How Good is the Evidence?

One of Dr. Tara’s family members was recently the recipient of a double lung and liver transplant. The miracle of him breathing with someone else’s lungs only five days after receiving them could not have happened without research, drugs and technology. Truly amazing.

One of the things we’re complimented on here at StoneTree is that we’re not anti-conventional medicine, and tend to be very analytical in our approach to assessment and diagnosis. Medical research has made enormous leaps, and we would never want to go back to a time when antibiotics were not available to deal with serious infections, or to a time when the medicine responsible for saving you from a heart attack did not exist.

There is the other side to the research coin though, when it comes to the drug management of chronic diseases, particularly those that are attributed to poor diet, sedentary lifestyle and chronic stress. These research studies, or at least how they are reported, may not what they seem.

Dr. Ben Goldacre MD, delivers a TEDtalk on the topic that is absolutely worth a listen:

How Can You Use This as a Patient?

1.  Be a skeptic and ask lots of questions. You are the expert on your own body.  If something doesn’t make sense to you keep asking questions until it does. You’re entitled to answers that you understand, and that make sense.

2.  Get to the root cause of your chronic disease. Eat real food, exercise, drink clean water, sleep and deal with your stress. The vast majority of chronic diseases, like Type II Diabetes, are lifestyle based. If you can change your lifestyle, you can avoid the use of the drugs in the first place. Then the evidence no longer matters.