Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, our doctors jump to medication without trying to figure out the root cause of the problem or lifestyle changes that can manage the condition.

This. My mom has diabetes. Never (even when she was prediabetic for many years before) has her doctor ever said anything to her about her diet. She isn't overweight and her mother was diabetic (and also not overweight). Her doctor retired and her new doctor just put her on medication. I begged her to change her diet and do IM. She mentioned it to her doctor and he didn't really address that as an intervention. I guess writing an Rx is just easier.

She didn't get diet and lifestyle advice because she didn't present as fat. When I'm fat, I get that advice, regardless of my labwork. When I'm thin, I don't.

Doctors are the worst about the whole "skinny = healthy, fat = sick" nonsense. It's just not that simple.

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Anonymous wrote:what's wrong with statins. In my experience anyone who is ranting about statins is an uninformed dotard or some "big pharma" conspiracy theorist.

Yep. Life expectancy is up since statins were introduced in the 80s. Thank god.

We have the worst heart disease in the world. Why? Pharma profits.

Sedentary lifestyles, streets without sidewalks, roads designed for cars, junk food subsidized at higher rates than healthy food, long work hours combined with long commutes, food deserts, so many things really.

All those can be shrunk down to one thing. It's not knowledge. It's will power.

I'm not blaming sidewalks. Whole foods are available. The whole world does it. No more excuses.

Why wouldn’t we want a society where being healthy is the easier choice, not the harder one?

It’ll never be the easier choice unless it’s the only one. At one point in history, we didn’t have all this shelf stable industrially produced food. At that time, people consumed fresh food because it was the only option - except canned foods, which were canned vegetables and other things that were not industrially processed. None of that is the same thing as the processed garbage that has inundated the world.

Keeping up with buying, preparing, and eating fresh real food is a huge pain in the ass. Regardless of where you are in the world. A worthwhile one, but a pain in the ass for sure.

Eating fresh foods has to be made a priority, I don't know if it is such a PITA. It is a skill that gets much easier with practice. It helps to eat more simply. Think about how easy it would be, for example, to just drink water only as the sole beverage for meals. It is the healthiest option after all.

I don’t have to think about drinking only water because I only drink water at meals. Keeping up with buying and preparing fresh food is not easy. We do it, but many people just won’t do it. Go to Harris Teeter and look at the volume of shelf stable things in boxes and ask yourself realistically if the average person is going to navigate around that to prepare their own meals. The answer is they won’t. And that’s a worldwide phenomenon.

Most people can’t or won’t change their diet or lifestyle much. And for a lot of people that wouldn’t even matter. Glad we have medicines.

One of the worst mistakes I ever made was allowing my mother’s anti-medicine beliefs to influence me. I went off my statin for “a few months to see if I really needed it” and had a heart attack.

100% do not recommend

Anonymous wrote:Yes, our doctors jump to medication without trying to figure out the root cause of the problem or lifestyle changes that can manage the condition.

This. My mom has diabetes. Never (even when she was prediabetic for many years before) has her doctor ever said anything to her about her diet. She isn't overweight and her mother was diabetic (and also not overweight). Her doctor retired and her new doctor just put her on medication. I begged her to change her diet and do IM. She mentioned it to her doctor and he didn't really address that as an intervention. I guess writing an Rx is just easier.

*hypertensive

What would you do if you were a physician? Someone comes in, has risk factors for heart disease, has LDL up around 185, he's a little hypotensive, and his fasting blood sugar is 107 -- not terrible, but really would be better if it were around 85. Yeah, he could probably eat better and exercise more, but he says he's trying and you believe him, and anyway, that's a longer-term solution (and it doesn't always work). So what do you do? He's got two kids and another one on the way, and statins can reduce his risk right now. Would you really not prescribe? I would prescribe.

I guess I’ll be the digressing voice, but maybe it’s the kids’ pediatrician who’s very conservative with medicines.

I also didn’t feel that medication is being pushed on me. The only exception was my c-section experience and the general pain killer prescriptions I got every time compared to experience of family member in Europe.

But this is anecdotal of course like all posts on this thread and can be impacted by lots of factors like strength of preventative medicine, cost of medicine, but also lifestyle, like does a worker have sick leave to take a week off to recover, or do they ask the doctor to give them something to recover quickly or mask symptoms till recovery to be able to go back to work the next day? Does a person go early on for a doctor visit or once the issue has progressed (given the cost of medicine and the limited PTO here compared to other countries, I assume it’s the latter).

So just a blanket statement that doctors in the US are over medicating probably misses a lot of nuances.

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Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:what's wrong with statins. In my experience anyone who is ranting about statins is an uninformed dotard or some "big pharma" conspiracy theorist.

Yep. Life expectancy is up since statins were introduced in the 80s. Thank god.

We have the worst heart disease in the world. Why? Pharma profits.

Sedentary lifestyles, streets without sidewalks, roads designed for cars, junk food subsidized at higher rates than healthy food, long work hours combined with long commutes, food deserts, so many things really.

All those can be shrunk down to one thing. It's not knowledge. It's will power.

I'm not blaming sidewalks. Whole foods are available. The whole world does it. No more excuses.

Why wouldn’t we want a society where being healthy is the easier choice, not the harder one?

It’ll never be the easier choice unless it’s the only one. At one point in history, we didn’t have all this shelf stable industrially produced food. At that time, people consumed fresh food because it was the only option - except canned foods, which were canned vegetables and other things that were not industrially processed. None of that is the same thing as the processed garbage that has inundated the world.

Keeping up with buying, preparing, and eating fresh real food is a huge pain in the ass. Regardless of where you are in the world. A worthwhile one, but a pain in the ass for sure.

Eating fresh foods has to be made a priority, I don't know if it is such a PITA. It is a skill that gets much easier with practice. It helps to eat more simply. Think about how easy it would be, for example, to just drink water only as the sole beverage for meals. It is the healthiest option after all.

Anonymous wrote:Yes, a pill-poppin society for decades. When you go to a new doctor and the nurse asks, what pills do you take? If you answer ‘none’, she will fall of her chair. It’s so rare.

I’m a 47yr old woman who has never ever taken a medication longer than a 10 day antibiotic cycle. I’ve never encountered a nurse or doctor that was in any way shocked.

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Anonymous wrote:what's wrong with statins. In my experience anyone who is ranting about statins is an uninformed dotard or some "big pharma" conspiracy theorist.

I’m the PP who mentioned statins. There is nothing wrong with them if you really need them. It seems like a lot of people need them though. So, I wonder if there is a way to not need them.

Well, yes, if we changed the standard American diet, many people would not need statins. But people either don't want to or are unable to do so.

We would still need statins because it is much more complex than diet.
When I was a child, most men in my neighborhood had a heart attack by the age of 60. They all had bypasses, with issues afterward and many, if didn't drop dead ftom the first heart attack, they did on the second one. There was, also at that time, lots of grandmothers and great aunts and hardly any grandfathers or grand uncles.
Food plays a role, but it’s about many other factors.

This is true. A lot of my friends’ dads died of heart attacks. They seemed old at the time, but many were in their 40s and early 50s.

What’s true? Our food is killing us?

That men used to be a lot more likely to drop dead suddenly. Some of the dads I knew as a kid that this happened to were unhealthy, but not all.

Men have always been overworked. 97% of workplace deaths are male. It's not just the hazards but the abuse on the body that takes a toll traditionally. Office jobs are easy now physyically, but take a toll on the cardiovascular system and overall nerve/spinal health, as well as the brain especially.

Most men, and women, used to smoke a couple packs of cigs a day also, and drink around 5-10 drinks a day. That certainly takes a toll.

Anonymous wrote:Are we over medicated as a nation? Do you feel like we'll be better off creating a culture where prescriptions, over the counter medicines and "supplements" aren't the first line of defense?

Isn’t there a book with this title?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, our doctors jump to medication without trying to figure out the root cause of the problem or lifestyle changes that can manage the condition.

This is all they know. Sad.

I don’t think it is. I do think GPs in particular have tried educating their panel on lifestyle choices and it doesn’t matter. How many times would you bother repeating the same thing only to see a patient ignore the advice?

My GP is not great. But his after visit summary is always the same. Whole Foods, avoid refined carbohydrates, limit alcohol, get good sleep, hydrate. It’s all there.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:what's wrong with statins. In my experience anyone who is ranting about statins is an uninformed dotard or some "big pharma" conspiracy theorist.

Yep. Life expectancy is up since statins were introduced in the 80s. Thank god.

We have the worst heart disease in the world. Why? Pharma profits.

Sedentary lifestyles, streets without sidewalks, roads designed for cars, junk food subsidized at higher rates than healthy food, long work hours combined with long commutes, food deserts, so many things really.

All those can be shrunk down to one thing. It's not knowledge. It's will power.

I'm not blaming sidewalks. Whole foods are available. The whole world does it. No more excuses.

Why wouldn’t we want a society where being healthy is the easier choice, not the harder one?

It’ll never be the easier choice unless it’s the only one. At one point in history, we didn’t have all this shelf stable industrially produced food. At that time, people consumed fresh food because it was the only option - except canned foods, which were canned vegetables and other things that were not industrially processed. None of that is the same thing as the processed garbage that has inundated the world.

Keeping up with buying, preparing, and eating fresh real food is a huge pain in the ass. Regardless of where you are in the world. A worthwhile one, but a pain in the ass for sure.

Anonymous wrote:Yes, our doctors jump to medication without trying to figure out the root cause of the problem or lifestyle changes that can manage the condition.

This is all they know. Sad.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:what's wrong with statins. In my experience anyone who is ranting about statins is an uninformed dotard or some "big pharma" conspiracy theorist.

Yep. Life expectancy is up since statins were introduced in the 80s. Thank god.

We have the worst heart disease in the world. Why? Pharma profits.

Sedentary lifestyles, streets without sidewalks, roads designed for cars, junk food subsidized at higher rates than healthy food, long work hours combined with long commutes, food deserts, so many things really.

All those can be shrunk down to one thing. It's not knowledge. It's will power.

I'm not blaming sidewalks. Whole foods are available. The whole world does it. No more excuses.

Why wouldn’t we want a society where being healthy is the easier choice, not the harder one?