The 1-Minute Weight Loss Cheat Sheet – Quick Shortcuts & Tactics for Busy Women (11 page)

The answer is to begin being smart about your choices. The answer is to be aware that your doctor is human. You need to be aware that mistakes in hospitals, most of which are understaffed, are far too common. This all requires that you use some commonsense.

First, question everything. If you have a 2- or 3-day hospital stay, when offered a pill or IV always ask what it is and what it is for. You don’t need a medical degree to know that given two of the same sleeping pills just 20 minutes apart is probably a mistake and not by design. You don’t have to be a jerk when you question a procedure that your doctor wants you to have. Just use each interaction as an opportunity to learn more about what is going on with your body to help you get well.

Sadly, there is no easy way to determine what you can trust when it comes to medical research and official treatment guidelines. So much has been tainted by economic conflicts of interests. In many ways, a doctor who strictly keeps to the guidelines is going to be far more controlled by the pharmaceutical industry than might be good for your health.

“
We're in a world where you want a doctor who, for the sake of giving you good care, is prepared to take the risk of losing their job, because this is the world that good doctors increasingly are being forced into. They’re being forced into being the kind of physician that says, ‘I know the guidelines are wrong. Yes, they based it on the latest evidence. But the industry actually controls the evidence, and as far as they do, they control the guidelines process also. I'm going to go by what seems to be the best thing for me to do for my patients.’

“
Unfortunately, there's no simple way to pick out articles in the literature and say, ‘We can believe this and not that.’ In fact, you could almost say that the articles in what we used to think of as the best journals in the field – like the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, and other journals like this – are more likely to be compromised than articles in perhaps journals that are less well-known.”
 – Dr. David Healy

A perfect example of this is the article
by Dr. Joseph Mercola about a study that was widely promoted in the media, which declared that
eggs were associated with as much risk for strokes as smoking
.
Dr. Mercola systematically shows that was a critically flawed study. And when one looks at the funding of the study, one discovers strong ties to the pharmaceutical industry. Two of the three researchers in question have declared interests in statins. Now do you think the companies that make statins might have a vested interest in getting you to be afraid of cholesterol? (Yes.) The third researcher helped create the vegan “Portfolio Diet,” which only allows egg substitutes and then only sparingly, so he too has a financial stake in scaring people away from eggs.

Note:
I performed a detailed analysis of the Portfolio Diet in my
Celebrity Diets: 50 Fast Weight Loss Diets Used by Celebrities and Hardcore Dieters
. If anything, we find that the Portfolio Diet is possibly far worse than Dr. Mercola makes it sound. If you put your teenage sons on a strictly vegan diet, you can expect them to develop the upper body strength of their toddler sisters.

T
he 
Thirteenth Annual HealthGrades Hospital Quality in America Study
 concluded in 2011 some horrible observations:

HealthGrades has been studying the quality of care in the nation's hospitals since 1988. This year they analyzed approximately 40 million Me
dicare patients’ records from 2007 through 2009, and found that 1 in 9 patients developed a hospital-acquired infection.

The HealthGrades report said that
“the incidence rate of medical harm occurring is estimated to be 
over 40,000 each and EVERY day
 according to the Institute for Healthcare Improvement.”

Another study, in 2008, by the Office of Inspector General for the Department of Health and Human Services, also reported grave evidence that something is amiss in the hospital setting in America:
 
One in seven Medicare beneficiaries who is hospitalized will be harmed
 as a result of the medical care they receive in the hospital, the study said.

Authors of this study found that physician reviewers determined nearly half, or 44 percent of the adverse and tempo
rary harm events “were clearly or likely preventable.” The mistakes equate to 3.5 percent of the Medicare budget.

Those facts do somewhat make anyone in his or her right mind want to avoid hospitals and doctors. But again, that is the wrong approach. And of the 40,000 mistakes, certainly much of it has no long-term or even immediate effects, such as prescribing four Tylenol as opposed to two that the doctor meant to prescribe.

The key is always to know the facts and be aware. In a June 2010 report in the 
Journal of General Internal Medicine
, study authors said that in looking over records that spanned from 1976 to 2006 (the most recent year available) they found that, of 62 million death certificates, almost a quarter-million deaths were coded as having 
occurred in a hospital setting due to medication errors
. They also found that these errors spiked in July, and particularly in teaching hospitals.

There are four points in the medication use process
 at which errors
 
may occur:

1. W
   hen the medication is ordered (written, electronic, or oral)
   
2. W
   hen the medication order is transcribed and verified
   
3. W
   hen it's dispensed, and
   
4. W
   hen it's administered
   

The June 2010 report narrowed the errors down to:


     
Drug overdose


     
Prescribing the wrong drug


     
Taking the wrong drug, or


     
Accidents involving medications during surgery or medical procedures

Older adults are at a higher risk of medication errors and have a greater propensity for experiencing harmful and fatal errors. The most common types of medication errors in older adults are omission and improper dose.

T
he foundational causes of what's driving health care costs in America are:

1. The emphasis on sickness and treatment, rather than health, fitness, and prevention which is primarily fostered by ultra-sophisticated marketing strategies employed by the drug industry.
   
2. Fraud – by both consumers and providers, including the drug industry.
   
3. Unnecessary procedures, medications, hospitalizations and screenings
   .
   
4. Medical mistakes, hospital-acquired infections, and surgical and device errors
   .
   

If we were only to address these issues, beginning with changing the emphasis of our well-being to health and fitness, and then following the healthy lifestyle that paradigm suggests, the issue of sickness in America and what it's costing us
– as well as the death-by-medicine events will begin to fade away very quickly.

It
’s time to quit bombarding your body with medical interventions and to reward yourself with the fit and healthy body that come from living fit and lean.

I’ll end this chapter with a little encouraging news. Several reputable websites have sprung up, many monitored and created and written by medical doctors from all ends of the earth, that you can read and participate in to help make the world safer with drugs.

One of the best is
http://www.rxisk.org
.

Note
: The name www.rxisk.org is used because
Rx
is the medical abbreviation for
prescription.
Rx comes from the word
recipe
which in Latin means
to take
. Given today’s risks, however, the term
prescription
might be better served to be translated,
take and pray.

O
ne of the most valuable features of www.rxisk.org is that it allows you to go through a series of questions that help you determine whether ailments you're having are associated with any of the drugs you’re taking. You then receive a report that you can take with you to your prescribing doctor. This aids you in making a more comprehensive risk-versus-benefit analysis of the drug. The idea is to try and create better teamwork between you and your doctor with knowledge on your side for a change. In addition, you will get feedback on potential problems with individual drugs long before you'd get it from the FDA.

What an
excellent
tool for anyone currently taking a drug, as well as for anyone considering taking one. If this book teaches you nothing else, due diligence is the key. Sadly, the risks are all on you – not on your doctor, the FDA, or the pharmaceutical companies.

Weighing the risks versus the benefits is crucial, but in order to do this, you need reliable, truthful information
.
www.rxisk.org
 
can be that valuable resource that only becomes more valuable with time, as people begin to use it and file their own reports on side effects.

Much of what you learned in the previous chapters applies to OTC (
Over the Counter) medicines. Examples of OTC drugs are pain relievers such as ibuprofen and aspirin, cough syrups, sinus medicines, hay fever tablets, and so on. These are the medicines you can get at most any drug store or grocery store without a prescription. Some OTC medicines can be combined with other substances to produce homemade hallucinogens, which is why some OTC meds are available without a prescription but limited in the number available for sale to one person at one time.

Note:
I list those only as examples of OTC medicines. I am not saying that those specific OTC medicines are – or are not – bad for you. As with all of this book’s subjects, misuse and incorrect application (using them to help a symptom without addressing the cause of whatever malady that might be causing that symptom) can lead to extremely bad results.

I appreciate the natural health industry and I am aware of its problems and limitations. I want what you want – the best answers to health problems available. Unfortunately as you’ve seen, other factors are at work that limit our answers. In some situations the answers we’re given are bad for us.

When it comes to OTC problems, we often treat our symptoms. That is understandable. A cough is causing our chest to get more sore every few minutes. A sore throat keeps up from being able to swallow. A drippy nose, or a congested nose, keeps us from being able to sleep.

Popping a pill or swallowing a spoonful of medicine does often mask a symptom of an illness. And in doing so we often feel better and can better get the rest we need to get well again. Sometimes something as simple as a minor headache keeps us from focusing on important work we have to do. Perhaps atmospheric pressure or work pressure caused the headache but there is little we can always do about things like that. So masking the headache with a pain reliever gets us through the day.

You won’t hear me arguing too much there. As you might imagine, it’s my goal
never
to take such a pain reliever! But guess what? I do take them. Not often. But I do. And in taking them I know I am not fixing whatever caused my headache.

The same goes for cough syrups and the other OTC’s. I avoid them. I try never to take them. I realize my headache didn’t appear because I didn’t get enough aspirin and I realize my cough isn’t there because I didn’t take cough syrup. The source of my problem at times such as those isn’t pertinent. In life we sometimes need to mask a symptom to get through the day and it is okay as long as it’s a minor symptom. Also, eliminating a symptom is great if you’re also taking steps to eliminate the originating problem. For example, if you are allergic to gluten and have moved to a gluten-free diet, but some slipped in causing you problems, you’ll want to mask the gluten-allergic symptom if possible while your system eliminates the gluten from your body.