Best Doctor's Advice I Ever Got
It was off the wall, unconventional, free, and it fixed my back problem.
Maybe I’ve Told This Story Before
But I don’t mind repeating it. I’m a rideshare driver. One day, as I rolled up to the airport arrivals lane, I found a leather shoulder bag. I picked it up. In the bag, were two nice Mac laptops, a lot of documents, and an I.D. badge for a doctor. I’ll Call him “Ben.”
I called airport security. Turned out Ben had called about the bag and left his number. I called him. We met at a local hospital. His story was he had just moved to my city and was going to do his doctoring here from now on.
I had been having bad back trouble for close to a year, so I asked him, “Since you’re a doctor, can I ask you about my back problem?”
“Sure. What are your symptoms?”
I told him. I thought maybe it was a sciatic nerve thing. A local chiropractor had done nothing helpful, so I didn’t know where to turn. His answer? It blew me away, and it fixed my back!
“If it’s sciatic, it could be a hundred or more things happening. It could be something else, too. Here’s what I suggest. Get on YouTube. Search for people who say they can help with the symptoms you have, and be sure to read the comments. If they have a lot of positive comments and thank you’s, try what they suggest. Might be exercises, stretches, and so forth. Take it easy, and if their ideas help, stay with it.”
I did what he suggested. I found three YouTubers with good information. In less than a month, my abiding pain level when walking was reduced from 6-7 down to 2-3. Since that day, five months ago, it now bothers me only slightly, usually first thing in the morning. A warm shower or a bit of moving around, and the pain is nonexistent. I don’t take naproxen sodium every morning; before, I’d take three pills after my morning toast.
This simple approach, out of the box, non-medical, without bone-cracking or the over-use of the Chiro’s “actuator,” seems to have actually dealt with the cause of my back problem without trying to just mask symptoms. And it was free; as opposed to the chiropractor’s $2,000 bill and his suggestion of spinal surgery, which I had rejected immediately.
This anonymous and kind doctor, “Ben,” cured my problem with an unusual approach. Maybe partly because he was anonymous in my situation, he wasn’t hindered by rules and mandates. I was grateful that he didn’t just say, “You should see your own doctor about this.” He actually helped. Maybe he felt grateful that his bag was returned intact, with some obviously valuable contents. (For which he rewarded me with a hundred bucks.) Or maybe he’s just a good, honest, out-of-the-box-thinking doctor.
Why Aren’t More Doctors Like Him? Why do most docs simply send us away with a pill or potion? Are they constrained by too many factors that we don’t appreciate or understand?
Seems To Me, There Are Doctors, and Then, There Are Doctors
Why are so many articles on Substack about the failure of modern medicine to treat and cure problems that might actually be curable if the emphasis wasn’t on quickly alleviating symptoms? In the articles and “Take Control of Your Health” podcasts by Dr. Joseph M. Mercola and articles in “The Forgotten Side of Medicine” by the unnamed “A Midwestern Doctor,” the exposés from Steve Kirsch, articles by Dr. Peter A. McCullough, Dr. Pierre Kory, and others, the facts and problems are well detailed.
We are given PPIs and OTC meds for heartburn to cut down stomach acid, when the problem is overwhelmingly shown in medical studies to be the opposite: not enough stomach acid.1
We are prescribed SSRIs (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors) for depression, when studies have shown that serotonin may not be its cause. Not only that, but the FDA itself strongly cautions that some of those drugs can cause suicidality, aberrant mental problems and behavior, sometimes violent.2,3
We were forced in many cases and coerced and constantly cajoled, as a general population to take a “safe and effective” shot to prevent Covid-19—a shot that was only granted an Experimental Use Authorization (EUA) by the FDA, which should not have been granted (under FDA rules) because there were known treatments for Covid-19 already extant, as has been since proven. (And, they’ve admitted, the shot did not prevent transmission or infection of C-19.) And, Riddle me this, Batman: Why should we trust a chemical soup in a syringe, when the manufacturer refuses to make it available unless they are protected from liability by the federal government?
There is obviously something wrong with some current doctoring practices.
Doctors: Out of Time
Doctors are loaded down with so much literature that, if they read it, they would have no time do be doctoring. Too many developments, cautions and changes. I read recently that if a doctor read everything he or she needed to read in order to stay abreast of developments, they’d be reading for eighteen hours every day! Simply not possible.
So, what do they do? One thing is to rely on pharmaceutical sales reps to give them the high points of their companies’ meds. These sales reps are some of the best and highest paid salespeople in the country, a group seldom noticed by us, the patients. If you search on Amazon for “pharmaceutical sales rep” in the books section, you will find five pages of books on how to be a “top pharmaceutical sales rep,” “earn big money as a pharmaceutical sales rep,” “sales rep journal,” etc. It’s a great job for those who have the gift of gab, don’t mind coloring the truth, and can easily handle pointed questions. I imagine the Vioxx sales reps did pretty well, until it was withdrawn. (“Research later published in the medical journal Lancet estimates that 88,000 Americans had heart attacks from taking Vioxx, and 38,000 of them died.”4)
According to a book by a former sales rep named Gwen Olsen, Confessions of an Rx Drug Pusher5, whose niece committed suicide while on antidepressant drugs, a pharma sales rep has great latitude in what they can offer. It’s more than just drug samples. They give doctors trips to vacation spots, well paid speaking engagements, dinners, show tickets, and many other “gifts” calculated to create a memorable impression of the rep and his or her company’s products. They’ve been doing this for years, and now, in some cases, they have the government in their corner. (The same government that allows TV drug ads in the US, unlike other countries. Doctors report that patients frequently ask for a drug they “saw on TV.”)
So, next time you’re waiting forty minutes past your appointment time in the little treatment room, try to give your doctor a break. And when they recommend a drug that you have investigated6 and found to be alarming, be sure to ask them many, many questions.
Why Stomach Acid Is Good For You, Jonathan V. Wright and Lane Lenard; publ. M.Evans; 2001. https://www.amazon.com/dp/0871319314
https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/drugsatfda_docs/label/2023/018936%20s112lbl.pdf
(Boxed warning top left, first page of 25+-page label)
This Present Madness, W. Cory, Publ. Niche Publishing, 2015. https://amazon.com/dp/B0B2NDP4PW
Confessions of an Rx Drug Pusher, Gwen Olsen, publ. iUniverse, 2009 https://www.amazon.com/dp/1935278592
“How to Investigate A Prescription Drug,” W. Cory, AtTheRubicon.substack.com, 1A Magazine, Jan. 8, 2024