Being an advocate for your health can be empowering. However, there can be a lot of pushback within the medical community when a patient asks a practitioner questions about their own health. I personally experienced this for a couple of decades before I became the kind of doctor I had actually been seeking.
National Doctor’s Day is March 30th. This is a good month to reflect on if you are getting the proper medical care. Going to a doctor should be enlightening where you get answers about your own health. You should be learning about yourself. Instead, there’s a lot of medical shunning going on. Patients get ‘written up’ or talked down to by their doctors if they choose not to take medication. Doctors even tell patients that their physical ailments are ‘in their head’ when doctors don’t see abnormal results on bloodwork. None of this is OK and that behavior should not be tolerated within the medical community. As patients, you deserve better.
As a patient, you have to set realistic expectations. You can’t walk into a pizza shop looking for tacos and vice versa. What this means with medical care is: if you want quick medicine for a symptom then go to a conventional medical doctor. Sometimes, that is what is needed, and for emergency care, we should be grateful for it. However, if you are looking for answers to your health with proper recommendations for testing, imaging etc then you have to find a root cause doctor who does that work for you which is a Naturopathic Doctor.
For years, I found myself in the wrong ‘pizza shops’, because I simply did not know there was another type of medicine. I understand that a lot of people are in the same situation which is why I have been educating the community for years about Naturopathic Medicine -it truly is life changing. Identifying and reversing chronic conditions does turn someone’s life around.
Naturopathic Medicine gets to the root cause of symptoms and is the supreme medicine for preventive care. As a Naturopathic Doctor, I also do a great deal of educating my patients about their specific health. I give them the tools to understand their own bodies. Furthermore, I review comprehensive labs and assess the optimal ranges ( not normal values) so they understand what their lab values actually mean for their specific health concerns. This information is invaluable because it empowers them for the rest of their lives.
I am an advocate for my patients. In turn, patients learn to be an advocate for themselves. Being an advocate for someone’s health is important at any age. I do think our elders deserve more respect in the medical community. If you think you know someone who can benefit from this article please share. Going to the doctor should be an enjoyable experience, not a chore or a fear…
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