October 2011

We Cannot Manage What We Do Not Measure

Published on October 27, 2011

5.1K views

Pay attention to the whimper or be forced to cry uncle. Those are your choices. Those were the choices that faced the nation ten and twenty years ago as naysayers to the economic policies certain to bankrupt our country became evident, but they were ignored or lambasted as fringe. The collective wisdom forged forward with derivatives, with the merging of investment and saving banks, against the whimpers of many, only to cry uncle in 2008 as the catastrophe loomed.

As the ‘other 99%’ seek to realign our political and economic situations, women must lead the changes in the health industry. We must pay attention to the whimpers, to the evidence that something is off, and more importantly, we must take heed before uncle is cried. How do we do that within such a flawed system of industrialized, profit-based medicine? Education, measurement, transparency and responsibility.

Education. The number one factor contributing to health is education. The more educated women (and men) are the better health they experience. Why? Better decision-making. Although there are clear associations between income and health, the association between education and health is stronger.

Education allows one to navigate the morass of medical marketing, cut to the truth, and identify the untruth in advertising. Education permits women the confidence to seek alternate directions in health and not simply take what is prescribed to them as gospel. Quite simply, education permits responsibility in health choices. It doesn’t necessarily lead to taking responsibility or making the right choices; we’ve all seen really smart, highly educated people do really stupid things. Rather, education creates the environment where those choices can be made.
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The Match Game Of Healthcare That Works (Part II)

by Deb Andelt, JD

Published on October 22, 2011

5.7K views

“What is the sign of a healthy person? Such a person is happy anywhere. He or she is relaxed everywhere – always at ease and in peace, within and without. Even in hell, such a person will be at ease. A healthy person hates no one, dislikes nothing. Total love, universal love emanates from within. There is no tension anywhere, no stress or friction. These are the signs of real health.”

Swami Satchidananda

Make healthcare truly about you – your personal definition of “health”

From Part I of this Match Game series you have a sense of how a payment system (health insurance) has been setting the playing field determining what constitutes health and well-being for millions of Americans.

To experience healthcare that works for you, we have to change the nature of the game – “reset” our current paradigm. This reset starts with your personal worldview of health and the relationship, or lack of relationship, between the physical, mental and emotional bodies (see related article). This worldview will naturally integrate with your definition of health and well-being.

Crafting your personal worldview of health likely resulted in one of two primary worldviews:
• Newtonian – from the namesake of Isaac Newton. Very simply, in this worldview the world is seen as a mechanical machine. The physical body is like a machine, divided into parts to be worked on like a machine. Mind and emotions have little, if any, impact on the physical being. Healing is rarely considered. Practitioners treat illness or disease in separate parts of the physical body.
• Quantum – from understanding the world through the lens of quantum physics. Very simply, at a quantum level everything is interconnected. Physical, emotional and mental aspects of our being influence each other. Our outer world and inner world are also connected. Consciousness matters. This worldview encompasses healing. Practitioners treat the person, not the disease.

You may have a blended worldview, or a different lens for different circumstances. Whatever your result, keep this in mind as you explore the nature of “health.”

What is health? What is well-being? And, where does healing fit in?

Health does not mean the same thing to all people. Reflect on the nature of health described in the opening quote of this article. It is basically about one’s “being-ness.” No mention of disease or of physical vitality.

Healthcare physicians, practitioners, all have a different view of what constitutes health, which has been influenced by their field study and experience. Physicians can only engage with you from their framework of knowledge and understanding. As a result, for example, you can now see that talking about well-being from a quantum lens with a physician with a Newtonian framework is a mismatch on many levels. It’s likely both of you will be frustrated. Having a mismatched partnership is not a good foundation for well-being and healing.

You deserve health and care that fits YOUR unique being, your worldview. These are very personal decisions. To find people for your healthcare team requires matching healthcare providers concepts of health to your beliefs and principles. The starting point is not a list provided by an insurance company. The starting point is your worldview of well-being and your personal definition of health.

Every medical science, from ancient sciences to current sciences, has a definition or a guiding principle of what “health” means. Just like worldviews, these generally fall into two categories.

Newtonian health science

The current dictionary definition of health is “freedom from disease.” This is the view followed by most allopathic doctors (M.D.s). This is the mechanical worldview. The physical body is a machine made up of parts. Think about that list of practitioners found in health insurance paperwork – it’s a list that divides the body into parts. This health science focuses on disease management. Osteopathic medicine (D.O.s) uses the same tools, treatments and technologies of medicine as M.D.s, so for these very general purposes, they fall in the Newtonian field.

If your worldview is generally Newtonian, you will likely be satisfied with allopathic specialists. For each symptom you may need to seek a new “mechanic” to address different parts of your body. You may be the one coordinating care between the various pieces.

Quantum health sciences

While quantum physics is considered a new science, the ancient medical sciences viewed “health” through a quantum lens ‒ systems of health in which everything is connected. Side effects don’t exist in these older sciences. There are only “effects” because these sciences have studied well-being and the impact of all their treatments and medicines on the entire mind/body/spirit system for hundreds and thousands of years. These health sciences focus on healing, eliminating the root causes of suffering, and balance.

Ancient sciences include:

• Ayurveda is the traditional medicine from India, the sister science of yoga. You may be familiar with this from Deepak Chopra. Ayurveda is the science of life, with a very precise definition of health. “Health is the state where the Tridosha, digestive fire, body tissues and components, and physiological processes are in perfect unison; and the soul and the sense organs and mind are in a state of total satisfaction and content.” While this seems to be a complex definition filled with Sanskrit words, the point is for 5,000 years this science has focused on what a healthy mind/body system is, and how to measure, attain and maintain health.
• Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is derived from Ayurveda, and so there are similarities. Like Ayurveda, it is based on the notion of harmony and balance. Health is viewed as a means to a good life – when an individual lives in harmony with her community and her physical and spiritual environment. Many people are familiar with acupuncture, a primary TCM treatment to create overall balance.

Mid-millennium sciences include:

• Homeopathy, which is about 200 years old, believes one has a state of health when you experience freedom and creativity. It’s interesting to consider how this seemingly simple definition effortlessly integrates physical, emotional, mental and spiritual aspects of well-being. Disease is considered a breakdown of vital forces and can only be known according to symptoms – so all “symptoms” are of equal importance in treating the whole person.
• Naturopathy evolved from homeopathy. Naturopathic medical schools include curriculum a range of medical sciences including TMC, homeopathy and herbal medicines.

If your worldview in primarily quantum, you will likely enjoy a positive relationship with doctors practicing these sciences to experience the essence of health you desire. You may still need (or want) a team approach. You’ll generally find physicians in the quantum sciences understand something about other quantum sciences, so you can actually achieve complementary care (meaning practitioners, treatments and medicines work well together, not in opposition to each other).

Your definition of health is what equips and empowers you to live your best life

Declaring “I want to be well;” or “I just want to not feel bad and get back to my life;” may seem like simple statements to make when requesting that a medical professional be your partner in well-being. As we see from the viewpoints above, it’s not so simple.

This is why it’s really important to know at a very deep level what you’re seeking. Be as clear with yourself as possible. Research the essence of health, well-being, vitality, healing. This article just provides some basic guidance to get you started. Take your time. And also be willing to evolve or change over time. What starts as a quest for pain relief in a very allopathic sense of suppressing symptoms in a particular location may evolve to wanting to experience peace and freedom, regardless of physical challenges.

Being clear on what health and well-being mean to you puts you in the driver’s seat of this healthcare match game. You have now declared your personal “reset” of the vast and complex healthcare system. You can now confidently:

• Identify practitioners who actually fit your needs.
• Know when you have a mismatch and feel comfortable firing medical professionals who don’t resonate with your needs.
• Communicate effectively with your chosen professionals and develop strong partnerships with them.
• Know when to shift approaches if a particular physician or medicine/treatment isn’t working to support your journey to well-being.
• Spend your time, money and energy wisely, in a way that lets you experience your best life.
• Analyze what payment system (insurance) will work for your health, and make decisions based on what care fits your needs. For example, if TCM or homeopathic is a fit for you, seek a payment system that pays for the care you use. Alternatively, be confident that it’s okay to pay for care rather than contributing to an insurance corporation’s profit for “benefits” that don’t fit your needs and therefore you don’t use. .

Resources you may enjoy to explore this further:
–The Quantum Doctor by Amit Goswami, PhD
–The Biology of Belief by Bruce Lipton
–Other inspiring people who offer a range of views for your exploration: Deepak Chopra, MD; Larry Dossey, MD; Greg Brayden and Stephen Schwartz

Note: This is part an ongoing series to equip you with a process, a path, to identify and experience healthcare that works for you.
— Foundation: The heart of healthcare that works: know your personal worldview of health: https://hormonesmatter.com/the-heart-of-healthcare-that-works-know-your-personal-worldview-of-health/
— The match Game of healthcare that works series ‒ Part I: Understand the landscape set by insurance companies: https://hormonesmatter.com/the-match-game-of-health-care-that-works-part-1/
— The match Game of healthcare that works series ‒ Part II: (current article)

Deb is co-owner of Experience In Motion, which equips organizations with tools to curate meaningful experiences for customers and employees. Deb’s personal journey from decay to wellbeing inspired an emphasis in improving healthcare experiences for patients and practitioners by focusing on experiences that heal, and self-caring as a way of organizational being. www.experienceinmotion.net.

Unite Walking Uteri: Repair the Economic Moral Fabric, One Woman at a Time

by Chandler Marrs, PhD

Published on October 20, 2011

3.4K views

For a website devoted to women’s hormone health research, I seem to write a lot about the current economic and political situation. That may seem odd on the surface, but a deeper dive reveals an inextricable connection. The recession has forced American values into re-alignment and like or not, health is at the center. And women’s health, because we bear children, is at the nexus.

As a woman, who has born children, I take offense to the fact that in political, economic and healthcare debates, women have become no more than walking uteri. From both the political Left and Right, our choices to bear or not bear children seem to represent the sum total of the interest in our health. Sometimes our breast health is considered and on a rare occasion other aspects of our physiology enter into public discourse and even research, but mostly it is our childbearing that garners the attention.

Even so, the pretense that the debates currently dominating the public arena involve anything closely related to women or health is false. These are debates about money and power—getting it and keeping it– and we are simply the tokens of that economy. But we don’t have to be, because as walking uteri, they have failed to recognize one important point- we can walk the other direction.

Although we are only 50% of the population, we consume 80% of the medical care and we control the medical decision-making in most families – that is our power. The makers of HRT know this all too well. They saw their profits drop by as much 70% when the unfounded marketing claims that HRT cured everything came to light. Millions of women transferred their consumer purchasing power to the bio-identical hormone, nutraceutical and other health-related industries. As hospitals began dictating C-sections, a whole movement of home-birth evolved; home-birth in the 21^st century- who could have predicted that? As more and more toxins are found in our foods and especially baby products, companies marketing healthy, organic products are born. Our uteri are walking right out the door and creating entire industries that place health and well-being center stage.

So, while politicians covet big money from the corporations that obliterated the economy and decimated women’s health; while protestors protest the profligate practices of Wall Street (finally) and pundits decide which side of the ratings fence they are on, women are quietly re-building the economy. Inc.com indicates that women lead 40% of all business in the US (2010), but received less than 8% of investment capital. Perhaps as a result of the lower capital, we are better at bootstrapping, have higher growth, better returns and our businesses succeed more frequently than companies led by men. Our companies are less risky; none of the high-flying financial shenanigans that got us into this mess in the first place. Perhaps because of the inequities in healthcare and research perpetrated on women by men interested only in the functionality of our collective uteri, we’re building companies that address women’s health-beyond the uterus. Companies like Lucine, and many, many others.

Are the attempts to de-fund women’s health important, even though they pertain to the most narrow definition of health? Yes. They serve as a reminder that we have more power than we think. We are the consumer market that matters. We can take our consumer buying power and our voting power elsewhere. We can create the industries that matter to us. In doing so, we repair what David Brooks called the ‘moral fabric of our economy.’

Hormone health research and diagnostics matter to me and my colleagues at Lucine. What matters to you?

Are We Marks? The Greed and Chicanery of 21st Century Corporate Culture

by Chandler Marrs, PhD

Published on October 12, 2011

4.8K views

Corporate Culture has Run Afoul

By now everyone is aware of Bank of America’s latest in a long stream of fee gouging practices- the $5 debit card fee. This is on top of an endless array transaction fees charged to customers that generate billions in profits annually, and of course, the billions from the bailouts and the foreclosure crisis. Although blatantly evident on Wall Street, the shift in corporate ideology that rewards chicanery pervades every aspect of American life, especially healthcare and most especially women’s and children’s healthcare.

We’re at a place in time where corporations would rather spend billions lobbying favorable regulations and billions more fighting and paying out consumer or patient lawsuits for faulty products than build a quality product or provide a quality service in the first place. How else does one explain the medical marketing of dangerous drugs to otherwise healthy women– think HRT, Yaz and Yasmin, Prozac, Wellbutrin and other anti-depressants to pregnant women (and to rest of the un-depressed population for that matter)? How else does one explain why incredibly dangerous products like Yaz/Yasmin are still on the market despite having more serious adverse events than drugs already off the market because of safety issues (VIOXX) (see comparison of Yaz side effects below, from www.adverseevents.com or click on the graphic below). How else do we explain why it took so many years to remove DES from the market place despite evidence of both teratogenic and carcinogenic effects from the onset or why HRT, was allowed to be marketed as the magic pill that cured all, without any evidence whatsoever? How else do we explain why we not only bought these drugs but demanded them (besides the fact that many are addictive)? How else does one explain that in the 21st century only 30% of practice guidelines for obstetricians and gynecologists are evidence based? Thirty-percent!!!

I guess one really doesn’t need evidence if the treatment choices are limited to bad and worse. Indeed, it’s probably a good thing that more people, patients and doctors alike, don’t question the prescribing practices, the medical efficacy or the very real risk some of these meds pose. Maybe we are marks.

Where did this racket of corporate miscreance come from? I would argue it came from us, or rather because of us. For some reason, we the consumer, the citizen, the patient, the physician, the politician, checked our common sense and personal responsibility at the door of mega-marketing. Somehow we convinced ourselves that we deserved everything, but had to pay for nothing. We abdicated our personal responsibility for our own health, happiness and financial stability to others. And now we are facing the consequences: ill-health, physical and economical, personal and global.

The economic crash exposed the fealty of our financial system and is exposing the very real flaws in our corporate, insurance-based, medical system. The system has taken medical decision-making away from the physician and the patient and placed it squarely in the hands of pharma marketing engines and insurance companies. We’re at a juncture in time, where the sheer economic reality of buying pills to solve all medical problems, is contrasted by the fact that many simply cannot afford their meds anymore and must look to alternative solutions for health.

With all crises comes innovation and change, maybe with this one, we can get back to the “first do no harm” principle of medicine. Maybe we can get back to personal responsibility for health. I think Bill Maher said it best “We’ll stop being sick,when we stop making ourselves sick.”

For a laugh-out loud assessment of modern healthcare by Bill Maher click here.

To look up or report adverse reactions to common medications go to: www.adverseevents.com

Warning: This site does not offer medical advice. If you have questions about your medications or your health, please consult your physician. Do not attempt to discontinue any medication without physician approval and supervision.

Are We Not Worth It? OB/Gyn Decisions Driven by Consensus not Evidence

by Chandler Marrs, PhD

Published on October 7, 2011

8K views

A recent study by researchers at Columbia University uncovered what many women have suspected for years, that the clinical practice of obstetrics and gynecology (Ob/Gyn) is steeped in tradition and opinion but lacks data and evidence. The study, Scientific Evidence Underlying the American College of Obstetricians’ and Gynecologists’ Practice Guidelines authored by Dr. Jason D. Wright and colleagues found that only 30% of Ob/Gyn clinical practice guidelines were based on hard data or scientific evidence. Rather, the vast majority of practice guidelines (70%) were based on observational studies, consensus or expert opinion. Perhaps this is why it takes 5-10 years to diagnose common Gyn conditions, why oral contraceptives are the first line of treatment for every women’s health conditions or why most pregnancy complications are still, in the 21st century, considered idiopathic. Without data, it sure is difficult to sway expert opinion. What do you think?
Link to the press release: Ob/gyn Guidelines Often Based Opinion Weak Data

Reference
Wright JD, et al. Scientific Evidence Underlying the American College of Obstetricians’ and Gynecologists’ Practice Guidelines. Online in press version, September 2011, Obstetrics and Gynecology 118 (3).

Pondering Cancer: the Hubris of Innovation

by Chandler Marrs, PhD

Published on October 5, 2011

4.5K views

This week begins breast cancer awareness month, a movement started 25 years ago largely by women and family members affected by cancer. The efforts of these men and women have been extraordinarily successful. Who doesn’t associate the pink ribbons with breast cancer? To boot, the public awareness catalyzed the need for research. The War on Cancer was born and a staggering amount of federal and private dollars research dollars have poured into cancer research. Federal breast cancer research dollars totaled $763 million in 2010.

And yet, except for the years between 1999-2005, which saw a 2% decline in new diagnoses (NCHS, SEER), largely attributed to the post-WHI decline in HRT use, breast cancer rates have increased steadily over the last two decades. The incidence of breast cancer is now 1 in 8 women (SEER). It seems the war on breast cancer has not been won.

I am not a cancer researcher and so my thoughts on cancer are offered with some trepidation. Sure, I did the requisite pharmacology papers and presentations in graduate school and even taught the basics in some of my undergraduate courses, but I don’t really know cancer, not like I know other disease processes. And so, as I pondered the state of cancer and reviewed the statistics, looking for an angle into this post, somewhere I could add to the conversation and not just regurgitate existing pablum, what became clear was a nagging sense of intellectual unease. Despite the billions spent on cancer research and the bevy of new treatments, more women are getting cancer than ever before. Perhaps better diagnostics explain the ever increasing incidence of breast cancer. Perhaps not.

Like so many modern diseases, cancer sits at the nexus between high and low science, between medicine and marketing. It is one of those diseases that at once benefits from 20th-21st century science and technology, and suffers immensely from the hubris of those same innovations.

A case and point: a report by the Personalized Medicine Coalition published three years ago and discussed last year in Bloomberg BusinessWeek indicates that of the $292 billion dollars spent on prescription medications in 2008 almost 50% went to medications that didn’t work. That means in one year, we spent $145 billion on medications that didn’t work. The report goes on to suggest that billions more were spent treating the side effects and adverse reactions.

Aside from the ridiculous amount of money spent on medications that don’t work and the billions more spent mitigating the potentially serious side-effects of these medications, both of which threaten our national economy in a very tangible manner; aside from the economics, the point that may be lost in this conversation, is that we are ingesting these medications and trusting them to work or at least not make us worse.

What happens when medications originally intended for one use are marketed for another? What happens when the need for blockbuster drug sales overshadows the actual benefits of a medication or worse yet, hides the dangers (DES, HRT, Vioxx, Yaz/Yasmin)? What happens when we disregard basic genetics, basic science and common sense when prescribing a medication? What happens when we use the one-size-fits-all or the one pill-cures-all approach?

Are we creating the very cancers we are trying to treat?