index.php : Page blog : Page archive : Page 2013-07

NWCN Show 7-20-13 from Longevity Medical Clinic on Vimeo.

The annual medical checkup is worthless.

You have probably heard that you should go to your doctor at least once a year to get your annual checkup. But a recent meta-analysis of 14 large studies demonstrated that annual exams seem to have no significant impact on your health or survival. In fact, serious questions were raised about not just the unnecessary cost of the yearly routine physical, but about both the cost and harm being done to people due to over diagnosis and treatment of conditions that are found during the exams.

It seems that people who seldom or never get their annual physicals develop serious conditions, get hospitalized or die, at about the same rate as those who do. People who do go for their annual physicals spend a lot more money on both medications and medical care during their lifetime. But they are no healthier!

Spend your money with a comprehensive and preventative clinic like Longevity Medical Clinic. We believe we

It drives men crazy when a woman says, “well, if I have to tell you,” but here’s a newsflash – you do need to tell us.

The brains of men and women function very differently. We do not perceive ourselves or the world around us in the same way. Women are extremely good at interpreting body language and nonverbal social cues. We men are only good at recognizing potential threats. Men are pretty much hopeless when it comes to recognizing the social and emotional needs of a woman.

It’s not that we are trying to ignore you. It’s not that we don’t care. We just stink at nonverbal communication.

If you want the man in your life to know something, tell him. Tell him straight out, in simple words, and be sure you have his attention when you say it. Otherwise, we will miss what you’re trying to convey.

We don’t have a healthcare system. What we have is a disease management system, but disease management is just second rate.

We should be working to make you as healthy as possible. Failing that, our fallback should be treating disease. Unfortunately, most doctors spend virtually all of their time treating disease rather than improving health. But improving health requires active participation by Dr. and patient, while treating disease is often done with the patient in a passive role. Unfortunately, most physicians have focused on treating disease for so long they don’t even know what the optimal laboratory and physiologic ranges are anymore.

When you see your doctor don’t accept normal as the goal. Ask what the optimal range is. If your doctor doesn’t know the difference between optimal and normal, change doctors.

When doctors say "normal" patients hear "good". But in medicine, normal has a very specific meaning.

Normal is arbitrarily defined as encompassing 95% of the population. When your doctor says your test was normal, what he is really saying is that you are better off than at least 2.5% of the population on one end of the scale or the other. If your brain, heart, lungs, or bones are better than 3% or 97% of the people, you are equally normal. I don’t know about you, but given a choice, I will choose to be better than 97% rather than 3% every time. When your doctor says your test was normal for your age, it means at least 2% of the old fogies in your age group are worse off than you.

That is not acceptable. Tell your doctor that you won’t accept normal; you want optimal.