Should You Completely Trust Your Doctor?
Let’s assume you had a small car accident. It was not your fault but nevertheless, your car has a minor dent that needs to be repaired. You go to the repair shop and ask for an estimate. After carefully checking the situation and doing certain tests to gauge the severity of the damage, the mechanic comes up with a proposal.
The proposal goes something like this – “I’ve no idea how to fix this kind of dent but yet, I can offer a workable solution: I’d put a strong canvas sheet over top of the dent, hold it in place with best adhesive that I’ve got and paint it nicely so that it is not distinguishable from rest of the body. You need to keep bringing this car back to me every month for a change of adhesive though.”
Would you accept this solution? Of course not!
But we are all used to accepting solutions like this all the time for many medical problems. The solutions that work well on symptoms but leave the problem untouched, nicely covered though. Take ‘Chemical Imbalance’ theory for example.
Chemical Imbalance in brain‘ has been the buzzword associated with all sorts of mental health conditions viz. depression, anxiety, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder etc. TV, Radio and Web advertisements have done their job well to ‘Educate’ us about this theory while advertisements in medical journals of all sorts have targeted the medical fraternity.
Per this theory, deficiency of neurotransmitters, Serotonin and Norepinephrine is the primary cause for many psychological problems and long term treatment with drugs aimed to boost these chemicals address these problems.
Take a look at following advertisement for Zoloft about chemical imbalance.
However, scientific research points to the contrary.
In her book, The Myth of the Chemical Cure, Dr Joanna Moncrieff, of the department of mental health sciences at University College London says that most anti psychotic drugs produce psychoactive effects which put the patient in different (read elevated) mental and physical states – just like alcohol and cannabis do.
Do you see the nicely painted canvas sheet to cover the dent here?
Elliot Valenstein refers to the faults in Serotonin deficiency story in his book, Blaming the Brain: The Truth About Drugs and Mental Health. There are studies indicating that anti psychotic drugs are only as good as the placebos. Those interested in these studies should read The myth of the chemical cure and The chemical imbalance myth.
It seems that doctors are either not aware or do not share the modus operandi of medication prescribed with patients. That these drugs are required to be taken for life – to ‘manage’ the disease – indicate that a cure is never attempted.
However, that doctors are unaware or unwilling to share the way medications work is not the point. The point also is not that most medication does not work better than a placebo.
The point is – with so much ignorance and misinformation involved, should you completely trust your doctor with diagnosis and treatment of a serious disease? Should you not do your own research and try to find the best available options, possibly out of Allopathy? Meditation is known to help with mental health conditions. Similarly, Yoga and Pranayam along with proper diet are known to help overcome numerous diseases.
Chemical Imbalance Theory is just a case in point. So many ‘incurable’ diseases have been successfully cured by alternative medications. Diseases like Cancer, ALS, Arthritis, Diabetes etc all have been treated well by various treatments. Dr Johanna Budwig’s FOCC therapy, Holistic Healing Techniques of Living Foods Institute and Hydrogen peroxide(H2O2) Therapy are some options worth trying.
So, should a doctor treating you or a loved one uses words like Serious, Terminal and Incurable: instead of losing heart, just remember following words.
If someone says:”That’s impossible.”
You should understand it as: “According to my very limited experience and narrow understanding of reality, that’s very unlikely.”
May you be blessed with health, wealth and happiness.
