The Politics of Getting Sick.

When a young man, or a young woman attends medical school, they usually follow a plan. A list of courses, called a syllabus, that they need to follow in order to become doctors. But there are a variety of specialties that a person can study. Neurosurgery, psychology, cardiology, and so on. It really doesn’t matter what specialty they’ve undertaken as their specialty, the list of subjects that they must study is designed to prepare them for their ultimate mission in life. And the purpose of that mission is to treat the sick.

In the course of handling your care, doctors do tell you, and advise you, to eat right and exercise. They also advise us to stop smoking. Patients rarely follow this advice, and doctors are trained in only curing illnesses. Not on preventing them. Today there is an epidemic of health problems that can be traced back to patient’s bad health habits, the way they eat, and their lack of enough exercise. And the results of these bad health habits are obesity, cancer, heart problems, sleep problems, depression and so on. When these patients were young, they didn’t have these health issues due to their youth and fitness levels. The issues manifested themselves as they got older, and after years of sedentary lives, overeating and of course eating the wrong foods. Supermarkets sprung up after world war II, and TV dinners became popular, Pizzas, Hamburgers and Cheeseburgers, and so on. But what we are really supposed to eat breads and grains, vegetables and fruits, dairy, proteins, and fats.

But the portions of these food items is what’s important. We’re supposed to have much less red meat, less egg and cheese (dairy), and much more fruits and vegetables. Lately, there has been a movement to juice ourselves to health. And it’s having a positive impact on those of us that are juicing. The first thing juicers do is detoxify themselves in order to lose weight. They fast and only drink a concoction made up of kale, cucumber, ginger, celery and lemon. Then of course they change their diet to eat more solid foods, but they cut out, or severely restrict meats, and dairy (eggs, cow’s milk, and cheese) and make a wide variety of different juices that they mix themselves. They mostly follow the advice of Dr. Joel Fuhrman who wrote the “Eat to Live” book. The result is a complete reversal of illnesses such as heart disease and diabetes.

But despite these inspiring results, doctors still treat patients with pills and medicines. If a patient asks about juicing, doctors nod, and say things like “uh huh”, and “I see” but steer patients back to their medications. It’s because that’s how doctors were trained. They prescribe these medications even though they are known to have adverse side effects. But there is another side to this situation.

The reason that doctors and hospitals exist is because people get sick. But it’s the reasons that doctors have jobs, and hospitals exist. But doctors need to advise healthy life styles. It’s their duty. One of the earliest doctors, Hippocrates, who came up with the Hippocratic Oath that doctors know by heart, said this: “Let thy food be thy medicine and thy medicine be thy food.” Hippocrates knew that eating the right foods, in moderation, had a positive effect on the patients who were ill. But doctors, who I’m sure have heard this quote before, rarely follow it. And the reason is pretty simple. Hospitals throughout the United States employ millions of people. I believe that hospitals try to do good by their patients and want them to be healthy. But the problem is that in order for hospitals to exist, people need to be sick. I worked for two hospitals over 10 years (I was in desktop support) and whenever we had a low census (a term that hospitals use to indicate when business is good or bad) it was not seen as a good thing (although I’m sure that the hospital doesn’t really want people to develop health problems, but it’s good for business). It hurts business when hospitals have a low census, It is in the best interest of the hospitals that people get sick.

But the real culprit in this health crisis are the drug companies. If you search the internet it’s not hard to come up with stories of payoffs by the drug companies to doctors. The task that the drug companies want the doctor to perform is to steer the patient toward a certain drug that they’re selling. Drug companies need to stay in business too, and doctors talking to patients on the subject of going on a juicing diet is detrimental to the bottom line of the drug companies. But also to the doctors and hospitals as well. So what do you do if you’re a doctor? Or a hospital? Do you tell the patient to take the medicine you’re prescribing or do you try to steer them towards a healthy life style? If you choose the former, do you reveal any negative information about the drug, as some doctors have done?

I remember the day when you never saw a commercial by law firms on TV. Today, I see commercials on TV put out by law firms hoping to make a profit themselves by suing the doctors and hospitals. A practice formerly known as ambulance chasing, but which today you see more and more of. They want their cut too. And this has the undesirable result of making health care extremely expensive. A problem which caused the government health care program that’s due to affect all Americans next year in 2013. This event is worrisome when we see the massive fraud in both Medicare and Medicaid.

And the fraud is unavoidable. Because the government puts restrictions on how much they will pay for specific medical services, hospitals and doctors don’t make good money helping the poor and the elderly. Money has a effect on people. It spawns greed. Fraud will absolutely and definitely happen to the health care program when it eventually begins. This means taxpayer money will be lost, and money having to be redirected from other sources such as Social Security, or raised by raising taxes. This means that the taxpayer will certainly lose. And in case you haven’t noticed, we’re in a lot of debt right now to the tune of 14 trillion dollars and this debt is barreling unabated at runaway speeds towards 15 trillion. So what can we do?

Well, this is something that’s difficult to start, but we need to start a jucing movement. Start to eat right and exercise. Get a juicing machine because it makes getting your veggies. I like it because I drink the juice quickly. And hopefully, as you start to lose weight, and start to look and feel younger, and hear from the doctor that you can cease taking the heart medicines, your cholesterol medicine,  or your diabetes medicine. It won’t happen overnight. The disadvantages that I spoke about are certainly going to happen. There’s no stopping them. But the nice thing about going on a health kick involving eating right and exercising is that you personally will suffer less than everyone else. The downside to this newfound health of yours is that you can now work longer, and you’ll have to in order to pay for taking care of all those sick American citizens. And those taxes will certainly be misspent and stolen. But at least you’ll have your health.

I hope this article inspires you to adopt a healthy life style, as we have in our household. And that you in turn inspire others to do the same. Because it affects the most important person you know.

You!