8 replies to this topic

[beefytaco]

I have my 6-mo appointment coming up with my cardiologist, and had a few questions for you guys....

- how much does your physician know about your supplement regimen?
- does he/she get frustrated with your "self-medicating"?
- how knowledgeable is he/she on what you're taking?
- anything else that I should be aware of?

[scottl]

Very few medical doctors know anything significant about supplements.


NB: Nothing I say here should be construed as medical advice. Consider this a public service announcement.

[lunarsolarpower]

Imminst Supp forums where not only is the glass half empty, but it is broken and the sharp ends might cut one.

I like THAT public service announcement.

[doug123]

I have my 6-mo appointment coming up with my cardiologist, and had a few questions for you guys....

- how much does your physician know about your supplement regimen?
- does he/she get frustrated with your "self-medicating"?
- how knowledgeable is he/she on what you're taking?
- anything else that I should be aware of?

I am not necessarily sure your cardiologist is going to be the best person to discuss your diet and lifestyle with. It might be a good idea to start by running your doctor's name through his or her state boards to see if they are even legit -- however, there was recently a big bust of doctors who even had fake licenses. I recall not too long ago a lot of folks thought someone posting in this forum was a doctor and that turned out to be quite far from the truth. However, it would be much smarter to take the advice of your cardiologist than use anecdotal evidence presented by self proclaimed experts in online Internet forums; and I don't know of any licensed physicians that post here (or ever have -- and if there is, I'd like to know his or her name, and which state he or she is licensed so I may run their name through their state boards).

Anyways, to answer your questions: my doctor knows everything I take -- and he isn't even a specialist in Integrative Medicine!

I provided a list of licensed doctors that are aware and up to date on all of the latest research -- here.

Another doctor that seems to know his what's up is Sanford Levy, MD. You see, there's a lot these doctors know that you and I don't -- that's because they went to Medical School and had to complete their residencies! What I mean is these folks are health care professionals.

Let me ask you: when your car is broken, do you google the broken part and take testimonials from other folks in online forums , then try to fix it yourself -- or do you take your car to the mechanic?

How about when your clothes need to be altered for a special event? You go to the tailor, right?

What about when you've got cancer? What if you have cancer and don't even know it?

It's the same issue with matters of health -- you go see a professional -- in this case, I might suggest finding a doctor that specializes in Integrative Medicine. That way, you can also access prescription drugs and all years of clinical experience of the professional. Otherwise, I might suggest you update on all of the latest research -- most of which you'll need to pay to view; here is a link to some of the information you need to be aware of to make sane decisions with your health -- as if we laymen are even cognizant of all these terms! And even then, you can't access prescription drugs.

For diet and lifestyle advice, if you are in the United States, look for the closest hospital that has an Integrative Medicine program.

Practice of IM has become so credible that the American Hospital Association states that more than 16% of hospitals, including leading medical facilities at Harvard, Mayo, and Duke, feature IM centers as part of their institutions. Among hospitals not currently offering IM, 24% stated that they planned to do so in the future.

If you need a referral, let me know. I might be able to help.

Take care.

[scottl]

I don't know of any licensed physicians that post here .

Amnesia Adam? Or are you just annoyed because I take a differnt point of view?

Though I dislike even bringing it up, one of the folks in the....whatever they call the group who runs this place, verified my license. Anyone can do it with the state licensing agency on line.

[niner]

- how much does your physician know about your supplement regimen?

He knows very little about it.

- does he/she get frustrated with your "self-medicating"?

Yes.

- how knowledgeable is he/she on what you're taking?

Spectacularly unaware. Yet, he's a great doctor, as far as conventional medicine goes. He is a particularly gifted diagnostician. Even if I some day find an IM practitioner who isn't a quack, I would still use my present doctor as well. For some time now I've been tossing around the idea of writing something up about what I take, what the evidence is for or against it, and what the pharmacokinetics and potential drug interactions are. I would then present a copy of it to my physician and see if he has a heart attack.

Let me ask you: when your car is broken, do you google the broken part and take testimonials from other folks in online forums , then try to fix it yourself -- or do you take your car to the mechanic?

This might be a bad example, Adam, as I do in fact get advice on fixing my car from an online forum devoted to it. I've had better luck doing this than going to mechanics. One of the guys on the forum is an engineer who worked on the design of my transmission. I have to say that I've been very impressed with the level of expertise on ImmInst as well. Since anyone can post on a web forum, the expertise there is also diluted by a lot of idiocy, so you have to be able to distinguish between the two. That's not always easy.

[zoolander]

I have a great relationship with my Doctor. In general I do my research and utilise as needed. He comes to me for supplement advice

Beefytaco if you have any concerns about particular supplements being contraindicated let us know. Perhaps we can give you doctor some papers to read. I sat in on a visit with my friend when he saw his oncologist. At the time there was a study that had just been published using a radical combination of agents. This combination was shown to be more agressive at attacking the tumour in question. I spoke openly with the oncologist and handed him the paper. As it turns out he had already read the paper and had planned to put my friend on the treatment. My friend does not have a tumor anymore.

[Shepard]

Let me ask you: when your car is broken, do you google the broken part and take testimonials from other folks in online forums  , then try to fix it yourself -- or do you take your car to the mechanic? 

It's the same issue with matters of health -- you go see a professional -- in this case,

Well, this is a bad example. Compared to the human body, cars are terribly simple and really anyone can learn to be their own mechanic. For the body, no one is omniscient (even doctors) so if I came down with a serious health issue, I'd make damn sure to do my homework and explore the avenues I considered plausible. This doesn't mean I'd immediately go against my doctor's wishes if I thought he/she was wrong, but I'd probably approach other doctors and ultimately make the decision myself which way to go. I certainly wouldn't say, "Well, you know what's right, doc."

[doug123]

Let me ask you: when your car is broken, do you google the broken part and take testimonials from other folks in online forums  , then try to fix it yourself -- or do you take your car to the mechanic? 

It's the same issue with matters of health -- you go see a professional -- in this case,

Well, this is a bad example. Compared to the human body, cars are terribly simple and really anyone can learn to be their own mechanic. For the body, no one is omniscient (even doctors) so if I came down with a serious health issue, I'd make damn sure to do my homework and explore the avenues I considered plausible. This doesn't mean I'd immediately go against my doctor's wishes if I thought he/she was wrong, but I'd probably approach other doctors and ultimately make the decision myself which way to go. I certainly wouldn't say, "Well, you know what's right, doc."

Briefly:

My friend George has a song called: Your Bad Example -- are you trying to play around, be funny or something?

It's called an analogy. I used two of them in a row, and that might be poetry.

I'll use some more, to illustrate my point further: if your kidneys fail, you'd want to go see a nephrologist, if your brain fails, you'd want to go see a neurologist.

Analogy is both the cognitive process of transferring information from a particular subject (the analogue or source) to another particular subject (the target), and a linguistic expression corresponding to such a process. In a narrower sense, analogy is an inference or an argument from a particular to another particular, as opposed to deduction, induction, and abduction, where at least one of the premises or the conclusion is general. The word analogy can also refer to the relation between the source and the target themselves, which is often, though not necessarily, a similarity, as in the biological notion of analogy.

I had an excellent anthropology professor; he used to give the class advice for the first few minutes of each class; and much of it turned out to be somewhat useful. One class he started by telling us the following: "if there are only two people in the world you should trust, it better be your dentist and your mechanic." It's remarkably true, because several years ago, I brought this minivan thingy I was driving for a while into the Toyota dealer and they're like: "you have a terrible leak; it's going to cost you over five hundred dollars to repair." I'm like, sure. I used to have this classic car back when I was a teen, and I trusted that mechanic, for reasons I won't go into right now. He introduced me to one of his friends (that is still my friend today, and ironically I gave him that minivan as a gift several years later) -- he's like: "there is nothing wrong with your car." So that's one instance where I think my analogy applies. That dude took care of that car for a long time, and it cost me nothing but oil changes and brakes. Anyways, that's besides the point.

Look: I think it's obvious many individuals in this forum have never had the opportunity to work with a licensed physician -- either because they couldn't afford it, were too afraid to try it out of perhaps fear of a paternalistic scenario.

When it boils down to it, if you want to live a long, healthy life (and you're male -- and I'd say over 90% of this forum is males) -- there are particular risk factors you should seek to have minimized if you want to live as long as possible; and there really isn't any other way to go than with a real professional. It seems a lot of folks in this forum may not realize that there is an entire field of medicine that deals with the science of diet and lifestyle -- and it's all based on evidence -- not elaborate anecdotes and testimonials from anonymous characters in Internet forums. Now, once you get into different specialties in medicine, you're going to get into lots of specifics.

There was a study published in JAMA (The Journal of the American Medical Association) on November 15, 2006, it was called: "Midlife Risk Factors and Healthy Survival in Men." Now, these are risk factors for men in midlife (45-68) that were followed for forty (40) years! That's no joke. They detected some distinct risk factors that are correlated with a long and healthy life.

Let me please introduce the The Journal of the American Medical Association: -- but first, some introductory information on the AMA from Answers.com, provided by US History Encyclopedia:

American Medical Association

American Medical Association (AMA) was founded on 7 May 1847 as a response to the growing demands for reforms in medical education and practice. Dr. Nathan S. Davis (1817–1904), a delegate from the New York State Medical Society who later came to be known as the "founding father of the AMA," convened a national conference of physicians to address reforms in medical education, medical ethics, and public health. On 7 May 1847 more than 250 physicians from more than forty medical societies and twenty-eight medical colleges assembled in the Great Hall of the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia and established the American Medical Association. A Committee on Medical Education was appointed, and minimum standards of medical education were established. The first national code of American medical ethics, the cornerstone of professional self-regulation, was adopted. Written by Dr. John Bell (1796–1872) and Dr. Isaac Hays (1796–1879) and published in 1847, the Code of Medical Ethics of the American Medical Association provided guidelines for the behavior of physicians with respect to patients, society, and other medical professionals.

Throughout the nineteenth century the AMA worked to expose fraudulent and unethical practitioners and to limit licensure to allopathic physicians. In 1883 the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) was established with Nathan Davis as the first editor. By 1901, JAMA was reporting a circulation of 22,049 copies per week, the largest of all medical journals in the world.

Membership, however, remained small, including only 10,000 of the 100,000 orthodox physicians. In 1901 the AMA underwent a major reorganization to become a more effective national body by providing proportional representation among state medical societies. The House of Delegates was established as the legislative body of the AMA. Each state society was allowed a specific number of delegates with voting rights. By 1906, membership in the AMA exceeded 50,000 physicians, and educational and licensing reforms began to take hold.

The newly established Council on Medical Education inspected 160 medical schools (1906–1907), and in 1910 the Flexner Report, Medical Education in the United States and Canada, was published. Funded by the Carnegie Foundation and supported by the AMA, the report exposed the poor conditions of many schools and recommended implementing rigorous standards of medical training. By 1923 the AMA had adopted standards for medical specialty training, and in 1927 the association published a list of hospitals approved for residency training.

By World War I, the AMA had become a powerful political lobby. Wary of governmental control, it fought proposals for national health insurance. The 1935 Social Security Act passed without compulsory health insurance due to AMA influence. Physician membership grew steadily to over 100,000 physicians by 1936. The AMA continued to fight government involvement in health care with a campaign against President Truman's initiatives in 1948. In 1961 the American Medical Political Action Committee (AMPAC) was formed to represent physicians' and patients' interests in health care legislation.

The AMA continued to work on numerous public health initiatives, including declaring alcoholism to be an illness (1956), recommending nationwide polio vaccinations (1960), and adopting a report on the hazards of cigarette smoking (1964). AMA membership exceeded 200,000 physicians by 1965. From 1966 to 1973, the AMA coordinated the Volunteer Physicians in Vietnam program and in 1978 supported state legislation mandating use of seat belts for infants and children.

In 1983, membership included 250,000 physicians. As AIDS became an epidemic in the 1980s, the AMA passed a resolution opposing acts of discrimination against AIDS patients (1986) and established the office of HIV/AIDS (1988).

By 1990, health maintenance organizations (HMOs) and other third-party payers were involved extensively in health care delivery. Health care reform had become a political priority. In 1994 and 1995 the AMA drafted two Patient Protection Acts, and in 1998 the AMA supported the Patient's Bill of Rights.

In 2001, AMA membership included 300,000 physicians. As new threats to the nation's health, such as bioterrorism, began to emerge in the twenty-first century, the AMA continued to rely on the principles in the AMA Code of Medical Ethics (revised 2001) and the democratic process of the AMA House of Delegates to guide its actions and policies to fulfill its mission as "physicians dedicated to the health of America."

Bibliography

Baker, Robert B., et al. The American Medical Ethics Revolution: How the AMA's Code of Ethics Has Transformed Physicians' Relationships to Patients, Professionals, and Society. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999.

Duffy, John. From Humors to Medical Science: A History of American Medicine. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1993.

Starr, Paul. The Social Transformation of American Medicine: The Rise of a Sovereign Profession and the Making of a Vast Industry. New York: Basic Books, 1982.

Stevens, Rosemary. American Medicine and the Public Interest: A History of Specialization. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1998.

Info on JAMA:

JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association is an international peer-reviewed general medical journal, published 48 times per year by the American Medical Association. JAMA is the most widely circulated medical journal in the world.[1]

Founded in 1883 by the American Medical Association and published continuously since then, JAMA publishes original research, reviews, commentaries, editorials, essays, medical news, correspondence, and ancillary content (such as abstracts of the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report). In 2005, JAMAs impact factor was 23.5[1] placing it among the leading general medical journals.[2] JAMAs acceptance rate is approximately 8% of the nearly 6000 solicited and unsolicited manuscripts it receives annually.[1] The first editor was Nathan Smith Davis, the founder of the American Medical Association and present editor of JAMA is Catherine DeAngelis.

1.  http://jama.ama-assn...c/aboutjama.dtl

Here's the abstract of the study:

Vol. 296 No. 19, November 15, 2006
Original Contribution

Midlife Risk Factors and Healthy Survival in Men
Bradley J. Willcox, MD; Qimei He, PhD; Randi Chen, MS; Katsuhiko Yano, MD; Kamal H. Masaki, MD; John S. Grove, PhD; Timothy A. Donlon, PhD; D. Craig Willcox, PhD; J. David Curb, MD

JAMA. 2006;296:2343-2350.

Context  Healthy survival has no clear phenotypic definition, and little is known about its attributes, particularly in men.

Objective  To test whether midlife biological, lifestyle, and sociodemographic risk factors are associated with overall survival and exceptional survival (free of a set of major diseases and impairments).

Design, Setting, and Participants  Prospective cohort study within the Honolulu Heart Program/Honolulu Asia Aging Study. A total of 5820 Japanese American middle-aged men (mean age, 54 [range, 45-68] years) free of morbidity and functional impairments were followed for up to 40 years (1965-2005) to assess overall and exceptional survival. Exceptional survival was defined as survival to a specified age (75, 80, 85, or 90 years) without incidence of 6 major chronic diseases and without physical and cognitive impairment.

Main Outcome Measure  Overall survival and exceptional survival.

Results  Of 5820 original participants, 2451 participants (42%) survived to age 85 years and 655 participants (11%) met the criteria for exceptional survival to age 85 years. High grip strength and avoidance of overweight, hyperglycemia, hypertension, smoking, and excessive alcohol consumption were associated with both overall and exceptional survival. In addition, high education and avoidance of hypertriglyceridemia were associated with exceptional survival, and lack of a marital partner was associated with mortality before age 85 years. Risk factor models based on cumulative risk factors (survival risk score) suggest that the probability of survival to oldest age is as high as 69% with no risk factors and as low as 22% with 6 or more risk factors. The probability of exceptional survival to age 85 years was 55% with no risk factors but decreased to 9% with 6 or more risk factors.

Conclusion  These data suggest that avoidance of certain risk factors in midlife is associated with the probability of a long and healthy life among men.

Author Affiliations: Pacific Health Research Institute (Drs B. J. Willcox, He, Yano, Masaki, Grove, Donlon, D. C. Willcox, and Curb and Mr Chen), Honolulu Heart Program, Kuakini Medical Center (Drs B. J. Willcox, Yano, Masaki, and Curb and Mr Chen), Departments of Geriatric Medicine and Medicine (Drs B. J. Willcox, Masaki, and Curb) and Public Health Sciences and Epidemiology (Dr Grove), John A. Burns School of Medicine, University of Hawaii at Manoa, and Cancer Research Center of Hawaii, University of Hawaii (Drs Grove and Donlon), Honolulu; and College of Nursing, Okinawa Prefectural University, Okinawa, Japan (Dr D. C. Willcox).

The scenario ended up coming down to something simple -- minimize certain risk factors and you'll live longer! It's that simple. However, how are you supposed to know if you are hyperglycemic or if you suffer from hypertension without professional assessment? How would you know if you should avoid hypertriglyceridemia if you don't have the proper testing done to determine if you have it or not? I guess one can easily determine if one is married or not -- and the individuals who lived the longest overall (to 90 years of age) seemed to be married.

Now, these are risk factors in midlife. We can't know for sure that it's the same factors for folks that are younger than 45 -- but these are good indicators to watch out for. And we know the additive effect on health (indeed synergistic) from exercise and diet that works at all ages, sexes, races, ethic groups, etc.

Go consult with a doctor that specializes in integrative medicine. Find a doctor that will take the time to hear your story, and learn about your belief systems. You may be pleasantly surprised to find a doctor you like that can help you find the answers you need in this field. Yoga, mediation, tai-chi, pilates, electromagnetic fields, dietary supplements, vitamins, herbs etc.are all part of this field.

I HIGHLY recommend everyone here to click here and view "Finding Time for Patients" -- a short clip where "Dr. Jerome Groopman of Harvard Medical School reviews why spending time with patients is such an important part of the treatment process." He discusses the role of hope in the healing process, it seems to be a popular clip. Check out the rest of the clips on that page as well.

But you don't just want a doctor for treatment, you want one you can discuss preventive care with as well.

View the rest of the videos on that page as well and see if you like what you see. That's the field of Integrative Medicine, and it's growing in popularity in the US.

Take care.