Slap You Silly Statistics about America's Health Woes

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I haven't been able to find a single argument that proves to me that gluten or high fructose corn syrup are good things for ANYONE, not to mention those of us with sensitivities to them. I hear from people every day who tell me they like what I have to say about gluten, corn and dairy (thank you!) but they are also quick to tell me that they are sure they do not have any food issues.

I know but apparently they don't know that there are countless people who have a problem with gluten who are asymptomatic. I also know that gluten sensitivity affects up to 144 million Americans, so if you think you are among the lucky it doesn't affect, I sure hope you have tested yourself every which way possible to try to rule out a gluten issue.

In case you are still skeptical that our food is wreaking havoc on our bodies, here are some eye-opening, slap-you-silly statistics that might make you consider your diet and how it can be improved. I am not saying bad food choices cause every single one of these ailments but I am saying that what you eat plays a major role in how you feel. I find it depressing that as a nation we are so very sick.

I've gathered this information from my library of health books, almost all of which are written by M.D.s or from websites such as the Center for Disease Control:

• Depression affects up to 18 million Americans yet 27 million Americans are taking antidepressants.

• 24 million Americans have diabetes (and that number seems to increase by the minute).

• The number of Americans with Type 2 diabetes has TRIPLED over the past 30 years.

• 75% of the world's population is lactose intolerant. 50 million Americans suffer from lactose issues.

• 50 million adult Americans suffer from heartburn at least once a month.

• 34% of Americans are obese.

• 11% of children aged 2-5 are overweight.

• 89% of Americans will develop hemorrhoids at one time or another in their lives.

• Autoimmune thyroid disease is the most common autoimmune disease in the nation.

• More than 12 million Americans have a thyroid condition and as many as 60 million are estimated to have a thyroid problem.

• By 2016, less than a decade from now, the number of American adults (those 22 and over) with autism is expected to be nearly 1.5 million.

• Autism affects as many as 1 in every 110 children in the United States.

• 80,700,000 people in the United States have one or more forms of cardiovascular disease.

• 73 million Americans have high blood pressure.

• 16 million Americans have coronary heart disease.

• 5.3 million Americans have heart failure.

• 6 million men and women of reproductive age in the USA are affected by infertility.

• 2.1 million Americans have Rheumatoid Arthritis.

• 1 out of 5 Americans suffers from Irritable Bowl Syndrome. It is one of the most frequently occurring gastrointestinal disorders.

• More than 25 million Americans will develop a peptic ulcer at some times in their lives.

• Crohn's Disease has spread like an epidemic since 1950 and it affects up to 1 million Americans.

• By the age of 55, 1 in 5 American women will have their uterus removed.

• 11 million Americans have cancer.

• 555,500 Americans will die from cancer, corresponding to 1,500 Americans a day.

• 1,284,900 new cases of cancer are diagnosed each day.

• An estimated 205,000 new cases of breast cancer are diagnosed each year, with an estimated number of deaths at 40,000.

• 28 million Americans have migraines.

• An estimated 26% of Americans ages 18 and older — about one in four adults — suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder in a given year.

• Approximately 20 million American adults, or about 9.5% of the U.S. population age 18 and older in a given year, have a mood disorder.

• Bipolar disorder affects approximately 5.7 million American adults, or about 2.6% of the U.S. population age 18 and older in a given year

• Approximately 2.4 million American adults, or about 1.1 percent of the population age 18 and older in a given year,11 have schizophrenia.

• Gastritis accounts for more than 2 million doctor office visits each year in the U.S.

• More than 19 million Americans have chronic esophagitis.

• More than 1 million Americans have recurrent seizures.

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How to Know If Your Doctor Is a Great Doctor

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I can talk all day long about bad doctors, just see yesterday's post. I have frankly had more experience with that kind of doctor than the good kind.

I do know that excellent doctors are out there, however. I will give you my personal check list that I have to have in my doctors. If he or she doesn't have these qualities, I move on until I find a better doctor.

I base these traits on three fabulous doctors that I have the pleasure and good fortune and thankfully now good health -- thanks to them -- to work with. One is a female ENT (Ear, Nose, Throat), one is a hormone specialist (he was the first doctor to believe that I had a thyroid problem and he fixed it) and one is a thyroid surgeon (often called one of the best thyroid surgeons in the country). I can easily add a fourth excellent doctor and that would be the TV doctor named Dr. Oz. I love that he cares about people with every fiber of his being. Had he not become a heart surgeon, he would have made a great shrink.

Traits of Excellent Doctors:

• They are rarely late for your appointment and if they are, they quickly apologize for keeping you waiting. They bother to put magazines in the waiting room in case they do run late. Simply putting up medical graphics or drug company promotions on the wall does not count as reading material. If you see an abundance of Big Pharma advertising, leave.

• They do not require you to wear that silly paper gown unless they have to examine something under that gown.

• They do not repeatedly interrupt you.

• They do not wear ties and often they leave that white doctor's coat at home as well. Bad germs love ties and that white coat often puts a lot of distance between doctor and patient.

• They are not offended if your bring in internet research that you want to discuss with them. This kind of doctor is thrilled to have a patient who is knowledgeable about their own health and one that will be an active partner in their own health care. They often recommend books for you to read to further your knowledge. This kind of doctor is never threatened by an informed patient.

• They don't stop learning the day they receive their diploma from medical school.

• Many of them don't mess with insurance because they refuse to allow an insurance suit to tell them how to best treat their clients.

• They spend at least 30 minutes with you; often they spend an entire hour with you.

• They ask how you FEEL and then they listen to what you say.

• They understand the body as a whole and thus treat the body as a whole.

• Many of them understand drug interactions so thoroughly that they could double as your pharmacist.

• They never denigrate holistic health care; instead they integrate it into their knowledge base and practice.

• They actually do the basics that every doctor should do: take your temperature, your pulse, your weight and your blood pressure. If you are seeing a thyroid doc and they never bother to actually walk over to you and examine your thyroid, fire that doctor.

• They often have a nutritionist on staff or recommend that you see one.

• They treat you with respect and assume you are an intelligent being who can grasp the finer points of your illness.

• They say that their best knowledge has come from their patients, meaning as they help patient after patient back to a state of health, they learn something new with each case and that helps the next patient they see.

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How to Know When Your Doctor Sucks

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Are you aware that you can fire your doctor?

Every time I visit a doctor, I act like a client, not a patient. Patients can't fire doctors; customers can. Doctors are like fish in the ocean and you can easily get another and another and another until you find one who treats you like you deserve to be treated. Pay out of pocket if you have to. What is more important than your health?

Here are reasons I have fired more than 15 doctors and took my insurance or my cash elsewhere:

• They spend 15 minutes or less with you and act rushed and very non-interested in hearing about your health concerns.

• They interrupt you a lot and/or finish your sentences for you.

• They are more than 20 minutes late and never apologize for keeping you waiting.

• They are arrogant, haughty and full of themselves and thus have no time for you as there is only so much room in that brain of his and it is filled with thoughts of his awesomeness.

• They refuse to give you a copy of YOUR lab work. It is YOUR body and YOU are legally permitted to have YOUR lab results.

• They tell you "it's all in your head." That one causes me to stand up and walk out immediately without saying a word to the doctor. Even if I am sitting there in that flimsy paper gown, I will grab my things and change in the bathroom. He can figure it out later why I walked out, if he even cares that I did. It tends to at least startle them and give them an opportunity to wonder about what they might have said to offend you. Of course they also can decide you are indeed crazy and it is in your head but at that point I don't care what that doc thinks as he is fired.

• They refer you to any doctor ending with an -ologist in their title. This often means they have no idea why you are before them whining again about how tired you feel so they push you off down the road to an -ologoist who will then most likely give you a prescribed drug and never consider your body as a whole. There may be a real need to one day see an -ologist but be on the lookout for this cop out move by your primary doctor.

• They say you fit the Four F Profile -- Forty, Fat, Female and Fertile. When a doctor has the nerve to lay this one out, I am so very thankful I never took that concealed weapon class after all because this line causes me to go postal. I am likely to respond by telling this sort of doctor that he/she forgot the fifth F: F**K YOU!

Okay, fine, not everyone feels comfortable using the f-bomb in a doctor's office. I think you might though if your body is falling apart for a few decades and doctor after doctor blows your concerns off. Or worse, they prescribe the wrong medicine or remove the wrong body part surgically from you and you end up sicker and sicker and sicker.

If you aren't willing to walk away from an incompetent or lazy or uncaring doctor, then you are saying that you are willing to stay sick. And sick you will stay.

My excellent thyroid doctor wrote this down for me on his stationary the very first visit I had with him: "Never let your doctor determine how you feel." Sage advice.

For tomorrow's post, I will share the ways to know if you are sitting before a truly remarkable doctor.

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Natural Solutions Magazine Hits Thyroid Article Out of the Park

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This article in Natural Solutions magazine is the very best mainstream article I have ever read about thyroid issues. Kudos to Natural Solutions! They got the story right.

Check out The Hidden Epidemic: Is Your Thyroid Making You Fat?

The Herxheimer Reaction

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Oh joy of joys! I think I am right smack in the middle of having a Herxheimer Reaction as a result of fighting Candida and dramatically changing my diet by eliminating corn, gluten and dairy (casein). What is a Herxheimer Reaction, you ask?

I like this definition that I found on-line:

"The Herxheimer Reaction- When you start a new treatment for an illness, your symptoms might increases at first, leaving you wondering if you're really getting healthier at all. This is called a Herxheimer reaction. This is the "die-off" effect that many people experience when they dramatically improve their diet and lifestyles. It is an allergic response to the toxic by-products produced when the body's ph is changed for the better. When this happens, large numbers of dangerous bacteria and yeast organisms die and leave the body. During this time, you won't feel very well, but in reality, you are responding positively to treatment. After this initial Detoxification period, you should see significant improvement of your symptoms."

My main symptoms are feeling very sore and achy all over. For some reason, my right shoulder feels like someone whacked it with a brick a few hundred times. I also have been having a mysterious red rash in the evenings on my back and shoulders.

I like these links that give good suggestions on how to deal with this not-so-fun side affect on the long and winding road to health:

Dealing With Yeast Die-Off Reactions

Could Irritable Bowel Syndrome and Candida Overgrowth be Related?

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Gluten Pootin'

A friend came up with this witty way to, ah, talk about what is the, um, end result of gluten poisoning (or dairy or corn or any food allergy you may have):

Gluten Pootin'.

There is no good way to address this issue. It stinks to have to even talk about it.

But one way we know around here if we been accidentally glutened is, um, er, if we start sounding like an all drum band over here. Really unpleasant, for all concerned.

Here is something scary to consider. Some of you may have a very serious food allergy but you never get to the gluten pootin' part of this problem. For whatever reason, some people just do not show symptoms of this problem until it is too late. That sounds alright and certainly less stinky, right?

Wrong. You are headed towards cancer and an early death if you don't find out for sure if you have a gluten sensitivity problem and you continue to ingest gluten. Or diabetes. Or rheumatoid arthritis. Or liver and kidney problems. Or, or, or and the list goes on until we reach 300 possibilities.

All in all, I will take gluten pootin' over intestinal cancer any day of the week. My apologies to those in the room who disagree.

I did find this great link of information from a writer who found a perhaps more civil way to discuss this issue; she called it a "rumbly tummy." That works, but I bet you will remember gluten pootin for a whole lot longer than you will "rumbly tummy." :)