I recently learned about and started reading a very important book. It is called, "Guide to Better Bowel Care," by Dr. Bernard Jensen. Everyone who is embarking on a journey of better health must read this. Dr. Jensen brings to light some very interesting facts about health attitudes. To quote him, "The American Cancer Society has expressed the idea that it may take 20 years or more for some cancers to develop. With due appreciation of the progress being made with cancer medications and surgical techniques, I'd like to ask where the doctor was 20 years ago when the cancer was starting? Why is our healthcare system placing so much emphasis on treatment and so little on prevention?" It is better to educate than medicate. This is something I try to do in my practice of nursing. I actually take the time to teach my patients about their diets. I teach them non-medication ways to treat their pain. I talk to them about stopping the behaviors that have lead them to repeated visits to the doctor and the ER. I hold them responsible for their poor health, which is how it should be.
Think about the dollars that are spent on studying diseases and the statistics that are being kept on those diseases. Do you think the same amount of money is spent on educating people on how to prevent those diseases in the first place. During this election process, how many times have you heard people talk about Obama-care? How many people have put it down, but have not come up with a better idea? I do not believe that giving people free insurance is the answer to our broken hearlthcare system. The answer is to stop making people sick in the first place. People think I am crazy for not having health insurance. I stopped paying for it a few years ago when I realized the only time I was going to the doctor was for my annual physical. Why was I making the insurance companies rich when I could be putting that money toward buying more organic fruits and vegetables, my supplements, and exercise equipment?
Another quote from Dr. Jensen is, "There are too many people with a coffee-and-donut lifestyle who go to the doctor, get a treatment, and then go right back to their caffeine-and-sugar habit. They will be back. You can count on it. The doctor is counting on it, too. He will be counting all the way to the bank!..."
When I try to talk to some of the doctors and nurses I work with and some of my friends, they respond with, "Life is to enjoy!" Seriously?! I enjoy life everyday without filling my body with crap. Why is there a mentality that in order to be healthy you have to stop enjoying life? Does anyone else find that to be a stupid way of thinking? If you or a family member is fighting a chronic illness, do you ever think that lifestyle and food choices led to the chronic illness? We have to start holding ourselves and the people we love accountable for the pain and misery. People say, "Don't judge." If I'm helping to pay for your healthcare, you had better believe I am going to judge and so should you!"
I have spoken on this before, but people need to fully grasp the magnitude of the problem in our country with rewarding bad behavior. As I watched this little overweight kid munching on a bag of chips, I asked his mother about his diet and his weight. Her response was, "He was a big baby. He weighed 10 lbs." This was her reasoning for having an obese 9 year old who she was feeding chips and pop! When I responded that I weighed over 12 lbs as a baby and just looked at her, I never did see the light come on. People weigh 200-300+ pounds and have back and knee pain. The pain is so bad that they can't work so we put them on disability, give them a power wheelchair, and the closest parking space. At no time do we pay for a weight loss program or make them attend nutrition classes or a gym. We pay them to continue being unhealthy. You have smokers who develop lung diseases like COPD and lung cancer. Do we force them to stop smoking? No, we pay for their healthcare with repeated visits to the ER and pay for their home oxygen tanks while they continue to smoke. We pay for liver transplants for people who have destroyed their livers with alcohol, but do not make it mandatory that they stop drinking. People come into the ER routinely seeking narcotics. The doctors give them the narcotics and then get angry when the patients keep coming back. What is it they say about the squeaky wheel? People complain long enough about the pain, the doctors give in just to shut them up and make them go away...but they only go away temporarily. They will be back because they know the system will feed their needs. We crack open people's chests and operate on their hearts, but then don't give the nutritional information necessary to prevent them from having to go through the same thing. I know this to be a fact because I ask my heart patients what they were told about dietary changes before they were discharged from the hospital. Nine times out of ten, the answer is "nothing!"
As a healthcare professional, I want to stop being asked to put a bandaid on a big, gaping wound. If you come in short of breath, at some point I will talk to you about why the problem keeps recurring. If you come in with abdominal pain, there will come a time when I will talk to you about why your stomach keeps hurting.
Stop being angry because your doctor is living in a big house, is driving a Porche, or takes their family on a European vacation every year...that steak and box of donuts you ate helped to pay for it. Get mad at yourself! We have to stopping make a healthcare system richer when that very system is doing nothing to make us healthier. All it does is make us more dependent on treatments and medications that only mask the problems or make us sicker.
