Repeat after me, and keep this in your thoughts as you read the rest of this post:
EVERYTHING IS CONNECTED …
When you consult with a doctor about a health problem you are experiencing, you expect that doctor to be well-trained, experienced, compassionate, and genuinely interested in helping you – right?
Sometimes it’s like that. Often however, sadly it’s not.
Why not? … a few reasons … :
#1 – American-trained doctors are taught, for the most part, only to focus on your symptoms.
#2 – Most doctor’s schedules these days are so badly overbooked, that they don’t have time to investigate your symptoms too deeply.
#3 – Doctors believe – not without reason – that everyone who sees them expects to walk out of their examination room with a prescription of medicine that will “fix” their problem.
As a result, doctors are less attentive to and less focused on getting to the root cause of your problem, and more focused on what pill or drug to prescribe to you that will reduce your symptoms and make you happy – at least for the short run.
Slow down … listen to the quiet
The average office visit for an MD in the United States, with a few exceptions, lasts about 10 minutes. Sometimes less than that.
When a new patient comes to see me here at the Naturopathic European Medicine Centre in Stevens Point, I spend a good solid hour with them – sometimes even 90 minutes or more.
Why? Because I’m not a psychic. I have no crystal ball to know what’s going on with a patient, and since most patients do not have the knowledge or understanding of what their symptoms might be indicating, I will need to listen to the patient describe what they are experiencing, ask clarifying questions, obtain some health and family history, and conduct some tests.
Only then can I develop what is usually a very clear picture of not only the symptoms the patient is experiencing, but also the underlying issue that is causing the symptoms.
With this information and understanding gained from 30 years of naturopathic experience and thousands of patients, together thousands of hours of education and training in science and medicine, I am able to work with the patient to design a course of treatment that will not only relieve their symptoms but will address their underlying health issue(s), and put them on a positive path toward resolving them.
Do I recommend and dispense natural and homeopathic medicines? You bet I do – but only AFTER the initial consultation and after 3-4 hours of study and research, where I review everything learned from the consultation and testing to figure out a clear picture of what is going on with the patient’s health, and where I formulate a program and a plan for helping the patient to rebuild their good health, safely and effectively.
A Better Health Care Model
Now, you might be saying to yourself, “Well, that’s all well and good for you, but that approach would NEVER work in the American medical system as it is right now … !”
Yes and no.
Yes, it absolutely can work – and it does, everywhere it is seriously tried.
No, it is not easy to replicate such a focused model of care, particularly in our current environment of pill-mill clinics where doctors are under increasing pressure to see more and more patients in a day to pay for expensive medical equipment, malpractice and liability insurance, and staff to file all of the insurance claim paperwork.
Insurance companies want to minimize their claim costs, demanding quick, mass-applied, clinically-proven treatments that are guaranteed to quickly relieve the patient’s symptoms – but not necessarily resolving the problem that is the source of the symptoms.
Pharmaceutical companies need new customers to buy their latest pharmacological creations, upon which they have spent tens of millions of dollars in research, clinical trials, and regulatory approval. Side effects? There are pills for those too …
American Medicine is Broken
Our American medical system today is badly broken, and it has nothing to do with needing more government programs, regulations, and mandated insurance coverage. (In fact, those things are great contributors to the problem, but we’ll leave that conversation for another day).
Our medical system today operates in perpetual crisis mode. Increasing stresses and demands for “more and bigger” hospitals, treatment centers, clinics, and the non-stop patient loads needed to support them, are burning out the doctors, the nurses, the support staff – and worst of all the patients, who are already in trouble with their health and need healing, not more stress.
I have worked professionally in two distinct arenas of medical care – the traditional American system, and the German style.
To my observation and way of thinking, there is presently a world of difference between the two, and in my opinion the German approach is far, FAR superior in a number of critical ways.
These include an ethic of thoroughness, a diversity of diagnostic and treatment options, and a greater receptivity to and respect for the roles of diet, lifestyle, nutrition, stress management, and more as part of proper healing.
Think about this:
Last year the 3rd leading cause of death in the United States was … wait for it … seeing your doctor and taking the prescription drugs he or she prescribed.
In numbers, that adds up to nearly a half-million (500,000) needless deaths per year … victims of a flawed medical system that spends too much time (and money) focusing on things that don’t actually solve the patient’s problem.
Do you know this word? … IATROGENESIS.
Probably not. It means a bad reaction, side effect, or fatal event caused directly by a mistake a doctor makes, and/or the medication he or she prescribes for you to take.
In my opinion there should not even be a need for a word like this in the English language, but there it is.
In Germany, and in other European countries, the statistics for iatrogenesis are lower than they currently are in America.
There are actual, actionable reasons for this, reasons and remedies for that any doctor or health care professional can easily employ in their practice.
Are German and European doctors just smarter? No, not at all. I think it’s something else. I think it has mostly to do with priorities and perspective.
What are your Priorities?
Priorities in American medicine are rush, rush, rush … and suppress symptoms with a drug or manufactured pharmaceutical.
In German medicine, and European medicine generally, the pace is much slower, much more considered, and from the first visit onward drug treatments are only one out of a number of options to be considered and addressed.
Below is a shorter version of what I have just written to you above. I give this shorter version as an educational, informational and inspirational handout to every new patient at the Naturopathic and European Medicine Centre on their first visit with us.
It sets the stage for us to help them understand and appreciate why German metabolic medicine is different, and what a wonderful difference it can make in helping them understand – perhaps for the very first time in their lives – what good health and good health care really is, and why American medical services so often miss the mark.
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The Problem With Your Health Care
The “problem” is this – you’ve been misinformed, misdirected, and misled about your health and you’re confused. That’s what happens when you are misinformed, misdirected, and misled.
Who Did This To You?
It comes from various sources in our culture:
- The Media – television, newspapers, magazines, billboards, radio, the Internet
- American-trained health care providers – doctors and nurses
- The Drug and Insurance Companies – who control all medical training and education, all medical research, and all health care facilities (clinics and hospitals)
- The Government, politicians and bureaucrats – who control all of the above through regulation, taxation, and subsidy
Why Was This Done To You?
Simple – to confuse, dis-empower and control you.
If you believe only Rx prescription drugs can help you, then those who seek to control you have succeeded and you are theirs. You have no choice but manufactured drugs, no other options, and so you give in and help them succeed in selling you drugs, drugs, and more drugs and it never ends.
Think about it. If drugs worked, if they cured you, then when you were cured you would feel fine and would not need more drugs. The drug companies would go out of business because they only survive as long as they can control you and sell you more and more drugs.
They mislead you by convincing you that your symptoms are the problem. NO! Your symptoms are warning signals that your body creates when it can no longer cope with an internal problem and alerts you with a symptom. Another answer needs to be found to really identify and fix the internal imbalances that are causing your symptoms.
Take headaches for example. There are at least 40 DIFFERENT causes of headaches.
You can mask or suppress the symptoms (your headache pain) with drugs, but these drugs will not only not address the CAUSE of your headache, they are themselves highly toxic chemicals that you are adding into your already sick and compromised body.
Look at the picture above. All of the organs appear separate but their functions are completely inter-dependent and are connected to everything else in your body.
Your body is a functional whole unit, which is inter-dependent on all of its contributing parts.
Your symptoms may seem limited (like headaches) but the causes are systemic – meaning full body.
Symptoms are Local, Causes are Systemic
Headaches, with rare exceptions like brain tumors, are caused by internal imbalances in a number of organ systems throughout your body. Drugs only hide the symptoms.
Your headache, in this case, is a local symptom (your head hurts), but it is those factors in your body that are out of balance that is causing the headache to happen.
Natural medicine seeks to find and resolve the causes, namely everything that is out of healthy balance, so you can actually heal.
Misleading you, misinforming you, suppressing your symptoms with toxic drugs is wrong. It is the total opposite of what real health care and true healing are about. It dis-empowers you, and makes you even sicker with the poisonous side effects of the drugs.
At the Naturopathic European Medicine Centre, our testing and our healing programs are comprehensive. They find the root causes, so that together we can address and help you to resolve the imbalances that are driving your symptoms, promote real healing, and restore your excellent health.
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I hope you have found the above to be informative and eye-opening. If you’d like to know more, please contact us at the Naturopathic European Medicine Centre in Stevens Point.
German doctors are both treating doctors and teaching doctors. Your life, and your health, belong to you. They are precious gifts from God, but they are also YOUR responsibility to understand, respect, and protect.
Yours always in health and healing.
* Be sure to visit our website here at www.YouCanGetYourLifeBack.com often for more information and tips about good health and healing, and be sure to visit and follow our page on Facebook! Tell your health-conscious family and friends about us!