Are You Receiving Competent Care That Works For You?
Stillman and Friedland’s clients deal with the immediate and long-term effects of traumatic injury. While financial recovery may be a long process, the physical issues may last a lifetime. That is why we fight for our clients to achieve fair compensation. We also care about our clients’ long-term prospects for better health and functionality, and that is why, from time to time we feature discussions on health and recovery in this blog. We understand that when you have had your health compromised by an injury, whether via a car or truck accident, you need to maximize your health for your best recovery.
Lately, the issue of competence has been a hot topic in the blogosphere. No one questions whether or not you should head for the hospital after a traumatic injury. (In fact, your financial recovery depends on proof of treatment.) Modern orthopedics and trauma surgeons work wonders to put accident victims back together.
When competence comes into question is in the recovery period. Is the patient eating a diet to optimize the re-building of bone, muscle and connective tissue? Does their diet reduce or eliminate the inflammation that causes pain? Does your diet promote mental health? Is the doctor thorough and helpful, or have you just walked out of the office with a potentially lethal painkiller?
Cardiologist Dr. William Davis, the author of Wheat Belly, has a new book out titled Undoctored, in which he offers a forward-looking vision of how health care is evolving. In light of the exponential growth of information online, and growing numbers of patients who compare their experiences in online forums, the all-knowing Marcus Welby doctor persona is going the way of the dinosaurs. So is your naïve reliance on your doctor as an unquestionable fountain of knowledge.
These days, patients are more and more likely to do their own research and ask whether there is another or better way to achieve healing results. They may opt to refuse the conventional, pharmaceutical route in preference to simple changes in diet and lifestyle which cost little and have no side effects.
Interestingly, our local paper had an article several months ago about how better patient/personal relations are the wave of the future for medical professionals. While we agree that your doctor should be caring and responsive, like the idea that health insurance or coverage plans are the solution to the health crisis, this is a case of dealing with secondary or tertiary effects, not the main issue.
What will solve the growing health crisis are prevention and real solutions, not pseudo-cures, or a nice guy dispensing bad advice. Type II diabetes will sink the system regardless of how much is shoveled into insurance programs and Medicaid. The real cure for better health is not insurance to pay for more insulin, and tell patients to eat as they will—resulting in worse diabetes, heart disease and higher cancer rates)—but to retract the USDA guidelines which promote a low-fat, high-carbohydrate lifestyle, and stop demonizing fats.
On the bright side of the nutritional front, retractions of poor and fraudulent studies are on the increase. The same is true of expensive and unproven genomic cancer research. We hope that this will push the National Institutes of Health to take a hard look at the policies it adopted in the late 1970s and stop wasting taxpayer dollars and promoting an unproven diet theory that has robbed many Americans of the health, wealth and even their lives. We also hope that repeated retractions will shame medical researchers and keep them honest. We have already seen the beneficial and chilling effect of publishing pharmaceutical kickbacks handed out to doctors at openpaymentsdata.cms.gov where you can see how much your doctor has made by prescribing and promoting drugs or devices.
If you have undergone a traumatic injury, how can you achieve optimum healing? The answer is that it depends on you, not a magic pill. As we have detailed a number of times in this blog, quitting smoking and cleaning up your diet are essential. Type II diabetes will throw a spanner in the works for healing; we know that Tennesseans are in one of the top ten states in the U.S. with this condition. Reducing your carbohydrate consumption, while increasing your consumption of healthy fats, such as animal fats, including butter, and oils including coconut, and olive oil, is another step toward better health.
Removing inflammatory foods such as wheat, sugar, and lectin-containing foods will help you heal. Anti-inflammatory ingredients such as turmeric, cartilage and bone-building bone broth, and supplemental magnesium will solve your real issues.
Stillman and Friedland hope that you will take responsibility for your health, and reject band-aid solutions in favor of real solutions that will help you live your life to the fullest.
