Here on the forum, we spend a lot of time responding to newbies (and plenty of others too) who want to tell us all about what their doctors have to say. We know what doctors have to say. We want you to have more, and better, information than just what your doctors want you to have. So, for the benefit of anyone who did not receive Christine's last e-mail newsletter, I am reprinting here in its entirety her excellent essay on this subject.
A REVIEW OF THE WHOLE WOMAN PERSPECTIVE ON THE MEDICAL SYSTEM
by Christine Kent
October 10, 2014
We get so many questions about conventional treatments for prolapse, I feel the need to review the problems with the medical system when it comes to chronic conditions like prolapse, chronic hip pain, or diastasis recti (separation of the long abdominal muscles).
I know many of you rightly gravitate to natural solutions to health issues. But we have had many women come to us who just can’t seem to let go of their various doctors.
While seeing the medical system as the ultimate safety net between us and the hereafter is understandable, western medicine needs to be thought of in two different ways, or perhaps two segments: the system that deals with acuity, meaning acute conditions like trauma or infectious disease, and chronicity, meaning those long term conditions like prolapse, hip osteoarthritis, osteoporosis and many others.
Today, western medicine is dominated by two approaches to “health care” or what is actually disease care. They are drugs and surgery. These approaches often are very effective for acute conditions. If someone is seriously injured in an automobile accident, trauma surgeons work wonders at keeping them alive and putting them back together. And, in spite of their misuse, overuse, and carelessness about dangerous drug combinations, the drug industry has done a remarkable job at controlling what was even early in the last century a discouraging list of deadly diseases.
But, there is an old saying, which my husband Lanny is prone to quoting, “If the only tool you have is a hammer, every job looks like a nail.” Drugs and surgery are rarely appropriate for chronic conditions, but the medical system cheerfully wields them both on patients with these kinds of conditions, and all too often the results are catastrophic.
A useful guideline is that surgery is something you do when the alternative is death.
Of course there are exceptions such as cataract surgery. But for example, there is virtually never a legitimate medical reason for hysterectomy, and yet half a million of these surgeries are performed in the US alone every year. That makes it a multi-billion dollar industry, which cannot medically justify its own existence.
For the many post-hysterectomy friends at Whole Woman, this comment is not intended to rub salt in your wounds, so to speak. Many of you trusted your doctor when he/she made the recommendation for hysterectomy. And many (but not all) of you have lived to regret that decision. What matters is that we learn from it and move forward.
If my work of re-describing the female anatomy and identifying the postural root cause of pelvic organ prolapse and hip osteoarthritis were adopted by gynecology and orthopedics, these disciplines would all but disappear virtually overnight. They cannot stand up to scrutiny of the Whole Woman paradigm. No one inside this industry wants to see this happen.
They would be killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.
Gynecologists have only four recommendations in their bag of tricks for prolapse:
1. Do nothing and see what happens. Obviously this is not very useful and certainly isn’t going to help your condition any. The only benefit is that it gives the patient time to search the internet and discover Whole Woman!
2. Doing kegel exercises. If you have read my article, Why Kegels Don’t Work, you know that they are ill conceived, are useless, and are very likely to make your condition worse. A doctor may send you to a physical therapist, who will almost certainly tell you to do kegels, and may try to earn their keep with vaginal weights and instruments for measuring how hard you can squeeze. The results are predictable. They will not stabilize and reverse the condition.
3. The next act of this drama will be a pessary, the silicone rubber device inserted in the vagina to keep the bladder from pushing in from the front (cystocele) and the rectum from pushing in from the back (rectocele), or to keep the uterus pushed forward away from the vaginal opening. Aside from the fact that a pessary is rarely effective for rectocele, it may provide some comfort for a time, but it has no therapeutic value at all.
4. Which brings us to the grand finale, where it becomes clear that the first three acts were just a slippery slope to justify the final “cure” — surgery.
This is where it was headed all along.
Why? Because gynecologists are surgeons. It is what they do, how they were trained, what they like, and most importantly, how they make their money. They certainly don’t pay for that expensive office space and staff by doing PAP smears. No, surgery is where the money is.
Orthopedics has its own version of this drama, with similar acts but the same ultimate result: convince the patient that everything possible has been done and the only recourse is surgery.
We have had many women ask us why we aren’t better known, why doctors aren’t supporting this work, as they should be.
When you understand how the medical system functions, it becomes apparent that it is actually a prison for doctors. They are constrained by their “standards of care”. Any step outside those guidelines leaves them wide open for malpractice litigation, non-payment from insurance companies, and/or the derision of their peers.
In many states, physical therapists can only be seen with a doctor’s prescription. So while as a group, PTs tend to be more open minded, their livelihood is generally dependent on good relations with doctors. They are unlikely to rock the boat too hard.
Even doctors in academia, who theoretically bring objectivity to the process and are above mere commercial interests, have to submit their research to a jury of peers for approval for publishing. Their research is also usually heavily subsidized by drug and surgical supply companies. Who in that process wants to be the one to point out that for over 500 years the medical system has completely misunderstood female anatomy and caused untold suffering for its patients and suggest that the industry should basically cease to exist? So the research studies compare this surgery to that, which is the equivalent of studying how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
Actually, on three different occasions, doctors tried to point out the anatomical error to their peers. Once was in the ’50’s by a gynecologist, once in the ‘90s by two veterinarians who challenged the human medical system for not addressing this 500 year old blunder, and a few years later by a pair of well known urogynecologists. They were all completely ignored.
The Whole Woman paradigm of natural postural alignment cannot co-exist with the traditional medical model. They are mutually exclusive and there is no middle ground.
One of the hardest parts of the Whole Woman work is coming to terms with the reality that the medical system has absolutely nothing to offer you when it comes to prolapse or chronic hip pain. The system is worse than useless because their methods do untold damage to huge numbers of women every year.
I have noticed over the years that women on the forum who continuously report on their latest doctor visit, seldom are successful with the Whole Woman work. I never discourage women from getting a diagnosis and opinion. I just encourage them to get all the facts and make up their own minds. Doctors don’t have to live with the consequences of their actions; their patients do.
As much as we need to trust the medical system, it is essential that we realize we have an economic conflict of interest with our doctors.
To make matters worse, I recently read a news article about a young man who had surgery for three herniated disks in his neck. He had planned the event with his insurance company, budgeted for the part he would have to pay, and underwent what appears to have been a successful procedure. Imagine his surprise when he received a bill for a second surgeon he had never met and had no idea would be involved. The bill was for $117,000 for which he was personally liable because the second surgeon wasn’t covered by his plan. It’s a wonder he didn’t have a heart attack on the spot.
It seems now that the Affordable Care Act in the US is pressuring the medical system to reduce costs, some surgeons are teaming up with others who are not in their insurance system and therefore neither covered nor constrained by the insurance company’s schedule of what they will pay. They bring in their buddy to “assist” in the surgery, send out an outrageous bill and split the take between them.
The article also included the example of a surgeon brought in by a buddy to sew up a four-inch incision, for which the patient was charged $250,000. Another was the patient who was assisted to the bathroom by a physical therapist who happened to be in the room and who slapped a $400 charge on the bill for providing that service.
The worst of it is that there is often no recourse for this kind of malfeasance, although I have no doubt these kinds of abuses will be challenged in the courts and eventually brought under control. Having surgery for a chronic condition is bad enough, but if you add the risk of this kind of financial abuse over which you have little or no control, surgery becomes an even scarier proposition.
As Whole Woman students, you have access to the most accurate and complete anatomic and exercise information available in the world today. Make good use of it!
