Tom Blackwell of the National Post wrote a great article last week about a very important subject. In a world where economies have been bruised and beaten, we can ill afford to fund upward spiraling health care costs.
Not only are we getting “sicker” as a society because of what we eat and drink and breathe, the cost of managing the sickness continues to escalate as our doctors order more and more tests and prescribe more and more medications.
If you have a couple of minutes, the following article is a worthwhile read:
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/Primary+care+doctors+over+prescribe+test+report/3583242/story.html
Mr. Blackwell notes that a new federal-provincial report offers the following warning: “Swayed by pharmaceutical sales reps and less than fully versed on new technology, family doctors may be prescribing drugs improperly and ordering too many expensive diagnostic tests”.
A new Health Council of Canada report titled Decisions Decisions indicates that ” Governments must give such primary-care physicians the tools to make better decisions if they want to corral spiraling health-care costs”. The report points out that “Our research points to inappropriate prescribing of drugs and over-use of diagnostic imaging. If there is no change in how family physicians are supported in their role as gatekeeper, we can expect a surge in health service use.”
Nobody denies that our health care systems need to be revamped, or the cost will be crushing as our population continues to get older. I would suggest that while our governments are looking at ways to stem costs, that they rethink the way that we look at health care in the first place. Surely it is more cost effective to prevent disease in the first place than to try and repair damaged bodies. For a good analogy, just think about why you put oil in your car before you run it.
For starters, lets encourage our politicians and policy makers to focus on health instead of sickness. We need to address the health issue before we get sick. How do we do that? Education! Who should provide the education? It sure isn’t doctors, because they don’t study how to help you be healthy. So, that leaves it up to our governments. In order to make a quantum change in thinking, there has to be a will to make the change.
It is a travesty that the pharmaceutical companies have such incredible power when it comes to policy making, because the pharmaceutical companies doesn’t want the public to be healthy. As much as that statement sounds ridiculous, it is true. What would happen to pharmaceutical profits if people started focusing on being healthy? You know the answer as well as I do. Profits would tumble and the pharmas would be screaming their heads off. We would hear the cries of “we need the funds to provide research so that we can find new treatments and cures.
Despite all the wonderful advancements made in medicine in recent decades, are people actually more or less healthy than in the past? Childhood obesity is out of control. Diabetes is at epidemic levels. Cancer diagnoses are growing every year at unprecedented levels. The incidence of ADD and OCD and numerous other disorders in children that we never heard of when we were kids is playing havoc with families. And what are we doing about it? More drugs and tests of course.
I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but it is hard to ignore what is going on when it comes to our health. The government allows the sale of tobacco because of the huge tax implications despite the common knowledge of the harmful effects of smoking. While our governments make token attempts to warn smokers of their stupidity, nobody is telling the fast food companies to shut down. While we no longer have the “Marlboro Man” in our faces, we still have fast food companies and soda companies filling our airwaves with enticing advertisements full of happy, healthy people. Well, the models in the advertisements are happy and healthy, but the customers that buy the crap become overweight and get sick and depressed. Our governments know this junk is bad for us, but the commercials are more prevalent than ever.
The buildup of acid in our bodies that is directly related to garbage food is responsible for many of health care problems. We could virtually eliminate acid reflux, osteo arthritis, high cholesterol, and Type 2 diabetes by simply changing our diets and drinking alkaline water or other alkaline beverages. In fact, getting our bodies into an alkaline state would help eliminate cancer, as cancer can’t survive in an alkaline body.
The solution to dramatically reducing our health care costs is simple. Educate our children about the importance of eating well. In the meantime, you have the solution in your own hands and you can share it with the people that are important in your life. While you are at it, perhaps we could pass on the soda and fries and replace them with a healthy salad and a glass of alkaline water.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and quoted sources.
- Tags: ADD, drugs, OCD, pharmaceutical, profits
Rob, that is a great article. I have no choice but to become a conspiracy theorist after always coming upon stuff like this. Big Pharma’s gotta go. They have too much control… and now I hear there are going to be cholesterol drugs in McD’s burgers. Sheesh. When does it stop. Keep it coming.
Thanks for the kind words Scott.
Cholesterol drugs in a Big Mac. Now that should be the example used in the dictionary for the definition of “oxymoron”.
I think the idea is to have a selling point… have a Big Mac and you can cure heart disease at the same time.
Hi Scott:
I’m lovin’ it! Step right up….get your Big Mack….can we upsize your order to include a side of heart disease control?
On the serious side, there is no reason that the fast food giants couldn’t find a way to make their foods alot more healthy. The only question is would people eat the food?
Hi Rob
I recently bought the Jupiter Water Ioniser. I have only been drinking the purified water and not the alkaline water. I want to know whether or not there are specific rules for drinking alkalkine water. I read somewhere that it shouldn’t be taken with medication, and shouldn’t be stored in plastic bottles, or heated up – etc. Are any of these true? Can it be drunk at any time and/or with medication?
Look forward to your response.
Regards
Milly
Hi Milly:
Thanks for sending your question from South Africa. Geez, the internet makes the world a small place. I see it is sunny and 20 degrees Celcius in Cape Town today, while we had our first snowflakes this morning in Toronto. I hope all the little ghosts and goblins dress warmly tonight.
There are no rules, but there are guidelines to drinking alkaline water. Every company that sells water machines recommends that you don’t ingest
medications with alkaline water. You can drink alkaline water half an hour before taking the medication, or an hour afterwards, but not while actually
swallowing the medication. The timelines for drinking alkaline water with medications are not carved in stone. The theory behind refraining from ingesting alkaline water while swallowing medications is that the presence of alkaline water may affect the ability and timing of the stomach to break down the medication so that it can pass through to the intestines. Pharmaceutical companies assume people will be drinking tap water when they prepare a drug, so they assume that the degradation rate will be somewhat consistent with the parameters of what is considered “normal”. If you alter the pH level of the stomach with alkaline
water, you may alter absorption rates or absorption ability. If a medication has a time release component, then drinking alkaline when the medication is swallowed may alter the timing of absorption.
In my opinion, alkaline water should produced by a water ionizer should be consumed as fresh as possible, as in the first ten seconds it is produced, so I’m not a big fan of storing water. The reason for that is that the bubbles you see in the water when it first comes out of a water ionizer machine are hydrogen bubbles and they disappear in a few seconds as they rise to the surface and dissipate when they contact the air. According to Dr. Hidemitsu Hayashi, MD, who I consider to be the world’s leading authority on alkaline water, it is the free hydrogen you can see in the fast escaping bubbles that are the key to producing good health. That being said, ionized water still contains negatively charged hydroxyl (OH-) ions that are are capable of reducing (or donating an electron, or energy) other molecules, so they are also beneficial.
If you need to store alkaline ionized water, the ideal conditions would be to remove any contact of the water with air and to store the water in the dark, or in a dark container. The key is to drink the water fresh, but if you can’t drink it fresh, store it properly. Even in the worst case, drinking water is a thousand times better than drinking sodas or other carbonated or sugar based drinks.