I’m reading The Patient Paradox – about the medicalisation of the healthy.
McCartney is a GP and she puts this so simply and eloquently, I had to share:
I’m reading The Patient Paradox – about the medicalisation of the healthy.
McCartney is a GP and she puts this so simply and eloquently, I had to share:
Don’t smoke.
Don’t drink excessively, and not every day.
Eat a wide variety of foods, mainly fruits and vegetables. Excercise daily, and if you can, make it sociable.
Have a job you like.
See people and do things you enjoy.
Stay reasonably trim.
And don’t be poor.
That’s it folks. I guess, largely, we all know that. But in the search for ever more complicated external reasons for what we are led to believe is the apparent fragility of our own state of health, the charge is that we are over-doing it, searching for illness, when we should be maintaining health.
I like the fact that she covers physical, nutritional and mental health, and is clear about the social determinants of health.
There’s a lot more on modern medicine’s tendency to turn healthy people into patients at the cost of their health and the finances of the health system. But for now, that’s my favourite.