Seeking Health

If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself. This applies especially to health. However, holistic health is not about avoiding doctors; it is about not needing to go to doctors. The idea is to be well. Each of us is ultimately responsible for our own wellness, and we should consider all options in our search for better health. We get out of our bodies what we put into them; our bodies will respond to efforts to improve our health.

We need to be smart medical consumers and learn to manage our doctors as well as we manage our employees. (After all, that’s what your doctor is – your employee.) So how do we do this?

First we need to ask a lot of questions, but don’t consent to anything until you have complete understanding of it. You go to the doctor and say, “Look, I’ve got this pain in my side and I can’t figure out what it is.” And she says, “Well we need to do some imaging.” Okay, well, what kind of imaging? She might say a CT scan, but if you investigate CT scans, you may decide that’s way too much radiation and you’ll probably be better off with an MRI. What you really want to do is gather information. If you don’t know the answers to some of these questions, go home, do some research, and then decide what you’re going to do.

That doesn’t mean you should dillydally for another nine months – you may be on a fairly tight schedule of needing to figure out what’s wrong or what to do about it – but you don’t just do what you’re told. In truth, it’s very rare that you wouldn’t have a few months or weeks to make a decision.

So, if your doctor does find something to worry about – high blood pressure, a lump, high cholesterol, high blood sugar, arthritis, you say, “Great, I’d like to have any images and any other information that you can give me so that I’m really clear on what’s going on with me.” Take notes and then say, “Thank you very much. Now please tell me what you think I ought to do and I’m going to take really careful notes. Also, please understand when you’re telling me what you want me to do, I would like some outcomes and expectations in absolute rather than relative terms. I want you to tell me the straight story. I’m going to check this out with some other people who may have different tools in their toolbox, get a second opinion , and then I’m going to make up my mind about what to do.” And that’s when you get in contact with someone like me, another GP or specialist and get some other points of view. And then make your best decision about what you think is right for you. Don’t get herded into some type of procedure without looking into it first.

It’s important to remember that the vast majority of illness can be prevented, healed and reversed by making changes in your diet and lifestyle, sometimes supported by nutritional therapy, herbal medicine and other natural therapies. There is a natural alternative to every drug and in most cases this includes prescription drugs as well.

Note that it may be necessary to take a recommended drug or have an operation or procedure in order to buy yourself enough time to address the root cause of your symptoms by making changes to your diet and lifestyle. But the long term goal should always be to reduce or eliminate medications as soon as your body heals and corrects the imbalances caused by incorrect diet and lifestyle. Remember that no cell in the human body is made from a drug. Not one. They are made from what you eat. And what you eat, or won’t eat is entirely in your control.

And if your doctor is not prepared to support you in your decisions, then you need to fire your doctor and find one who is. Doctors are very smart people, but I think that many times they’re admitting the wrong people to medical school. They’re bringing people into the profession who are very bright and technically very proficient, but they don’t have the right idea about what medical practice should be about: preventing, stopping and reversing disease. So they go to work every day and get used to the idea that everybody gets worse, everybody has to have more drugs, more procedures. This is all they know, all they’re taught at medical school and by the drug companies, and they convince themselves that this is what’s best for their patients.

So, take back your control in your own health. Don’t hand it over to someone else, especially someone else whose idea of health care is medication, operations or other medical procedures that will treat your symptoms without getting to the root cause of your problem. However, please bear in mind that self-sufficient health care is not about refusing needed medical care; it’s about putting yourself in a position to not need medical care.

“No illness which can be treated by diet should be treated by any other means.” (Moses Maimonides, 12th century physician)

“One of the first duties of the physician is to educate the masses not to take medicine.” (Sir William Osler, MD)

Since turning 45 I, like all women in NZ over that age, have been invited to participate in the national breast screening program. This program is solely comprised of regular mammograms. I have opted out of this program due to the research I have done into the effectiveness of mammograms and the risks involved.

This is fairly shocking to most women who have been told that mammography can and does save lives. However, we need to remember that these are marketing messages that are informing us and not messages that report scientific findings. Here are my issues with mammograms:

1. Mammography is highly unreliable. It tends to miss aggressive tumours that grow between screenings, while detecting small, benign tumours, such as carcinoma in situ, that are usually not cancers at all and are often referred to as “pseudo-cancers”. In spite of the fact that most of these pseudo-cancers will not develop into a cancer that will require treatment, women diagnosed with them are advised to have lumpectomies, to receive radiation treatments, and to take drugs like tamoxifen. This is overtreatment for a condition that is highly unlikely to be life-threatening.

2. Particularly troubling is how these women are classified as “cancer survivors”. Almost all of them would be alive five years after diagnosis (the benchmark for survival) even with no treatment. This skews the survival statistics numbers, making it look like treatments for breast cancer are much more effective than they really are. While mammography detects pseudo-cancers resulting in overtreatment, it does not reduce the risk from dying from the real cases of breast cancer.

3. A research letter published in 2001 in Lancet reported the findings of the Cochrane Review that looked at the efficacy of mammograms for reducing breast cancer deaths. It is important to note that the Cochrane Collaboration is the most independent medical research organisation in the world, and therefore its conclusions about various issues related to medicine should be taken seriously. The article stated, “In 2000, we reported that there is no reliable evidence that screening for breast cancer reduces mortality. As we discuss here, a Cochrane Review has now confirmed and strengthened our findings.”

4. Cochrane has further concluded that screening led to an increase in radical treatments due to overdiagnosis or 25 to 35%; that 49% of screened women would experience at least one false positive; and that the absolute reduction in risk of death was 0.1%.

5. The Cochrane researchers also concluded that studies showing that mammograms reduce the risk of dying from breast cancer do not take into consideration the deaths related to breast cancer treatments, and that more women are harmed from overtreatment than are saved with mammography. The group stated, “There is no reliable evidence from large randomised trials to support screening mammography at any age.”

6. Another study published online by the British Medical Journal was conducted in Denmark, a great country for studying mammography outcomes. For the past 17 years, only about 20% of women in Denmark have been screened, leaving a large control group from which data can be gathered. Two geographic areas were included in the study: Copenhagen, where screening was introduced in 1991; and Funen, where screening was introduced in 1997. Between 1997 and 2005, deaths from breast cancer dropped by 5 % for women between the ages of 35 and 55 in both these areas. For women aged between 55 and 74, the decline was 1% in mortality rate. In the non-screened population in Denmark, the death rate from breast cancer declined by 6% for women between the ages of 35 and 55 and 2% for women between 55 and 74. The researchers also observed that diagnosis of carcinoma in situ (pseudo-cancer) doubled in the population of women who were screened and remained the same in the nonscreened population.

7. Studies even show that mammography is contraindicated for women who carry the BRCA1 and BRCA2 gene mutation, which predisposes them to a higher risk of developing breast cancer. In one study, researchers concluded that mammography screening beginning at age 25 to 29 years of age results in a higher risk of breast cancer due to increased lifetime radiation exposure, and that mammography may have a net harmful effect for these patients.

Add to that the research showing that eating a wholefood, plant based diet significantly reduces your chances of developing cancer in the first place and I feel pretty confident in my decision.

New Zealanders, including most health care professionals, are very misinformed about nutrition and health, which leads to a lot of confusion and frustration. Many people with degenerative conditions have tried dietary improvement and have decided that it doesn't work. But most of these people have not improved their diets enough to make a difference in their health outcomes.

For example, I recently spoke with a woman who told me that she had to take drugs for high blood pressure and high cholesterol because these conditions "run in her family" and "changing her diet didn't work." Under her doctor's direction, she had tried to eat more chicken and fish, avoid fried foods, and eat less fat, and doing these things did not result in her blood pressure or cholesterol going down. She was both skeptical and shocked when I told her that eating chicken and fish actually caused her coronary artery disease to progress. She then ordered a cheeseburger and fried onion rings, because she believed, based on her experience, that her condition could not be controlled by diet, and her doctor had told her that the medications would offer her protection, neither of which is true.

Diet does work, but you have to adopt the right diet. And research shows that the right diet is the wholefood, plant based diet I recommend at Seeking Health. Making a few or even many changes to your diet, but not adopting the whole plan, will not produce results (I define results as preventing, stopping the progression of, or reversing disease).

I talk to people regularly about their attempts to eat better. Their food journals show that they have tried to do the right things - they don't eat fast food, they avoid fried foods, they have stopped drinking soft drinks, and they don't eat dessert. But they are dehydrated, they eat fish 3-4 times per week, they eat too much fat and too much processed food, and while claiming to be vegetarian, they include dairy products in their diet. Many are confused because their weight and health problems have not resolved or they've gotten worse, or new conditions have developed, all while they have been trying to use diet to improve their health. The tools they are using are not wrong, the problem is that they are not enough. Getting 75% of the diet right does not result in 75% health improvement. It takes 100% to get the job done.

Dietary change is like a combination lock. A lock that requires three numbers to open it will not open if you only use two of the numbers, even if they are two of the right numbers and they are in the right sequence. Without the third number, the lock simply will not open. Add the third number and the lock opens right away.

And so it is with diet. If you've been frustrated by attempts to change your health outcomes with diet, try adopting the whole dietary excellence programs I recommend. The last few changes you make will be like the third number needed to open the lock - your weight and health will improve very quickly after you make them.

To schedule a free Healthy Directions Strategy Session with me, call 357 4335 or email cath@ckinghealth.co.nz