The generation that the doctors betrayed

While I am a strong advocate for people being proactive about their healthcare, I find it darkly humorous when individuals second guess the opinions of modern professional healthcare providers based on their own sketchy knowledge of current medical science, especially when they never bothered to ask said healthcare provider direct pertinent questions in the first place. Dunning-Kruger Effect once again.

In the general case, I don't think doctors "betrayed" anyone. Although no doubt there are exceptions, I suspect the vast majority did what they thought was best for their patients given the resources and what we knew at the time. For example, 50 years ago there was evidence that saturated fat in the diet was not good for you so they recommended reducing it. So some people began to use margarine in place of butter because butter has a lot of sat fat but margarine doesn't. What we didn't know at that time was that the trans fat in margarine is even worse when it comes to your blood cholesterol profile. After much research we know that now and docs tell us to reduce/eliminate both sat and trans fat.

When it comes to betrayal, that is, the knowing intent to deceive via an established trust, it's not the doctors we should look to, it's the corporations. For example, 60 years ago the tobacco companies had research that their products gave people cancer and heart disease but they chose to hide that information from the public. And when the data came out in the 1960s, they did everything in their power to discredit it. Quite literally, millions of people have suffered and died prematurely just so that these corporations could continue making a tidy profit.

If that's not betrayal, I don't know what is.
 
Larry,I have COPD,from being a 9/11 first responder, and those steroids I take to be able to breathe are brociodialators.They keep my airways open.Without them,I would be out of breath walking from my bedroom,to the kitchen.There are other meds out there that aren't steroid based,but they don't seem to work nearly as well,for me anyway.

As for liver damage,my primary care Dr.makes sure to test my liver enzymes, every 3 months.I drink lots of ater,and take a Milk Thistle supplement,a herbal non drug,which with the water,helps detox my liver,and my liver enzymes are normal.

The steroids can actually damage the bones as well,making them very brittle.

I know steroids aren't a great thing to be putting in your body,but the alternative is to not be able to function.If you can't breathe,you can't do anything.

Steve B

I don't disagree with you in theory on any of this. What I practice in my life is instead of defaulting to pharmaceuticals, I default to Mother Nature always. I want to exhaust any natural bronchiodilator that Mother Nature has to offer.
I don't even know if she does offers any. I just assume she does. I just really have to believe there is a completely natural substance that's safe in normal usage for every ailment. You have to it seek out for yourself. I trust Mother Nature implicitly. She has all the answers.

They say plain CO2 is a natural bronchiodilator. I just looked it up, first link I clicked. I have no idea how true that is. All I'm saying is all kinds of varying info is out there on this and I just have to assume that you can dilate your bronchial tubes without poisoning yourself. Steriods can't possibly be the only way to accomplish what needs to be accomplished, and I do assume this. I would be trying all known safe stuff before letting those guys get their hooks in me. I don't trust them in that capacity. I only trust ME. We all have access to information now that was never this easily available before, so damn straight I'm using it to my advantage to the best of my ability. You just can't go wrong with Mother Nature is my stance. Smoking cannabis is good for asthma, that's been known for years even though it seems completely counter-intuitive.

Went to the doctor about 20 years ago for athletes foot. 60 dollar prescription, 90 dollar doctor visit. Time to drive there, waiting room, blah blah. Found out years later via the internet that soaking your feet in vinegar lowers the PH of the skin on your feet temporarily and the athletes foot fungus all die off. What's easier, cheaper, takes less time and is safer? It's a no brainer. So that was the start of it all lol. Except I soaked my feet in balsamic vinegar and my skin was stained for a week lol. It was the only thing I had lol.

It's a tragedy you have COPD from being a friggin first responder man. No good deed goes unpunished. Dilate those bronchi safely my friend.
 
I drink beer, I eat fast food, I smoke a little pot, I dont exercise enough, I sit on the couch for hours at a time, I drink energy drinks, I eat microwave dinners, but most of all I am HAPPY!

Instead of worrying about being healthy, worry about being happy. Whoppers are delicious! If eating one takes a few years off my life so be it, I dont want to live forever. My knees hurt at 40, I dont even want to think about 80. I'm not part of the brainwashed masses. I know high fructose corn syrup is bad for me, but it tastes awesome. So excuse me while I finish my cup of coffee and eat my fatty breakfast sandwich.

So, not that I expect to get anyone here thinking with my diatribe, but this is exactly how I used to think, and act. I was impulse driven and didn't let a little critical thinking get in the way of my Whopper craving. Thing is, one day I just up and changed and considered it a personal challenge to keep at the changes for as long as I could. So, I grew a beard, and that same day I made the big beard decision, I stopped eating meat for breakfast.

Two really simple small things. One would change how others perceived me, and the other would change how I ate and felt in the morning.

I won't bore you with how each thing snow-balled and led to more changes on top of each other. The relevant end result was that I ended up being a lot healthier, (mentally and physically) and as a result, happier. Less dependent on the easy, quick "happy" things that our illustrious society puts within such easy and constant reach.

I certainly don't mean to criticize anything you said; it just sounded really familiar, and I thought maybe you might be persuaded to change something small, just because you can. There's a small chance that the change might also make you "happy".
 
I just really have to believe there is a completely natural substance that's safe in normal usage for every ailment. You have to it seek out for yourself. I trust Mother Nature implicitly. She has all the answers.

You have to believe it? Why? Do you have evidence that there's "a completely natural substance that's safe in normal usage for every ailment" or is this merely a wish that conforms to the way you'd like things to be?

Don't trust nature to be kind to you. Human beings do not occupy a privileged space. If we did, we wouldn't suffer from polio, river blindness or small pox. It was our fellow humans, by the way, that invented a vaccine for the former, methods to battle the second, and eradicated that last little item that nature created. There is a reason why 300+ years ago Thomas Hobbes described life as "nasty, short and brutish". We live the way we do, as long as we do and with the strength and health that we do, thanks to those scientists and researchers who did the difficult work. I wish people had a better appreciation for the long trail of work that leads to where we are. As Newton said, "If I have seen farther than others it is because I stood on the shoulders of giants". I for one do not wish to go backward and fall prey to some Disney-esque version of nature. I think it's incumbent on all of us to help further the human condition and that begins with looking at the way things are versus the way we'd like them to be.


They say plain CO2 is a natural bronchiodilator. I just looked it up, first link I clicked. I have no idea how true that is.

You need to do a little more research here. Low O2 does not stimulate breathing. A high concentration of CO2 does (both bind to hemoglobin and too much CO2 means lower binding of O2). The "bronchiodilator" effect is due to the fact that your body is trying to offload excess CO2 to get back to stasis. Consequently this is not, for example, an effective technique to treat someone with COPD which is what you seem to be implying.


You just can't go wrong with Mother Nature is my stance.

This reminds me of a funny story that my brother told me. Back in the 70s he was in college and went to a party. Like many parties at the time, people were ingesting all manner of "trendy chemical amusement aid" (as Zappa used to call it). He meets one girl who is gobbling down magic mushrooms as if they were potato chips. He says to her "Maybe you should go a little easier on those because that could be dangerous". She responded "They can't hurt you, they're completely natural". My brother's answer was "So are toadstools and they'll kill you".
 
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You have to believe it? Why? Do you have evidence that there's "a completely natural substance that's safe in normal usage for every ailment" or is this merely a wish that conforms to the way you'd like things to be?

Don't trust nature to be kind to you. Human beings do not occupy a privileged space. If we did, we wouldn't suffer from polio, river blindness or small pox. It was our fellow humans, by the way, that invented a vaccine for the former, methods to battle the second, and eradicated that last little item that nature created. There is a reason why 300+ years ago Thomas Hobbes described life as "nasty, short and brutish". We live the way we do, as long as we do and with the strength and health that we do, thanks to those scientists and researchers who did the difficult work. I wish people had a better appreciation for the long trail of work that leads to where we are. As Newton said, "If I have seen farther than others it is because I stood on the shoulders of giants". I for one do not wish to go backward and fall prey to some Disney-esque version of nature. I think it's incumbent on all of us to help further the human condition and that begins with looking at the way things are versus the way we'd like them to be.




You need to do a little more research here. Low O2 does not stimulate breathing. A high concentration of CO2 does (both bind to hemoglobin and too much CO2 means lower binding of O2). The "bronchiodilator" effect is due to the fact that your body is trying to offload excess CO2 to get back to stasis. Consequently this is not, for example, an effective technique to treat someone with COPD which is what you seem to be implying.




This reminds me of a funny story that my brother told me. Back in the 70s he was in college and went to a party. Like many parties at the time, people were ingesting all manner of "trendy chemical amusement aid" (as Zappa used to call it). He meets one girl who is gobbling down magic mushrooms as if they were potato chips. He says to her "Maybe you should go a little easier on those because that could be dangerous". She responded "They can't hurt you, they're completely natural". My brother's answer was "So are toadstools and they'll kill you".

Word. By our standards, nature is cruel, ugly and violent in many ways, as well as the opposite of those things.
 
I was born in 1957.
What didn't kill me only made me stronger.
My pediatrician used to smoke cigarettes while he examined me during a house call when I was a child. I used to swim downstream from a sewage pipe.
There were even ads on TV showing that more Dr's smoked Camels than any other cigarette.
 
I was born in 1957.
What didn't kill me only made me stronger.

My pediatrician used to smoke cigarettes while he examined me during a house call when I was a child. ...


I hear this "made me stronger" claim a lot. I would like to hear your hypothesis on how the second hand smoke from your pediatrician made you stronger. Seriously. I'm sure it will be enlightening.
 
I hear this "made me stronger" claim a lot. I would like to hear your hypothesis on how the second hand smoke from your pediatrician made you stronger. Seriously. I'm sure it will be enlightening.
It was a joke. Look up George Carlin routines on YT.
My Dr really did smoke in front of me though.
 
Wakefield has blood on his hands.

As does Jenny McCarthy for using her celebrity status to promote his fabricated findings.

What is even more stunning is the people that still continue to be anti-vaccine after the entire study was discredited.

A quick google search will turn up all sorts of crazies that think they know "the real story" behind Wakefield.
 
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