Colorado Springs Functional Medicine

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Before You Detox

Detoxes are like CrossFit Hero WODS.  You know it’s going to suck, you do it anyway, and feel good because it’s over, not necessarily because of what you did.  I always leave with the same question.  ‘Was that necessary?’

For you CrossFitters, the answer is always, “yes.”  For you detox people, I’m not so sure.  Before you detox, you have to consider a few things.

1. Are Your Done Toxifying Yourself?

I can’t tell you how many people have told me they did a sugar detox.  I like to ask, ‘why did you detox from sugar?’  I get a variety of answers that come down to a basic mutual point that they have been overloaded on sugar and needed a break.Detox Colorado Springs

“How did you break your detox?”  I can’t tell you how many will break a detox or fast by consuming the substance they were detoxing or fasting from.  For some reason that’s justified in their minds.  I just did a sugar fast, now I can have that donut.  Let’s look at it from a different perspective.

“Hey Dr. Kurt.  I’m going to do a Crystal Meth detox.  I’ve just been using so much lately, my body needs a break.  But when it’s all over, I get to break my detox with a fat rock of Okie Coke.  I can’t wait to tell you how great I feel.”

 

Others are concerned about the industrial chemicals they are exposed to on a daily basis.  Though we can’t control all our exposure, we can control our home base.  These toxins will invade your body through what you eat, what you breath, and what you put on your skin.  I think the skin one gets over looked often.

Just think of all the products that you use on your skin; bath soap, shampoo, conditioner, shaving cream, sanitizer, perfume, laundry detergents from your clothes, moisturizers, bug spray, sunscreen, dish soap, deodorant, hair products, and many more.  Before you detox, start cleaning these out of your daily rituals by replacing them.  We love the Toxic Free products from the Healthy Home Company.

Until you have committed to stop re-toxifying your life, don’t consider doing a detox.  It’s like the celebrity that is in and out of rehab.  Just because they are in rehab, it doesn’t fool anyone into thinking they are sober.  Stop fooling yourself into thinking you’re doing something healthy by doing a detox if you’re just going to have to do it all over again in a month.

2. Is Your Body Strong Enough to Support a Detox?

I’m not a fan of starting people with a detox for the reason that their body is not properly supported to start.  The stomach, liver, gall bladder, kidneys, small and large intestines are all involved with detoxing harmful substances when you come into contact with them. Part of the process is making the toxin less harmful, the other part is actual elimination.Detox Colorado Springs

If these processes aren’t supported, you may free up toxins, but if you can’t eliminate them properly, you will just recirculate those toxins.  It’s kind of like how a kid tricks you into thinking they ate what’s on their plate.  Instead of one lump of food, they spread it all around the plate in small quantities to make it appear that there is hardly any left.

Make sure your systems are supported before you start leaching.

3. Measure Your Outcomes.

How do you know you detoxed efficiently?  What outcomes are you using?  What substance are you trying to eliminate?  Feeling miserable is not a successful measurement of the effectiveness of the detox.  Just because you feel like crap, doesn’t mean it’s working.

Go ahead and do your detox but I would challenge you to get some lab testing prior to and after completion of your detox.  This could be a urine toxic element test that could test for a host of toxic metals like aluminum, mercury, lead, nickel, tungsten, and many more.  Maybe you test for a methylation profile to see if you even have enough support prior to attempting a detox.

There are many options and paths.  Just be sure to measure your outcomes.  Not sure where to start?  Book a complimentary 15 minute phone consultation.

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Guide to Supplements

The supplement industry is a trillion dollar industry.  Each company that makes a supplement claims that theirs is the best.  With so many to choose from and so man claiming they are the best, what do you do?  Hopefully this guide to supplements will help your decision making.

1. Remember it’s a Supplement.

I think in the world of supplements, people often forget that supplements are designed to SUPPLEMENT what you eat.  Supplements are based on the premise that you’re filling in the gaps between what you do eat and what you should eat.  Often times, people have it reversed.  They start with the supplements and then fill the gap with what they are eating.  Eat first, supplement second.

2. Start with the Basics.

When you decide to start supplementing, start first with ones that are based on what the human genetic code requires.  You know the body requires certain vitamins, minerals, and fats.  Start with supplements that provide vitamins, minerals, and fats.  These are the ones that aren’t that sexy.  They aren’t the latest and greatest herb or isolated antioxidant.  These are based on food and should come from food.

If you pick up a multi-vitamin or multi-mineral, the label should look more like a food label with the ingredients listed than isolate forms that were picked and chosen from all different sources.

Sure an apple has certain vitamins and minerals but what you can’t account for is the synergistic effect of the apple as a whole.  You can’t isolate the thousands of phytonutrients and antioxidants from the larger vitamins and minerals.  They all work together and when you keep them together, they provide a larger impact than just the sum of its parts.

Same thing with a fish oil.  The fish oil content should be just like if you picked up a fish and squeezed it.  You’ll see fish oil supplements that have an altered EPA and DHA fat content.  The manufacturer did this to make it look unique, sexy, and make it proprietary.  If it’s altered, it’s not fish.  It’s some human form of franken-fish.

With that sJuice Plusaid, I like to start people on an EPA:DHA Omega 3 and a whole food based supplement.  My supplements of choice are from Innate Choice for the fish oil and Juice Plus for the whole food based supplement.  Both the fish oil and Juice Plus have product labels that look like a food label.

Something really unique about Juice Plus is that they have a children’s program where kids ages 4 through college can get the product for free for 4 years, when they have an ‘adult’ (anyone over 13 years old) sponsor.  In other words, it’s a buy one, get one free deal.  Your only requirement is that you have to answer some very easy, anonymous surveys every few months.  They are tracking how people’s lifestyles are changing when adding a simple step like a whole food based supplement.  Questions revolve around lifestyle decisions like, ‘do you eat more fruits and veggies? or is your kid missing less days at school?’

Another cool thing about Juice Plus is that they have put their own time and money to do clinical research on their products.  It’s rare to find any supplement company that does this.  Most supplement companies, even the other ones I recommend for specifics are using borrowed research.  There was research somewhere done on a specific nutrient and they use that research to support their product.  Juice Plus looks at their specific product, not borrowed research from any ingredient in their product.

Cool facts about Innate Choice is that they only make the basic necessities.  They have the highest standard for their products that I have seen from a purity standpoint and make sure they are all 3rd party tested and validated for purity or they discontinue the product.

There’s 2 others that I would consider essential and part of your basics when starting to supplementing or cutting back to the basics.

Vitamin D is an essential hormone in the body produced from sun exposure.  The problem is that media and Big Pharma has demonized sun exposure when nothing could be further from the truth.  As a result, I see more and more vitamin D deficiency when I run lab panels on people.  Another problem is that Vitamin D has a conversion pathway that has to pass through the liver, kidneys, and DNA.  With our daily toxic load, sometimes it’s not the exposure or consumption of Vitamin D but the conversion.

We use one from either Innate Choice or Thorne.  Thorne is less expensive.

Probiotics are my 4th basic essential to start when supplementing.  There should be 10 beneficial, symbiotic bacteria to every 1 human cell.  In essence, we’re more bug than we are human. Again, since the advent of antibiotics, anything resembling a germ, bacterial, or bug has been demonized and we have dropped the antimicrobial A bomb on our food supply, cleaning products, and now even clothing.

Companies are coming around but there are still things to look for.  Make sure it’s free of wheat, gluten, corn, soy, yeast, dairy, and anything artificial.  It’s estimated that we should have 30,000 different species of bugs in our gut.  Prior to agriculture we got these bugs from eating off the land, before we had dairy, before we had pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, and nutricides (a word I just made up to categorize farming practices that don’t replenish nutrient content of soils or focus on mono-cropping).

There were bugs on virtually everything we ate.  Some were harmful but the great majority were not.  When looking for a probiotic, look for one that has many different strains and is from a vegetarian source.  My family and I use the Innate Choice one.

Don’t Guess…Test

If you are doing those 4 and are consistently doing it and still not experiencing that level of health you desire, then I’m a proponent of looking to your biochemistry to see what needs support.

Though humans are virtually identical genetically, our life experiences are not.  Starting with the basics, on top of a pure and sufficient lifestyle, should satisfy the requirements of your DNA.  The problem is that due to our life experiences, this can shift what systems need more support.  This plays into the phenotype of your DNA (the expression).

You and I are are 99.9% genetically identically identical.  The 0.1% is what makes us unique.  This is what is known as your phenotype, how your DNA is expressed.  If you drink a gallon of anti-freeze, you may get cancer, I may get depressed, someone else may get skin problems.  It’s toxic to all three of us but it can manifest differently.  The symptoms can be misleading of what’s actually happening.

With the easy access to information today, many people are playing whack-a-mole-symptom-chaser with supplements.  This is no different than prescribing medicine based on symptoms.  I can’t tell you how many patients have come in with a small trash bag full of supplements because the ‘expert’ at the local health food store was recommending them based on their symptoms.

“I’m taking this for my thyroid.”

“Do you have a thyroid problem?”

“I don’t know, but I’m really fatigued and can’t lose weight.”

“Let’s stop guessing and test.  It could be a thyroid problem, but it could be a thyroid conversion problem.  It could be a methylation problem.  It could be an estrogen problem.  It could be an adrenal problem.  It could be an inflammation problem.  It could be an auto-immune problem.  It could be detox problem.  it could be a Vitamin D problem.”

The scenarios are vast and guessing will most likely leave you frustrated, discouraged, and eating more pills and capsules than actual food.  This is a shout from a patient that had a very clean lifestyle and did the basics for a while.  She still didn’t have the energy she was hoping for so we dug a bit deeper and got individualized and figured out what needed support.  She was pretty confident it was her thyroid. Labs showed other wise.

A couple things I’ve noticed since being on my doctor prescribed supplements… My memory works again, my recovery from working out is really fast, I don’t need to sleep as much/I have more energy and I handle stress a TON better. The memory one I think is the biggest for me.  It’s really nice to not feel like my ‘computer’ is completely frozen and that I will be able to recall what I want in a minute instead of never…I love my Piyo workouts even more now! Now that I can recover like a normal person from a workout I can do the harder workouts all the time and not feel like I am dead after.

In a day and age where time is as valuable as money, stop wasting your finite resources.  You can always earn more money.  You can’t ever gain more time in a day.  If you’re already on the fit, fuel, feel strategy in addition to basic supplements but still feeling foggy, then it’s time to stop guessing and get tested.  Not sure what the next step is?  Feel free to set up a complimentary 15 minute phone consultation.

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Hospice or Health Care

What’s the difference between Hospice Care and traditional Health Care?  Nothing.  Think about it.

The Providers:

Providers in either scenario are generally kind, have a great intention to help people in need, and genuinely care about the patient.

The Outcomes:

The outcome in either situation is to make you comfortable.  If you have terminal cancer, they want you to feel little to no pain, as you pass away gently.  If you have high blood pressure, hormone imbalance, chronic pain, behavioral issues, and immune system imbalances, you are given something to numb the symptoms as you continue down the course that got you in that situation.  The best possible outcome in either scenario is to numb you.

The Delivery System:

The quickest route to make sure you don’t feel anything is through medication.  In both scenarios, the patient is given a chemical intervention.  Why not alcohol?  Why not Mary Jane?  Wouldn’t they be cheaper?  Isn’t one of the biggest complaints about our health care system the cost?

The Results:

People die early with less symptoms.  You wouldn’t say someone in hospice care is healthy.  Why do you say someone on 5 medications is healthy?  Even the insurance company doesn’t think so.  They know to the penny how much more someone on medication is going to cost them in the long run and therefore raise premiums.  Why is it harder to get life insurance?  They know you will die sooner and therefore charge you a higher premium to be covered in case you die…early.

You and I can have the same cholesterol levels.  You take Lipitor to suppress it, I do it through lifestyle.  Who do you think pays more in insurance premiums for the exact same coverage?

With any system touted as health care, the primary outcome has to be health.  Less symptoms is not health.  With this being an election year, see if any candidate mentions this or do they just spout out a plan for ‘who is going to pay for it.’  Until we change the question from, ‘who is paying for this,’ to ‘what are we actually paying for,’ we’ll be in a chronic state of discouragement.

Policy change will be slow if it ever changes.  That leaves you to create health in yourself and family.  Choose wisely.

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Incredible Insulin

Pure and simple, the better you are at regulating insulin, the better life you will live.  I’m not talking about destroying your body to the point where you have to check your blood sugar 3x/day and regulate the spikes with an extra injection of insulin.  Even if you’re a type 1 diabetic with an insulin pump, your choices can have a dramatic effect on the amount and frequency of usage.

If I’m speaking at an event and the topic of insulin arises, which it most likely will, people are quick to blurt out, ‘it regulates sugar.’  Yes, you are correct but this just scratches the surface to how insulin will impact your life, for better or worse, in sickness and in health.

Weightloss Rollercoaster

Yes, it is true that insulin reacts to elevations in blood sugar. As blood sugar levels rise, this is a signal to your nervous system that you have more energy than is needed at this point in time.  You can either drastically increase your energy demands by sprinting and doing box jumps or you can rely on insulin to store it for later.

Your body will first store it in the liver and muscles in the form of glycogen.  If you added up all the stored energy in your liver and muscles, it may last you 24 hours.  This is why exercise alone, though fantastic for brain development and nervous system regulation, often fails as a weight loss strategy for many people.  Someone is looking to burn off that spare tire.  Unless you plan on exercising non-stop for 24 hours, you may not get past the stored energy in your liver and muscles to touch the stuff around your midsection.

Female Athlete Is Performing Box Jumps At Gym

What kills your 6 pack dreams even more is that you reward yourself for all that hard work you just accomplished.  You know better than to eat garbage.  Instead you go for the ‘healthy’ low fat, low calorie goods.  In reality, you just ate a 1/2 cup of sugar, which gets redeposited back into your liver and muscles.  Since you didn’t use ALL your stored liver and muscle glycogen during exercise and just consumed more sugar than you burned off, you added another layer of insulation for the winter.

The stored energy that targets the butt, gut, and thighs isn’t glycogen, it’s stored in the form triglycerides.  You’ve seen these on your lab work.  Because it’s fat, I’m sure your well intentioned cardiologist told you to eat a diet high in complex carbohydrates and low fat.  “If we need to eliminate fat, than we have to lower our fat intake.”  The only thing that cardiologist did was keep himself in business with advice that resembles assisted suicide.  Since ‘diet and exercise’ didn’t work for you, then you have no hope other than taking drugs.  Sound familiar?

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The Hunger Conspiracy

I hate to even use the word conspiracy, as it lays claim that someone or some group is doing something malicious on purpose and trying to cover it up.  But the more I see campaigns surrounding feeding the hungry, the more I feel something weird going on beneath the surface.

I’m not denying there are people that don’t get enough food or there are many that go to bed hungry.  But are Americans really dying from starvation?  Hunger and starvation are different beasts.  Is there a problem that is bigger but being brushed under the carpet?  Is the media tugging at our heart strings to appease the people that pay their salaries?

Back in 2012, there was a report in Lancet (a British Medical Journal), called the Global Burden of Disease that reported obesity as now a bigger problem than hunger, except for sub-Sahara Africa.  This report also has a LOT of controversy around it.  I haven’t dug too deep but I think there’s one industry that is the spear head of the controversy, or dare I say it…conspiracy.

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Top 5 Ways to Lose Weight…Guaranteed

One of the most searched items on the internet is how to lose weight.  Instead of searching through all the diets, workout programs, and supplement regimes, I have decided to be a knowledge broker for you and give you my ‘Top 5 Ways to Lose Weight…Guaranteed.’  Guaranteed means guaranteed.

If you don’t like the outcomes, you can get a full refund of the weight you lost.  Some will work quicker than others but all of them are very effective and only 1 of them will cost you money directly.

Before

1. Stop Eating

What happens when you don’t give your body the nutrients and calories that it requires to operate on a daily basis?  The weight just falls off.  This may take some time and won’t always be pleasant but the sky is the limit.  Want to get back into those Bugle Boy jeans you wore in 8th grade?  What better way than restricting any and all calories.

If you don’t have the will power or you feel you need accountability, you can head to south central LA and start yelling racial slurs.  There will be plenty of people that will bash your face in, making it nearly impossible for you to chew food or even open your mouth.  The best part of this plan is that you will save thousands of dollars on your food bill. All that money saved can be re-invested into your life insurance policy since you’ll be needing it in the near future.

2. Chop Off Body Parts

If you’ve ever seen the movie Jerry Maguire, you know the human head weighs 8-12 pounds. Chopping off your head is just plain ridiculous and only losing 10 pounds doesn’t move the interest needle very far.  Instead, choose a non-essential, heavy body part.

According to the book Human Body Dynamics: Classical Mechanics and Human Movement by Aydin Tozeren, the average percentage of weight for each body part is as follows:

• Trunk (Chest, back and abdomen) – 50.80%
• Thigh – 9.88%
• Head – 7.30%
• Lower leg – 4.65%
• Upper arm – 2.7%
• Forearm – 1.60%
• Foot – 1.45%
• Hand – 0.66%

Just think about it, you’re 200 lbs and wanting to get down to a cool 170, the fastest route is to cut off a leg.  Between your thigh and lower leg, that’s easily close to 30 lbs.  Depending on your tool of choice, that could be as quick as 3 minutes.  Fast and effective.  There’s no way you need 127 hours to get these results like Aron Ralston did in the middle-of-no-where Utah.

3. Cocaine and Meth

Have you ever noticed there’s rarely ever a fat or obese person portrayed in the movies or TV that is addicted to cocaine or meth?  Look at all the rock stars, movie stars, and athletes that admit to having a cocaine or meth addiction.  Skinny, skinny, and skinny.  The longer you use it, the better the meth_lipstickweight loss results…GUARANTEED!!

The added benefit is that these drugs are also appetite suppressants so if you like option #1, this can be a great adjunct for quicker results.  Not to mention as your teeth fall out, it’s hard to chew food.  Plus those teeth are just added weight anyway.  In weight loss, “every ounce counts.”

If you can’t afford the high cost of cocaine or meth, you might be able to get your doctor to prescribe a drug for ADHD.  Same difference, right?  Best of all, your insurance pays for it.  Win-Win.

4. Blood Letting

You have too much blood anyway, you can afford to get rid of some.  According to a UC San Diego study, the average blood draw burns 650 calories.  “A pint’s a pound, the world around.”  Not only are you losing a pound at each donation, you increase your calorie burning capacity.  The hangup is that donating often is tricky.  They try and make you wait like 53 days.  Only losing 1 pound every 53 days is only almost 7 pounds in a year.  You’re looking for 7 pounds per week.

Imagine if you donated 2x week, once on each arm.  Weight loss jackpot.  If the nurse is concerned that you just donated blood because of the needle marks on your arm, just tell her “Chill out, it’s been 53 days since my last donation.  Those needle marks are from heroine…I’m trying to watch my weight.  Gotta be healthy to donate blood, right?”

5. Parasites

Tapeworm-dietThis might be the best of all because you can eat all you want, the parasite just steals it from you.  It works as the same premise as option #1 except you can eat all you want and never have a regret.  You can look pretty on the outside and not worry about the inside.

Honestly, I thought this was a little far fetched until my wife asked me yesterday, “have you heard of the tape worm diet?”  Apparently, I’m late to the game.  Just like when I thought Red Box was a stupid idea.  Seriously, just google the tape worm diet.  Apparently it’s been around for a LONG time.  People already willfully ingest tape worms to allow the parasite to aid them in the pursuit of life, liberty, and the consumption of excessive, guiltless calories.  God bless ‘Merica.

In our society’s craze for the next weight loss strategy, don’t confuse weight loss with health loss.  Just remember, dying early with less weight is not a successful outcome.  If the diet or routine seems sketchy, it probably is, even when it’s ‘doctor supervised.’

 

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Shin Splints and Plantar Fasciitis – It’s All In Your Head

If you’re a runner or competing in the CrossFit Open with nagging shin splints or plantar fasciitis, you probably think I’m nuts saying your pain from injury is all in your head.  What I’m getting at is this, ‘is your brain cheating on you?’

One of the key characteristics of shin splints and plantar fasciitis is that you are using the big toe to cheat your movement and cover for some other movement or body part not pulling its weight when you are running, jumping, or lifting. Your shin splints or plantar fasciitis is a symptom of a different problem, most likely one between the ears.

You may be thinking, “But my big toe and brain aren’t anywhere near each other.”  Stay with me on this.  If you don’t think your big toe and brain are connected, read on.

Shin Splints

If you’ve never had shin splints, then skip to the next section.  If you HAVE had shin splints, you know how painful, debilitating, and frustrating it can be to treat and recover.  What I want you to do is STOP TREATING YOUR SHIN.  Your shin is not the problem.  It’s the symptom.  If you really want it to stay a nagging injury, keep competing and covering the pain with some caffeine and NSAIDS. [Read more…]

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Non-Toxic vs. Toxin Free

If you have done shopping the past 6 months, you will notice an ever-increasing attention to show off a label that screams ”Non-Toxic.’  This seems really great on the surface until you peel back some of the layers in the battle of non-toxic vs. toxin free living.

It’s one of those things you may or may not want to dig into.  It’s like Tom’s Shoes.  On the surface, it’s a great idea.  You buy a pair of shoes and they donate a pair of shoes.  You forget about the rest…unless you work in the non-profit relief sector of these countries like a friend of mine, John.  What you don’t see is that these donated shoes then puts the village shoe repairman out of business.  These donated shoes also have a tendency to increase crime and violence as the shoes are stolen and you may be beaten up to get the shoes off your feet.  Is there anyone to monitor that these don’t happen?  Probably not.

Non-toxic is no different.  There’s no regulation of the term non-toxic, just like there’s no regulation of the ‘pink ribbon’ to support breast cancer either.  Anybody can slap that pink tag on any item and dupe you into feeling like you’re making a difference.

Why not make a pair of slippers with a non-toxic label, pink ribbon shoe laces, and donate them to those without shoes?  Man you would help a ton of people.

In theory, there is a cutoff where something can be called non-toxic but that doesn’t mean it’s safe or toxic free.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) is the federal agency responsible for administering the Federal Hazardous Substance Act.  The Federal Hazardous Substance Act defines ‘a product is toxic if it can produce personal injury or illness to humans when it is inhaled, swallowed, or absorbed through the skin.’

Title 16, Section 1500.3

(5) Toxic shall apply to any substance (other than a radioactive substance) which has the capacity to produce personal injury or illness to man through ingestion, inhalation, or absorption through any body surface. (6)(i) Highly toxic means any substance which falls within any of the following categories: (A) Produces death within 14 days in half or more than half of a group of 10 or more laboratory white rats each weighing between 200 and 300 grams, at a single dose of 50 milligrams or less per kilogram of body weight, when orally administered; or (B) Produces death within 14 days in half or more than half of a group of 10 or more laboratory white rats each weighing between 200 and 300 grams, when inhaled continuously for a period of 1 hour or less at an atmospheric concentration of 200 parts per million by volume or less of gas or vapor or 2 milligrams per liter by volume or less of mist or dust, provided such concentration is likely to be encountered by man when the substance is used in any reasonably foreseeable manner; or (C) Produces death within 14 days in half or more than half of a group of 10 or more rabbits tested in a dosage of 200 milligrams or less per kilogram of body weight, when administered by continuous contact with the bare skin for 24 hours or less. (ii) If the Commission finds that available data on human experience with any substance indicate results different from those obtained on animals in the dosages and concentrations specified in paragraph (b)(6)(i) of this section, the human data shall take precedence.

In other words, if a substance kills ONLY 49% of the test subjects, it could be legally labeled non-toxic.  Makes you feel really safe, right?  How does this translate to humans?

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Healthcare Epic Fail

I think it’s really simple on why our healthcare system fails to produce health.  It’s not because our system is only accessible when you’re sick, therefore being a sick care system.  It’s not because a lack of insurance coverage for the masses.  It’s not because we don’t have a large enough vaccine coverage rate.  It’s not because the FDA and government regulations are just subsidiaries of the drug companies.  It’s not because of lack of technology, primary care physicians, and testing.

The healthcare epic fail comes down the basic premise of the goal of healthcare.  Healthcare has one premise.  That’s to remove disease.

Wait, what?  Isn’t removing disease a good thing?  In theory?  Yes.   In practicality, nope.

Removing disease is like trying to remove darkness.  You can’t do it.  Seriously, go into a dark room and try to remove the darkness.  Look at your sleeping cell phone and try to remove the darkness of that screen.  You’re not going to be able to do it unless…

candleYou add light.  If you want to remove darkness, you have to add light.  It doesn’t even have to be a big, bright, spot light.  It can be the slight glow of your smoke alarm’s red flashing light.

Disease is darkness.  Health is light.  The ONLY way you’re going to create less disease is by creating more health.  This is why this website is called ‘More Health, Less Healthcare.’

For this reason we have a healthcare epic fail.  Medicine cannot add light.  The best medicine can do is slow down the rate of darkness.  Medicine continues to attack darkness with short term results at best.  How many ‘fighting (insert diagnoses)’ campaigns are there out there.  We have walks for breast cancer, telethons for diabetes, and months dedicated to heart disease awareness.

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Before You Take that Cholesterol Drug…

You may not have heard of some recent news that is happening across the pond in the mother country concerning taking statins.  You know statins as those drugs that are recommended to every man, woman, and child to “prevent heart attack due to all that pesky plaquing in the arteries.”  For the past 40 years, our national government has had a vendetta against the little waxy substance called cholesterol.  

statinsEven dietary changes are happening.  Hopefully it’s not another 40 years before they change the medical management of elevated cholesterol.  Before you decide to take a statin or if people you know and love are on statins, you may want to consider a couple things.

Type 2 Diabetes

Taking statins can increase your chance of Type 2 diabetes by almost 50%, while doing NOTHING to prolong the lives of those at a low risk heart attack.  In England, close to 8 million Brits take statins.  It’s closer to 25 million Americans taking the essential molecule blocking drugs.  Is it really working to reduce heart disease?

Researchers in Finland studied 8,749 non-diabetic men to see whether taking two of the most popular statins increased the chance of developing Type 2 diabetes.

They found those who took simvastatin or atorvastatin were 46 per cent more likely to develop the condition and those on higher doses were at even greater risk.

Last year, Britain’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence issued guidance making 40 per cent of adults eligible for statins.

It said anyone thought to have a greater than 10 per cent chance of a heart attack or stroke within 10 years should be offered the drug on the NHS.  It means virtually all men aged over 55 and women over 65 are encouraged to take statins to stave off fatal ­cardiovascular disease.

Back in 2013, the American College of Cardiology created new guidelines that would increase statin use in the states by an additional 13 million Americans.

If that study that involved 8700 people in Finland translates into 38 million Americans, we should see an increase in diabetes by at least 19 million Americans as well as a drastic increase in heart disease in the coming decades.

“Ironically diabetes triples the risk of heart ­disease for men and multiplies it by five for women, so the very drugs given to prevent heart disease may well be causing it in, potentially, ­millions of people.  Many researchers have been aware for many years that the true rate of side effects from statins have been hidden and under-reported.”

Dr. Malcolm Kendrick

Parkinson’s

Dr Kailash Chand, deputy chairman of the British Medical Association, was speaking following research which found those who take the cholesterol-lowering drugs are more than twice as likely to develop Parkinson’s disease in later life than those who do not.

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