Healthcare vs. Sickcare
Early detection by the medical field, should have never attempted to step into the shoes of prevention, it is incapable of yielding the same benefits.
Navigating health insurance, healthcare, and prevention tactics is something we hear a lot about and it can be unnerving to say the least! Along with all the noise, we have a large aging population which will be stretching our healthcare system and capabilities to the max, so it should concern us as to what kind of care we can expect if we or family need healthcare services.
It really made an impact years ago when I read an article in the Wall Street Journal- where it said that “there are enough people that die each week from medical mistakes to fill 4 jumbo jets.” This does not include the ones with temporary or lifetime complications from medical mistakes. As the system gets loaded with more and more patients due to our aging population, we need to consider that quality of care may decline due to wait times, and less time for individual care by the healthcare professional. Adding to this, if there happens to be a pandemic that gives a hospital the excuse of enacting policy that heavily restricts family members being able to be with their loved one (sorta clears the path for the medical doctor, when making his/her rounds when they don’t have to deal with family asking questions). We saw this in hospitals and nursing homes during the Covid Pandemic, where patients and individuals lost the benefit of having ones at their bedside (24/7) who know them best -and there was little regard given to the unmeasurable pain of separation in the final days of life that this caused.
We have grown dependent on a healthcare system that is largely governed by health insurance companies that tell doctors what they can or cannot do, so even the heavily insured are not that assured. We can decrease our dependency on external systems often by simply changing negative lifestyle habits and figuring out what we might need to adjust by asking ourselves a few simple questions:
1. What have I been doing wrong?
2. What have I not been doing right?
3. How long has 1 or 2 been going on?
4. What can I do to correct this? Asking ourselves these questions and answering them honestly can put us on track for decreasing our dependency on others for our health.
Self-diagnostic questions we can ask ourselves: Are we getting, adequate water? Plenty of activity and exercise? Healthy diet? Deep sleep? Getting rid of stress? Maintaining good social (family and friends) connections? Sunshine? Consistency with the above 7?
We have an internal doctor (our immune system) that works 24 x7 x 365 and it isn’t practicing medicine- it knows exactly what’s wrong and what it needs to repair and rejuvenate us with. Oft times all this internal system asks from us is a better diet, more water, more activity and better rest.
1. When you feel fine and your doctor is constantly trying to get you to come back for checkups etc. (remember this is a business to them), but for you it’s subjecting yourself to a gathering place of sick people many times unnecessarily.
2. When it comes to our medicine(s) we need to know the purpose of each and every one.
3. Learn all the side effects of each medicine, before using it.
4. If you’re on medicine(s), question yourself and your doctor, to see if there is anything in your lifestyle that you can change or add to lessen the need for the medicine over time?
If we can change our thought pattern from how we will be able to access healthcare, to a more defensive play of how we can keep from needing the healthcare system, (we can save ourselves a lot of down time as well as exposure to other pathogens etc. while we are in doctor’ offices, hospitals and waiting rooms). This helps create healthcare independence and that is much better than healthcare dependence!
