Most of the general public trusts medicine and doctors, why? “Because doctors have studied and have a qualification” is the first answer I get from most people.

My question to everyone is: what have they studied? “Medicine of course, what else!”  

But what is medicine?

A dictionary will tell us that medicine is the science or practice of the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of disease. I agree with diagnosis and treatment, however prevention nowadays is greatly disregarded.

Have a look, for example, at this information sheet, below. Is a vaccine really going to prevent illness or is it simply giving us something else to worry about in the future? Of course, everyone is entitled to follow what they believe and use their own knowledge (or ignorance) accordingly.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some people have said to me “we live longer now” – I can only tell you to read about Hunza and Vilcabamba tribes or to look at the Nagano population of Japan. Some sites will tell you that information on these people is inaccurate. Do your own research and cultivate your own answers.

My mum, born in 1921, died in 2014 and she was almost 93 years old. Those that were born in the 40s and 50s – would probably have had their parents dying in their late 80s or 90s. Many war veterans that have died in the new millennium were well above 100 years old (Florence Beatrice Green, in UK, died in 2012 at the age of 110). This is well before most of the “life saving”(?) vaccines were introduced.

As it happens at least 100 famous individuals have already died this year (up to May-2016) and these include: Terry Wogan (77), Alan Rickman (69), Ronnie Corbett (85), Victoria Wood (62), Johan Cruijff (68), David Bowie (69), David Gest (62), Frank Kelly (77), Garry Shandling (66), Paul Daniels (77), Frank Sinatra Jnr (72), Louise Plowright (59), Tony Warren (79), Denise Matthews ‘Vanity’ (57), Margaret Forster (77), Ed Stewart (74), and many others. If we consider the average age it is very bad news and these were famous people that could have afforded private care. Facts, sad facts.  

Of course many would say that due to “certain” illnesses none of these people could have been saved. I would say that we are all getting too accustomed to think that if science and medicine can’t help, there is really nothing else or much that we can do.  

Thankfully, there are doctors (only a minority, unfortunately) that having studied medicine also feel that the information or care provided in general is more harmful than safe.  

These doctors are appearing on some television programs and documentaries and most of them have written books to warn us that medicine is not what it should be; medicine doesn’t save lives. 

Here is a short list of these doctors. I recommend that you carry out your own research or read some of their books. These doctors are: Atul Gawande, Henry Marsh, Danielle Ofri, Hyla Cass, George J Georgiou, Shari Lieberman, Carl C. Pfeiffer, Eric R. Braverman, Frank A. Oski, Harvey Diamond, Raymond Francis, Inna Segal, Jonny Bowden, Stephen Sinatra, Gary Fettke, Joseph Mercola, Francisco Contreras and Arash Bereliani.

There are of course, plenty more, too many to list. Should the reader of this blog, buy only four books at random from any of these authors, they will understand where my thoughts are coming from and why medicine is now a killer. 

What does all of this have to do with psychology or counselling?

Dr. Carl Pfeiffer was a physician and biochemist who researched schizophrenia and shows how doctors have been curing disease with nutrition for 80 years. I said nutrition and not medications/drugs and this is only one single point of view on resources available to reach general well-being.  

The following text comes from Raymond Francis and these are his major points: 

1. Narrowly trained, our physicians are taught the art of surgery and the administration of drugs; tools designed to manage and suppress symptoms, not to cure disease. For medicine to recognize disease it must be diagnosable. You are not sick until the day the physician can diagnose something. Modern medicine has no way of recognising or diagnosing disease when your health is in its initial decline. We are considered sick only after the problem has become serious enough to produce symptoms that fit neatly into one of medicine’s disease categories. 

2. Patient is “well” until his or her condition deteriorates into symptoms that the doctor recognizes as a diagnosable disease.

3. Physicians resort to protocols that merely suppress symptoms. By suppressing symptoms, rather than addressing causes, disease remains chronic.

4. Physicians have no protocols or established procedures for measuring decline in health for their patients. In modern, technologically advanced hospitals infections are bewilderingly rampant.

5. Many physicians assume that if they don’t understand what is wrong, the patient must be imagining the illness.

6. Physicians are unable to effectively diminish disease in our society. Surgery and drugs are virtually the only tools of the physician and they are limited in what they can do.

7. Diagnosis by symptoms – is the process by which modern medicine gives each collection of symptoms a particular name. Medicine views symptoms as enemies and physicians are trained to eliminate them, even if this means aggressively assaulting the body with dangerous toxins, radiation or invasive surgery.

8. Symptomology is about focusing, identifying and categorising symptoms – the effects produced by disease. The misconception is that thousands of different diseases exist, each with different symptoms, causes and treatments. The modern medical treatment of almost all disease focuses on the management of these symptoms (the effect of disease), rather than the elimination of the causes. 

9. Symptomology leads the medical profession to look at symptoms individually, organize them into thousands of categories, label them as different diseases and then prescribe a currently accepted protocol to suppress those symptoms.

There is not one of Francis’ nine points that could be defined as inaccurate. Doctors or the Lecturer in my previous article, become autocratic in their views, unwilling to welcome comments/criticism/observations from the patients, students or those that work in their same field. “Care could improve if doctors accepted patients as experts of their own medical disorders”, David Tuckett – 1985. 

During a recent seminar about anxiety at the Wellcome Institute in central London, a psychologist said “you can validate your sad and anxious feelings if you lost your job”. This therapist runs a company that provides advice and training to private individuals. I disagree with him because realising that your negative thoughts (sad) lead to negative feelings (anxiety) does not mean that the thoughts are true. The person that has just lost his/her job might feel sad and hopeless because he believes that he will never get a job, but this is just a thought – it is not a fact. We cannot know what the facts are, until we get the facts – and, the future, right now, is not known. 

All physicians and therapists should work on facts and not speculate on what might or might not be the symptoms of the client/patient. Far too often GPs don’t ask questions and come to conclusions and assumptions about the patient’s symptoms. In fact the “symptomology” routine is very often the same. Symptoms = 1) “try this medication, …if it doesn’t work come back to see me”; 2) “oh, it didn’t work, we must try something else/stronger”; 3) “still not working, I must refer you to a specialist”!  

If the above doesn’t ring any bell, this might do: “Patients commonly present to doctors with physical symptoms. Whilst these symptoms maybe an expression of a medical condition, they often are not. They may be referred to as ‘medically unexplained symptoms’ (MUS). Patients with MUS may receive a medical diagnosis of a so-called functional somatic syndrome and may also merit a psychiatric diagnosis”; source: Davidson’s Principle & Practice of Medicine, 22^nd Edition, page 236. Therefore if the doctor is unable to “match” your condition(s) within the right category of symptoms – as Francis said – “the patient must be imagining the illness”. 

And what Davidson’s Principle & Practice of Medicine states, is official, all doctors follow the same guidelines as this is part of their learning. 

But what about the patients?

I encourage all individuals to ask questions, there is really little harm in gaining a bit of knowledge. I have had clients that were told by their doctors that there was nothing wrong with them despite being ill or being in pain.  

There is not one single answer or a single solution to any problem. Often if we wish to improve our wellbeing we need to make drastic changes in our lives. These changes come from all directions and, as mentioned before, beliefs, for example, that CBT or Hypnosis will settle all symptoms, are simply misguiding.

Remember – mind, spirit, emotions and body… is one.