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Doctors According To Voltaire


Bossybabe

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HOLA441
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HOLA442

Doctors are men who prescribe medicines of which they know little, to cure diseases of which they know less, in human beings of whom they know nothing.  

Voltaire

Has anything changed?

Yes! They now have a mortal fear of legal action! :huh:

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HOLA443
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HOLA444
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HOLA445

I was talking to a doctor last night about how the UK/EU is trying to raise the quality of emergency cardiac care in the Caribbean.

He was saying how the UK/EU is trying to get people trained up on how to first respond to chest pains, how to ressusitate people, give them aspirin to dillute the blood vessels - cheap, practical AND proven methods to save lives.

But he went on to say how some of the big US health firms are moving into the are big time and their focus is all on expensive drugs and heart transplants rather than the cheap, practical and proven preventive treatment - i.e. stopping things getting so bad that more expensive and intensive action is required.

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HOLA446

It has certainly become more of a "business" rather than a "service" Mr Tulip, and Mr Britney!

This is called consumer choice!

I would really want to be looking at hospital brochures, if I had a life threatening ailment!?I think not! :o:blink:

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HOLA447

They consultants swan around this town in 4x4's with blacked out windows. Yet its the sickest town I've ever seen. Many hobbling about, overweight and with dodgy bones and joints.

Even I think I could cure some of them (if caught early enough) with Vit D and iodine supplementation, removal/elimination of wheat or white flour from the diet.

The Industrial Medical Complex?Or rather the Pharma Fast Food Supermarket Medical Complex?

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HOLA448

They consultants swan around this town in 4x4's with blacked out windows. Yet its the sickest town I've ever seen. Many hobbling about, overweight and with dodgy bones and joints.

Even I think I could cure some of them (if caught early enough) with Vit D and iodine supplementation, removal/elimination of wheat or white flour from the diet.

The Industrial Medical Complex?Or rather the Pharma Fast Food Supermarket Medical Complex?

By the time your forty the only person qualified to be your doctor** should be yourself. The Internet makes this infinitely easier.

(** I'm talking GP here not specialist consultant or surgeon )

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HOLA4410

By the time your forty the only person qualified to be your doctor** should be yourself. The Internet makes this infinitely easier.

(** I'm talking GP here not specialist consultant or surgeon )

I'd be a bit worried about diagnosing my own Alzheimer's, even with t'internet! I do most other diagnoses on myself.

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HOLA4411

Trouble with quacks is that they are technocrats. They see everything in isolation, in laboratory conditions, and ignorant of other concerns.

Seems hardly a week goes by without the BMA calling for smoking to be fully criminalized (because obviously that works with other narcotics, prohibition of alcohol etc)

Ignoring the futility of it, what about freedom to do what i damn well please with my body.

Same with the Police. Sure they could get crime down if they had complete control in a police state, but i consider my privacy more important than living in a crime free world.

Same with the transport people. I know im more likely to die doing 80mph than 40mph, its a risk im happy to take.

Technocrats maybe scientifically correct. It doesnt mean they are 'right'

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HOLA4413

My Dad just turned 60.

Diagnosed as Diabetic about 7 years ago - taking increasing amount of medication, having more and more health problems as a result of diabetes.

The 'Diabetes Nurse' told him to eat a good helping of carbs with every meal. Doctor just gave him increasing numbers of pills. I had been trying in vain to get him to switch to a Paleo diet, but no luck.

Finally a few months back things declined to the point where he got scared enough to try Paleo. Lost a stone and a half in three months. Blood sugar better than it's been in 10 years. Just reduced the diabetes medication by half, with a view to reducing it further depending on how things go.

At 60, he is slimmer than I can ever remember. If he loses another half stone, he'll be the same weight he was on his wedding day 30 years ago. It took years of me telling him that the doctor/nurse were wrong; he didn't believe me for a long time.

Needless to say now he does!

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HOLA4414

My Dad just turned 60.

Diagnosed as Diabetic about 7 years ago - taking increasing amount of medication, having more and more health problems as a result of diabetes.

The 'Diabetes Nurse' told him to eat a good helping of carbs with every meal. Doctor just gave him increasing numbers of pills. I had been trying in vain to get him to switch to a Paleo diet, but no luck.

Unfortunately, this is the problem. Doctors all know that one of the most useful things for diabetes is weight loss, which is most easily achieved with a careful diet (containing lots of complex slow-release carbohydrates, such as whole grains, etc.), appropriate exercise, etc.

The problem is that advising a patient to take up such a diet is totally ineffectual. This has been trialled over and over, advising people to eat a good diet and lose weight, simply doesn't work (because the advice isn't followed until it's bordering on too late).

The difficulty is that many pills (including various anti-diabetic medications), but also statins, do work. The fact is that the most effective thing a doctor can do is prescribe sugar lowering drugs, blood pressure lowering drugs and statins, to a patient with type 2 diabetes. It's not that losing weight doesn't work - it does. It's just that *advising* weight loss doesn't.

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HOLA4415

Science has advanced a hell of a lot since Voltaire's day. In his day, they didn't know about scurvy, thought diseases were caused by bad air (rather than bad water) etc.

It's like saying machines in the 18th century were slow, inefficient and broke down a lot, has anything changed? They still do, but the advances have been gigantic.

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HOLA4416
Guest tbatst2000

Doctors are men who prescribe medicines of which they know little, to cure diseases of which they know less, in human beings of whom they know nothing.

Voltaire

Has anything changed?

That's probably all still true but some, much even, of the stuff they now prescribe actually works. I have a chronic disease which, 100 years ago would have killed me in my 20s, now I take a daily dose of a relatively cheap drug with no noticeable side effects and have a normal life expectancy. Western medicine and the people that practice it is f*cking brilliant!

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HOLA4417

A friend of mine is on a ward.

Daily activties are axed at weekends to "cut costs".

Yet every visiting room has new leather sofas ( just delivered)...nurse admin said it was because they had to spend the remainder of the "budget" or lose it next year.

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HOLA4418

My Dad just turned 60.

Diagnosed as Diabetic about 7 years ago - taking increasing amount of medication, having more and more health problems as a result of diabetes.

The 'Diabetes Nurse' told him to eat a good helping of carbs with every meal. Doctor just gave him increasing numbers of pills. I had been trying in vain to get him to switch to a Paleo diet, but no luck.

Finally a few months back things declined to the point where he got scared enough to try Paleo. Lost a stone and a half in three months. Blood sugar better than it's been in 10 years. Just reduced the diabetes medication by half, with a view to reducing it further depending on how things go.

At 60, he is slimmer than I can ever remember. If he loses another half stone, he'll be the same weight he was on his wedding day 30 years ago. It took years of me telling him that the doctor/nurse were wrong; he didn't believe me for a long time.

Needless to say now he does!

Good post, and excellent news for your dad who has got his life back.smile.gif

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HOLA4419

A friend of mine is on a ward.

Daily activties are axed at weekends to "cut costs".

Yet every visiting room has new leather sofas ( just delivered)...nurse admin said it was because they had to spend the remainder of the "budget" or lose it next year.

Simple. Activities cost the STAFF budget and sofa costs the FURNITURE & EQUIPMENT budget. You can't move money between the two. :(

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HOLA4420

Doctors are men who prescribe medicines of which they know little, to cure diseases of which they know less, in human beings of whom they know nothing.

Voltaire

Has anything changed?

It would be interesting to debate the point, however, there is work to be done in the garden.

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HOLA4421

They consultants swan around this town in 4x4's with blacked out windows. Yet its the sickest town I've ever seen. Many hobbling about, overweight and with dodgy bones and joints.

Even I think I could cure some of them (if caught early enough) with Vit D and iodine supplementation, removal/elimination of wheat or white flour from the diet.

The Industrial Medical Complex?Or rather the Pharma Fast Food Supermarket Medical Complex?

I was diagnosed with IBS by a GP, given 3 prescriptions, two medicines and one for a synthetic fibre, total cost £18/month for life, and they didn't even work that well. Did some research, changed my diet and take a daily calicum+Vit D supplement. Total cost now £0.58 per month.

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HOLA4422

I was diagnosed with IBS by a GP, given 3 prescriptions, two medicines and one for a synthetic fibre, total cost £18/month for life, and they didn't even work that well. Did some research, changed my diet and take a daily calicum+Vit D supplement. Total cost now £0.58 per month.

That's crap innit! :lol:

I think my curry,beer, and pickled egg diet keeps me sorted! ;)

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HOLA4423

I was diagnosed with IBS by a GP, given 3 prescriptions, two medicines and one for a synthetic fibre, total cost £18/month for life, and they didn't even work that well. Did some research, changed my diet and take a daily calicum+Vit D supplement. Total cost now £0.58 per month.

I've just had a follow up consultation 9 years post stroke. The doc said the best advice she could give me was not to lose weight (which I admit I need to do) but to get out into the sunlight as often as possible. Vit D daily now.

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HOLA4424

Finally a few months back things declined to the point where he got scared enough to try Paleo.

I can see a lot of sense in eschewing some things (mainly highly refined carbs), but I can't see much sense in applying the same to whole grains/legumes etc which I gather the Paleo diet does. There's certainly plenty of evidence to suggest that consumption of both is a good thing (Med diet etc).

I'm always bemused by the contents of people's trolleys at the supermarket - full to the brim more often than not with brightly coloured packaged foods. Have we forgotten how to start from the basics?

Anyway back to topic; there's still an element of truth to what Voltaire says and I think that will be the case for a long time. The human body is pretty darn complicated and given the current compensation culture (is that an unintended consequence of free market healthcare?) I can't see any great innovations ahead, just the usual gradual trudge. A doctor just follows a text book after all, the advances aren't made at ground level and that slows things down (though of course I doubt most would be content to be guinea pigs). We've just scratched the surface really I think.

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HOLA4425

Trouble with quacks is that they are technocrats. They see everything in isolation, in laboratory conditions, and ignorant of other concerns.

Seems hardly a week goes by without the BMA calling for smoking to be fully criminalized (because obviously that works with other narcotics, prohibition of alcohol etc)

Ignoring the futility of it, what about freedom to do what i damn well please with my body.

Same with the Police. Sure they could get crime down if they had complete control in a police state, but i consider my privacy more important than living in a crime free world.

Same with the transport people. I know im more likely to die doing 80mph than 40mph, its a risk im happy to take.

Technocrats maybe scientifically correct. It doesnt mean they are 'right'

+1

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