At every mall entrance you walk in to a cube shaped structure with a red arrow pointing to the location on a map where you are. It says quite simply and effectively "You are here." This information is important to everyone. If you don't know where you are then don't move, because you could step on a land mine. Your current state of health is important to understand. You have to know what your starting point is. You may have worked out for years and have a good feeling about your abilities, but are you familiar with your family history, the times when you plateau or the way you respond to certain foods? You might go to the doctor all the time, but you may have no idea what it's like to push your body to perform, or what's wrong with your diet. A doctor can measure certain aspects of your health. These may include, but are not limited to blood pressure, cholesterol, heart rate, reflexes, bone density and body fat. Additional health factors that you should be aware of might include measurements of your waist, hips, chest, arms, thighs and neck. In addition, it is absolutely necessary to do a proper fitness test to truly understand what you are physically capable of doing. The question this should leave you with is what is the best way to do go about getting this information.
First Things First
I know you've seen this disclaimer whenever you've read any diet pill, workout program or medicine but, it's actually true-before you start any fitness program you should actually go to the doctor to see if you are able to workout. To make sure that you maximize your trip to the doctor's office you should always do research about what you want to accomplish. For example, if you getting your blood pressure taken then, you should at least know what an ideal blood pressure is. In addition, you should know a little bit about everything the doctor is doing in the office. If you're getting a prostate examination, make sure you understand how your prostate works, what dangers might be attached to it and what it does. Educated patients force doctors to be on top of their game.
I took my 14-month-old son to the emergency room at four o'clock in the morning for a violent cough that scared my wife and I. After an hour of residents getting an education by examining my son, he was calmed down and basically seemed fine. In reality, we overreacted to a bad cold and so did my son. The actual doctor arrived and examined my son again. She said that he had some redness in his ears and she was going to prescribe antibiotics. I stopped her and told her that I was against antibiotics and asked if there were any other options. To my surprise she immediately responded. She said that the other option would be to WATCH the ear and have him checked out if it got any worse! She went on to explain that research is showing that more and more ear infections are caused by viruses that are not affected by antibiotics. My jaw dropped. I knew that antibiotics wouldn't impact a virus. And, I knew that antibiotics essentially kill both the good and bad bacteria in the body. This practice of over prescribing antibiotics to babies is the exact reason why kids have to get tubes put in their ears. Their bodies don't build the proper immunity to fight off viruses and the antibiotics kill all of the good and bad bacteria. Their bodies end up not being able to generate enough good bacteria to fight off infection. What blew me away was that the doctor knew that this was the case and risked my child's health to placate my emotions. It's logical really. The doctor is a businessperson. You can't have people coming out to the emergency room at four in the morning and the doctor tell you to go home without a quick fix or a possible resolve. She assessed me in the one minute she spent with me. She thought, "if he's here at four AM, he wouldn't want to hear that he should just go home, so I'll give him some antibiotics." Because I was educated on the effects of antibiotics I called her bluff. These are the types of questions that enable us to make-educated decisions about our health when venturing into a doctor's office. My son was fine in a couple of days without any assistance from antibiotics.
Another important aspect of your education is choosing a good doctor. The worst reason to choose a doctor is because he is your family doctor or he has been a friend of the family for your whole life. This is not to say that he isn't a good doctor, but that this alone shouldn't be the criterion as to why you choose him. You need to know that a doctor is making decisions that are in your best interest and not his own. The first thing you want from a doctor is to know that he or she wants you to live a healthy life. To discern this, you can look for him to give you advice about diet, exercise and mental clarity. In addition, he should definitely be in good shape himself. Do not trust a doctor who is overweight or chronically ill. How could anyone claim to care about your health when they abuse their own bodies? Believe it or not, if you don't take care of your body it is in fact abuse. It's the worse type of abuse. It is consistent, psychological and physical all at the same time. Another intelligent way to discern whether your doctor is good or not, is to talk to the pharmaceutical sales representatives in his territory and find out his prescribing habits. Many times doctors are in bed with pharmaceutical companies and this clouds their judgment.
In one study done on Actos and Avandia the results concluded that Avandia increased risk for heart attack by nearly 42% and the other decreased it by nearly 20%.Actos clearly increased cardiovascular health. Fishman states "Avandia, on the other hand, in four studies of 14,000 people, increased the rate of heart attacks, strokes and heart failure by a whopping 42%."(2007) In addition, both drugs accomplish essentially the same thing with the management of blood sugar in diabetics. This information seems pretty cut and dry but one must always consider that pharmaceutical companies have invested significant resources into the production, distribution ad marketing of their products, so they're not about to just pull the drug off the market. Here's where it gets tricky. Actos paid for a doctor's education seminar on Long Island in September of 2007. Various speakers got up to discuss TZDs (Actos and Avandia), which are drugs that help control diabetes. One of the speakers was a paid speaker for Glaxo Smith Klein, which is the parent company of Avandia. A well-respected doctor, the speaker refuted all of the research done in the head o head study, claiming that Avandia was not dangerous and that doctors should still prescribe it. Now imagine being a pharmaceutical sales rep with your bachelor's in biology and trying to change the mind of a doctor who just spoke to one of his colleagues. The sales rep for Actos, who is essentially the doctor's only true educator on the product, has now been reduced to a used car salesman. The pharmaceutical business is filled with people who have less than scrupulous morals. Many companies are willing to buy X-ray machines or other supplies just to gain favor with heavy prescribing doctors. You would like to think that your doctors are above this, but remember they have kids to put through school and bills to pay just like you and I. Therefore, it is very important that you understand any drugs associated with your health conditions and hold the doctors responsible for what they give you.( By Henry J. Fishman, M.D.(ConsumerAffairs.Com. Sept,13,2007)
Your trip to the doctor should include an active physical. This may include, but is not limited to a stress test. An Exercise Stress Echocardiogram, sometimes called a stress echo, is a tool used to evaluate heart function by combining an exercise (stress) test with a transthoracic echocardiogram.(American Society of Echocardiography) http://www.seemyheart.org/stress.) This test uses ultrasound to create images of the heart at rest, at work and after exercise. These images are used to evaluate whether or not you are healthy enough to exercise. You can find a lab that performs such tests at www.seemyheart.org/stress. I highly recommend taking this seriously. But, no mater what they say you must keep the results in context and decide before you go that you are beginning a fitness program. You have already decided to change your lifestyle-that's why you're reading this. What this test will do is let you know where to start. Other tests that will be inevitable are blood tests that give you your cholesterol levels, blood sugar levels and other details that you can ask your doctor about. Be sure that you ask him what each one means so that you are educated about your current health. Find out what healthy levels of each test should be and inquire about your own health in reference to these levels. Sometimes you might not be at healthy levels, but the doctor might not see you as a serious health risk. That's why you should know for yourself. Healthy blood pressure is 120 over 80 so it's important to know where you stand with that as well. Most of these tests are pretty common when you go to a good physician. The key is still to find a doctor concerned with your health and not just treating your ailments.
It is my opinion that Western medicine has become a monster that enables people to live long and unhealthy lives. This is accomplished by creating drugs that treat one symptom and cause four others. In addition, doctors only make money from you when you are sick. Therefore, they usually treat people when they are already sick. Your goals should be to maintain a healthy lifestyle and die in some heroic fashion like rock climbing or cliff diving! We are at much greater risk everyday that we fill our bodies with poisonous pharmaceuticals and bad food than when we are when we jump out of a plain or go scuba diving. The only way to genuinely maintain good health is to be conscience of what we put in our bodies and how we use them. Having said this however, I must concede that there are good and honest doctors who genuinely want you to be healthy and demonstrate that by the way that they take care of themselves. Any doctor can provide you with the necessary information to successfully start a fitness program. However, if you want to efficiently take advantage of your insurance you should always be educated before you walk into the doctor's office. Be careful not to get your information from a site that is sponsored by a specific drug company. These reports will always be skewed in favor of their respective line of drugs. And remember, you've already decided to get in great shape and you should not be discouraged by anything the doctor says, but you should consider everything he says in context to your new lifestyle. To contact this author directly you can visit www.powercelldiet.com.
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