Should You Fire Your Specialist?

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MBombardier
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Should You Fire Your Specialist?

Post by MBombardier »

Intriguing article by Mark Hyman in the HuffPost.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mark-h ... 24977.html
As a functional medical practitioner, I look at the whole person, not the disease. I've spent the greater part of my career studying the root causes of chronic illness. There are more than 12,000 diseases known to medicine, but there is only one Evelyn. Instead of thinking about her as a hodgepodge of 29 different diagnoses, I shifted the paradigm. I looked at what might be throwing her body out of balance.
Marliss Bombardier

Dum spiro, spero -- While I breathe, I hope

Psoriasis - the dark ages
Hashimoto's Thyroiditis - Dec 2001
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tex
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Post by tex »

IMO, the ingrained reliance on the theory behind specialization is the primary reason why the medical community will never actually be able to discover the true causes of disease. Instead, (unless they somehow change that policy), they will be doomed to forever treat symptoms, rather than to prevent disease. The primary problem is that this specialization applies not only to physicians, but it also extends to medical researchers. The result is that researchers are unable to appreciate what they have discovered, outside of their own little area of specialization, and consequently, no one else down the line can make the necessary connections, either, and once it gets to the practicing physicians, they're not about to try to interpret the results, in a meaningful way - instead, they just try to apply the conclusions of the research reports to their practice, as specified by the narrow-minded researchers. That means that any profound significance that could possibly be derived from the research data, remains hidden/ignored, because no one in the industry can put 2 and 2 together to actually get 4. All they know is that they have 2 and 2. They are highly educated scientists, who are unable to think outside their tiny box. If it weren't so pathetic, it would be funny.

Here's a hint to illustrate why no one in the industry is in any hurry to change the status quo:

There's a lot more money to be made by treating symptoms, than by preventing disease, because of all the repeat business that is lost, when disease is prevented.

:sigh:

Tex
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It is suspected that some of the hardest material known to science can be found in the skulls of GI specialists who insist that diet has nothing to do with the treatment of microscopic colitis.
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JFR
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Post by JFR »

A few years ago I saw a bunch of specialists, trying to get to the bottom of my troubles. It felt something like the story of the blind men and the elephant, all saw, or didn't see, something different and no one had an answer although I saw a surgeon who wanted to operate on a small rectal prolapse that hardly causes me any problem at all, warning me of all kinds of dire consequences if I didn't. It is major surgery, not even laparoscopic, and I refused, and several years later I still have a small rectal prolapse that causes me almost no problem. My pcp believes that specialists have tunnel vision and are not able to see the big picture. She also agreed that refusing the surgery was a good idea. I am hoping that the next time I see her (probably no time soon) I will have good results to report from my efforts spurred on by the info I have found on this site. Then maybe she will pass it along to other of her patients.

Jean
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