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Question the questionnaire.

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Have you ever noticed when you go to a doctor’s office how many things they ask you on the forms? How much of this is just they are able to ask?

A form I filled out recently asked for my husband’s name, his social security number, and where he worked. I can see how this would be appropriate if I got my insurance through him, but I don’t. There was nothing on the form saying “only fill out if…”

I think a lot of it is that they ask because they can. We have been trained to trust doctors. We have been trained to follow their instructions without question. The receptionist is swept right up in that. She is part of the authority structure.

So when the receptionist asks for personal information, we tend to give it. Me, I question everything, everywhere.

“Why?” is a powerful tool. If you don’t get a good reason why they need the information, don’t give it. “Because” is not an answer. Understand that the person behind the desk is just a cog in the machine. She doesn’t make the rules. So don’t get upset with her. Even talking to her manager won’t help sometimes.

I’m one of those cogs. I understand. There are plenty of things that we are told to do that don’t make any sense. Sometimes administration even gives us scripts to follow to explain a particularly weird rule change. It would be better if they asked us beforehand if this is a good policy change, but they don’t. Ever. We find out about it just as it is about to roll out, or just as it hits the news.

But, sometimes the rules or the policy does make sense. Sometimes I am all about enforcing it because I agree with it. But I’m still all for people asking questions and not following blindly. It is best not to give away something that you don’t have to.

Occupy your health

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Perhaps the Occupy movement needs to teach us something else – don’t wait on the government to take care of us. We need to do it ourselves. While we are all holding our breath about the Affordable Care Act and whether Congress will get over its collective snit fit and start working again, we can do something ourselves.

Let’s not wait for tragedy to strike before we take care of ourselves. We’ve already seen that the government doesn’t really care about taking care of us. Instead of getting upset about it, use it as an impetus to not need to be taken care of. Remember, prevention is cheaper than cure.

The insurance companies, sadly, don’t think like this. Yet.

I remember one time when I lived in Chattanooga. There was a tree that was leaning too close to my house. I could see that any time now the thing would topple over and destroy my roof and everything under it. I called the insurance company and asked if they would pay to have the tree cut down. Nope. They would pay to repair the house and for a hotel room for me to stay in while the repairs were going on. But prevention? No. Prevention was a lot cheaper and faster. They would rather wait for the inevitable to happen and clean up the mess.

Insurance companies are doing the same with our health. Let’s spend a lot of money on a cure for cancer. Let’s spend a lot of money on diabetes supplies. They don’t think to encourage exercise and eating well.

If the government really wants to regulate health, it needs to ban cigarettes and vending machines. Ideally, we’d have enough self-control to know that we need to not smoke and not eat processed “food.” Obviously we don’t. So we have way too many people dying of entirely preventable diseases.

Sometimes the government does us a favor. Remember when you would go into a restaurant and they would say “smoking or non-smoking”? It really didn’t matter what section you went to – if there was smoking in that place, it travelled all over the whole restaurant. You were in the not-as-much-smoke section, but not the smoke-free section.

Sure, people have the right to smoke. They have the right to kill themselves that way. But they don’t have the right to take other people out with them when they do it. That is where the government stepped in and made it illegal to smoke in public buildings, and for that I’m very grateful.

I remember a lady who got really upset when she heard that she was no longer going to be able to smoke in restaurants. She got mad at the government telling her what to do. I was glad that finally they did something to protect me. But we can’t expect the government to take care of us all the time. We have to step up.

This should be an idea that will appeal to all the people who think government needs to get out of our lives and let us live the way we want to. This should be an idea that will appeal to all the do-it-yourselfers.

Let’s not sit around and wait for the government to do anything for us in regards to our health. We see what they have done with education. Why let them dumb down something else? We don’t need our health reduced to the lowest common denominator.

If health insurance is going to live up to its name, it needs to insure health. Paying money to restore what has been lost is backwards. Health insurance should pay us to go to the gym and eat well. We should go to nutritionists and personal trainers more than we go to doctors. We should all get stress-reduction training before we even are stressed.

We go to the dentist every six months to get our teeth checked. This prevents bigger problems. We brush our teeth three times a day to prevent problems too. Why are we so reluctant to take care of our bones, our muscles, and our hearts? We can get replacement teeth. Replacement bones, muscles, and hearts are another matter entirely.

People say they don’t have the time to exercise. That is all in your head. You have the time. You don’t want to do it – just be honest. You’d rather spend the time playing videogames or drinking beer or watching “reality TV”. I do all of these things to – well, except for the TV part, but I do them in moderation. And I exercise. I realized that my health was more important than my leisure time. If I didn’t take care of my health, I wouldn’t have any leisure time in a few years.

We have to change the way we think.

People say they don’t need health insurance and they shouldn’t be forced to buy it. OK, so do they have a card on them so that when they are in a car crash that they don’t get rescued? They don’t get their bones set? They don’t get a blood transfusion? If we all don’t pay into it, then we all don’t get to benefit from it. That only seems fair. But it isn’t the way we do things.

We have a way of thinking in America that if someone is hurt, they will be taken care of and that we’ll just sort it out later. So do you need health insurance? Yes, but not the kind that we currently have. Take matters into your own hands. We need insurance for accidents, but not for the things we can do for ourselves.

We are looking at the problem backwards.

“Do no harm” – on grocery stores and the American diet.

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There is a grocery store near my house that has a health food section. All the healthy options are put together in one little area. This section is to the far left of the entrance, tucked behind the pharmacy. The ceiling is low, the walls are dark, and the lighting is bad. It would be easy to never even notice there was a healthy-option section. When you do notice it, it isn’t inviting.

In one way it is good to have a separate section. All the different healthy options that you might want are put together. You don’t have to go all over the store to find them. In another way it is bad. Regular shoppers won’t know of these options when they are shopping. They won’t be able to discover a different brand of toothpaste or compare prices or ingredients on juice or breakfast cereals.

Why are healthy options marginalized? When they are mixed in with everything else they are often on the bottom shelf where they will not be noticed. All the popular options are at eye or at least chest height. They have bright colors and clever marketing. The healthy options sit quietly, gathering dust.

Grocery stores should stop getting bigger and start getting better. They should stop selling fourteen different brands of cheesy poofs for starters. In fact, stop selling cheesy poofs altogether. It doesn’t matter that people want them. Perhaps grocery stores should adopt the “do no harm” oath that doctors have to take. But then again, we see how well that has done us. Treat the symptom, not the disease.

One of my coworkers was told by her nutritionist that she needed to skip everything that was in the center of the store. Skip everything that is prepackaged and filled with preservatives, and buy fresh real food. Let’s add to that. Skip everything that has labels on it with ingredients you can’t understand and can’t pronounce. Skip everything with an ingredient list that is longer than the “food” item itself.

Convenience foods are killing us.

Fast food equals a slow death.

I understand. We live busy lives. Who has time to bake their own bread? Who has time to grow their own food? Cooking takes time, time we think we don’t have. Yet we have time to check Facebook and Twitter and time to watch reality TV and talk shows.

The old adage is true. We are what we eat. And we are eating junk.

“Do no harm.” On televisions and junk food in doctor’s offices.

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Must there be a television in every doctor’s office? Must it be on Jerry Springer or Fox News? Must it be so loud?

Most people who come into a doctor’s office are sick, right? They already don’t feel well. So high energy, high hostility television only makes things worse. The commercials are not only not a respite, they are even louder, even more insistent, even more unsettling than the show itself.

I feel tense when I watch TV. It is like drinking a Doctor Pepper and eating two chocolate bars in ten minutes. I feel all hyped up, unsettled, anxious. It took me a long time to realize that this isn’t a normal way to feel, and that television was a big cause of my unease. It took me a long time to wean myself from the addiction that is TV. I’ve not watched broadcast television for five years. I use the television, sure, to watch movies on DVD. But I don’t watch anything live. And I certainly don’t watch anything where people are yelling at each other.

So going into a place that is supposed to make me feel better and being confronted by something that makes me feel worse feels like an assault.

I understand how people like TV. It is numbing. It is distracting. It takes their minds off their pain. Plus, many people are afraid of silence. They don’t know how to be with themselves. They don’t know how to entertain themselves. So the TV in the doctor’s office makes sense, in a strange sort of way. But while it is soothing to them, it is really disturbing to me, and there really is no middle ground.

I think I’m going to call around for a new doctor and ask if their waiting room has a TV. If not, I’ve found my new doctor.

I wrote this while waiting to get an X-ray for a slipped disc. I wasn’t in the chiropractor’s office, but a separate one. It wasn’t far. Because they do radiology all the time, their prices were cheaper, so he sent me there. I noticed that they had complimentary snacks for while you were waiting. Soda. Chips. Nothing healthy. Even their water was fake. Why not have fruit and nuts? Why not have spring water and fruit juices? Why would you offer people things that are harmful to them?

Perhaps it is because that is what people want.

Doctors need to give you what you need, not what you want. We want quick relief but we don’t want to know how to take care of ourselves. We want to keep on eating badly and smoking and not exercising. And we want to be well. We can’t have it all.

Doctors don’t work around this. Either they don’t know to, they don’t know how to, or they don’t care. Maybe they are frustrated, only treating the symptom and not the cause. Maybe they are stuck thinking the usual way is the only way.

I’m saying that a doctor that gives you bad things isn’t really a doctor. A doctor who treats only the symptom and not the cause isn’t really following the pledge of “Do no harm.”

Surgery – cut out the old ways of doing things

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One time I was in the recovery area after surgery. I didn’t have cancer, I had cancer’s next door neighbor. I was recovering after my surgery to remove the abnormal cells. The area was open so the nurses could keep an eye on everybody.

I had not had any mind altering drugs before my surgery. I didn’t want any Valium or anything like it. I didn’t want Versed either. That is an amnesia drug. My theory was that I have enough problems as is with reality because of my bipolar condition. I don’t need drugs messing with it too.

It is rare to refuse these medicines. If you have a surgery you’ll be asked what you are allergic to, and other than that it is free and clear for them to give you whatever they want. They want you calm and compliant. They don’t want you freaking out. So they commonly give these kinds of drugs.

Because I’d refused them, I was awake and alert while there. I didn’t hurt, and I was a little bored. There were others there in various states of recovering from anesthesia. There were cloth curtains separating the patients but no walls.

I overheard something two beds over. A doctor came up to the patient and told him that it was a lot worse than they thought. His cancer was a lot more invasive. They couldn’t get it all. He was going to have to have chemotherapy, and even that might not work.

This was heavy stuff. This was private. This was serious. This wasn’t something that should be said to someone in an open place, and by himself, and drugged up.

He had nobody with him. In the recovery area you are alone. He was most likely still not alert because of the standard drugs that are given. Thus he wasn’t really in a state to properly process this information. It is doubtful that he would remember it. Sure, they would soften the blow, but they might soften it so much that the words wouldn’t even be solid enough to stick. The words might slip right through and fall on the floor.

I felt for him. I didn’t know what to do, so I did what I always do these days when I don’t know what to do. I prayed. I prayed for peace and healing. I prayed that he had strength to hear these words. I prayed that the peace of God would descend on him and envelope him.

And I was angry. I was angry at the insensitivity of the doctor. I was wondering why he had to tell the patient then, there, in that way. He could have waited. He should have waited. That is some heavy stuff to tell to someone. What a way to punch somebody when he is down.

So I prayed some more. I couldn’t get up – I was attached to IVs. I was also naked under that flimsy hospital gown. I needed to lay still because I was being checked for bleeding. My surgery couldn’t have stitches. So I was stuck there.

But even if I could get up, what would I do? This is a stranger. What would I say? I can’t make it go away. I couldn’t heal him. Maybe I could let him know he wasn’t alone. Maybe I could tell the doctor that he needs to try being human for a change, try to see things from the patient’s perspective.

This was three years ago. I don’t know the resolution. I don’t know if the patient is still alive. I don’t know if the doctor has changed his ways. But I write this anyway, hoping that my words reach out across time and space to speak to some other doctor. Consider your words, and when, and how.

There may be no good way to tell someone that they are far more sick than you thought. You may be uncomfortable with your own mortality, so it may be hard for you to tell someone else about theirs. Breathe into it. Pray into it. Feel it out. Get counseling. Get training. You’ll be doing everybody a favor – including yourself.

Body mind and spirit aren’t separate.

Some doctors get into medicine because they like to know how the human body works. They want to fix things. But bodies aren’t like cars. You can make all the systems work, but the person is part of it too. She has to be a part of the healing. She has to change her ways, otherwise she will end up sick again. She has to want to get well, and work towards it. The doctor is part of this process and can help inspire the patient or can crush her spirit. What is said, and how, and when, is critical. Yes, doctors are human too, and make mistakes. That is normal. We make mistakes and we learn from them.

Consider the idea of making the patient have to come back to your office to find out bad news from test results. Sure, you don’t want to tell him over the phone. But making him take time off from work, drive downtown to your office in bad traffic, have to find a parking space – and then have to drive back in bad traffic, back to work, after hearing that he is very sick – isn’t that great. It is very hard on the patient. It makes a bad situation worse.

Perhaps you could come to him, and meet him? Whatever happened to house calls? Whatever happened to the doctor having time to talk with the patient, and having time to listen?

We need to rethink the whole thing. We need to focus on prevention and not treatment of symptoms. We need to focus on keeping people healthy rather than dealing with them being sick. We need to teach healthy living as a lifestyle instead of a quirk.

The quick fix versus the long haul.

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I had a dream last night that I was in the hospital. I was waiting on some procedure to be done and noticed that this hospital had a snack area for visitors. There was free food available for them while they were waiting. It was simple stuff – nothing that required cooking or plates or utensils. Purely grab and go.

I thought this was a very kind idea. Then I started studying the offerings. It was mostly cookies and chips. It was all simple carbs, with lots of salt and sugar thrown in for “flavor”. While it was nice that they were offering something, they weren’t offering anything healthy. There were no fresh fruit or protein offerings. All of it was quick-fix, not long-term.

Anybody who has ever been on a long hike before the advent of “energy bars” knows about gorp. Gorp is a strange name for a useful thing. It is a mix of M+Ms, raisins, and nuts. You’ve got something in there for quick, medium, and long-term energy, in that order. If you’ve ever been on a long road trip you’ve had to use something similar. If you try to last long on just caffeine and chips you’ll be crashing soon.

Then my thought was if the hospital offered good food, would people eat it? If the hospital staff follow the same parameters of stuff that is easy to store and prepare, then they could offer string cheese, nuts, and bananas and apples. The shelf life is shorter on these, so they might have some waste. And people when in stressful situations often go for the old standbys. They don’t think about what their body needs, they think about what they want. They want quick comfort, the quick fix. It would be better to not even offer chips and cookies at all.

I see so many people that when they take a break at work they grab a soda and cheese crackers. One of my basic rules is never eat anything that has an ingredient list longer than the “food” item itself. It has taken years of deprogramming, but I’ve learned that the best snack for me is an apple, some nuts (either sunflower or almonds) and some water. It is a middle of the road snack – nothing to rev me up.

Eating is like balancing with yoga. If you are trying to do tree pose and you start to wobble, overcompensating with a shift of weight or a wiggle of the ankle too far is going to make you fall. It is about little shifts, and finding the middle. If you try to overcompensate your feeling tired by drinking caffeine all the time and eating salty or sweet snacks that are full of simple carbs, you are going to crash soon. Then you have to have more. It is a horrible cycle of crash and burn.

Then I remember this dream was in a hospital. Western medicine does a laughable job at taking care of the person’s health. I’m not sure why Western medicine is seen as being superior. Sure, we have a lot of money invested in it. Sure, our doctors get paid a lot of money and our hospitals look like something out of a science-fiction set. But there is absolutely nothing long-term. There is nothing about health to be found in a hospital.

Western medicine treats the symptom and not the cause. Go in with a cough and you’ll get cough medicine. The doctor won’t even notice or care that you smoke two packs of cigarettes a day. Go in with diabetes and they will say “here’s your insulin”, not “here’s your nutritionist and exercise coach.”

Our medical industry is about reacting to the problem rather than preventing it. It is quick-fix. Its plan is to cut out the tumor, but let you keep eating junk food while sitting on the couch all day.

Now sure, you can’t make people be healthy. You can’t make someone eat well and exercise. You can’t make them be intentional about their lives. But how much of that is caused by our current American mindset? How much of that is just how we have been trained? We’ve been taught to take a pill to fix it. We’ve been taught to place our fate in the hands of “experts.” We are slowly starting to wake up to the fact that just because someone is an authority figure, it doesn’t mean that she or he is an expert. This applies to everyone – teachers, politicians, doctors, ministers – everyone who talks to you as a lesser-than, everyone who assumes you can’t handle your own life and won’t give you the tools to do it yourself.

This country was founded on the idea of freedom – freedom to practice religion as wished, freedom to self-govern, freedom of expression. Sure, it concerns me the amount of freedoms that are being taken away from us. The new information about how our every move and click of the mouse is being watched is deeply concerning. But I’m more concerned with how much we have given away. We’ve become passive consumers, rather than active participants in our own lives. We are allowing ourselves to be molded by advertising and by culture.

Turn off the TV. Go for a walk. Disconnect yourself from your iPod, your Kindle, your Gameboy. They may be wireless, but there is a cord nonetheless, and that cord is around your throat and your mind. Don’t do anything unless you have examined it yourself and found it to be true and helpful. But most of all, take care of your body by eating well and exercising daily. That is the best tool for your kit.

Organic food is just a start.

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One advantage to eating organic food is that you feel like you are making a difference. Whether the benefit is all in your head or real, you feel healthier and more vibrant. I feel like I’m doing something good for myself and the planet. I think also that if more of us eat organic food, then it will get less expensive.

I don’t eat a lot of organic food because of the cost. I have a low level civil service job with the government, so I’m paid very little. I feel like I’m being paid in a future pension and in health insurance rather than in wages. But that is part of the package. Government jobs aren’t get rich quick. They aren’t get poor slow, either. They are middle of the road.

Currently I eat organic oatmeal and apples and hummus. It isn’t much but something is better than nothing. You have to start somewhere.

The disadvantage to eating organic food is you retrain your taste buds. I had some regular oatmeal this morning and it tasted terrible. I felt like I had a coating of chemicals in my mouth. I felt a little dizzy too. This was the same flavor as the organic version, so there isn’t a flavor issue I’m dealing with. Perhaps it was artificially flavored as well? Generally maple and brown sugar flavor isn’t messed around with. Dang it, I just checked. “Natural and artificial flavors”. Bleah.

It reminds me of when I switched to drinking water instead of sodas. I used to drink Mello Yello every day, several times a day. Lots of caffeine and sugar and fizz loaded in that. Let’s not forget the artificial coloring too. I hated drinking water at first because it is so boring. But then after a month of water, a soda tasted terrible. I burped a lot from the carbonation. The sugar was too much and made me feel weird, or maybe that was the caffeine. Or maybe it was both.

I started to wonder why I even drank that stuff to start with. Now I wonder how I could eat regular oatmeal. I’m starting to dread finishing that box in the pantry.

I’m wondering what else I’ve come to think is “normal” that isn’t normal at all.

This isn’t just about food. I’ve been looking into everything I can and trying to uncover and unveil what I’ve ignored. I’m trying to open my eyes and my mind. What am I missing? What have I always assumed? What have I not questioned? This applies to education, healthcare, government, religion – everything.

There is a lot to studying other ways of doing things involved in this. Different ways of communicating, eating, thinking, believing all factor in. There is a lot to learning different traditions and faiths. The more I question why “we’ve always done it that way” the more things open up.

The bad part is that the more I become aware, the harder it is to fit in. Perhaps there are others who are faking it too. Perhaps by just talking about it, we can start to change things. Wouldn’t it be nice to go into a restaurant and have everything on the menu be not only tasty to eat but good for us and the planet? Wouldn’t it be nice to go into a doctor’s office and be told how to prevent our illnesses by eating the right things and exercising properly?

I want everybody to be awakened and empowered.

Comfort food and Western medicine are killing us.

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I know a lady whose adult daughter has Crohn’s disease. She has done well with it for several years, but it has flared up again. She is recently divorced and has moved back in with her parents.

Her mom wondered if she should buy her a Blizzard from Dairy Queen after she found out the test results weren’t good. Uh. No. As another person said – what health condition would that be good for?

But it isn’t physical health she is trying to treat. She is hoping to soothe with food. We do this a lot. We soften the blows of life with ice cream and cake and brownies.

These are celebration foods. Perhaps what we are trying to do is “turn that frown upside down”. Perhaps by eating the same foods we eat at parties we are trying to trick our brains into thinking that everything is fine. We aren’t in the middle of a bad situation. We are at a party!

But junk food never fixes anything. Good food will fix quite a bit. Exercise will always help.

I’m not sure how we got to the point that we treat the symptom rather than addressing the cause. I’m not sure how we have become reactive rather than proactive. I’m not sure how we have become so passive about our health and our lives.

I know that I’m not playing that game anymore. Sometimes I think I want to go back to school to learn how to be a nutritionist, or a life coach, or anything that helps people prevent their own suffering. But then I think I can’t save the world. It seems like such a logical thing – eat well and exercise and you’ll do fine (barring accidents). Eat terribly and be a couch potato, and you’ll suffer. But that is the way of things. I don’t think we’ve always been this way, but we sure are now. Our medical institutions don’t help either. Coughing? Take a pill. Diabetes? Take a pill. There is no education on how to get well.

Doctors who made a pledge to “do no harm” aren’t doing any good either.

Where does the change start? I think it has to start with us. We have to take control of our own health and lives. We have to essentially homeschool ourselves on our health and wellbeing. The more we expect others to do for us, the more passive we are. And the more passive we are, the more we will fall behind.

Meatless? Are you mad?

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I was at a local burrito place today and ordered “seitan chorizo con papas” as my protein option. The preparer checked with me to make sure I knew it was vegetarian. I told him that was why I ordered it. He then shared with me that a lot of people freak out when they learn this. They reject it and go with the barbacoa.

I’ve noticed a lot of people are like this. They are terrified of being without meat. I’m like this. I’m trying to eat less meat but I haven’t taken the plunge yet and gone totally vegetarian.

It is as if there is a fear of being without meat, like we will faint or fade away from lack of nutrition.

Looking at the obesity rates of Americans, there is no worry about fading away to nothing anytime soon.

I had a coworker that I invited to an Indian buffet. He asked what was available and I started to describe what we were likely to find. He was quite interested in the chicken tikka masala but bored by the spinach and potato dishes. He was a little dismayed by the absence of any beef dish. When I told him that the best dishes were the vegetarian ones he visibly got defensive.

What? Not eat meat? Are you kidding?

I pointed out that there are people who go without meat for their entire lives and they do just fine. One meal without meat wouldn’t kill him. He was so skeptical that he decided not to go.

I remember a conversation with the manager at an Indian buffet many years ago. He said that people in India and in America are both dying because of food. Indians are dying from not enough food, while Americans are dying from too much food. We are eating ourselves into our graves. We suffer from preventable diseases for many years beforehand.

Our doctors, insurers, and pharmacists make a lot of money on treating these diseases with palliative treatments. I don’t have all the words yet to explain how angry and upset I am about Western medical thought, about how it treats symptoms rather than addressing the cause of illness.

I know I feel better when I eat a vegetation diet. I feel lighter and happier. I know I am doing something nice for my body.

Our bodies are temples. Our bodies are temporal houses for our immortal souls. So why do we fill them up with trash? Why do we pollute them with preservatives?

I haven’t made the full switch because I like the taste of meat. I like the texture. I don’t want to limit myself to only two or three options on the menu when I eat out. I don’t want to be a bother to friends when they are kind enough to invite me over to their homes for dinner.

I remember when I was in college and had gone entirely vegetarian because my boyfriend was. It was as if I needed a buddy or a partner, like in a hike in the wilderness or in AA. I needed someone to participate in this different diet with me. Plus, he cooked.

I was invited to a cousin’s wedding and the invitation said that if you had special dietary needs to call. I called and told her that I was vegetarian. She said that wasn’t a problem. A day later I got a call from my aunt, her mother, saying how dare I insist that they change everything around just for me. I was immediately uninvited to the wedding.

It was years later before I realized that side of the family was crazy in an abusive kind of way.

There is a knee-jerk reaction against being vegetarian. It is seen as counter cultural. It is seen as rebellious. It is seen as other, as weird.

But the norm is to eat all you want, spend all you want, and die soon and poor.

I don’t want to be normal. I want to live a happy, healthy life. But I also want the convenience of eating out. It is a sign of our culture that it is almost impossible to get vegetables if you eat from fast-food places. And when you do find vegetables they are either very salty, or cooked with pork, or they are just salad greens with little nutrition.

Perhaps it is time to Occupy the Kitchen.

There is nothing more countercultural than cooking your own food. There is nothing more rebellious than taking charge of your health.