In case you’ve been living under a rock for the past few years, our healthcare system is crumbling. The costs have skyrocketed, getting appointments with your doctors is much harder, the best doctors are leaving medicine (because they are fed up with all the changes), and at the end of the day, the current healthcare system sends you out the door with a prescription for another pill, an order for another test, or a referral to another specialist.
So, what do you do? You get better at navigating through this broken system. There are steps you can take, strategies you can implement, and consistent behaviors you can adapt that will increase your chances of getting and staying well and reduce your chances of being harmed as a patient. (Over 100,000 people die each year as a result of their properly prescribed medication, and medical errors is the third leading cause of death in the U.S.)
Here are five quick tips to ensure better healthcare and better healthcare outcomes…
- Ask questions. You need to have all the information you can, and you get that by asking questions. You need to know the why, what, how, when, and where’s of any test, procedure, or medication before committing to it. It helps to make a list and take it with you. If it is a first visit, ask how you can have questions answered that you are likely to come up with. And the online systems, like MyChart, that hospital systems use are often much more effective than phone calls. If a doctor gives you choices, a great question to ask would be… “If you were me, what would you do in this situation?” If a doctor is not answering your question, or appears annoyed that you ask questions, find a new doctor.
- Get a second opinion. I am a HUGE advocate of getting multiple opinions. It will amaze you to see how two different doctors, even within the same specialty, and even office, can have vastly different recommendations. How can you know if the advice you are being given is the best option for you? Having multiple doctors give their opinions helps. If multiple doctors give you the same recommendation, that may give you peace of mind that you are doing the right thing. If they differ, then you have multiple options. Getting three or even four opinions, especially when it comes to more serious issues, is even better. Oh… and a true second opinion would involve an alternative healthcare practitioner. Protocols and procedures from mainstream doctors are very limited to what their hospitals, organizations, or offices deem appropriate. You will get a safer, more natural, and often more effective recommendation by an alternative care provider.
- Listen to your body. Your body is beautifully and wonderfully made. It comes equipped with an internal alarm system… called symptoms… which is your body’s way of alerting you that something is wrong and that you need to act. Pain, numbness, tingling, throbbing, burning, aching, and even muscle spasms are not conditions, they are symptoms. Most medical doctors treat symptoms, giving pain pills to reduce pain, muscle relaxers to reduce muscle spasms, and other medications to reduce the sensations of numbness, burning, aching, and throbbing. These do nothing to correct the underlying cause. Pay attention to the symptoms your body is sending, take action when you feel or notice these symptoms, and address the actual cause of those symptoms. Ignoring symptoms is very dangerous. Masking symptoms is just as bad.
- Act immediately. There are many factors that determine if, and how fast, your health problem can be resolved. Factors such as age, diet, daily activities, body weight, whether you smoke or not, etc., all affect your body’s ability to heal, as well as the rate at which it heals. After being in private practice for over 26 years, I can say with certainty that the one factor that has the biggest impact on how fast you get better is how soon you take action. The sooner you address the issue, the more likely you can get well, and the faster that will happen. Do not wait years, months, weeks, or even days if you are struggling. Catching any health issue sooner, even back or neck pain, has a dramatic effect on how fast you will get well. (This is why our office works hard to get people in within one day when they call with a problem.) Do not wait!
- Don’t accept minor improvements. People have come to accept feeling sick, weak, run down, and not well. They may go day after day thinking this is normal. They take action when things get really bad, only to bring them up to that mediocre level of health. You should be shooting for optimal. We are designed to have abundant energy, vitality, strength, and an overall feeling of goodness. Our medical system has become complacent with people muddling along, functioning just well enough to get by, and popping a bunch of pills to keep them going. Being better than you are now is good, but being the bestversion of you should be the goal. So do not accept being just a little bit better when you can be great.
At some point, we handed our health and the health of our children over to modern medicine. This was clearly a mistake. And our current medical system has run our health into the ground. It is time to once again realize that we are our own doctor. We are in charge of our health. No one will care more about you and your family’s health than you. It is up to you to take charge of your wellbeing and health trajectory. It starts with asking questions, getting multiple opinions, listening to your body, acting immediately, and striving for optimal health. Health is not a noun… it’s a verb. It’s not something that happens to you, it’s something you make happen.
