Jay
Welcome to episode 16 of the Energy Balance Podcast. I'm Jay Feldman and joining me again today is my good friend, Mike Fave. Today's episode is part two of our two part series talking about the failures of modern medicine. And again, just like in the last episode, I do want to mention that we are not anti-medicine. We just think that there are certain areas where conventional modern medicine is really effective in certain areas where it's not. And today we're going to be continuing that discussion by talking about the role of dogmatism in conventional medicine and the dismissal of alternative views as quackery or as conspiracy theories and how this really ends up interfering with science and medicine and their progress. We'll also be talking about current medical mishaps, and this includes the overemphasis or misuse of labs and lab results as well as different screening techniques and also various treatments and medications that are currently being used that are really either dangerous or simply ineffective. And we'll also be talking about medical error, which is actually one of the leading causes of death, at least in the United States. And then we'll also be talking about how we can navigate this conventional medical system in order to lead to the best result as far as our health is concerned.

To check out the show notes for today's episode, head over to jfeldmanwellness.com slash podcast, where I'll be linking to any of the articles or studies or anything else that we mentioned on today's episode. And if you're dealing with any low energy symptoms, if you're struggling with brain fog or fatigue or gut inflammation or low libido or bloating or weight gain or any source of chronic health conditions, maybe you've used some of the medications or different things that have been prescribed from the modern or conventional medical system and they aren't working. You'll definitely want to head over to JFeldmanWellness.com/energy and sign up for a free energy balance mini course where I'll walk you through the main things that you can do to support energy production and the things that you want to avoid that inhibit this process. And again, our energy producing systems are directly influenced by our environment and our lifestyle. So it's really important to be addressing those factors.if we do want to find relief from any of these symptoms or chronic health conditions. And with that, let's get started.

 Normally the people who are shouting these things the loudest and are so dogmatic about it and cannot consider any other points of view are typically the people who know the least about these things because when you look into any topic and see how much conflicting research there is, conflicting ideas, are all the different possibilities, you really can't be so dogmatic about something unless you are so attached to this view that, what some people do, they flip-flop, they'll, for the nutrition industry, they're hardcore vegans and anyone who's not a vegan is an idiot, and then they're hardcore carnivore and anyone who's not a carnivore is an idiot. And you have some of that. for the most part, but yeah, it's really when you have the least understanding of these things and the most attachment to them, which go hand in hand, that you are so dismissive of these other views.

I don't want to say this just to bash these people. It's completely understandable when you're in that position. you and I have been there to an extent where, to an extent, but like where, you know, we parroted some other views that we come across without really understanding them. And it's a normal thing to do. But, but if I don't want to say all this to, to somebody who is in this position and who is thinking this way and who is so angry when somebody has a dissenting point of view. I don't want to say this time so that they feel like an idiot or anything like that. It's understandable, but it's important to consider, like if you're getting angry or upset during those things and you're noticing that you are so triggered, if you want to use that word, by an opposing point of view, then that's something you might want to examine and consider.

You know, if you are insulting other people for their points of view, then that is another sign that you are not like, you're not looking at these things objectively and you were, being influenced by these, by these other factors that aren't actually the information. Yeah. Well, I think it's important is if you feel that way, then go find out the answer. If you're having, if you are frustrated or somebody's whatever, they pointed holes in your view and you don't have answers for them and it's making you angry, then go find the answers.

Jay
Go try and ferret out the answers as best that you can. And because I understand the review. Yeah. Exactly. You have to, you have to go and figure out what's going on. There's never a point where you just say, I have the answer and then that's it. And then there's another point of view. And if you don't understand their point of view, well, you have to figure it out. And then you have to try and figure out the middle ground or, It may be what points of your view are wrong or what points of their view are wrong and try and sort of come to some sort of understanding. And this is not through yelling at somebody or arguing them or telling them, getting angry with them or cursing them out or whatever it is. It's purely about, you you go looking at the, go and trying to figure out the information and seeing, you know, maybe there's a point of view here and then trying to rectify the differences. That's the only answer. But the thing that the cognitive dissonance of situations does suck. mean, when your views are challenged and you have completely different points of view and somebody then from somebody else and they their stuff has some type of benefit like you're gonna feel that pressure you're gonna feel that that anger because your entire it's challenging your worldview and a lot of and a lot of people's worldviews attached to their identity and so it's gonna feel like a personal attack and sort of just have to get over it and understand what's going on and not act out of it I it happens even I mean even when my views get challenged and there's some validity in the challenges and you know, then it's time to go back and do the research. There's not a question. It's like, okay, I got to go look, I got to go see what's going on. I got to go understand what their point of view is and why things are happening this way. Whatever data they're pointing out and you know, it's annoying because it challenge because like you have things figured out and you have this specific point of view. And you feel this type of way about your point of view. And then all of a sudden, it's like you're the the earth beneath your feet is shaken by somebody else presenting a different point of view and they have evidence for their point of view. it's like, it is frustrating. It definitely is frustrating, but the only answer, the only solution to figuring it out is to literally go and try and figure it out. It is not yelling at the other person or having a fight about your beliefs because the beliefs in the situation are not.

Jay
What matters is like what objectively is going on and trying to come to as close to possible as you can to that. Yeah, that's what science is, is trying to pursue that truth. And it's funny because a lot of people who cite that they are following the science or that they are talking about evidence-based medicine are also the people who are saying that this is fact. So stop questioning it and getting in the way of science and getting in the way of
helping people, you're just hurting people with all of this misinformation and this quackery. And in reality, like science, and I'm not saying that everybody has an alternative view is valid by any means. Most are not, but in the same way that like most views that people hold are not true. And that is what progress allows for. Like if we look at the beliefs that were held hundreds of years ago, a lot of that has changed and adjusted. And that's, mean, that is essentially what science is, that pursuit of truth. And there aren't facts when it comes to science. Science requires falsifiable hypotheses where you have a belief or you have an idea or a concept of what's going on, but it has to be falsifiable. If it's not, then it's not scientific. It's antiscientific. Well, you're basically testing. You're not testing if your hypothesis is right. You're testing if the other...
there's the null hypothesis is actually null. It's actually false. So you're never coming to a point where you're saying this is exactly what it is. It's, well, I've done this a bunch of times and I continue to see that the other result is wrong. And so I'm, so I have a theory about what this current result is. Yeah. A lot of people don't realize that that's how scientific research works or supposed to work where you're not saying, I believe that, that this drug improves heart disease risk and then you test that and find that it's true. What you end up testing is what you were saying, the null hypothesis, which is that this heart disease doesn't improve. This drug doesn't improve heart disease. Yeah, and then you try to prove that, you try to create that, you try to falsify that hypothesis by looking at the result and then comparing that result with the statistical analysis of how likely that result is to be due to chance. So if you can say that that results the likelihood of that result being due to chance is very, very, very low, then you can essentially falsify that hypothesis and assume that, and then go on with the original hypothesis that you believed, nothing is proven. That's like that it- still remains theory. It still all remains theory. And then the other, the main point of that is that it has to be consistently- Reproducible. Reproducible, exactly. You have to consistently reproduce that result.

If you can't consistently reproduce that result, then we have to start thinking about, that result may not be what's really going on. What else is going on in the situation? and you see this even in medical practice, you see this. mean, you get a lab result on a patient, the lab result from the, and you look at the trend of the result. The previous trend was down, say for their hemoglobin. You have a hemoglobin in the patient, which is its amount of a protein within red blood cells that carries oxygen.

So you have this certain value, it's 12. And then the next result you get is nine and it's the next day. And so you're thinking, wow, my patient is bleeding because hemoglobin is present in blood, very large component of blood. It's like, wow, my patient is bleeding. So then you draw another lab right away, stat lab. But this one says, it's 11. And so then you say, OK, so now you have two results.

And the first result you got was nine, so you're thinking they're bleeding. The second result was 11, you're thinking, okay, they're all right. 11.7, whatever it is. So then you have to get another result. You can't rest on those two results, because now you have one result that indicates bleeding and one that doesn't. So then you get the next result, and then you say, oh, it's 11.7, so then you have to assume that that other result that you had there was an invalid result, which does happen, this does happen. And you continue to check going forward and then you can watch the trend. then same thing occurs in studies. You get a particular result, it shows some type of effect and you're like, hmm. So then when you, but if you retest it and you don't get, it doesn't show that same effect, the null hypothesis has not been rejected in the next study.

Then you have to retest again and retest again to continually see, okay, well what's going on? And you have to change certain variables to see as well. Like maybe it wasn't, Maybe it wasn't the fish oil in the study that got the best result. Maybe it was the furin fatty acids, or maybe it was the fact that the people in the fish oil group were eating fish and they had better diets, or maybe it was that these people had a healthy user bias. There's a lot more to just whatever's going on in that particular situation. And in a lot of rat studies too, a lot of people don't realize they'll read the rat study and it's like, yeah, in genetically mutated mice that have certain defects in certain areas, you get this certain benefit.

And it's like, so you're going to have to look at what type of mouse you're using. The benefit may be because you have a mutant mouse. So like you have a mouse and it's a mutant mouse and it's the predisposed to getting, um, to getting cancer and autoimmune diseases and certain, you get a certain beneficial effect from whatever compound you're using in the study. And it's like, yeah, it extended their lifespans because it stopped them from getting their autoimmune disease from whatever mechanism, immunosuppression, whatever it was.

But in real life, if you gave that to a regular person and you immunosuppress them and they get an infection from their immunosuppression or whatever it is, then they're going to be worse than the mutant mouse. you have to really like, again, it comes down to understanding and being able to test and know what context you're coming for these things on. And a lot of these studies, so if I compare patients in an acne group and a non- I compare patients in an acne group, right? And one acne group is getting x-rays and the other acne group isn't getting x-rays. And the end point of the study is decrease in acne. Well, obviously, if the x-ray acne group had a decrease in acne, then well, the x-rays worked. So the x-rays work for acne. But if that doesn't tell us anything about x-rays effect on cancer, so how much cancer did the acne group get down the line as well?

Well, and how much are you going to find out in two years of the study or six months or whatever it is? And that's part of the issue as well is that there's such part of this is because of the way patents work where in for medications, it's like a six, a seven year patent. So that's why they they'll use the same drug and then just change it a tiny bit and then release a new version. a major problem with that is for most of these drugs and treatments, they aren't studied for extended periods of time before they're before they're released and used in the public. And they might
do the equivalent study on a rat and go through the rat's lifetime, but that's not always equivalent to humans. And so, yeah, you might see that in a short-term study with x-rays, there was no harmful effects, no increase in cancer. But if you were to look 20, 30, 40, 50 years out, you might find a very different result. So that's another major issue. You had also talked about labs a little bit, lab results. And we like to think of any lab values as like truth, as like objective.

When in reality, there's a lot of issues with lab results. mean, there, you're looking at a single snapshot that could be a lot of times these values can change drastically based on the time of day, based on what you ate and when, how long ago and how big of a meal it was. And if you exercised and if you were, if you were really stressed at that time, if you had a lot of anxiety, like these values can change significantly. And a lot of the ranges are not based on sound science either. So if you look at hypothyroidism, for example, they, one of the earlier tests used was a protein bound iodine test, which based on that protein bound iodine test, they determined that based on the people who were out of range, who had hypothyroidism, about, I don't know, think they said 5 % of the population had hypothyroidism. Then they realized that the protein bound iodine test was not very effective for diagnosing anything and it was really irrelevant. And then they started using TSH.

But then they applied the same range, the same, they assumed that the same percentage of people had hypothyroidism based on the protein bound iodine test to the TSH test. So they assumed, okay, well, there's still only 5 % of people have hypothyroidism. So when we test a range of people on TSH, here's the regular range. So then that skews that range where in reality, if a lot more people have hypothyroidism than 5 % of the population, which is probably true, then our, you know, our lab range for TSH might say that a TSH of four or five or 10 is fine in your don't have hypothyroidism, but in reality it could really be much lower. So that's just one example, but whether it's the RDA for different vitamins and minerals like the recommended daily allowances or it's different lab values on the test and looking at the reference ranges, or also just the variation in all of these things day to day or in the time of day, like we end up putting way too much emphasis on those as well and a lot of them are not based on accurate science, which is why we emphasize looking at symptoms and how you're feeling and really looking in depth at considering your symptoms and whether it's digestive or blood sugar fluctuations or whatever it is, because that can be a lot more effective for acknowledging or for identifying your health than these lab values. And another point here is with all the screenings for cancers and different diseases, they all have false positives. And a lot of times those false positives are so common.

And end up treating people who don't need to be treated, that the harm and risk from getting these screenings outweighs the benefits. So this is something that's been found with different breast cancer screenings and pap smears and prostate cancer. And where basically there's enough false positives, not even to mention the screening itself, where for breast cancer screening, you know, they're using mammograms, are radiation, which happens to cause cancer, which they say it doesn't in the doses they use, but besides the point.

There's enough false positives from these things that there's research suggesting that a lot of them shouldn't even be used and that there's more of a risk from basically that so many people who don't have the issue end up being treated compared to the couple of people that are potentially saved that it's not even worth using a lot of these things. So, yeah, I mean, it's just a few other examples as far as how skewed these different medical approaches are. The other thing is the one, some of these tests don't tell you what the overall process is.

Like, I'll an example. check a, it could be anything. You use TSH, but another one they use is for diabetics. They'll check your blood sugar. So they'll check your sugar before a meal, and then they'll check your sugar if it's high, or they'll check your sugar after a meal. But it really depends on what your meal was, and then also a lot of other things can be going on with blood sugar handling than just in terms of, you have diabetes. You know, so there. What is your cortisol level? Do you have some type of other endocrine imbalance leading to a consistently elevated blood sugar? What was the composition of the meal? Or in some cases, you have people who at around their meals will have normal blood sugar handling, but they'll still have an elevated hemoglobin A1C, which is a marker of glycation or the amount of sugar molecules attached to hemoglobin. And a lot of these results indicate or lead to some type of point of view on something, but they don't really tell you what the whole picture of the situation is. They don't really describe what's actually... You look at your TSH and your TSH is low. Oh, well, have hyperthyroidism or you're not hypothyroid, but your resting basal body temperature is 96.3. I would venture to guess that you are hypothyroid. That's where you're at. That very strongly would lean in that direction because you can look and even within this, you look at the test, have TSH and then you have T3, then you T4, then you have reverse T3, then you have antibodies to thyroid and then you have the different amounts of the different thyroid, the different iodinized enzymes and things like that that you can look for, thyroid peroxidase or whatever.

So you can look, there's a huge picture to look at and you look only at TSH. your TSH is less than one. Okay, you're not hypothyroid. Or your hyperthyroid. Yeah. Or your hyperthyroid, yeah. But your basal body temperature or your resting body temperature is 96.3. You have cold hands, cold feet, your hair's falling out and you're constipated and you have brain fog. If I had to guess, I would say you're hypothyroid. And the thing is, is the lab tests don't really give such a great idea of what's going on. And even when you can look at different hormone concentrations and things like that, you'll see guys will be like, testosterone levels XYZ, it's high, but they feel like crap. and then you look, well, their cortisol levels are also through the roof or their sex hormone binding globulin is also extremely elevated or they're converting a ton of it into estrogen. And so they have really high estrogen levels. So there's a ton of factors that can be going on within the situation that don't really tell you what the perfect picture is, what's really going on in the overall picture. And so they're just a snapshot in time. The other thing is you have blood pressure as well. You go to the doctor's office, you're a little bit nervous, then your blood pressure's elevated. you're hypertensive. And then the other thing is, another important thing I think to talk about here is reference ranges. And you sort of mentioned that, is when you have the things like cholesterol or
high blood pressure, things like that. When the pharmaceutical companies adjust reference ranges to what the new normals are, well then all of a sudden you have an increase in population to treat. So if you change your cholesterol, the normal levels are supposed to be below 200. Well, how many more people do you add to now get treated with a statin? Which has some negative outcomes from lowering cholesterol. Some of them with associations with increases in cancer or increases infectious disease. And then things like blood pressure, they just recently updated the guidelines, if I'm not mistaken, where older people are, it's okay for people over I think the age of 50 or a certain age to have a higher blood pressure. They don't need to be 120 over 80 or below. It's okay, and treating them lower doesn't give them any benefit. And so, but for years, people were treated
to bring their blood pressure down to 120 over 80 or lower. And so it's really, you know, a lot of that really adjusts the, can be played with too and adjust the ranges and things and how people are treated and create a situation for over treating. And I guess that can lead us into the next, I don't know if you want to go into the next section from there, but just the amount of damage that happens from our current medical system in regards to how many people are killed by medical error or.

And things like that. There's a couple things I want to touch on first. So you had mentioned TSH. I just wanted to add in that cortisol and stress hormones lower TSH. yeah, you could be in a super high stress state, which would happen when you're hypothyroid, and you can have a low TSH and be diagnosed as hyperthyroid, even though you actually have hypothyroidism. And the same thing goes on with all these other markers. We also have this ridiculous notion that this one value determines your disease state. if your blood glucose is one, if it's 99, you're perfectly normal and healthy. But if it hits a hundred, now you're pre-diabetic and you need to do these things. Or same thing with cholesterol. If it's 199, you're fine. We're not going to prescribe anything. As soon as it hits 200, you have high cholesterol. We have to, we have to start using this drug when in reality, like we are just choosing a number and like the numbers are based, are supposed to be based on research suggesting which ranges are at most risk for different issues. But the point being that it's certainly not black and white. And we treat it as if it is, and we treat it as if this number matters so much when, I think I've mentioned this before, but I've seen my own cholesterol drop by a hundred points in, I think, a year. And all along the way, you know, that would mean 25 points every few months. And I don't think it was exactly that. I think it was not exactly linear like that. the whole point being that, you have somebody who tests at 210 or and it could be six months later, it could be under 200 without a statin. you also- to say you didn't use a toroxan or Lipitor to get your cholesterol down. No, it's- my God. Defying medicine. Yeah, and yeah, that happens with all sorts of these drugs and we assume, like we've talked about some of these drugs that are already acknowledged and have been to be damaging and have been taken off the market.

There's a lot of others that haven't and a lot of treatments that still aren't. So before we talk about how much damage medical error has caused or medicine has caused, there's a lot of medications and treatments that are going on now that I think are worth mentioning that have a lot of evidence against them and people are still defending as if anything else. So one is stents for heart disease, which these require an extremely invasive procedure.

And yet they've been shown in large trials not to reduce the risk of death or cardiovascular events. And I'd mentioned the screenings earlier. There's also like other surgeries like for knee surgery on torn meniscus, meniscus is menisci. Yeah. If you have a torn meniscus knee surgery or if you have arthritis, they'll do an arthroscopic surgery. And those have been shown to be as effective as placebo surgeries. So they make an incision, don't actually do anything, tell you you got a surgery and you feel just as good as if you actually got the real surgery, which is, know, and these are surgeries that a have risks just like any other and they're, they're obviously expensive and require rehab and whatever else. And we assume that anytime we're getting a surgery, that it's actually something that's proven to help when oftentimes it's not, or sometimes it's not. don't want to say oftentimes. You're not given the ramifications of said surgery where
with joint replacements, you have an increased risk of having a joint replacement on the other side after you have your joint replacement because they hypothesize alterations in gait and joint mechanics and stuff like that. And another thing is even with some surgeries, like even things where people need it, you know, like heart transplants or liver transplant or lung transplant, a lot of people don't realize you get your heart, your lungs, your liver, whatever it is. But then the medications that you have to go on for the rest of your life to prevent rejection of that organ have a host of extremely terrible and damaging side effects including massive immunosuppression. there's a lot and I don't from what I understand I don't think a lot of people are aware of a lot of the side effects and effects that come out of these treatments and I know for me when I was in high school and I had my surgery I wasn't told what the ramifications of my surgery were going to be.

And had I known the ramifications of my surgery, you know, I was 16, 17, I don't think I would have gotten the surgery. You know, and I, a lot of, you know, you go to the surgeon, the surgeon, they present this idea, at least with my experience, that, once we do this, you're going to be good. And that's not really what happens. There's, I've personally, I've suffered complications continually, like ongoing from just from them and I had a lot of laparoscopic surgery just from cutting me open. I have different areas of scar tissue that I still have causing adhesions and affecting my movement and stuff like that that are very uncomfortable and uncomfortable with things like digestion. And there's studies talking about the risk of adhesions in abdominal surgery is I think can go upwards to 90%.

And adhesions can cause problems or they can just be minorly disturbing or annoying. the side effects of some of this stuff aren't really talked about. What are the side effects of getting stents? What's the side effect of taking statins? mean, there's drug reports on people getting rhabdomyolysis, which is essentially tons of muscle damage from statins and then they can possibly damage your kidneys from all the myoglobin or the interior components of the muscle cells being leaked into the bloodstream causing damage to the kidney. I mean, and you don't really get this. It's like, your cholesterol is high. Well, we're going to have to put you on a statin so we can bring it back down and prevent your heart disease. It's like, well, does it even prevent your heart disease? Right. That's another question. And does it, what are the, what's the ramifications of taking this drug over the long term? mitochondrial damage in my muscle cells. lowering my cholesterol can lead to
possibly an increased risk of infection or maybe even cancer or things like that or liver damage. I mean, sometimes side effects are worse than the drug and I would say a lot of times they might actually be. Yeah. And if you were to take another, like speaking of surgeries, an extremely probably the most common one is appendix, getting your appendix removed when you have appendicitis. And they found that as much as two thirds of those surgeries, probably more, but as much as two thirds, at least in what I was looking at, are unnecessary and could have just been treated with antibiotics and the appendix never needed to be removed. yeah, it's just another perfect example where we're not considering the risks to these things. It's many ways of money grab and there are more effective solutions out there. I mean, for all of these things, there are more effective solutions that don't come with these side effects. just talking about lifestyle and things like that, I mean, we assume that a drug that lowers cholesterol or that lowers blood sugar has more benefit than negative or harm because it's prescribed. Because the doctor prescribed it. Right. And yeah, there's much better ways to bring your fasting blood sugar down than to use metformin, which directly inhibits energy production. yeah, I mean, there's, I don't think I want to mention, actually I do. One other one that's really like another entire industry of medications is the antidepressants. And I mean, I'm going to say, I wrote an article talking about SSRI, so I'll just refer to that. But, but it was one of those articles where I, when I was going to go into the research, I was expecting to what I find with most of these things, where it's a lot of contention, a lot of disagreement. And, you know, I just, and like having to like really decide for the studies exactly what we were talking about earlier and consider what's, what's actually going on.

Jay
And it wasn't, it was overwhelmingly anti SSRIs where there's so many different papers talking about how the serotonin hypothesis is basically has been entirely falsified, which is the idea that serotonin is the happy hormone and that if you have too little serotonin, that's what leads to depression, which is actually no longer allowed to be used as like marketing, but they'll still make vague claims about chemical imbalances, which has also been falsified where there's nothing as simple as just you have too much of this one neurotransmitter and too little of another. So we're just going to reverse that a little bit with this one drug. Like that is not shown to be effective at all. And the SSRIs, there's a lot of evidence showing that they really, most of them never should have been approved. They're little better than the placebo. They have a ton of side effects, a ton of side effects and they're really ineffective. so it's just like some of those side effects are more damaging down the road to multiple tissues and organs and function.

Than just solving your depression for that period of time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And there's, think there's also studies showing how effective non, like things other than medication are for depression and how a lot of depression either improves on its own or improves using those other, other techniques and things. And, and which could be like psychotherapy or things like that. But yeah. And so we've talked about some of these ones that some of the examples of drugs that have now been taken off the market, they've been acknowledged as huge mistakes. And yet, so how many of the drugs and treatments that are being used right now are we going to be looking at in the same way down the line? there's just, there's just, and another example is smoking cigarettes where there was, people were adamant that this was healthy and improved your lung function when they started, when like smoking cigarettes first was encouraged and marketed.

What was it? Nine out of 10 doctors smoke camel or something like that was like the ad from back in the day. Right. Consensus, you know, all the doctors say that is healthy. And it's another really good example of just how, how biased and influenced these things are by industry. There's another example is the swine flu vaccine. I go 76 where they marketed it as entirely safe.

Jay
And effective. And there's, there's a whole, a whole expose done about how that wasn't the case. There's a lot of people who ended up getting neurological damage and brain damage because of it. Yeah. And it turned out to not even be a concern. The swine flow at that point was basically non-issue. So, yeah. So, and yeah, so these things have gone on throughout the medical industry and continue to, and I think that's a perfect lead into what you were about to talk about, which is that it's like even, so this is talking about basically these things being used as they're supposed to be being used, but so much of the time that doesn't happen. And because of that medical error, which really includes a lot of different things which will let you touch on, but medical errors and extremely is one of the main causes of death. So like it's right up there with heart disease and cancer. According to the studies, it's the third main cause of death.

Yeah, third leading cause of death. Yeah. Third leading cause of death, but it really depends on how you look and what you define as the medical error. Right. So there's what I have here. There's adverse drug reactions. There's actual medical error. There's bed sores, which are pressure ulcers from laying in the bed too long, not being turned when you're sick. There's infection. There's malnutrition. There's issues.

Happening in outpatient settings outside of hospitals. There's unnecessary procedures, which we talked about as an example was the Removing the appendix and then there's surgery related and if you added all those up and this was in I think 1997 you would come out with 783,000 deaths, which is a year which surpasses both cancer and heart disease. it really, so that would make it the number one leading cause of death in the country, but it really depends on what statistics you look at and what you determine. what you determine is, it's like within this particular category really depends on how it's defined. So it, but either regardless, it's even if it's one or three, it's still ridiculous.

Jay
That is a ridiculous number of deaths per year just from medical error. And there's broad different categories of that. then when you start looking at, okay, so one of the number one is adverse drug reactions. Then you start looking well, all the industry funding of the different drugs and supporting a different hypothesis and things like that. And then you want to sit there and you want to say, doctors and medicine know what's going on.

It's like, well, if they really knew what was going on, number one, why are disease rates increasing? Why is obesity, metabolic syndrome, et cetera, increasing? And then why are so many people dying from error? Right. Yeah. You like it suggests that in reality, we might want to be careful about how quickly we want to go to the hospital or to the doctor. mean, when these things are going on and I'm not trying to say that if you have an issue, don't go, of course, go see your doctor, go to the hospital, but at least acknowledge that  like it really depends on where you go and working as somebody who works in the facilities, depending on what facility you go to, it may not really be like, it really isn't safe. And a lot of this comes down to, cause the healthcare industry is a business. And so it's known amongst nursing staff that certain types of facilities you just don't go to. Nurses don't want to work there and they don't want to send their family members there and they don't want people to be there because of what goes on there. a lot of it's just with situations with patients getting the wrong medications, patients experiencing falls and facilities, things like that, especially with elderly, there's a lot of problems or like different procedures that will, I mean, I've seen 80, late 80s, early 90 year old people getting treatment with cancer medication. At that point.

But you know, and a lot of times the cancer medication, and this is personal point of view, so you know, this isn't research or anything like that, but at an extremely old age and things like that, a lot of the cancer medication and a lot of the medications have really, really terrible side effects. Yeah. The quality of life is not the same. It completely... Exactly. So a lot of people don't realize you may get a few more years, but how are those years going to be lived?

Jay
And I'm not saying not to get cancer treatment, whatever you decide with what your doctor is, but it's important to put the whole analysis together of the picture of what's going on with any, regardless of cancer, whatever it is, what are you trading when you take this procedure or this drug? What is the possible negative outcome versus what you already have right now? And then what's the likelihood that the outcome is going to happen? And then if it does happen, what does it do to your quality of life and to your lifespan?

And I think people seriously need to consider what they're getting themselves into and really ask the questions as what's going on. Because when you say in your late 80s, your early 90s, you start taking a chemotherapy drug and maybe it's going to stop you from getting some effects of whatever your cancer is at that point in time, right? Well, what are the other side effects that come?

Well, you know, you might, you might have terrible digestive problems because it destroys rapidly dividing cells. So the lining of a digestive track tract is wrecked. So you can't, you're not really eating anymore. And then your, your appetite is gone. Right. And then you're tired all the time. So now all you want to do is sleep and you're not hungry anymore. And you feel you're nauseous all the time. And then you start to get, you can get skin lesions and it has an immunosuppressive effect so then maybe you get an infection. So there's a lot to consider with that type of stuff and it really, really depends on, like what, you got to ask what the outcomes are. You got to ask what are the side effect profiles. You got to ask, do I really need this? What's the outcome if I don't do this? Yeah, so those are all good questions to ask and that kind of brings us to this idea of, okay. What do we do considering this knowledge? And I think one of the, which is why we started talking about dogmatism and science and essentially being open-minded and relieving ourselves of our attachment to our beliefs and being open to being wrong and open to alternative points of view, which doesn't mean that all alternative views are right or anything like that. But that's the whole point is that we are not dismissing anything blindly without it, especially without understanding it, which is essentially what blindly is.

And that's what many people do when they're dismissing
the things as conspiracy or quackery or whatever it is. one of the, one thing that we want to be doing is making sure that we are being open-minded and that we're considering our own beliefs and where they come from and how well-founded they are and what we're basing them on. And that, I think that is the biggest factor. And if we were all to do that, then that would probably lead to a lot of progress. But in addition, if you are, you know, facing If you have gotten certain lab results back that you're concerned about, or a doctor suggests that you're supposed to be on a certain medication or any things like that, mean, do some research on your own. mean, even just looking at Wikipedia for these drugs, we'll talk about the side effects and how they work and, you know, do your best to try to understand it and look into it and take on some of that power yourself and have your own autonomy. And that's really one of the things that is so heavily discouraged. And I think it's more or less intentional is that it's much easier for everybody, but also much better for the pharmaceutical companies and whoever else. Where if you're docile and you don't have any of this autonomy, you don't have this power and you just do whatever you're told. And there's kind of this myth that you need to go to school to understand these things or that you can't understand it unless you're a PhD or an MD or whatever it is. And in reality, that's not at all the case. And it's worth taking your time to do your own research and ask.

Whomever it is, ask your doctor, ask whoever it is that is suggesting these things to you about the risks or the side effects or the benefits, why it should work, why it wouldn't work. And consider what they say with an open mind that it might be a really great answer and it might not be and make your own decision as informed as it can be. Do you have anything else to add? mean, it's almost as if talking about like advocating for ourselves. Yeah, I mean, I think that's really important.

And I think it's also important and I see this a lot because that as a patient, you have the right to refuse different things and you have the right to ask questions. And I that people should know that because I know a lot of times people won't ask those questions and people and people feel like they have to follow whatever the doctor says without question. that's not really the case.

Jay
And you can get second opinions and you can go, you can find out things and if you don't want to do something, you don't have to do it. There's not, no one's going to force you to do anything. I'm not saying it doesn't mean that sometimes your doctors really know what's better or things like that. That's fine. But at the same time, like being critical is really important and being skeptical is really important and keeping the large picture of how you want to live the rest of your life.

And how you want your life to go is extremely important and to understand that you have the right to ask questions and you have the right to say no and you have the right to move in whatever direction you see best for yourself as well. And to get multiple opinions and multiple standpoints on a different, on a situation, because I'll tell you a lot of your doctors won't agree. A lot of doctors don't agree on different things. There's different points of views and a lot of different doctors go about things in different ways. I mean, you see that just with any doctors that you work with.

Some do things in different ways and if you don't like the way someone's doing it, then you go find somebody else. It's fine. So until take the look at look at things yourself and ask questions yourself. Look, go look up different things and bring that stuff to your doctor and talk to him about it. And if he gives you a hard time about it, then go find somebody else that is part of the medic. That is part of the medical profession's job is to educate the public on some of that stuff. Yeah. And on the doctor's behalf, they're put in a position where they have nowhere near enough time to work with patients in the way that they should, nowhere near enough time to review what's actually going on or to spend with them to explain anything. a lot of liability. Yeah. Yeah. So they're in a really tough position because of those things. so it might be worth finding a practice or a situation where you can find a doctor that will sit with you who has the ability to do that based on the way that their practice is set up or whatever it is. But yeah, it's a, I would say a very broken industry, but I think that those are all good points. Yeah. And again, it's not to bash doctors or nurses or any medical professionals. It's just to, to like know that you, as you as a patient also have your own rights. And then you understand the context, the doctors are under the gun and, so are the medical professionals because they have a lot of liability for their situation and the way the industry is set up, they have to do things a certain way. They have to treat a certain way. And if they don't treat a certain way and a bad outcome occurs, they can be held liable type of stuff.

Jay
And that really affects, I mean, there's a benefit to that in a lot of situations, but there also can be some negative effects of that in a lot of situations. And then obviously, again, a lot of doctors don't have the time to spend with patients because of what their patient load is and what the requirements are for them. And the same thing with nurses. A lot of nurses have a certain patient load and they are not able to spend that time. Nurse practitioners and physician assistants as well It is an industry issue as and there are some individual issues that as well, but it's largely an industry issue. So just that's the most important things I would say to keep in mind when dealing with any of that stuff. Yeah. And I think, yeah, it's such a good point to advocate for yourself, recognize that you have it is entirely up to you. It is your choice. Don't you know, you don't have to be bullied into doing anything you don't want to do or anything like that, which some people feel that way. So and it's still important to seek medical advice or different situations because sometimes the outcome of not doing it can be way worse than doing it. Yeah. Yeah. Now if you have a heart attack, go to the hospital. If your blood pressure is running 200 over 140, go to a doctor. You know, like there's we're not saying not to seek medical advice where no one is saying that is saying that. But we are saying to just keep everything in perspective. Know that you have rights as a patient as well.

And that you can seek multiple points of view on a particular situation. You can have multiple opinions and to ask the net ask questions if you have questions and to look up some of the information yourself so that you can ask the doctor questions about things. Hey, I read about this drug and it has the side effect and I've been feeling this way and I'm not really not feeling good. Is there, is there not something else I could do? That's perfectly valid question. Yeah. 100%. All right. We'll leave it there.

All right, that's going to wrap up this series talking about the failures of modern medicine. I hope you enjoyed that episode. And if you did, please leave a review or a like or a comment wherever you're listening. It really does a lot to help support the podcast to check out the show notes for today's episode. Head over to J Feldman wellness.com/ podcast, where you can take a look at any of the articles or studies or anything else that we referenced throughout today's episode. And if you're struggling with any low energy symptoms, whether that's weight gain or fatigue or low libido or brain fog or you're having trouble sleeping, head over to Jfeldmanwellness.com slash energy and sign up for a free mini course where I'll walk you through the main things that you'll want to focus on to support energy production and the main things that you want to avoid that inhibit energy production. And I'll also be talking about how when we optimize these energy producing systems, this is what leads to relief from all of these low energy symptoms as well as all of the chronic health conditions that we've been talking about. So to sign up for that free energy balance mini course, head over to jfeldmanmulness.com/energy and I'll see you in the next episode.