Is Your Doctor Dangerous To Your Health?

We are taught as children to trust the doctor, to suffer the pain of procedures like shots and giving blood samples, because it's good for us. How difficult it is to become adults, only to discover that our doctor isn't always right, doesn't always know best, and sometimes is downright incompetent.

If you want a taste of reporting that really questions the wisdom of most of the medical profession today, start to read www.mercola.com and learn. I became acquainted with Dr. Mercola's site a few years ago when I first started studying natural nutrition. One of my favorite aspects of his work is when he goes into local grocery stores and exposes harmful and deceitful advertising on package labels. He's intelligent and factual, and believes that we should listen to our bodies, and not to food manufacturers and doctors, who are often paid to pass out information and prescriptions by the drug companies themselves.

So today, MSN news reports on a study that was conducted on medication errors in hospitals, sometimes resulting in death. A non-profit organization reviewed not just a few medication errors, but 11,000 of them, reported by 500 hospitals. Next time you place yourself or your children in the hospital for surgery, be prepared...here's an excerpt from the story:

TUESDAY, March 6 (HealthDay News) -- Medication errors that occur during the course of a surgical procedure are three times more likely to harm a patient than errors committed during other types of hospital care, a new report shows.

Some 5 percent of such errors resulted in harm, said Diane Cousins, vice president of the department of Healthcare Quality and Information at the United States Pharmacopeia (USP), which conducted the survey. The nonprofit group sets safety standards for pharmaceutical care that are used worldwide.

The report analyzed 11,000 errors reported by 500 hospitals between 1998 and 2005. This is the largest known analysis of medical errors related to surgery, according to the USP.
Overall, there were about 500 harmful errors, including four fatalities, one of which involved a child.

Errors were most common in the operating room and were most likely to affect children. Almost 13 percent of pediatric errors resulted in harm, proportionately higher than any other group studied.

If you want to read the whole story, go to http://health.msn.com/guides/surgery/articlepage.aspx?cp-documentid=100157359&GT1=9145

In her book, Pathology and Nutrition, author Liliana Stadler Mitrea states, "For us to be healthy and become more and more balanced, as individuals and as a society, we need to know more about what causes imbalances and ultimately, disease.

Does that mean we can all become Nutritionists? Of course not. I don't need to learn how to do a tune-up on my car. We can only be expert in so many areas...I take my car to an expert. So in the area of nutrition and understanding imbalances and disease, I recommend you speak to a professional holistic nutritionist. We study the effect on the body of food, emotions, environment, age, and much more.

Be an expert in the areas that really excite you...as they say, do what you love and the money will follow. A holistic nutritionist should be able to pass along enough information, when you need it, to give you the basic foundation of good health. Sometimes lifestyle adjustments are needed to move toward optimum health but the intervention will be based on natural solutions. They involve listening to your body and providing it with what it asks for, and protecting your body against what harms it.

Am I saying that all doctors are bad? Of course not. But blind faith may not be the right course of action when it comes to seeking out a doctor's advice. Ask around. Look for a doctor that believes in a holistic approach. If your doctor doesn't know much about nutritional options (many don't), he/she should be willing to refer you to someone who is an expert in that area, to complement everything your doctor is suggesting.

After all, who is responsible for our medical care? As always, we are responsible for ALL of the decisions that we make for ourselves. Choose your practitioners wisely.

I will carefully and thoughtfully answer any questions you may have about your nutrition and the effect it has on your body. Please e-mail your questions to billiesinclair@mybodywise.org