It’s time to stop being passive and to start actively managing your health…
Years ago I was a practicing mechanical engineer, meaning I spent my days at work running calculations and crafting specifications to build complex systems within petroleum refineries.
One thing that I noticed about the profession is that, because the consequences of deviating from the design standards were so high, there was little incentive for experimentation or investigating new ways of looking at problems. It was much easier to simply rely on the industry standards to guide us on how to design something. There was oftentimes little reward, or desire, for exploring intellectual curiosities or potentially doing something in a better, more efficient way.
However, in the engineering world there is a cohort of experts at the cutting edge of design and technology, who routinely throw the old way of doing things out of the window. These are the PhD’s and R&D professionals who debunk old truths and unlock new realities of the universe. These people are oftentimes 20 or 30 years ahead of the general practitioners like myself, who just “follow the standards.” To put it simply, having the title of “engineer” did not predispose me to being all knowledgeable about the fringe topics at the cutting edge of technology and design. The knowledge gap between your everyday engineer like myself, and the much smarter, yet smaller, cohort of PhD’s and R&D engineers is quite drastic.
I was merely very good at applying my knowledge within the boundaries of the guidelines that I was given to work with. Outside of those boundaries, my understanding was shaky at best.
I bring up my experience as an engineer who just “followed the standards” because I believe the medical industry works in a similar way where most of your typical primary care physicians follow the standard industry health practices rather than channeling their intellectual curiosities to discover new realities that exist beyond the decades-old thinking that guides our approach to health and treatment.
Like engineers, primary care doctors have a certain set of guidelines that they follow and make decisions by. There is limited incentive to operate outside of these standards not only due to the potential for malpractice liabilities, but also because years of schooling funnels doctors into a very specific way of looking at health and treatment that favors pills and surgery over diet, lifestyle, and holistic approaches to health. To break away from this standard line of thinking, requires a willingness to search for answers and alternative solutions that most medical professionals, or people for that matter, simply do not have
This would not necessarily be a problem, as the point of standards is to simplify the thinking process and enable professionals to make quick decisions in an efficient manner. However, when it comes to the western medicine, the lines between fact and fiction, objectivity and bias, are blurred. I don’t want to go into extensive detail about this, but for the sake of this article, let’s just acknowledge that the funding for medical research and higher education, incentive structures, profit motives, politics, and human biases all play a role in ensuring that many guidelines in western medicine sometimes promote profits for pharmaceutical and food industries over positive health outcomes.
This leaves us with even the most well-intentioned doctors operating within a larger system that unwittingly steers them to provide sometimes outdated or misguided medical advice that can do significant harm to their patients and to society.
Let’s look at the facts:
The CDC has determined that about 1/3 of antibiotic drugs are overprescribed by doctors, creating a new threat to public health with the rise of antibiotic resistant bacteria.
The inclination to treat pain rather than addressing the underlying conditions that lead to pain has led to an over-prescription of addictive pain medications that have not only become a public health crisis, but also is a major driver for reducing the average American’s life expectancy due to overdose.
Despite research suggesting the percentage of Americans on statins should be as low as 15%, current guidelines suggest that up to 40% of Americans should be on cholesterol-reducing statins which bring side effects such as fatigue, dizziness, and sleep problems; all issues that reduce quality of life and make it harder to incorporate exercise into one’s health regimen.
Dietary guidelines published in 1992 (The Food Pyramid) encouraged that most calories not come from natural healthy fats, but instead come from refined carbohydrates such as bread and cereals which spike insulin and are correlated with a notable rise in metabolic diseases such as obesity, diabetes, and dementia.
In my experience, doctors have quickly jumped to prescriptions and medications for various ailments that quite frankly didn’t require medication. Even when I adamantly state that I don’t want or need medicine, I’ve received prescriptions for steroids, ultra-strong antibiotics, pain medications, and the like. I very rarely fill these prescriptions.
Despite my objections, doctors seem at a loss when I ask for other treatment options. There is only surface level talk about diet and nutrition to drive positive health outcomes. There is no talk about medicinal herbs as treatment. There is virtually no talk about lifestyle factors such as fasting, sleep, daily walks, saunas and cryotherapy, forest bathing, meditation, sunlight, etc.. I suspect this is because these factors are rarely explored in Western medical education and research, which is typically funded in part by pharmaceuticals and the major food producers that would be negatively impacted by a health system that prioritizes preventative holistic health over allopathic treatment.
This leads me to the point of this article, which is that it is time for us to take responsibility for our own health. Yes, doctors do serve an important role in helping us live healthy lives. However due to corrupted forces in play, I do not believe we can fully trust the system at large to always work in our best interest.
This is not an attack on our medical professionals. It is more so an objective of new guidelines that doctors and their patients are asked to follow. With questionable motives behind many of these guidelines, it is very much within the realm of possibilities that advice that we receive could oftentimes cause more harm than good, and in some cases make otherwise healthy people sick.
I argue that doctors should merely serve as advisors who provide a professional opinion. However, the responsibility is with ourselves to understand the basics of our own health and wellness, and to understand the full range of prevention and treatment options that are available to us. We cannot rely solely on western medical professionals to have all the answers, or the correct answers.
A CEO seeks advice from the many highly trained professionals on his executive team, but the CEO ultimately makes the final decisions. Those on the executive team may have expert level knowledge in their field (the CFO understands the finances, the COO understands the operations, and the CTO understands the technology). However, it is the CEO’s responsibility to stay well-informed from the wide variety of information sources available to him, to develop a vision, and to make the final decisions.
The CEO hires only the most competent people for the job after a grueling interview process. The CEO fires people who do not align with his vision. The CEO faces the consequences of poor decisions, but also takes credit for the positive outcomes.
In the case of your health and well-being, it is up to you to step into the CEO role. Get informed. Set your vision. Hire. Fire. And make the final decisions regarding your health.
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