Preventive Health Care: Does it Exist?

Preventive Health Care: Does it Exist?
True preventive health care is nonexistent for most
Americans. That's because traditional medicine focuses on
treatment of symptoms, and that's not prevention. Our
health care system operates like the old barn door ? it's
left open and then the farmer tries to figure out why the
horses ran off.

Preventive or "alternative" medicine is available, but it's
not the norm. You have to be informed enough, open minded
enough and have enough money to get it. If you find a
traditionally trained physician who integrates alternative
medicine into his or her practice, and still takes your
insurance, you are in luck.

Most often you will not be in luck because alternative
practitioners are usually fed up with the traditional
system. Part of their gripe is dealing with insurance
providers who dictate what medications the insurer will pay
for. So doctors stop taking insurance. The result is that
patients seeking alternative medicine must either pay the
entire cost of care or do without.

Our overburdened health care system is controlled by the
pharmaceutical and insurance industries. The pharmaceutical
industry holds the "solution" (prescription drugs) to
medical problems. That prescription drugs usually don't
cure a condition doesn't matter. Drug companies are not
interested in finding cures. A cured condition does not
require medication. No profit it that!

However, it is profitable just to manage symptoms (high
blood pressure for example) with medication for years, or
until the patient changes lifestyle habits or the patient
dies.

If you think about how long it is taking to find a cure for
cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer's and other devastating
diseases, you must conclude that something doesn't add up.
We are the most technologically and scientifically advanced
country on the planet and it still takes forever to find
cures.

Take the amount of time and money spent over the years to
find a cure for cancer. Yes, there are cures (which often
become relapses), but treatments that poison the entire
body in an effort to get at the cancer and usually end up
killing the patient are barbaric. There has to be a better
way.

Look how long we have been dallying with Alzheimer's
disease. Research money provided by corporations and
advocacy organizations continues to fund the same
unproductive "plaques and tangles" theory as the cause of
AD.

At the same time, credible Alzheimer's research at
universities (with the help of government funding ? not
usually the pharmaceutical industry) clearly shows there is
a probable answer to AD but more research needs to confirm
preliminary findings. Why isn't promising research followed
up by the entities that claim to want prevent or cure AD?

This brings me to a true story. The husband of a close
friend, Mary, was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. In
the early stage, he had some hand tremor but what was most
disturbing to Mary was evidence of cognitive decline. A
math whiz, her husband now had difficulty with simple
arithmetic.

The doctor said medication was not yet indicated. He could
offer nothing to help the cognitive problem. Mary asked if
I knew anything that might help.

I had recently seen research that showed progression of
Parkinson's could be slowed a staggering 44 percent by
taking 1,200 mg. of CoQ10 a day. (Normal daily dose is
50-150 mg). The Life Extension Foundation protocol for
treatment of Parkinson's indicates up to 3,000 mg daily.
There are no known side effects or contraindications for
high doses of CoQ10.

Mary started her husband on 1,200 mg a day and about two
weeks later bumped up the dose up to 2,400 mg.

Within a month, her husband's cognition was almost back to
normal. Was it luck? Was it a "miracle" that would have
occurred without the CoQ10, or was it the CoQ10 that
produced the benefit? Will the improvement last?

Shall we wait for Alzheimer's advocates or the
pharmaceutical industry to fund adequate trials of CoQ10?
We should not hold our breath. CoQ10 is not patentable.

When the traditional health care system fails us all we can
do is take personal responsibility and act on our own
behalf to the best of our ability.

Taking personal responsibility includes developing a
prevention-oriented mindset ? learning how to stay well
without reliance on a health care system that talks a lot
about prevention but doesn't seem to know how to provide it.

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Barbara Morris is a pharmacist and author of Put Old on
Hold. Visit her web site, http://www.PutOldonHold.com and
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