I am constantly amazed at how many internet, print, and television ads there are for prescription drugs. Many with a very long list of side effects including liver damage, stroke and death. There has been a lot of debate in the recent past and some still on going about the need to reform the U.S. Healthcare system and I agree there is a need, although my idea of change is radically different. In January 2011 it was announced that the US government was going to spend 1 Billion dollars to start it's own drug research center. 45.8 Billion is already spent privately each year through the big drug companies.
I am not much of a conspiracy theorist however, when I look at how much money and energy is spent on researching, producing, and selling prescription drugs on both the private and governmental side I start to wonder "what would happen to our economy if our society was healthy and relatively drug free?" Would our economy collapse? Is this what the U.S. economy produces, sick people, drugs and new medical procedures?
If I could reform our entire medical system I would take the 1 Billion governmental dollars and invest it in health education. I would change the way we educate young doctors at the medical school level and then work up to continuing education for current medical practitioners. Now I'm not saying we should not continue to work on and research tools and procedures that are life saving. By all means our medical life saving procedures are important and worth while but the treatment of symptoms from disease instead of the causes of disease leave us with what?
An article by Mark Hyman MD,contributing editor of Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine discuses the failure of treating risk factors for prevention of chronic disease. Dr. Hyman points out that large drug companies have attempted to prove that treating risk factors such as lipid or glucose levels with prescription drugs reduces the risk of chronic disease endpoints such as cardiovascular events, diabetes, and mortality. "Despite the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on this research, aggressive risk factor treatments of the two most important targets -lipids and glucose- has consistently failed to show benefit in primary prevention." Dyslipidemia, hyperglycemia, and hypertension are risk factors for chronic disease, they are not the causes of the disease. Drugs mask these symptoms but don't treat the cause and help us live longer. In two large trials, the NAVIGATOR and ACCORD studies published in The New England Journal of Medicine showed that "lipids, glucose, and blood pressure were all effectively reduced in the drug trials. But there was no reduction in morbidity and mortality in any of the trials reported and there was significant side effect." Side effect that include myopathy, elevated creatine phosphokinase, sexual disfunction, liver damage, nerve damage, and others were reported in 10-15% of patients. So they reduce the symptoms, cause damaging side effects, but they don't prevent cardiac problems or diabetes? Why are we taking these drugs? A study published in the Lancet in 2004 named the INTERHEART study followed 30,000 people and found that changing lifestyle could prevent at least 90%of all heart disease!!
The cause of the symptoms indicated in cardiac problems and diabetes is the environment influencing our gene expression. The way we eat, how much we exercise, how we deal with stress, how much stress, the effects of environmental toxins all interact with our genes and change the way the gene phenotype.
So if I could make changes to our healthcare I would educate and research comprehensive approaches to treating body systems not symptoms. If we were all informed about comprehensive approaches to treating systems using a whole-food, plant based diet, rich in omega 3 fats, antioxidants, and phytonutrients; supplements, exercise, stress management,and treating low level toxicity we would be a lot healthier. But what would take the place of that 16% of our GDP currently spent on healthcare?
