A Candid Discussion About Your Health

By Darryl A. Hill, MD

Laurel Medical Associates, LLC

. http://laurelmedicine.com

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A Candid Discussion About Your Health

I have had the privilege to work as a doctor for a long time. I have met a variety of personalities and have shared some of the innermost secrets and thoughts of my patients. I appreciate the trust and education that these experiences give us doctors. I have found that almost everyone treasures their health and wants to live a long and healthy life. The relationship between a doctor and patient is paramount. Despite the challenges of our healthcare system, this partnership still is fundamental to our health. There are simply many things that doctor Google, robots and the Internet can not do.

Surprisingly, we all yearn for good health but few of us want to live our lives in such a way to warrant this outcome. It is imperative that we all implement significant lifestyle changes so that we can stay healthy for as long as possible. Let me add, this includes everyone including health providers such as myself.

The increased levels of diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, sleep apnea and cholesterol challenges all can improve simply by a change of activity and diet. Worldwide, heart disease is the leading cause of death regardless of race, ethnicity or sex and costs in the U.S. alone surpass $300 billion dollars. The cost of the other conditions also are not sustainable.

Some may wonder how did we get to this point. Why are we not living as long or longer than our parents? Is it the environment, our busy work schedules, has the quality of our food changed or have we evolved into a new physiologic organism. All of these are feasible. In addition, has the intelligence and marketing strategies of the food industry taught us how to consume more of high calorie poor quality foods. We all have our different opinions. One thing is for sure change has come. There is only one person who can fix this, and it is not the government or your insurance company.

We all will have to look inside and see what is applicable to our personal lives. I encourage everyone to eat high quality, whole grain foods everyday. Foods like broccoli, spinach, apples, beans, oatmeal are some of the best foods out there. It has become all too easy and expected to eat fast food and eat out. There is no question that this needs to change. Cutting down on meats, fried foods, simple sugars will only help the weight and the waistline to decrease. When this happens, we will see change. It will take time but it will happen.

In our health system, there are a lot of changes. I am sure you have noticed the new technology, longer waits for appointments and now even more discussion about life style changes. In my opinion we all can get better and do better. This will improve our health, decrease healthcare spending and help reduce our dependency on medications.