Not what I would call an aspirational photo. But I probably got your attention. To be clear I am advocating to avoid this kind of misery and a life not worth living. But you have to take control of everything about your health.

Ill give you another one. My dad had a minor surgery. He was allergic to the anesthesia, so he had seizures and they had to induce a coma. Then they punctured his lung by mistake. That same week my young friend in Italy told me he was going to get tested for anesthesia to make sure he is not allergic. That is something we dont do in this country. Why wouldnt we do that for a 90 year old man?

One more my grandmother caught pneumonia in the hospital and died. So medical mistakes abound. You need to be on top of your own care. Dont even google medical mistakes. Items left inside during surgery, failure to order lab tests. So you can actually insist on lab tests Good luck on preventing them from leaving instruments inside you. in correct medications you can read about that and wrong dosages. So even when it comes to “medical care” performed by your Doctor, you can check that, knowing he or she is busy. Which ironically my sister just did.

I just saw my sister. It is unbelievable what she told me. She was having issues breathing so her primary doctor sent her to a pulmonologist who put her on asthma medication that really hurt her and almost made her pass out climbing the stairs. She went home read the label on her eye drops and it said that it might cause breathing problems. And as it turned out she was allergic to the preservative in it. SHE FIGURED IT OUT. Not her eye doctor, not her primary care doctor, not her pulmonologist. They would have killed her.

So who is nuts here?

So just FYI many of my closest friends are doctors and I know how hard they work. But seriously if they are seeing 100 people a week, which is a mere 20 a day with different ailments and worse yet if they have to do paperwork for insurance, there is no time for a deep dive into your particular issue or needs.

Add to that I recently saw a kidney specialist and as I asked him specific questions about a particular issue, he honesty replied, you probably know more about that than I do.

He went on to say, the fact is that we all have access to the same information today. There is no secret cache of information for Doctors only. If its something of particular interest to you, you can spend 100 hours this week studying it. Obviously a doctor who is entrusted with the care of maybe 100 people this week cant do that. Even if he wanted to spend 100 hours thoroughly researching the issue of each of his 100 patients this week that would require 10,000. hours. At 40 hours a week it would take 5 years for him to allocate that much time.

Are you beginning to understand the math here? Its just not possible for you doctor to do a deep dive into your particular issues. Only you know what you eat each day, what supplments you take, what over the counter medications you take. What else might be causing you problems.

I am sure every single one of you have a story where a family member was almost killed or was actually killed by a medical mistake. Heck I can think of quite a few off the top of my head. Even a few years ago a doctor tried to prescribe a medication for me that would have seriously injured me.

I read the prescribor information and I was 100% contraindicated to take that medication and told him, he said “oh” and decided not to prescribe that,

So if you are not taking care of your own health YOU ARE NUTS. I am not the health nut. You are nuts and are pretty much destined to get sick and die prematurely, PS I would sign up for that program if it was just a matter of dying sooner. But you dont get that lucky. You land up being in constant perhaps excruciating daily pain without energy, maybe in a wheel chair living a miserable life.

Its simply not an option. And its really easy. Read the prescribing information if you have a condition or need a medication. Go to Pubmed.gov type in what your condition is. If there is an alternative that works it will be there. Dont read what people are advertising that will drive you crazy.

If you do see something advertised, go to Pubmed and see what the research says. I just went there to justify my previous sentence and typed in vitamin c for shits and giggles. There were 75,000 studies. In fact in the brief moment I noticed there were studies on Vitamin C an alzheimers and intravaneus vitamin c and cancer. I literally learned something I did not know in 15 seconds. I will have to go back and read them.

But that is where the serious research is. Funny that there are so many studies on Vitamin C and cancer. They are saying it is being used as an adjunct treatment even with chemotherapy to mitigate the side effects of chemo. Decades ago they made fun of people who wanted to do Vitamin C therapy. Today you can easily find an integrative doctor. This is a doctor who will integrate the best of conventional medicine with alternative medicine.

I am in no way advocating bypassing conventional care.

I am advocating DONT BE NUTS. Get involved in your own care. Is the quality of your life not worth a 5 minute read? I can promise you one thing for sure. You have more time to read about your particular issue than your doctor does. In fact if he is a specialist he is probably that much more busy and doesnt have the time to read even the most recent research.

So who is the NUT here? Not the health nut. We need a new name for us. I asked Chat GPT to give me a better name for health nut she said weird long ass names enthusiast etc. How about a human “being” How can you “be” in your life with no knowledge of what to eat, how to stay healthy?

If you want your Iphone or computer or air fryer to work properly you read the instructions. But you seriously would not spend 5 minutes reading how to take care of an illness or issue that you have? You must be nuts if you can say that.

I would call myself “A living human being involved in my own life and wanting to enjoy it.” You can call me a heatlh nut if you want. And I will call you a dumbass. or an ignorant dumbass. I am being kind here because if you are going to leave it up to busy strangers to maybe destroy your life by medical mistakes, mis prescribing and or simply not having time to advise you properly you will live a terrible painful unhealthy life with no one to blame but yourself and simply calling you a dumb ass i overestimating your intelligence.

Signed

Your friendly Health Nut

John 🙂

PS start today go to Pubmed.gov read about anything I just went back and typed in adult acne and found 9000 articles. There is so much research there on everything. Its fun and interesting and more so if it pertains to you or your loved ones. And you can verify the claims about supplements too. I went back again and type in acai. So there were 58 articles you can read to tell you friend trying to sell you on his multilevel marketing jungle juice. And I just tried apples and saw hundreds of articles including the effect of drying apples, as there is such a proliferation of dried fruit snacks today. Have fun with it.