In the last week or so, Mr. Stephen Colbert has tackled challenging health topics twice, much to my pleasure. A week ago in THE WORD segment, he raised the idea that the youth of today could survive without insurance by become an educated consumer of alternative health and partaking in preventative strategies such as yoga and nutrition. He fell a little short on his punchline but managed to speak somewhat rationally about the probability that health insurance/hospital care are part of a flawed system. I agree Mr. Colbert. Would you like to have me on your show discussing all the interesting misperceptions regarding health care we manipulate for the benefit of the economy?
Last night, in keeping with his love of challenging material Dr. Colbert remarked on the United States flogging the motto "innocent until proven cancerous" with its consistent use of BGH in the dairy industry. Even in Canada we may thinkg that there are no hormones in our milk, but in fact any cow that is under stress produces more hormones. Cows are supposed to have horns so they can hear and find their way, but with modern day farming practices we removed these. This causes more stress in the cow, which means that the contents of our milk have more hormones in them.
We already know that the world is increasingly estrogenic from the alarming rate of early puberty in children, hormone related conditions such as fibroids, endometiosis, candida and cancers such as breast, ovarian and prostate. The exposure to and breakdown of pesticides, plastics, thalates, birth control pill, Hormone Replacement therapy and hormones used in our meat and dairy industry have created an estrogenic world. We have tripled consumption of other xenoestrogens such as coffee, chocolate, alcohol and contributed to their estrogenicity with heavy pesticide use. We have nearly ruined Soy and Canola with pesticides and GMOs. Soy now has the opposite effect of what it had 20 years ago in the body due to the farming practices we've used. Currently the only safely consumable soy is small organic farmed soya and its products due to the estrogenic strength of the pesticides used on conventional soy. We have also weakened our ability to combat the effects of carcinogenic estrogens with the limitation of phytoestrogens found in vegetarian foods. We need to eat more sprouts, organic soy, flax seeds, whole grains and vegetables so that our estrogen receptors can be attached to weak estrogens such as estrone and estriol as opposed to E2 or estradiol.
See my mandate in action at my other blog www.milliesays.wordpress.com
xox dr millie lytle nd
Thursday, April 19, 2007
Saturday, April 14, 2007
How Naturopathic Doctors Think-description
Welcome to my newest blog. I am very excited to be writing about the policy, position and theory of naturopathic (Complementary and Alternative) medicine. I will focus on how ND function professionaly and where they exist, politically, within the confines of our Medically-centred and Evidence-based health care system.
My other blogs, MillieSays and MillieSaysHealth are both patient-centred health-tip sites, based on wellness and preventative medicine. The goal being to provide the public with tools for self-self and at-home care. I believe it is more than possible to keep one's health in one's own hands to a large degree with some basic physiology and understanding of nutrition, supplementation and aspects of a good lifestyle. Family-care in the home with modalities from a kitchen cupboard of 'lore, health food and vitamin store focus on prevention and treatment of minor acute conditions supporting wellness while limiting one's use of medications unnecessarily. Alternative medicine at home serves a dual purpose as avoiding unnecessary over-the-counter medications and prescriptions alike benefits the plight for wellness, reducing the number and dependence on these medications in the short and long-term.
This site is an extention of my political thoughts on healthcare. It is a sociolo-political, philosophical health-care blog on why naturopathic doctors are the ideal primary care providers. MDs should actually be secondary care and tertiary care physicians, handling the sickest and urgent of cases. Alternative care practitioners such as NDs, TCM doctors, nutritionists, osteopaths and nurse practitioners should be front line working on prevention and chronic care management by improving overall health and wellbeing, quality of life, nutrition, and lifestyle factors. This model is cheaper, health-wise, prevention-focused, individually-tailored, accessible and sensible.
Due the the name of this site, I am obviously a fan of Dr. Jerome Groopman MD, a medical doctor and a staff journalist at The New Yorker Magazine. He has recently written a book called "How Doctors Think". He is a fellow Canadian, maybe a fellow duel citizen as he lives in the US. If he is, then we have this in common, and a birth-right to the health care of the continent. He takes a very brave stance in his book, criticizing the evidence-based diagnostic approach followed by all north american medical schools, hospitals and really presents individual, patient-centred care as the ideal method of diagnosis and treatment. In his book he basically describes the ideal medical practice as being identifical to most Naturopathic medical practices in Canada and the US, whereby the doctor takes a vested holistic , mind-body approach to the medical interview, relying on physiology, anatomy, lifestyle and history (personal and medical), as opposed to 'heuristics' to get to the bottom of the problem. NDs have more time, it's the beauty of our medical structure. We give ourselves the time to get to the know the patient so that we can fruitfully apply a subclinical diagnosis and therefore effectively prevent illnesses before they begin. ND Diagnose and treat based on holistic physiological signs and symptoms, mental and emotional state and nutritional biomarkers rather than set-criteria depicting an illness. NDs then treat patients using the best ratio of harm reduction to effective results that they can, using their alternative modalities.
Kudos to Dr. Groopman for unveiling some secret language and diagnosic short-cuts used in the medical/hospital model. He has basically exposed the topic of medical protocol and asked up to question the value of evidence-based medicine. This conversation topic has been in want by NDs and members of the educated public who have for generations been quaranteened from an honest, human-based approach to medical practice, in exchange for a 'old boys school mentality that those who wear the white coat are deserving of God-like status.
We now know that doctors are people, and the medical system ought to take a more human-approach. The need for suitable policy will follow toe, and naturopathic medicine will take a more-recognized place in medical model of present, if I have anything to do with it. People need more.
xox dr millie lytle BA, ND
Naturopathic Doctor: sociologist, research practitioner
My other blogs, MillieSays and MillieSaysHealth are both patient-centred health-tip sites, based on wellness and preventative medicine. The goal being to provide the public with tools for self-self and at-home care. I believe it is more than possible to keep one's health in one's own hands to a large degree with some basic physiology and understanding of nutrition, supplementation and aspects of a good lifestyle. Family-care in the home with modalities from a kitchen cupboard of 'lore, health food and vitamin store focus on prevention and treatment of minor acute conditions supporting wellness while limiting one's use of medications unnecessarily. Alternative medicine at home serves a dual purpose as avoiding unnecessary over-the-counter medications and prescriptions alike benefits the plight for wellness, reducing the number and dependence on these medications in the short and long-term.
This site is an extention of my political thoughts on healthcare. It is a sociolo-political, philosophical health-care blog on why naturopathic doctors are the ideal primary care providers. MDs should actually be secondary care and tertiary care physicians, handling the sickest and urgent of cases. Alternative care practitioners such as NDs, TCM doctors, nutritionists, osteopaths and nurse practitioners should be front line working on prevention and chronic care management by improving overall health and wellbeing, quality of life, nutrition, and lifestyle factors. This model is cheaper, health-wise, prevention-focused, individually-tailored, accessible and sensible.
Due the the name of this site, I am obviously a fan of Dr. Jerome Groopman MD, a medical doctor and a staff journalist at The New Yorker Magazine. He has recently written a book called "How Doctors Think". He is a fellow Canadian, maybe a fellow duel citizen as he lives in the US. If he is, then we have this in common, and a birth-right to the health care of the continent. He takes a very brave stance in his book, criticizing the evidence-based diagnostic approach followed by all north american medical schools, hospitals and really presents individual, patient-centred care as the ideal method of diagnosis and treatment. In his book he basically describes the ideal medical practice as being identifical to most Naturopathic medical practices in Canada and the US, whereby the doctor takes a vested holistic , mind-body approach to the medical interview, relying on physiology, anatomy, lifestyle and history (personal and medical), as opposed to 'heuristics' to get to the bottom of the problem. NDs have more time, it's the beauty of our medical structure. We give ourselves the time to get to the know the patient so that we can fruitfully apply a subclinical diagnosis and therefore effectively prevent illnesses before they begin. ND Diagnose and treat based on holistic physiological signs and symptoms, mental and emotional state and nutritional biomarkers rather than set-criteria depicting an illness. NDs then treat patients using the best ratio of harm reduction to effective results that they can, using their alternative modalities.
Kudos to Dr. Groopman for unveiling some secret language and diagnosic short-cuts used in the medical/hospital model. He has basically exposed the topic of medical protocol and asked up to question the value of evidence-based medicine. This conversation topic has been in want by NDs and members of the educated public who have for generations been quaranteened from an honest, human-based approach to medical practice, in exchange for a 'old boys school mentality that those who wear the white coat are deserving of God-like status.
We now know that doctors are people, and the medical system ought to take a more human-approach. The need for suitable policy will follow toe, and naturopathic medicine will take a more-recognized place in medical model of present, if I have anything to do with it. People need more.
xox dr millie lytle BA, ND
Naturopathic Doctor: sociologist, research practitioner
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
