Ignorance Is Bliss

[Tarmander]

Sadly, I think the lesson of medicine's modern failures will have to be driven home with the usual...bodies.

 

[Lilac]

What has he said about this?

Cataracts: water, energy, light, and aging.

 

[tara]

Cataracts: water, energy, light, and aging.

Oh yes, I forgot I'd read that - thanks!

 

[LUH 3417]

The more I learn from this site and from Ray Peat, the more I realize how hard it is to go to a hospital and put myself in a hospital doctor's care. Does anyone else feel this way?

Just today, I asked a rehab doctor attending to my sick mother to do an Achilles tendon reflex test on her. He pulled out an el cheapo neuro hammer supplied by a drug company, and went about doing it the wrong way. I said thank you to him, just not knowing what to say. Was he ignorant, or does he think I'm just as ignorant as the rest? I ran into the physical therapist working under him, and she asked if I was able to get to the doctor. I said yes, but that he was making a fool of me. She laughed as if she knew what I was talking about. Kind of like an industry secret for them. The Achilles tendon reflex test is a useful test for hypothyroidism, and apparently it's underutilized because there are more expensive but less reliable tests around such as the suite of endocrine tests the hospital used on my mom declaring her normal thyroid - free T3, free T4, and TSH - which to those who know among us is not conclusive of a test at all by themselves.

Last weekend, I was engaged in an argument with the pulmonologist who is the attending physician to my mom. She tried to go around my questions regarding my questions on blood CO2 pCO2 values, as I tried to establish a condition of respiratory alkalosis with my mom's test results. She kept evading my questions, saying things like that are inconsistent, trying to throw me off. But I was having none of it, and showed her my understanding of the relationship of arterial and venous pCO2, proving my case that respiratory alkalosis exists. And she finally relented. WTF right? Why the runaround? They're just not used to patients asking questions with some knowledge. It seems they're so used to just doing as they so please with patients, thinking all patients are just going to play dumb, which usually is the case.

I realize more and more the contempt by which they hold their patients. They give us drugs without much regard for side effects. I can understand if they don't bother to tell us, as that would be too time-consuming and it would always backfire on them with patients imagining side-effects left and right. But when patients do their own research and really do observe side effects which could mean stopping the continued use of the drug, they just dig in their heels. Doctors having experience cannoton;t continue to pretend it's the first time they encountered such effects, but talking with them they feign ignorance. They prescribe these drugs all the time, and it's laughable that they're not aware. It just seems to me it is an unwritten rule among hospital doctors to just let side effects run its course. If and when the patient is gravely harmed, they can just as easily chuck it up to genes, or age, or simply say "Gee, I don't really know."

These doctors are otherwise respectable people outside the hospital. But once they step inside the hospital, they have to play the role of an ogre and an actor.

I am in nursing school with the sole goal of becoming a midwife. I would never trust a doctor or nurse to care for me after my experience in nursing school. It's blatant brainwashing, coercion, and so little hands on experience. I told my class mate salt was necessary and good for you and she looked at me like I was crazy. I've watched instructors force suctioning on patients just to demonstrate to students what it looks like even after the patient said they did not want suctioning and did not need it. I've watched patients who have not had a BM for two weeks cry on a bedside commode because the nurses and doctors just would not leave them alone to have the peace needed to take a proper ***t. I've watched both doctors and nurses embarrass and patronize patients relentlessly and treat people their grandparents age as if they are mindless children. No one is immune to mistreatment in hospitals. It's all part of the culture. When students raise questions about the controversy around vaccines we are automatically shot down and told "you just tell them their child will die if they don't get vaccinated." Ironically though they constantly drill the mantra to be a good nurse you need to know critical thinking.

 

[Constatine]

There are many doctors that are anti-dogmatic and rather insightful. But these are the doctors that are passionate about their work and are always learning. Other doctors unfortunately only care about money and not getting sued.

 

[yerrag]

O

There are many doctors that are anti-dogmatic and rather insightful. But these are the doctors that are passionate about their work and are always learning. Other doctors unfortunately only care about money and not getting sued.

I find it very difficult to find one in a hospital setting. The ones that are not dogmatic, they more likely pretend to be like other doctors to keep themselves from being stigmatized by their peers and superiors. They will not initiate patient-harming protocols, will be Hippocratic and conservative in approach, and are receptive of patient suggestions that bear hallmarks of knowledgeable thought and not fancy internet memes. They're valuable finds and I tell them how much I appreciate their approach and would not hesitate to have them consult on my health.

The rest are not in the hospital setting. Not that all doctors not affiliated with hospitals are good. Some are blatant victimizers of patients and just milk patients while harming them, even worse than in hospital.

For that reason, I feel stuck having to be in a hospital setting. Many decades of suppression by mainstream medicine, together with a litigious system, has made it difficult for well-meaning and knowledgeable doctors to thrive. That the insurance system has made these doctors unaffordable makes the economics of their survival a challenge. An endangered or extinct kind.

The metrics that drive excellence in patient care are not there. The system does not reward efficiency. It rewards the lack of thought and the mechanistic troubleshooting approach that make doctors resemble technicians, who simply follow directions for uniformity. The conformity is for robots. Not for humans.

 

[Constatine]

O

I find it very difficult to find one in a hospital setting. The ones that are not dogmatic, they more likely pretend to be like other doctors to keep themselves from being stigmatized by their peers and superiors. They will not initiate patient-harming protocols, will be Hippocratic and conservative in approach, and are receptive of patient suggestions that bear hallmarks of knowledgeable thought and not fancy internet memes. They're valuable finds and I tell them how much I appreciate their approach and would not hesitate to have them consult on my health.

The rest are not in the hospital setting. Not that all doctors not affiliated with hospitals are good. Some are blatant victimizers of patients and just milk patients while harming them, even worse than in hospital.

For that reason, I feel stuck having to be in a hospital setting. Many decades of suppression by mainstream medicine, together with a litigious system, has made it difficult for well-meaning and knowledgeable doctors to thrive. That the insurance system has made these doctors unaffordable makes the economics of their survival a challenge. An endangered or extinct kind.

The metrics that drive excellence in patient care are not there. The system does not reward efficiency. It rewards the lack of thought and the mechanistic troubleshooting approach that make doctors resemble technicians, who simply follow directions for uniformity. The conformity is for robots. Not for humans.

I find that doctors who are employed tend to be less competent than those with their own practice.

 

[Badger]

I think this is pretty dead on except for the "under funded" part. The medical industry is like 20% of the US economy. There is an excess of funding, if anything. However, I would completely agree with the idea that it is poorly budgeted.

Tweet from John Robb:
"The US spends more public $ per capita on healthcare than almost every other country in the world."
Scroll down to 2nd table
In a followup Tweet, Robb adds, ""Why? The US alone doesn't control prices for health care. Some argue that this is why the US produces most of the world's medical innovation. In other words, the US doesn't get universal healthcare like everyone else because we subsidize the world's medical innovation..."

 

[sladerunner69]

I agree it is very irritating dealing with doctors when you have an issue, and hearing them say the usual ingrained medical lies. When I was much younger travelled over an hour to speak to a consultant which specialised in a specific condition I had years ago. He spoke to me about a high tech, very expensive machine that could be used to help my issue. I had found a Youtube video that showed a DIY equivalent of this machine that cost less than £10. I mentioned this to him and he was intrigued and I offered to show him the video. He was speechless. He didn't know how to "save" Youtube videos so had me, in his office, during my appointment about my issue, help him email the link of the video to himself via his email so he could watch it again.

> Dat learned helplessness

ZOMG would I be rustled beyond belief in that scenario. Doctors are scum.

 

[yerrag]

Tweet from John Robb:
"The US spends more public $ per capita on healthcare than almost every other country in the world."
Scroll down to 2nd table
In a followup Tweet, Robb adds, ""Why? The US alone doesn't control prices for health care. Some argue that this is why the US produces most of the world's medical innovation. In other words, the US doesn't get universal healthcare like everyone else because we subsidize the world's medical innovation..."

Where is the innovation?

Genetic sequencing? Gene modification? Bionics? Vaccines? Antibiotics? Cryonics?

Or is better designs of hospital extensions, already monolithic as it is? More sophisticated insurance plans? More sophisticated ER procedures?

What more can they improve on basic physiological processes that only need to be supported by proper education and understanding, and living a lifestyle based on sound and coherent principles. How much technology is needed to enable the efficient metabolism using sugar and oxygen in our cells, supported by carbon dioxide, from which energy is produced to support basal metabolic needs, to grow, to preserve, to build, and to support bodily functions with the least amount of chronic stress?

 

[Badger]

Just a guess, but for him medical innovation mostly means pharmaceuticals.

 

[Badger]

American medicine is above all a business. Business means making money, lots, and lots and lots of it, and anything that does not make money - lots of it - cannot remain or be a business. Medical innovation is the primary driver of continued business, and drugs the primary arena where innovations takes place. Upshot: if it ain't a drug, no innovation, no business, no more "American medicine."

 

[yerrag]

American medicine is above all a business. Business means making money, lots, and lots and lots of it, and anything that does not make money - lots of it - cannot remain or be a business. Medical innovation is the primary driver of continued business, and drugs the primary arena where innovations takes place. Upshot: if it ain't a drug, no innovation, no business, no more "American medicine."

The downside to it is that it is a model that disposes us to be in a state of chronic stress. We have to sacrifice our health to be innovative. To me, it's not a good tradeoff.

 

[Badger]

Agree entirely. But our culture does not. This flawed model is in place because the culture accepts it, even though it's a model in which profits are the only relevancy, and success in healing patients without involving huge costs to patients and the system, without use of toxic substances and methods, is irrelevant. Put differently, if the system does manage to heal people, which it does at times, fine. If it doesn't, that's fine too. In either case, however, it doesn't matter. The outcome is irrelevant. Only the profits it very potently provides are relevant. Perhaps solid success would have some relevance, as a healed patient is a lost customer. Too many of those would sink profits. Why the culture accepts this model, even though evidence shows it's a massive failure, is another question. A sick and dying culture means unnecessarily sick and dying people living in that culture.

 

[yerrag]

I'm not sure it's the culture that accepts it. The problem is species-wide- just being human and easily manipulated by a system that has refined itself throughout mankind's history to deceive it. The system is what the Chinese call a "wisened old immortal monster" that can use mankind's weaknesses and fears to its benefit. It is very subtle, and can convince good people to do evil deeds without their knowing it. It is a mass hypnotic state, where people act normal and think normal that belies a zombified inner mind. Without the tubes that suck our energy to power the system, we are still like the humans in the Matrix, used by a system. In our context, the system is hungry for profit, and our chronic sickness feeds that profit. We give life to a profit system that feeds on our misery.

 

[DaveFoster]

Ignorance is bliss, until it costs you or a loved one, their life.

Right; sometimes I think that the commonplace misunderstandings exist to weed out people who are too trustworthy. It's very unfortunate that corruption (initially of the self, as these doctors all started as curious children no doubt) decays a system of assistance into one of manipulation and profit.

Agree entirely. But our culture does not. This flawed model is in place because the culture accepts it, even though it's a model in which profits are the only relevancy, and success in healing patients without involving huge costs to patients and the system, without use of toxic substances and methods, is irrelevant. Put differently, if the system does manage to heal people, which it does at times, fine. If it doesn't, that's fine too. In either case, however, it doesn't matter. The outcome is irrelevant. Only the profits it very potently provides are relevant. Perhaps solid success would have some relevance, as a healed patient is a lost customer. Too many of those would sink profits. Why the culture accepts this model, even though evidence shows it's a massive failure, is another question. A sick and dying culture means unnecessarily sick and dying people living in that culture.

It's important to keep in mind that institutions (not just the medical cartel) gain more money by treating, but not curing the problem. Of course, this derails society and results in large amounts of suffering and inefficiency, which minimizes growth in the long-term, but in the short-term, a small number gain quite a lot.

 

[Tarmander]

Profit really shouldn't be given the rap for the failed system. It's a profit motive plus government regulation that makes the system so corrupt. Seriously, I can't think of a better motive to have for a doctor then profit. Can anyone? If profit was at the core of medicine we could have a creative system where maybe you only pay your doctor when you are healthy, and stop when you get sick. Or something else. People could innovate and we would all be better.

 

[Constatine]

The downside to it is that it is a model that disposes us to be in a state of chronic stress. We have to sacrifice our health to be innovative. To me, it's not a good tradeoff.

Also that means if a disease is fixed you lose a customer.

 

[burtlancast]

The more I learn from this site and from Ray Peat, the more I realize how hard it is to go to a hospital and put myself in a hospital doctor's care. Does anyone else feel this way?

Just today, I asked a rehab doctor attending to my sick mother to do an Achilles tendon reflex test on her. He pulled out an el cheapo neuro hammer supplied by a drug company, and went about doing it the wrong way. I said thank you to him, just not knowing what to say. Was he ignorant, or does he think I'm just as ignorant as the rest? I ran into the physical therapist working under him, and she asked if I was able to get to the doctor. I said yes, but that he was making a fool of me. She laughed as if she knew what I was talking about. Kind of like an industry secret for them. The Achilles tendon reflex test is a useful test for hypothyroidism, and apparently it's underutilized because there are more expensive but less reliable tests around such as the suite of endocrine tests the hospital used on my mom declaring her normal thyroid - free T3, free T4, and TSH - which to those who know among us is not conclusive of a test at all by themselves.

Last weekend, I was engaged in an argument with the pulmonologist who is the attending physician to my mom. She tried to go around my questions regarding my questions on blood CO2 pCO2 values, as I tried to establish a condition of respiratory alkalosis with my mom's test results. She kept evading my questions, saying things like that are inconsistent, trying to throw me off. But I was having none of it, and showed her my understanding of the relationship of arterial and venous pCO2, proving my case that respiratory alkalosis exists. And she finally relented. WTF right? Why the runaround? They're just not used to patients asking questions with some knowledge. It seems they're so used to just doing as they so please with patients, thinking all patients are just going to play dumb, which usually is the case.

I realize more and more the contempt by which they hold their patients. They give us drugs without much regard for side effects. I can understand if they don't bother to tell us, as that would be too time-consuming and it would always backfire on them with patients imagining side-effects left and right. But when patients do their own research and really do observe side effects which could mean stopping the continued use of the drug, they just dig in their heels. Doctors having experience cannoton;t continue to pretend it's the first time they encountered such effects, but talking with them they feign ignorance. They prescribe these drugs all the time, and it's laughable that they're not aware. It just seems to me it is an unwritten rule among hospital doctors to just let side effects run its course. If and when the patient is gravely harmed, they can just as easily chuck it up to genes, or age, or simply say "Gee, I don't really know."

These doctors are otherwise respectable people outside the hospital. But once they step inside the hospital, they have to play the role of an ogre and an actor.

This current state of affairs was predicted 200 years ago:

“Unless we put Medical Freedom in the Constitution, the time will come when Medicine will organize into an undercover dictatorship…..to restrict the art of healing to one class of men, and deny equal privilege to others, will be to constitute the Bastille of Medical Service…… As such laws are un-American and despotic and have no place in a Republic. The Constitution of the Republic should make a special privilege for Medical Freedom"

Benjamin Rash, M.D., The Surgeon General Continental Army, 1777 Signatory, Declaration of Independence.

Of course, they never did; so we got exactly what he foretold us.
Yet, the medias have been telling us for 200 years we do have medical freedom, thank you.

This racket is lawful; we need to render it unlawful.
Making doctors "better persons, more human" is a pipe dream the medias like to confuse us with.

 

[Marg]

This racket is lawful; we need to render it unlawful.
Making doctors "better persons, more human" is a pipe dream the medias like to confuse us with.

I totally agree, and the only way that this will ever happen is with a grassroots movement of commited individuals who keep educating people to wake them up. I think that the current medical system will eventually implode as it becomes less and less viable as time goes on.

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http://vitalitycapsules.com/radio-show-health-insurance

Could Health Insurance Kill You?


Dr. Jennifer Daniels MBA comes in handy here as she presents facts which support the cost/benefit statistical analysis in regard to individual health insurance. I used to think that our insurance coverage was a great thing.

Dr. Daniels refers to the coercive Obamacare as "extortion." For example, one spouse as a single breadwinner in the family makes say $100,000. Immediately Obamacare forces them to pay $25,000. Next federal taxes extort, even in best case senario with tax exemptions, a minimum of $30,000 (and most taxpayers don't want to suport the war machine, foreign military bases, bankster bailouts and bailins). More than half of the income is wiped out and we haven't even added on the state taxes. Think California! There is barely enough for the family to survive.

So this means that the spouse must work, and they will also extort as much as possible here too. No homeschooling is possible. People are worried about job security and this increases stress.

People under Medicare and Medicade, who are most vulverable, get hurt because the system is full of governmental corruption. War veterans, the elderly, and the disabled are told that they are undeserving, and the budgets must be cut because they need more allocations for the war killing machine.

If this keeps upand isn't stopped, who will be left to support the system at all?