Physicians Preventive Medicine and Nutritional Supplements

Physicians are trained to investigate diseases. They will ensure that every possible means is used to find out the signs and symptoms of a disease. They develop deep curiosity about the cure and management of diseases.

The medical training involves the study of pharmacology which is the study of drugs and how they perform in the body. Physicians also seek to understand the side effects of drugs and how the body gets rid of them.

Physicians have the authority to prescribe drugs. They are confident to do this by knowing these drugs and how they will work against the effects of diseases in the body. The number of drugs they have to become familiar are simply astonishing.

People need drugs to suppress the effects of ailments like high blood pressure, high cholesterol levels in the blood, diabetes, arthritis, cardio vascular diseases and ulcers among many others.

In medicine, their philosophy is simple: attack diseases.

Medical practitioners have maintained this proactive approach to restore health by directly attacking the causative agents of illnesses even in the twenty first century. The aim is to create an effective treatment for all kinds of dreaded diseases. The demand for prescription drugs has alarmingly increased over the past 24 years.

The statistics reported for 1990 indicates that Americans got prescription for drugs that amounted to $37 billion. This figure rose to $374 billion in 2014, 10 times more!

As it stands, the use of drugs to reduce the rising epidemic of chronic degenerative diseases seems to be the main strategy that the physicians and insurance companies rely on.

This is very good news for the pharmaceutical industries that produce these drugs.

It only takes a short experience with an illness to appreciate the joy of having a good health. Many people strive to maintain their good health using various means like dieting, cutting down bad habits but sadly, we are all gradually losing grip on the good health we currently enjoy.

One of my responsibilities as a physician is to inform my patients when there are stronger indications that their health is failing in one area or the other when I find out.

From my experience with patients, it seems that there is always one form of health issue developing and manifesting with time. This includes new cases of arthritis, diabetes, heart attack and many other diseases.

The common wish is to remain healthy and protected from diseases, but many people have very little idea how to protect themselves.

Physicians will remain dedicated to studying the symptoms of disease with the aim of prescribing the right drugs to suppress or entirely free the patients from the discomforting ailment.

But, there is another angle to this; considerations should also be channeled towards maintaining a good health instead of trying to recover our health after falling ill.

Every physician should be primarily concerned with promoting disease prevention. It makes a lot of sense to focus on harnessing the potential of preventive medicine, but from the financial reports on healthcare budgets it seems only a minor part of this budget is meant for the development of preventive medicine.

The truth is that our approach towards preventive medicine is basically about early detection of already existing diseases rather than prevention.

It is clear that health programs that focus on preventive diseases efforts like the use of mammograms, chemistry profiles and PSA tests (for prostate cancer) are all aimed at identifying the symptoms earlier.

The major focus of the doctor is to quickly make a diagnosis for a disease rather than promote a wide spread health education early enough to educate the public on the effective ways to prevent these diseases.

Physicians have been over burdened with the numerous cases of health challenges needing urgent medical attention that they have shelved the importance of implementing preventive measures for these diseases.

A very little percentage of doctors receive a minimal form of nutritional education that is necessary to guide patients who have no idea about how to live healthy from a young age and stay protected from diseases.

The common trend among physicians is to play down the importance of nutritional supplements when their opinion about this is sought by their patients.

These enquiries are usually pushed aside with baseless assertions that nutritional supplements are not necessary and the patients do not need to spend extra money buying supplements because they can get all the nutrients they need from the food they eat.

Upon a patient’s insistence, as a physician I will recommend only the cheapest brands of vitamins while boldly stating that they are not really important.

Many people can relate to this experience with physicians. I can confirm that during the first years of my clinical practice I did not see the need to recommend nutritional supplements for any reason. My opinion has been changed over the past three years after studying reports from recent studies on this subject.

My recent realizations have changed my previous perceptions about nutritional supplements. Now I understand it better. Unfortunately, more doctors haven’t come to this realization like I have! I understand that physicians feel responsible to protect their patients from suspicious programs and products that might be harmful to them.

Personally, I have witnessed many fraudulent schemes aimed at misleading my patients. But as physicians, we must make our decisions based on the reports from research studies that have been done through double blind and clinical trials based on the use of placebos (the recommended standard applicable in clinical medicine).

I also think many doctors are yet to acknowledge the role nutritional supplements play in preventing diseases because they have not fully understood the root causes of degenerative diseases.

If doctors ever come close to these studies and researches, they are quickly pushed away as the concern of biochemists and scientific researchers. In reality, there are links related to clinical medicine.

A close observation will reveal that there is a gap in the working relationship between the research scientist and the physician. The research scientists are constantly discovering new facts about the causes of degenerative disease, but these reports are barley acknowledged by the physicians.

The medical scene is basically about diagnosing diseases and waiting for the latest drugs developed by the pharmaceutical companies to treat these diseases.

Preventive medicine

simply has to do with the methods through which an individual can make healthy changes in their lifestyle and nutritional habits to stay healthy. The recent discoveries in biochemical research have made it possible to closely analyze human cells with the aim of discovering the root causes of degenerative diseases.

However, I still believe patients need to give the physicians some time to acknowledge these facts and start using the principles of preventive medicine more. The issue of nutritional supplements is still a controversially debated topic among medical scholars.

We are still waking up to the reality of nutritional medicine and its potential effects. This still puts the patients at a disadvantage because they miss out on the benefits of nutritional medicine.

The important point to note here is that patients do not need the consent of doctors to start using nutritional supplements in their lives. Every patient can learn more about nutritional medicine and start applying the principles in their lives.