We doctors have dirty little secrets. We say things that are not true, or partially true, and then act like we know everything and how dare a patient question me. Why do we act this way? Why say things that are not true? Mostly because we believe the particular dirty little secret is true. We have some bad habits, and this series will be about the top 5 dirty little secrets, or the top 5 bad habits that patients should know about. Now I am not saying we do this on purpose. It’s not a conspiracy, even though I love conspiracies. It just the nature of our profession and how medicine has matured in the last hundred years. Unfortunately factoids are all over the place in medicine. So, let’s begin.
This will be part one of the top five dirty little secrets of doctors. This is the more detailed discussion of the video on You Tube. So what is the number one dirty little secret of doctors? It is that we believe that we cure disease and make patients healthier. Not true. What we call cure is really just delaying the onset of disease. What we call prevention is just the early detection of disease. Both of these things are good, but not true prevention or cure of disease. We have old most nothing to do with the prevention of disease and even less to do with making patients healthier. We don’t understand how to do optimal health treatments. Doctors and medical treatments don’t cure disease; we just prolong life and give better quality of life if you have disease. And I emphasize if you have disease.
There are some exceptions to this, but even those exceptions can be greatly exaggerated. But to be fair, we do cure many infectious diseases, like pneumonia and others. We do prolong life with cancer patients and cure some cancers. (But less than you think, because we doctors have a funny way of defining “cure”). But to say we cure most cancers is a great misunderstanding at best, (or lie, depending on your point of view). I will talk more about cancer in a different discussion. Surgery can cure some diseases or conditions but can be greatly misused and over used. And the list goes on and on. So what do we doctors do anyway???
We go to medical school to learn how to do the “early detection of disease”, “the diagnosis of disease”, and then “the treatment of disease”. And then 95% of what we do after school regarding our continuing medical education and research is just more of the same. “The early detection of disease”, “the diagnosis of disease”, and then “the treatment of disease”. Where do you hear anything about prevention or health in this approach? Nowhere, that’s where. And even further away is any remote understanding of how to make patients optimally healthy, which prevents the formation of disease in most patients. The truth is we are disease treaters. Doctors learn nothing about prevention or optimizing patients health, and yet patients think we know something. And the average doctor thinks that the “early detection of disease” is the same as prevention. (debunk, debunk, just not true!)
So then, I will say it again, that the first dirty little secret in medicine is that medicine and doctors define “the early detection of disease” as prevention, but it is not! We are not health professionals, we are disease treaters. We take no classes on “how to make humans optimally healthy at all decades of life. And most patients also think early detection is prevention. Now early detection is important, because finding a disease early is both good and valuable, but you still get the disease, we just found it early! It is not prevention!!
Furthermore, getting a yearly check-up with your doctor has nothing to do with prevention or optimal health living, it is just a checkup for “the early detection of disease”. When you see a doctor for an annual exam and the doctor tells you that all your tests are normal and the little physical exam is normal, you now believe you are ok and not moving towards getting disease. Wrong, wrong, debunk-debunk. It has no value in determining how fast you are aging, and it has minimum value in determining how quickly you are moving towards disease. All the annual check-up means is that right now, with this normal checkup, we see no signs of the early detection of disease. Which in all fairness to my kind (the doctor kind), is a good service. But my beef with medicine is that it is a dirty little secret to give patients the impression that the annual doctor exam is a “preventative exam.” It is an early detection exam. That is all it is. And again, that is a good thing.
Now doctors will read this and say I am full of crap. Doctors do in fact prevent disease and cure more than I am saying. Well let’s see if we can use the basic facts of life outcomes to see who is correct. Is Dr. Debunk full of crap or mainstream medicine full of crap? Ready???? According to the US government that tracks what Americans die of, in 2014, the numbers shook out approximately like this:
70% of Americans die of heart disease, cancer, lung disease, stroke, and then a combination of other organ failure diseases. 7 out of 10 adult Americans die this way and the age is 75-85.
So what about people that don’t die of disease? They die of old age. Essentially, what dying of old age is that one of your major organs just wears out, and then you expire. How old is this: Based on the cumulative evidence of the last 50 years, it is 105 years, plus or minus 5 years. How do we know this? Most obviously from the fact the people all over the world achieve these ages. Dying without signs of disease, at 105 or older.
The numerous factors that cause people to die of old age and not from disease is not the subject we are discussing here. What determines old age dying are the 10 factors of an “optimum health lifestyle”, a subject I will discuss in other videos. But for this subject, it is sufficient to say, what i just said is an historical fact. People all over the world do in fact make it to 105 with high quality of life and no overt signs of disease when they die. So what is the point?????
If what we do in medicine really prevented disease, using medications like we do, for any and every problem, doing the annual checkups, and all the other things that we do as doctors, why Americans do on average die at 75 to 85 years old. That is the statistic. Americans die from disease at 75-85. If you do what your doctors says, you will live to maybe 80. So why don’t all these drugs and surgeries regular medicine promotes make us live to the 105 age??? I mean, if what we do as doctors is truly preventative, why do we still die of disease (not old age), and why die at 80 years old? Because what medicine does just delays the onset of disease and help you live longer with the disease. You still get the disease and then die from disease at 80 or sooner. Finally, as an interesting fact, the 105 year old “centurions” generally have minimum contact or no with doctors or drugs throughout their entire lives. Most centurions don’t see doctors at all.
The truth is what we do as doctors will extend the quality of life with our treatments once you have disease. You will live longer with (the drugs + disease) than if you had (disease + typical American lifestyle and no drugs). But we are not preventing cancer or heart disease, we are just delaying its onset, and then helping you live longer with the disease. This statement is reality because it is based on what has actually happened over the last 75 years and is still happening today. History does not lie. Dying of disease is very different than dying of old age. For 38 years I have watched patients die of disease, and now, I am trying to get patients to live the exact opposite kind of life that produced that disease. This by definition is what an “optimal health lifestyle” is all about. But doctors know nothing about health, because we are trained to treat disease, hence “licensed disease treater” should be our title. But wow, that does not sound good! Tomorrow get up and tell you friend you are going to see your licensed disease treater! Probably won’t go well.
So to conclude, let me summarize. Doctors should be called disease treaters, not health professionals. But that title doesn’t sound so good. Yet the truth is we don’t study of the scientific fields of “human health science”. We do early detection of disease and call that prevention. We use drugs and therapies that just delay the onset of disease but mostly don’t get to the lifestyle factors that would truly prevent disease.
Now everything I have just said may have sounded depressive. I may have caused you to doubt your doctor, but be of good cheer. It is not depressive, it is exciting. Because now you can embrace the truth, and not believe in medical myths. Now you can start to learn how to live “optimally healthy” which will prevent disease and promote excellent quality of life at all decades of life. You can set your doctor free from your false expectations that he/she can keep you healthy. You are responsible for your health outcome, not the doctor!!! You doctor can help you with intermittent medication use for symptom relief of non-diseased problems. You can use annual check up’s for the early detection issues, but you must do the work yourself to stay optimally healthy. So stop going to a carpenter to get your car fixed, it doesn’t work. Yes, carpenters and mechanics both use tools, but good luck with having a carpenter taking a skill saw to fix your car.
I am Dr. Debunk, and this has been debunked!
