Health Empowerment

Collaborative Health Care

Whether it's for detox-related conditions or other health issues, more people are taking the initiative to learn about their health. The Internet has contributed enormously to this. As a health care newsletter reported recently, there has been a growing trend in health care: patients who eagerly, even voraciously, seek information regarding their health issues. Because every person is unique, and because the body is complex, becoming more knowledgeable about your health is a vital step toward creating and maintaining good health. The more you actively participate in your health care and medical experience, the more specific and successful your health care can ultimately be.

We are reaching an exciting time in health care where patients are beginning to do more to influence the quality and methods of the treatments they receive. This shows up in the huge percentage of Americans who are willing to pay out-of-pocket for access to alternative healthcare. Likewise, more and more insurance companies are beginning to recognize that many alternative forms of health care can be more effective and less expensive than conventional strategies.

Detoxification will be one of these areas. If most doctors don't currently recognize the value of scientifically based nutritional, supplemental and other lifestyle techniques for supporting the body's natural detoxification processes, they will still eventually be convinced by the improvement in their patients who try these techniques and recount them. Eventually they'll be asking their patients how, exactly, it worked for them.

The convenience that personal Internet access provides to a wide range of heath care information is a significant factor in the trend. Another aspect is that insurance companies have discovered that making members more knowledgeable can save them money because "ƒpatient behavior has an enormous impact on outcomes." Insurance companies are supporting the trend by providing more information to members. The third aspect is the baby-boomers' tendency to "question authority." This factor makes it less likely that boomers facing chronic illness will passively accept such deterioration in health as a natural part of aging.

Over the past decade, as patients have found new sources of information and taken more control over their own care, some physicians have had difficulty adjusting to this shift in roles. ïPhysicians tell us when a patient arrives with a stack of information and asks detailed questions, they interpret this as a lack of trust,' says Edgman-Levitan, president of the Boston-based Picker Institute, a non-profit organization that promotes patient-centered quality assessment and improvement strategies. ïThey don't realize this patient just wants to understand what's going on.'

Doctors, especially in a managed care setting, are pressed for time and while we do know that many of them are concerned about quality of care issues, it doesn't change the fact that they have no more than five to ten minutes to spend with each patient. They are constrained by "care models and protocols" dictated by insurance companies that establish the basis on which health care will be reimbursed.

Also, as Dr. Sidney McDonald Baker, author of Detoxification and Healing: The Key to Optimal Health, points out, doctors typcially belong to one of two different camps: "Those who see what they believe and those who believe what they see." The first type of doctor, those who see what they believe, believe that a person's health condition cannot be explained by anything that falls outside of the conventional mainstream of medical knowledge. Dr. Baker has seen the kind of punishment the medical profession can levy on doctors, especially researchers, whose work contradicts the prevailing approach. He has seen that they lose their positions. They lose their grants. But he has also seen that eventually, they may be exonerated by the gradual acceptance of their findings as accurate. The second type of doctor, those who believe what they see, are more open-minded in their approach to medical diagnoses. They tend to take note when a patient says, "Doctor, do you think my condition could be related to...?" When choosing a doctor, an important criteria should be his willingness to listen to you and his regard for lifestyle as a whole in his understanding of health.

Primary care physicians in a managed care environment typically have about 5-10 minutes to spend with each patient. Unless the physician has known the patient over a long period of time, or has taken a truly extensive medical history, the physician is basing his or her decisions about your health care on minimal knowledge obtained through standard diagnostic mechanisms. We know that these standard diagnostic mechanisms can be way off for problems faced by millions of men and women -- health issues such as chronic fatigue, chemical sensitivities, fibromyalgia, rheumatoid arthritis, depression, and a number of other major modern health problems. This is why it is so crucial to become as well informed as possible about our health.

Take Charge!

Don't Let Doctors and HMOs Give You Pharmaceuticals, When What You Want is True Health! As has often been noted, what the media, doctors and insurance companies call "healthcare" is, in fact, disease management. And frequently this disease management results in a downward spiral for the individual who never regains true, vibrant health again.

There's a basic difference in concept. Conventional, mainstream AMA-endorsed medicine would say that a person who had no symptoms is well. And if they could not determine a cause for an individual's symptoms, they often say, "it's psychosomatic -- all in your head," (especially if you're a woman).

Our concept of 21st Century Health defines health as vibrant well-being, as feeling good, and having enough energy to do what you want to do. Our concept places responsibility for health maintenance not with an HMO (health maintenance organization) or medical providers, but with the individual -- you, me, us. Our concept for regaining health calls for individuals to make an initial assessment of their personal and lifestyle factors that influence health -- either with or without the help of a healthcare practitioner. The goal is then to detoxify both your personal internal and external environments, that is -- your body, and the places your body spends a lot of time. Because toxins damage health, reducing their levels (both inside and out) helps you establish a new basis for health. It's a simple yet powerful -- and empowering -- concept.

The basic tool for accomplishing this is knowledge. It won't be genetics, or money, or social class that will determine the healthy people versus the unhealthy people in the 21st Century. It will be knowledge, and the individual's willingness to ACT on that knowledge.

Our goal is to present you with information gathered from many credible and credentialed sources to inform your personal decisions and help you regain or maintain vibrant health in the 21st Century.