Taking charge of your health
Ever since COVID I have been paying a lot more attention to what I have been putting in my body, what my or my kid’s doctor has been recommending and just what the doctors have been saying in general. Essentially, I have tried to take charge of my (and my family’s) health more. I used to just take doctors right at their word and do no further research. They suggest I take a certain medicine, then I will. They suggest my kid needs this treatment, then he does. No questioning. No asking about side effects. No asking about alternative options. No independent research. They are the experts and I am not, so I will listen to them. However, during the COVID pandemic, I noticed that doctors didn’t agree. One doctor would say one thing and believe it strongly, and another, equally as educated doctor, would make a passionate stand for the exact opposite approach. How could that be?
I also started looking into what factors might be influencing a doctor’s choice for a certain treatment. Now I am not necessarily the biggest conspiracy theorist on the block, BUT there is something to say for looking at what a doctor gets paid for the treatments that they are offering vs what they might be paid (or not paid) for an alternative option. It would also be prudent to take into consideration the doctors educational system as a whole and who is funding that and what might not be being discussed. Who is doing and paying for the effectiveness studies of certain drugs and treatments? I know, because I was like this as a student, that a lot of people just go to school and learn what they are being told and study it well, but they don’t look outside of what they are being taught. They don’t consider how any of that information might be skewed based on who wrote the textbook or who is teaching the course. I was an excellent student, but I started to realize after school and some real life experiences, that not everything I was taught included the full picture.
With all that being said, I don’t think that all doctors are horrible and out there to make a buck rather than keep you/your kid healthy. But what I do think is that some doctors don’t necessarily think through what they are offering. I think sometimes they are just offering what they’ve been told to offer. For example, when my kid was a baby, I would (as most did) freak out if he got any kind of fever. Even if he was acting normally otherwise. I would call the on-call nurse to tell them he had a fever of 100 degrees but was acting normally and they would say to give him Tylenol every so many hours until the fever went away. But what I am realizing now is that in large part that is a silly recommendation. Fevers are our body’s natural way of healing itself. It’s our body, warming up to fight off whatever is going on in our body, to make it a not so great environment for the bad thing to live in (clearly I am being super medical here). I have also been seeing studies come out about Tylenol and how it has a lot of nasty potential side effects that were never communicated to me by the nurse or doctor. For instance, I was never told that Tylenol used one time per year increases a child’s risk for asthma by at least 50%. I was never told that Tylenol also increases a child’s risk for allergic rhinitis and eczema. So why is my doctor’s office telling me to give my baby tylenol for a low grade fever, when they are acting normally otherwise, without telling me these risks? I would have opted to not use Tylenol had I known. The risks did not outweigh the benefits in that instance.
Another such example occurred when I was a teenager. I had terrible periods. I would have an immensely painful first day or two and I’m not talking just bad cramps. I would get so hot that I would feel like I was going to pass out and I would be in so much pain that one time I was getting up to get medicine and couldn’t make it all the way down the stairs to get said medicine, so I laid down at the top of the stairs until I could yell for my mom to help. I went to my primary care doctor and told her this and she suggested I go on birth control. I was 16 and most other people I knew were on it, so I just said yes. She did not go over (nor did I consider) the fact that birth control wouldn’t fix the cause of why I was having such terrible periods. Instead, going on birth control would increase my risk for cancer, inflammatory bowel disease, blood clots, stroke and deplete me of nutrients all while interrupting the natural and healthy part of my body which is my menstrual cycle. But did my doctor go over those risks with me? No. Did she try to explore why I was experiencing what I was? No. In fact, the birth control pill she put me on had one of those commercials out about it a year later. You know the ones where there's a lawyer saying, “if you or a loved one experienced a stroke or blood clot while on this pill then you deserve money”. I didn’t think to question her treatment plan then, but I wish I would have taken charge of my health then and asked more questions.
It has been information like that, that has led me to realize that while a doctor is a good resource, they are just that: a resource. My goal is not to distrust or always second guess doctors. But rather to find a way to be the owner of my own health and use them for guidance and consultation. They are not the end all be all. They are fallible humans just like me. They are influenced by their education. They are influenced by money. They are influenced by their own experiences and paradigms. Ultimately, I am responsible for myself and my kid, so I need to do my own outside research as well. I cannot just sit idly by and let someone else decide what is or isn’t best for me or my kid. I need to find a doctor that I trust while simultaneously looking into things on my own to consult with the doctor about. We need to take charge of our health and our family’s health.