Medical Practices and Your Health. What are the risks?

Do you know the problem with medical data and science when it comes to your health? It’s based on averages. When you buy a multivitamin, for example, it’s the same for everyone regardless of your body size, weight, age, activity level, blood type, genetics, diet, food sensitivities, nutrition, and more. The same principle applies to vaccines, drugs, medication, chemotherapy, and other medical procedures. None are specifically formulated for you. Nobody has studied YOU that thoroughly. Everything is based on ‘standard’ dosages, knowledge, and practices. If we look at dosages alone, too little can be ineffective, and too much can be lethal. Often, a certain level of risk, ineffectiveness, and side effects, including death, are deemed acceptable.

There is also the human interaction with this medical data and science, which is subject to interpretation and acceptance. Additionally, practitioners may lack the time, knowledge or compassion needed to seek out the best types of therapy or treatment for you, make accurate diagnoses, or may be motivated by other interests that put money in doctor’s pockets that recommend a particular drug or treatment. As well, doctors tend to “funnel” patients into a known diagnosis, so a known drug can be given, simply because it aligns with their training, even though the symptoms can be due to other causes.

In fact, a study conducted in 2016 at John Hopkins University revealed that the 3rd highest cause of death (or being permanently disabled) in the United States comes from iatrogenic causes – human, medical errors, and misdiagnosis. You can read more about that here, here, and here if you wish.

This does not necessarily point to inherently bad doctors. Rather, it highlights issues such as poorly coordinated care, fragmented insurance networks, the absence or underuse of safety nets, and other protocols, an avoidance of complementary and homeopathic medicine and nutrition in the USA, in addition to unwarranted variation in physician practice patterns that lack accountability. All this is a fancy way of saying that the care you receive may not take your unique circumstances into account and is often geared towards pallitive care; treating symptoms and not a cure.

While this number may seem staggering given the amount of money poured into medical research and treatment, some say it is very conservative. No one knows the exact toll taken by medical errors because the CDC’s published mortality statistics count only the “underlying cause of death,” defined as the condition that led a person to seek treatment. As a result, even if a doctor does list medical errors on a death certificate, they aren’t included in the published totals.

So the data available is not used when it conflicts with the interests of the system. And another problem with the medical system is your insurance only covers one type of medicine: allopathic and doesn’t allow you to be knowledgeable and educated about any other forms of medicine or healing outside of that system. If you’d like to learn more about the history of allopathic medicine in the USA, you can watch this video here.

About Big Pharma and Drug Lobbying in the USA here. Also, the average cost of hospital stays, medical procedures and tests in the USA can be found here and here.