I grew up in a medical family. My father was a doctor and both my grandfather and my brother were pharmacists. Each day I would listen to the events at my father’s medical practice during dinner. On the weekends I would be surrounded by his friends either at our home or out and would see the lifestyles they practiced and the logic that went into them. Our vacations were predominantly taken at medical conventions given by large pharmaceutical companies and once back home, my desk would be filled with the inscribed pens and trinkets I had collected each with colorful letters of some new medication introduced at the convention. My life was defined by the medical community. I put it and all doctors on a pedestal and never questioned the ‘truth’ and ‘integrity’ of everything and anything I was told about pharmaceuticals. Doctors must be the smartest and healthiest people there were I thought. Boy was I wrong.
It took years living far away from that environment to break me from that erroneous belief system. After a decade away I returned to my home city and quickly realized that what I had taken as ‘truth’ while growing up was really ‘brainwashing’ by the pharmaceutical companies. All those vacations sponsored by drug companies, trinkets given and lectures listened to had turned my father and his doctor friends into nothing but high priced drug salesmen. Instead of watching his diet, my father was popping pills to lower his cholesterol. Instead of doing exercise, he was taking another pill to treat his gout. Still another medication was taken to lower his high blood pressure because it would be ‘too complicated’ to lower his salt intake and to exercise in order to lower it naturally. This backwards thinking reached the pathological when he used a fellow doctor that had gone running and had a mild shin splint as an excuse why he shouldn’t exercise. ‘Exercise is dangerous’ was his thought process. The list goes on and on.
All this would be fine with this ‘lazy’ approach except for one thing. It doesn’t work. Not only does it not work, but with the ability of American doctors to prescribe psychotropic drugs without the proper training or even information, this kind of approach can ruin lives and even prove fatal. The fact is the American medical profession has been so co-opted by the pharmaceutical industry and most physicians are so naïve about the insidiousness of corporate America into their doctoring that they have been turned into nothing more than highly educated drug salesmen who quite often misinform their patients as to the proper way to treat various ailments both physical and mental. Instead of drugs being the ‘last’ course of action…as they should be, doctors have been trained to make it the ‘first’ course of action. This is pure stupidity that serves only to line the pockets of the drug manufacturers.
The operating principal of western medicine today is to ‘treat the symptom’ instead of ‘fixing the problem’. This approach is backwards and ends up hurting more than it helps. It is nothing less than misleading. Today, if you walk into a doctor’s office and tell him you are suffering from anxiety or that you feel ‘glum’ he almost certain to suggest you go on some antidepressant/anti-anxiety medication, most of which have a whole host of side effects, are unproven to fix anything ever and at best will offer a temporary ‘fake’ relief while the underlying problem persists. Even worse, if the patient tries to get off the medication they are almost certain to experience nasty withdrawal symptoms that can often be even worse than the initial problem itself. Unless informed…and most doctors don’t even know this about psychotropic drugs…the patient that tries to stop will be ‘tricked’ into thinking their condition is worsening and be coerced to re-start the medication.
Self-awareness is the key to dealing with medicine these days. Self-awareness and education. The next time you get some advice from your doctor make sure you think through the logic and see if there’s a better way without using drugs. Your doctor quite often will push the drug without even being aware how it should not be the first course of action. Doctor’s old habits die hard. But you don’t have to. For more great self awareness info please visit www.selfawareness101.com
With Degrees in Film, Real Estate Finance and Development as well as Psychology, Robert Levin writes expert articles covering a broad range of issues. Some of his websites include: www.toptenmba.com, Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/health-articles/dont-trust-your-doctor-870028.html
www.MBAonline.me, www.lawdegree.me, www.selfawareness101.com and www.tvwriter.me
