Randy and I both had doctor appointments last week for physicals. We got our fasting blood draw lab results and some future guidance for good health.
Different doctors, same advice: diet and exercise.
As I thought about it, I realized that when doctors talk to you like they talked to us, they’re not using the words diet and exercise as nouns. These are verbs…commands…as a dog owner would say to their best 4-legged friend, “Sit!” “Heel!” “Roll over!” In other words, our doctors are trying to train us and have an expectation they are going to be obeyed. Or else!
Or else what? The doctor is not our owner, or the boss of us. I’m sure he has our best interests in mind. And if we’re honest, he’s not telling us in any way, shape, or form anything we didn’t already know.
Over the years Randy and I have, through extensive research, observation, and analysis, come to understand two main things about doctors and their medical “practices.” First, they’re called medical practice for good reason. They’re still practicing. And second, anyone who tells you the science is settled on medicine is delusional.
I concede that modern medicine has made huge strides with incredible technology that can diagnose and fix mechanical problems (broken bones, tumor removal, replace amputated limbs, fix, remove, or completely replace organs that no longer work, etc.) in less invasive or more creative ways than anyone ever imagined even 50 years ago.
But, boy, we’ve also come to understand that, without a doubt, in wellness and internal medicine, the medical profession has regressed and actually been harmed by swallowing whole the medical education that changed so dramatically in the early 1900s. (The link in the previous sentence explains our conclusion far better and more succinctly than I can).
As mentioned in the linked article, the Carnegie and Rockefeller Foundations were primarily responsible for driving the change in the way medical education is conducted in America. And that change (not so strangely) coincided with the rise of the pharmaceutical industry in the mid-20th century. The two events together raise serious questions for us about what really drives medicine today. More than a few times we have been offered maintenance medication prescriptions to get our cholesterol and blood pressure numbers where (coincidentally) newly lowered standards say they should be. We stumbled on and had to research why blood pressure and cholesterol standards are lower in the U.S. than they are in other countries.
Draw your own conclusions. I’m not trying to convince you of anything. But consider this: the word pharmacy is from Medieval Latin Pharmacia, from Greek pharmakeia “a healing or harmful medicine, a healing or poisonous herb; a drug, poisonous potion; magic (potion), dye, raw material for physical or chemical processing.” I don’t know about you, but there are a few things in there that give me pause.
What I do know is that over the nearly half century of our marriage the medical guidelines for what foods are good or harmful to our health, what parameters our blood pressure, cholesterol, salt intake, etc. should be, what medications are good or harmful to humans, and whether or not newly developed drugs and their side effects are worth taking have changed so many times it’s hard to know what’s truth anymore. Any intellectually honest person knows that the no fat and low fat guidelines in the late 1900s led to more sugar (for flavor and addiction) in our food and had the awful unintended (was it really unintended?) consequences of huge spikes in heart disease and obesity. Look it up. The heart can only use fat for fuel. Without sufficient fat in a human’s diet the heart starves.
I also know that none of us get out of here alive. I know that God doesn’t make junk. I know we are what we eat, and that God gave us an excellent auto-immune system with incredible ability to heal ourselves—if we don’t mess with it by introducing a load of man-made and man-pushed chemical junk into our bodies. Have you read any food labels lately? Yikes!
Our doctor is right to command us by using “diet” and “exercise” as verbs rather than those wimpy nouns. We have a lot more control over the health of our own bodies than our doctor does. When I finally understood that my behavior changed. I made it through the grocery checkout without one single sugary treat thrown into the cart on impulse by me. That dear readers is a major break-though. Randy was astonished! I’m planning some other food and habit changes to facilitate the healthy diet thing.
Randy and I also looked at new bikes this week. Those cheap Walmart models we bought to see if we even liked biking will be donated. We both enjoy walking too but have been dealing with physical limitations the last couple of years that made it hard. The doc promised we’d work on getting my bum knee fixed this spring and Randy will see what can be done about the hip that gives him on-going trouble. The medical profession today is really good at those sorts of things.
We’re gonna do it…. diet and exercise.
P.S. Improving your health is a marathon, not a sprint. You’ll hear occasionally how it goes along the way.
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