Before I get into the concerning stats I read this morning that I want to share with you, I want to tell you a little bit about my story.
I have had good doctors and I have had bad doctors. More bad than good, unfortunately. As a child I was struggling to breathe for the first 2 years of my life. Every pediatrician my mother took me to said that children don't develop allergies and asthma until 3. Finally, after months of watching her baby suffer, she found one that agreed with her - yep! Allergies, asthma.
As a teenager, I started my period around 13. From the very beginning they were horrible boys, scroll down if you get uggy about women-things. My cramps were so painful I couldn't function. I couldn't concentrate in class, I couldn't even sit down...all I could do is lay curled up in a fetal position. Often they would be so bad I would vomit or pass out. Passing out, though, was the best remedy for them. If I could pass out, somehow my body would "reset" and the pain would disappear.
After over a decade of being on birth control pills (and all of the life-altering personality changes that goes with them, including suicide attempts and depression) I discovered, quite by accident, what was actually happening. The doctors diagnosed me with endometriosis - which is almost impossible to confirm because it requires exploratory surgery that no insurance company will approve. In fact, one year I had started a new job and was so embarrassed because my boss found me passed out on the bathroom floor nearly naked (laying against cold tile helped ease the symptoms) so I called my doctor. Her recommendation was to prescribe me oxycodine. No wonder our drug problem in the US is so bad. I told her 'thanks, but no thanks, the point is to be able to FUNCTION at work, not be stoned off my gourd'.
So quite by accident I found the real reason behind my pain - in most people under duress or pain, their body raises their blood pressure, releases adrenaline and gets them ready for fight or flight. However, in 10% of the population, the opposite occurs. Essentially, my body was shutting down and going into shock once a month. The solution? Coffee. If I could artificially increase my blood pressure and heart rate, the pain because completely bearable.
Side note - coffee is a medicinal herb. It's an herbal tea made out of the roasted beans of the coffee trees whose main medicinal constituent is caffeine.
Going back to my teenage years, I was in a farm accident that broke a few ribs, lacerated my spleen, and completely ruined my lumbar. Years after years of abuse later and my back had given up. I was in chronic pain in college. I lost nearly all of my friends because all I could think about, all I could talk about, was how badly my back hurt. Again, after seeing dozens of doctors, I had done physical therapy (multiple times), chiropractic (multiple times), ultrasound therapy (multiple times), epidural steroid injections (multiple times), and, at 22, was on such heavy narcotic painkillers with no other options I was suicidal. I was a cripple at 22, who couldn't function unless on heavy-duty drugs. What kind of life was left for me?
Long story short, I found a cure for that too - yoga. When my hamstrings and glutes are tight from sitting down for too long, it creates extra stress on my lumbar, causing it to curve and cause me pain and sciatica.
So for two different ailments, I blew through dozens of doctors and years of pain - only to be told that heavy-duty, mind-altering and life-ending narcotics were the only solutions - to find perfectly safe, healthy, actual treatments for my ailments. The health system had failed me completely.
That being said, I have two stories as well of doctors who saved me: I had separated from my first husband when my back started REALLY acting up again. However, I didn't make the connection. A great doctor saw immediately that the stress from my divorce was causing me to be physically tense and aggravate my already bad back.
The birth of my son was also as amazing an experience as I could have ever hoped for. The epidural was amazing - I didn't feel a thing. The midwives also brought me tools to help me focus on what I was doing (I won't go into gory detail), we were laughing and joking around the entire labor, and at the end of it, my 9 lb line-backer of a baby tore me from stem to stern. I would have been one of those "died in childbirth" cases had it been even 100 years ago. I'm forever grateful to the nurses and midwives that that day went as beautifully as it did.
So now for the scary statistics you came here for:
Adverse drug reactions are the 4th leading cause of death in the United States. ADR's include serious drug side effects, product use errors, product quality problems and therapeutic failures. This does NOT include deaths caused by physician or pharmacy error. There are more deaths every year from ADR's than from pulmonary disease, diabetes, pneumonia, accidents and automobile deaths. Source
Hospitals produce 1/5 of the US waste stream's mercury (a neurotoxin now found in a lot of fish) which is released into the air during medical waste incineration or dumped into waterways. Source
Estrogen from the urine of women are birth control pills which ends up back in our waterways and other pollutants is finding its way into our fresh water fish. About 85% of the male smallmouth bass collected in national wildlife refuges in Northeastern US had eggs growing in their testes. Source
Fun fact = your doctor is also probably receiving kick backs from these pharmaceutical companies. Check out this website and do a search for your doctor to see: https://openpaymentsdata.cms.gov/
Antibiotic misuse and overuse is creating a global epidemic that creates superbugs and is creating a global shortage in antibiotics. Source More on that later.
Of the countries assessed by National Institutes of Health in 2013, the US had the highest or near-highest prevalence of infant mortality, heart and lung disease, and other issues, placing the US at the bottom of the list for life expectancy. Source
Pharmaceutical companies spent $277 MILLION last year in lobbying alone to create legislation that benefits them. Source
While there are many more disturbing statistics that paint a gruesome picture of the health care industry in the US, we have to fully understand where we are to get a picture of where we need to go.
I won't sit here and preach to you what I think we need to do to fix it. Instead, I want to hear from you. What are you experiences with health care in the US? All bad? All good? Mostly good but we have some room to grow? Or have you completely written off modern medicine?
