are health professionals who are invested in or are on the payroll of the pharmaceutical companies, biotech firms, manufacturers of medical devices and diagnostic technologies, labs, surgical centers, clinics, hospitals, etc. The editor of The New England Journal of Medicine labeled this some 30 years ago as the “medical-industrial complex”. I will call the band of them MIC.

This band, MIC, now defines health as the absence of abnormality as ever-new technologies are developed and ready to measure us. Dr. Welch writes that people use to seek health care because they were sick. Now MIC seeks patients so every little ache or twitch should be checked out and “labs are needed”.

Doctors and public only know drugs
A major contributor to drawing in the patients has been direct-to-the-consumer (DTC) advertising, especially on television. There were years of heavy pharmaceutical ads, and who couldn’t eventually identify some little twitch or pain they could use that drug for? New Zealand is the only other country that allows DTC advertising of drugs, but the education of our MDs in drugs being the sole healing modality and the American public’s lack of alternatives to drugs has resulted in our four percent of the world’s population using 50 percent of the world’s pharmaceuticals.

But MIC also defines what is “normal” so this potential patient can fit into the “abnormal” category, of course. When I was having my children in my thirties, as many Boomers did, my obstetrician commented that the statistics of “high-risk age” for maternity would be changing with my generation. And it’s these statistics of what is “normal” that MIC manipulates. If over half the population is living quite well with blood pressure above the “norm” of 120/80, common sense would indicate the statistics should be revised. Since cancer cells are our own cells gone haywire, couldn’t we all be labeled by MIC as in pre-cancer condition? And if those babies were born a hefty 8 pounds plus or you have an extra 10 pounds, you’re surely pre-diabetic. (Following this logic, we’re all pre-deceased!)

Tests are costly and ineffective
This definition of health only serves the financial interests of MIC. The irony is that often the tests they do use–and then prescribe drugs to treat the phantom ailment–aren’t measuring anything significant. If half of those who have heart attacks have normal cholesterol, then what does managing cholesterol have to do with cardiovascular risk and why would you take a drug to reduce cholesterol? A new radiology test that captures internal views of every blood vessel in the body has found patients with lifelong very high cholesterol didn’t have a pinhead of plague in their vessels. (It’s dislodged plague that causes cardiovascular “events”.)

For the most part, the tests done by MDs don’t measure excesses or deficiencies until we’re in critical condition. They fail to keep us even close to optimal health. A friend who has occasional wakes-me-up pain in the kidney (and she’s had kidney stones so she knows PAIN) and scant blood in urine (she’s a nurse so observes things), went to the doctor for tests. His test indicated “everything’s normal”, and to quit complaining was his advice. She needs to seek nutritional and herbal support for her kidneys.

Another individual did just that. A complete physical and blood tests didn’t indicate causes for slightly swollen ankles or lower than normal energy. That was the MD’s assessment. “Everthing’s fine,” was the diagnosis. The TCM naturopath, in a 90-minute visit vs. 10-minute exam, through examining the six pulses and the tongue, saw that her heart was sluggish. With a herbal complex prescribed, within two days the ankles were no longer swollen and energy levels boosted so that an afternoon nap wasn’t a necessity.

Open system to all practitioners
So while the MDs and the medical-industrial complex manipulate the definition of health, and resulting costs have skyrocketed, their medical devices and lab tests also fail to detect non-optimal health conditions. To improve individuals’ and the nation’s health all the varied health practitioners must be brought into the health system. The education of our MDs has to be expanded beyond pharmaceuticals, and the population needs education in nutrition, herbs, and medical systems other than drugs.

The WMB mantra stands: You are (indeed) an Experiment of One with everything you take, and you are the only one that matters!

Salud!
Beverly A. Jensen, Ph.D.
President, www.WomensMedicineBowl.com

The mass media have done it again. Another news story reported on every network that Vitamins C and E are useless–might even do you harm though they didn’t even pretend to have any evidence for that claim. Of course, these reports are delivered by M.D.s who have no training in nutrition and journalists who evidently have no knowledge of nutritional supplements nor do they know how to evaluate scientific studies.

The sensationalized story may have boosted ratings during the “sweeps week” in November when network audiences are measured in order to set advertising rates. The latest antioxidant study involved some 14,000 men (male physicians) taking various combinations of vitamin C and/or E or placebo. After eight years there was no reported difference in heart attack or stroke incidence among the groups. Vola! The simpletons in the media, supported by the AMA of course, tell consumers they shouldn’t bother spending their money on these supplements.

If Memory serves me–over 8 years
Now in reviewing this study, we’ll cut to the chase and look at the methodology used in the study. And Vola! At the conclusion of the study 28% of the subjects admitted they hadn’t taken the supplements even two-thirds of the time. And the researchers were relying solely on the participants’ MEMORY of their compliance for the past eight years! Yet when the calculations for heart attack or stroke incidence were made, those who took as little as 66% of their low-dose vitamin C and or E supplements were counted as having taken the entire dose.

On editorial review boards on which I serve, the methodology alone would have drawn a “thumbs down” or rejection for publication. But even with poor methodology that shouldn’t have made it past the reviewers, the study was set up for the effectiveness of the supplements to fail by choices made in dosage, frequency, and type.

Vitamin C>700mg for Cardiovascular Effects
Several published studies documenting vascular benefits in response to Vitamin C use doses of 1000-6000mg DAILY. The authors alluded to this in their study, that Vit C intakes exceeding 700mg/day significantly reduce heart attack rate. Yet they limited their subjects to 500mg.

Vitamin E–Synthetic vs. Natural forms
In every single study involving Vitamin E, the first factor to examine is whether the form of E is natural or synethetic. With most vitamins natural or synthetic makes no significant difference; in fact, the synthetic is the only form available for most. Not so with Vitamin E, where the natural form has proven far superior. Natural Vit E is distributed through the body much better (2x-3x) than the synthetic form.

Do the researchers actually not know the difference or choose to ignore it? I have yet to see a study bashing Vit E that used the natural form. When shopping, look for the “d” form of E (d-alpha tocopheryl acetate). The “dl” form (dl-alpha…) is the synthetic form. I remember it as the “damned-liar” form. I’ve inadvertently bought the dl-alpha form and experienced first-hand the inadequacy of synthetic E.

So the participants in this study were told to take one 400IU capsule of synthetic Vit E every other day. As the director of the Life Extension Foundation writes in his rebuttal, ”
First of all, we don’t take our vitamins every other day. Free radicals are constantly being generated in our bodies, and supplement users today seek to take their antioxidants with most meals, as oxidative damage is generally the greatest after eating.
It is rather ludicrous to think that these study subjects would reduce their vascular disease risk by taking modest dose, every other day, of a form of vitamin E with inferior anti-oxidant capacity.”

So this study that had such media fanfare used critically poor methodology to record compliance with the study, used dosages known to be insufficient, a synethic version of Vit E known to be inferior in absorption, and frequency known to be inadequate. Could it be more blatant that the study was designed to show the supplements fail to improve health?

We could ask, Why is there such a die-hard, hell-bent drive in the USA for poor health? The answer, of course, is Profits, Business, the profits of pharmaceutical companies and insurance companies (which are sick-care insurance, not health-care). The members of the AMA are in the pockets of Big Pharma, and these same MDs serve on government committees so the government ends up working on behalf of the trioka–Big Pharma, AMA, Insurance industry. But I’m ranting… (Have you read The China Project by Colin Campbell yet? The insider report from an eminent scientist which proves the validity of my–and your–ranting.)

You are the Experiment of One
With every pharma, herb, or supplement you (and I) take we are an experiment of one. I have a methodology that works for me: if a nutritionist or Phylis Balch’s Prescription for Nutritional Healing or my mother recommends a supplement (and she wisely reminded me of Omega 3-fish oil recently which quickly resolved skeletal pain), I try it and watch for improvements or reactions. If, after a 30-day supply is finished, I go without it a few days to test whether it’s still needed before getting a refill. When all is said and done, your own health is all that really matters, not the results of studies! Respond to this post and tell us what your method is or your results.

Salud!
Beverly A Jensen, Ph.D.
President, www.WomensMedicineBowl.com
“You are an Experiment of One”