OK, as promised, how to make your doctor cry. This only works if your doctor really wants to heal people and has an open mind....open even a crack will work, if he/she remembers this stuff from med school.
I was meeting with a doctor who was interested in incorporating wellness programs into her practice....she worked in a women's health practice and also at a very large assisted living center. I'd met her when my vet asked me to lecture to a group of her clients on home-made diets for cats and dogs! I'd made a couple of cracks about how "your doctor won't know this, they are not taught this in med school..." not knowing she was a doc. When I found out, I apologized, but she assured me that it was true. That led to this appointment.
We met at her office at the nursing home part of the complex. I was emphasizing the need for her to get some CME's (continuing medical education....workshops that many licensed health professionals need to take regularly to keep their licenses current) so that SHE could guide her patients, rather than leaving it up to a high school student at GNC! I used this example:
Statin drugs are prescribed to protect the cardiovascular system of many of her patients. They work by blocking production of cholesterol in the liver. But when mevalonate is used to produce cholesterol, CoEnzyme Q10 is also produced. When cholesterol production in blocked, CoEnzyme Q10 production is also halted.
Depletion in CoQ10 leads to congestive heart failure. So the drug used to prevent heart failure.....can cause heart failure!
When she realized the truth in that statement, I could see that she was suddenly questioning SO much....and thinking of her many very elderly and fragile patients that she was treating right there. She actually slumped in her chair and stared at the notes I was holding. I offered her a copy, emphasizing the need to recommend supplementation with patients on statin drugs......just one of many, many examples of meds that cause dangerous depletions. Depletions that cause symptoms that are usually treated with more meds. Here is a nice article, very user-friendly for the patient:
http://www.cholesterol-and-health.com/Coenzyme-Q10.html
I have yet to meet an MD who learned any of this stuff in med school. There are now some CME course being offered, and it is encouraging to me to see docs taking them.
What is not encouraging, is sitting with the docs in the course and seeing them playing on their laptops, reading magazines, signing in then leaving and still getting the CME certificate. At one course I took, we were divided into little groups to work with some case studies. Here I was, a massage therapist, put with two MD's. How intimidating was that!
Well, after the first one, the two of them were asking ME what to do with each subsequent case study.....and I nailed every one, recommending every regimen that was suggested when the teachers discussed the answers. I should be proud, but it really saddened me, that it is almost impossible to find an MD who knows the first thing about wellness. They are taught the sickness business....how to cut, inject, prescribe. Not how to prevent.
One thing I really liked about the vet I mentioned is that she would change the diets of every new pet that was brought in to see her. Unless there was an acute issue, she would give them three months on the new diet to see if the health issues resolved. Almost every case did, needing no meds. She had been recommended to me by a friend when I left the practice I'd been using, finally getting sick of getting yelled at by vet techs for feeding my dog raw food, when no one at that multi-vet practice could help his diarhea and drastic weight loss. Reversed in one day with chicken wings! The evidence was before them, yet they refused to see it. In six weeks, he was no longer a walking skeleton. They said I must've been feeding him junk, and when I finally stopped, he got better. Yeah, the junk was the commercial diet they recommended!
Oh, and fats. When I defatted the broth in my homemade catfood, my first batches, the behavior of my cats changed, one in particular. He became obsessed with saturated fats, forgetting many years of good behavior and jumping up on the stove to lick out frying pans that were barely cool, and stealing butter by the stick and dragging it off to hide with it at any opportunity.
When I added half of the chicken fat back into the food, this behavior stopped, and there was a noticable difference in the coats and behavior of both cats. The playing and wrestling and galloping around increased in our teenaged kitties. The older one hadn't initiated play in many years, and would whine and hiss when the other one tried to get him to wrestle. Now he was (is) initiating wrestling matches and games of chase, and a good gallop...just because....several times a day. And he is a very healthy and muscular weight for the first time since he was a kitten.
That says more to me than any study.
