Health Chaos

To those of you who have read my blog, I apologize for repetition. But some issues just don’t go away.

I just heard an ad on tv for health insurance plans to supplement what medicare offers. First of all, just what does medicare offer? And what about the 47 million of us who have no health insurance and are not yet ready for medicare? The ad was about a certain supplemental insurance company, and it was recommended that you discuss this plan with your “doctor” who will help you decide if this plan it right for you. Yah sure! Since when do “doctors” recommend health insurance plans? Well, someone is getting a kick back here from an insurance company. You need to count on your friends and colleagues for this kind of advice: not your “doctor” and not the insurance companies!

All research must be taken with a grain of salt. I was recruited, years ago, for the Nurses’ Health Study. After filling out their questionnaire, I received a letter informing me that I was ineligible as a participant since I had taken steroids. I had  never taken steroids in my life! I didn’t write back because I didn’t have the time (full time working mom, grad student, with two little boys). So now I look at all health care research with more acute skepticism.

As for HRT (Hormone Replacement Therapy), I did that for about 5 years, then quit cold turkey because my gynecologist told me she could not in good faith prescribe it anymore. I have a friend who has been “tapering off” HRT for the 3 years I have known her. Tapering off HRT? No need to. Doing this will not affect your blood pressure and heart rate, and will probably do nothing except have you discontinuing HRT.  I can only suspect that her gynecologist is her age as well, and the looks of skin and hair are more important than the total health picture? Or maybe not? Maybe it doesn’t matter if we do HRT or not? Once again, conflicting conclusions from research.

There is a lot of spurious, and confounding, information in these studies…I am a medical professional, but also a skeptic. I have attended prestigious universities, have worked at prestigious universities. But that doesn’t mean anything. What is important is the integrity of their representatives,  their scientists, of their reporting of results of their studies. They need to be honest, not just writing what the public wants to hear.

So now we need drugs to fall asleep, drugs to stop restless leg, drugs to make us “regular”? Soon we will need drugs to wake up, get our legs going, and be able to use the bathroom normally?

Have we forgotten to eat a normal, well balanced diet, with fiber,  that would prevent some of these “problems” in the first place? Have we forgotten to just go to sleep to some nice music at 10pm after walking the dog in fresh air? And though I am lax myself about taking vitamins, popping a pill or two each day, if it doesn’t burn up your stomach (drink plenty of water), you won’t have legs that fly around or get stiff and achy, most likely.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 16th, 2007 at 3:10 pm and is filed under Diet, Drugs, Education, Exercise, Health, Insurance, Lifestyle, Nursing, Nutrition, Pharmaceuticals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.