Perhaps one of the most insidious dangers in modern technology is medical testing. Although it would be nice to be able to visit our doctor and get all hooked up with electrodes, inflatable cuffs, probes, needles and catheters and have a read-out telling us exactly how we are working and where there is a problem, that is a myth, not the reality.
Such testing creates false confidence and the illusion for people that they are being wise and practicing preventive medicine. But prevention is not detecting existing disease. Diagnosis is not to be confused with cause or cure. Not only do patients have these misconceptions, the entire medical industry does as well. Modern medicine is focused on naming diseases and treating symptoms, not preventing disease and addressing causes.
Medical tests (done on yourself or by others) give a false sense of control and knowledge. The better choice is to take every step we can to modify life-style and nutritional habits to actually create health, not simply live life with gusto and have yearly stress tests and mammograms. Waiting for disease (reacting to injury, which disease is) to strike and then taking action is certainly not an intelligent approach.
None of this speaks to the waste in much of the $200+ billion a year that is spent on laboratory and clinical tests. Not only do they drain our economy and not create health, they are often inaccurate and unnecessary. Some 75% of doctors surveyed admitted to performing more tests than necessary. In one study of 25,000 tests, only 20% of them reproduced the same result 90% of the time. In another study, 197 out of 200 were cured by simply repeating the same tests. (Wysong, RL. Laboratory self-testing. Wysong Health Letter. March 1992.)
This brings me to a serious danger of laboratory testing: a false positive or false negative. If the test is falsely positive, the emotional trauma from believing you may have a serious disease can be enough to create a disease. Thus a test can make a well person sick. A false negative could send you on your way happily believing that everything is fine and that no life modifications are necessary. Meanwhile, the disease continues to incubate and spread.
Medical tests have inherent dangers like any other medical procedure and should be submitted to only with that understanding. Even entering a hospital or doctors office poses the risk of exposure to infectious disease (nosocomial infection). A sterile needle to draw blood could result in a fatal (albeit rare) systemic infection. Squeezing breasts for a mammogram can activate dormant cancerous tissue and increase the spread of cancerous cells (metastases) by 80%. (Greenburg, DS. NCI blasted for mammography confusion. The Lancet. 345(8942): 129.) Pap smears are performed millions of times a year yet have never been proven to change morbidity or mortality. (McCormick, JS. Cervical smears: a questionable practice? The Lancet. 2: 207-209. 1989.) Ultrasound may influence fetal growth. (Newnham, JP, et al. Effects of frequent ultrasound during pregnancy: a randomized controlled trial. The Lancet. 342(8876): 887-91.) X-rays are always dangerous (carcinogenic) and their effects are cumulative over a lifetime. Vaginal and rectal exams can introduce infection. Cancers penetrated with biopsy needles may increase the spread of cancer to sentinel lymph nodes by as much as 50% over lump excision. It is estimated 1 in 20 liver biopsies result in new tumors. (Evans, GH, et al. Safety of and necessity for needle biopsy of liver tumours. The Lancet. 1: 620. 1987.) Let the buyer (patient) beware.
Health is something you do to yourself, not something others do to you with machines or analysis. Health by the numbers of cholesterol, blood pressure, prostate antigens, white cell count and the like is a fantasy. Subscribing to this idea will start you on a slippery slope of medications, medications to treat the side effects of medications, surgeries and other interventions that destroy health, not build it.
This is not to suggest that diagnostic tests are not important for refractory diseases or those to which no reasonable cause can be assigned. But as a preventive measure for healthy individuals the benefits of the practice are dubious at best. (See article on medicine as the greatest threat to health http://www.wysong.net/health/post77061902.shtml by the author.)
The best test of health is to evaluate yourself. If you feel well, leave well enough alone, no medical test should convince you otherwise. The best test is to examine your life-style and nutritional practices against the standard of genetic context. We are adapted to fresh air and water, sunshine, exercise and fresh natural foods. (See CD the master key http://wysong.net/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&StoreCode=WOTTPWS&ProductCode=EDCD21&CategoryCode=EDUAIDS&ProductCount=0 by the author). If you are not living as you are genetically programmed, do it. By so doing you will not only be preventing, but reversing disease. Its easy, cheap and has passed the test of time in being the best medicine ever invented.
About the author:
Dr. Wysong is a former veterinary clinician and surgeon, college instructor in human anatomy, physiology and the origin of life, inventor of numerous medical, surgical, nutritional, athletic and fitness products and devices, research director for the present company by his name and founder of the philanthropic Wysong Institute. He is author of The Creation-Evolution Controversy now in its eleventh printing, a new two volume set on philosophy for living, several books on nutrition, prevention and health for people and animals and over 15 years of monthly health newsletters. He may be contacted at Wysong@Wysong.net and a free subscription to his e-Health Letter is available at http://www.wysong.net.
Anabolic Hormones - A Two-Edged SwordDr Randy WysongWhen I was a young boy, emerging muscles were the coolest thing. If a vein popped out a little, that was even more awesome. There were no fitness centers or body building gyms to amount to anything back then (Stone Age). If you aspired to brawn, Charles Atlas paraphernalia advertised in comic books was guaranteed to help you turn the cards on the guy who kicked sand in your face on the beach last summer.
Back then, muscles seemed more legitimate if you earned them from work on the farm or from other labor. Muscles from exercise were thought of as sort of artificial. So I did lots of farm work and construction in the summers. But leaving nothing to chance, I also cheated by building my own weight set with a pipe that I would insert into the holes of cement blocks.
My dad was of the school that I had better be careful or I could get all muscle bound if I exercised too much. I guess he must have worried as he saw me in the back yard hoisting my pipe with blocks dangling from each end. But I loved the exercise and reveled in the pumped feeling in my biceps.
Sorry to sound so narcissistic. But its the way all of us guys thought. We would even compare bumps on the school bus every morning and banter about who could do the most push-ups. This is not to say muscles and fitness are still not important to me, but now I focus primarily on exercise that will help me stay healthy, in shape and trained for the competitive sports I play.
I bring this up not to brag or appall you, but as a backdrop for the current situation in the sport and bodybuilding worlds. Now that society is off the farm, exercise has become a perfectly legitimate way to replace the physical activity lost with modern living. The use of hormones to force the body to grow in a way it would never do naturally, however, is a perversion of what should be clean and healthy personal development. Anabolic hormones totally miss the point of it all. The freaky bodies that can result are aberrations, yet magazines are filled with their photo spreads as if drug induced bodies are icons we should emulate and aspire to.
Aside from the fact that only people with natural bodies and developed talents should compete in sports (otherwise drugs are competing, not athletes), the real tragedy is the toll on health any hormone can take. Of all the drugs I used in medical practice, hormones scared me the most. They could create dramatic and immediate results (and that is their allure), but hormone treatment continued for any length of time always seemed to come back to harm the patient and haunt me.
An example in humans is the use of testosterone patches in women to increase libido. Take them very long and although your passion may be triggered, your voice will deepen and a beard will start to grow (not so good for the libido of the husband). Corticosteroids for allergies can result in extremely serious adrenal gland diseases, immune suppression and vulnerability to infection. In veterinary medicine the same things can happen. One situation I am reminded of that occurred many years ago was related to hormones given to dogs for birth control. Years after discontinuing the drugs, treated dogs would present to veterinarians with life threatening illness, extreme thirst and white blood cell counts off the charts. When their enlarged abdomens were surgically explored, a gigantic uterus would be found filled with pus quarts of it! All this just because a little ole hormone was given years ago without a hint of an immediate ill effect.
You see, the body is extremely wise. It is not fooled or endlessly forgiving. If you break your arm and put it in a sling, the muscles dont grow bigger, they atrophy. Why? Because the body is also efficient. Why grow muscles or even maintain them if they are not needed? When the sling is removed, the arm will have lost much of its strength. The body shuttled its resources into building bigger muscles in the arm that had to do double duty. Its a very pragmatic thing. The body doesnt pay attention to your agenda; it just does what it must to stay alive, make do and meet stress.
The same thing would happen to both arms to your whole body if you had servants do everything for you as you reclined in an easy-chair. Then, if all of a sudden you had to get out of the chair and run a mile or lift 200 pounds to survive, you wouldnt make it. Your wasted and weak body could not rise to the challenge.
Hormones are like a metabolic sling placed on the hormone producing glandstesticles, ovaries, adrenal, thyroid, pituitary, etc. They replace the hormones that the glands normally produce. When this happens there is a negative feed-back: the more hormones from the outside that are introduced into the body, the less the glands do what they no longer need to synthesize hormones. So the metabolic muscles (glands) that create hormones atrophy. If all of a sudden the outside source of hormones is withdrawn, your weak and withered organs may then not have the strength to take up the task again and supply hormones. Since about every function in the body is hormone-influenced, and every hormone interacts with every other hormone in some way, catastrophe results. Is it any wonder that modern anabolic body builders are also racked with heart disease, cancer, immune disorders, digestive failure and metabolic disorders in their (early) later years? The use of anabolic hormones is most certainly a case of desire being a ruinous tenant of its landlord, the body.
Consider this also with regard to anabolics. A normal body weight of 170 lbs. can be changed to 250 lbs. of solid muscle. To get there, massive amounts of food have to be consumed. Yet digestive muscle is not being built to keep pace, So the digestive tract and associated organs (liver, pancreas, gall bladder) suited for maintaining a 170 lb. body is forced to digest and assimilate extremely large amounts of food? The result is digestive exhaustion and resultant damage that can last a lifetime. Most of us suffer some digestive problems and intolerances as we age due in large part to eating abuses when we were young. Note the number of television commercials hawking stomach remedies. Body builders force feeding can exaggerate this damage leaving a ruined digestive system tolerant of little more than Maalox..
A huge number of high school kids are trying to get big with steroids. What an incredibly dangerous proposition for them. Parents, be aware that this is not innocuous. If the plea is that a little wont hurt, particularly if they are cycled properly, dont buy it. If the argument is that taking them is the only way to excel in a sport, then change sports. Insist.
For you adults who are toying with the idea of taking hormones for one reason or another, think long and hard. Read the contraindications and cautions on the drug insert sheets. Take heed. Find other ways to stimulate your bodys own natural ability to enhance or improve itself through exercise, lifestyle and nutrition. Dont put your organs in slings and then expect long-term benefit.
The piper will always be paid.
About the author:
Dr. Wysong is a former veterinary clinician and surgeon, college instructor in human anatomy, physiology and the origin of life, inventor of numerous medical, surgical, nutritional, athletic and fitness products and devices, research director for the present company by his name and founder of the philanthropic Wysong Institute. He is author of The Creation-Evolution Controversy now in its eleventh printing, a new two volume set on philosophy for living, several books on nutrition, prevention and health for people and animals and over 15 years of monthly health newsletters. He may be contacted at Wysong@Wysong.net and a free subscription to his e-Health Letter is available at http://www.wysong.net.
Health And The Economy Dr Randy WysongWe normally do not think that health is related to economics other than with regard to the costs of medical care. But there is another more fundamental way money impacts our wellbeing. If you could not pay your bills or had to worry about where the next meal would come from, would you be thinking about health, or survival? When we are trying to stay alive moment-to-moment we dont think about food choices, supplements, organic farming, animal welfare or environmental issues. Those considerations are a luxury dependent upon economic capability. But they are a luxury we must have if we are to live a reflective life and survive on planet Earth. Without a robust economy, you can pretty much forget about people being environmental, health conscious, or even civil to one another. In starving nations, war is endemic, disease rampant and the environment is only a raw material to be ravaged to hopefully live to the next day.
The emerging world economy will ultimately place great economic stress on the United States. It already has. Thousands of jobs are being lost to overseas companies employing workers requiring a fraction of the wages demanded here. People in America increasingly try to maintain a standard of living through debt. This is great for all the banks popping up on almost every street corner, but bad for the people. Just in the past year there have been almost two million personal bankruptcies declared.
To compete in the marketplace, companies must keep their costs down. If that means shifting manufacturing elsewhere, thats what will be done. India, China and other Eastern rim countries are the beneficiaries of this shift in manufacturing and labor pool. While American workers are clamoring for things to return to the way they were with high wages and generous benefits, workers in developing countries are happy as can be having a job for five dollars a day.
This trend will not go away with buy American banners or political rhetoric about treaties, minimum wages and outsourcing. The global economy is here to stay and that will mean the American standard of living will retract and the developing worlds will improve. Expect a decline in the standard of living, falling wages and investment insecurity.
Government is not the solution, since it produces nothing but only takes. Government saps an economy, it does not create it. The more that government is hands off, the better the economic vitality. A robust private sector economy (environmentally responsible), on the other hand, is not the enemy as it is so often portrayed, but is critical to financial vitality. Capitalism is not in itself a demon since it merely provides the mechanism for prosperity and with that the opportunity for a society to focus on matters of health and altruism. It works well if ambition and hard work, not merely greed, are its tools.
The inevitable decline of our standard of living is an inevitable and irreversible trend for the foreseeable future. It should concern us not because we want to see American super abundance continue, but because those who are unaware and get caught as casualties in this economic downturn will suffer in so many ways. The world is no longer business as usual.
Good health is not just about diets, supplements, organic foods and aerobics. Its also about being safe, like driving carefully, not standing on the top of a stepladder, wearing safety glasses when chipping stone...and working hard, keeping our financial house in order and supporting societal choices that do the same.
Life is not surety, and neither is our economy. Nevertheless, hard work and prudent management will never be replaced and is as close to security as we can ever get. It, not entitlements and guarantees, is what ultimately creates the financial footing we need for good health and a sustainable, better and more peaceful world.
About the author:
Dr. Wysong is a former veterinary clinician and surgeon, college instructor in human anatomy, physiology and the origin of life, inventor of numerous medical, surgical, nutritional, athletic and fitness products and devices, research director for the present company by his name and founder of the philanthropic Wysong Institute. He is author of The Creation-Evolution Controversy now in its eleventh printing, a new two volume set on philosophy for living, several books on nutrition, prevention and health for people and animals and over 15 years of monthly health newsletters. He may be contacted at Wysong@Wysong.net and a free subscription to his e-Health Letter is available at http://www.wysong.net.
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