Sunday, May 28, 2006

Creating Health Risk

I often wonder what is behind articles like this, especially since there are so many of them every day. Maybe the core issue is that medical education is so poor at this time, aspiring physician's have gained no insight in to how to evaluate what is happening to a person with a health concern where nothing in their vocabulary fits. I am certain that either you or some one you know has been told "we don't know what s wrong".

I guess I am fortunate that I learned how to sort out what goes on physiologically and nutritionally in people, so at least I can offer them some information they can use to work on getting well.

Alopecia is a condition that leads to hair loss. Sometimes it is seen as an auto-immune problem. I knew someone who had a bout of this as a child. It left him without eyelashes and hair.

Somewhere, though, a doctor missed something. Maybe the status of the thymus, the adrenals, or thyroid. Go to the correct source of information and you might find a relationship to a cause of the problem. Then you can do something about it.

And you can do something for HIV, AIDS, or Alzheimer's if you go to resources outside the mainstream protocols. Especially if you are not subject to an organizational psychologist who is setting up a mechanism to further an agenda that certain people can't get help to be well.

Too often this happens today, and I think the following article shows there is something a foot to ingrain the process in people so they take the brunt of a failed health care / medical system.

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According to an article on May 26 in HealthDay News, people are more likely to seek tests for conditions they believe to be severe but treatable, but are unlikely to do the same for illnesses they view as severe and untreatable, such as Alzheimer's disease, cancer and HIV/AIDS, a study finds.

"If people think they have no control, they may not seek information about their health status even if they are at risk for a serious disease. In fact, they may go out of their way to actively avoid any information," researcher Erica Dawson, an assistant professor of organizational behavior and fellow of the Center for Customer Insights at the Yale School of Management in New Haven, Conn., said in a prepared statement.

In one experiment, the researchers told two groups of participants that they were at risk for alopecia areata, which can cause hair loss but poses no overall health threat. One group was told the condition was severe and untreatable, while the other group was told it was treatable.

People who were told the condition was untreatable were less likely to request a conclusive genetic test, less likely to volunteer to take part in a future study about the disease, and avoided looking at an informational brochure about the disease in private.

The results may actually under-represent the degree to which people avoid information when confronted with a serious health problem, the researchers said.

The study may help doctors and other health care workers predict when people may be likely to avoid testing and to provide them with appropriate counseling.

"Caregivers should discuss treatment options not only with patients who have been positively diagnosed, but also with those who have considered, but not yet consented to, diagnostic testing," Dawson said.

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Now after reading this you might want to visit http://zero-risk.org, and look at Skewed and Dirty Medicine links as well. Ivan Fraser's work is another good source of information

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