michelle@thegoodhealthshop.co.za
039 315 5351

There’s no way of getting around the sad fact that Modern Western Medicine and anything ‘alternative’ are speaking two different languages; so much so that the lack of communication is widening the chasm. Where any and all things that help a patient should be employed together or side-by-side, we have the different disciplines disagreeing with each other, leaving the patient confused, conflicted and often angry but also no better than he was before he checked in with an educated person to advise him and help him recover his/her health.

We’ve discussed, in previous blogs the difference between dieticians and nutritionists; but any professional that advocates sugar-free sodas to pregnant women and diabetics has no place working with the public. A Dietician that advises agave syrup over honey clearly does not have a good grasp of nutrition, science or basic biology.

This past week I have spoken to two people, one woman and one man, one Indian and one white, one middle aged and one old, both of which were hospitalised with high blood sugar, both of whom were released with insulin and both of them were not advised how to correctly use the insulin and neither of them were given any dietary advise whatsoever. It’s criminal. We had a customer in December who was hospitalised with a blood sugar of 22, put on insulin 3x a day and sent home. He came to see me because he was feeling so bad – it turns out that no-one asked any questions, because within two minutes I found out that he had had laryngitis, he wasn’t eating, drinking Energade and sucking Halls lozenges by the handful. He wasn’t diabetic at all. Just a bit silly.

We have women being told by gynaes that they ‘have no hormones’; that testing for homocysteine is an expensive waste of time and that candida is just a fad. We see people being prescribed 6 courses of antibiotics in a row for diarrhea, and today’s lady, after eventually being told to take an Immodium at night and live with it…

If it’s frustrating for us in the Health Shop I can only imagine how it is for the patient. I intend to stay as well as I possibly can to prevent me ever having to see a medical professional. Without a doubt any money spent on health promotion is money well spent!