It's Your Health - Be The Empowered Patient

Creating Health vs Treating Disease

Creating health, can be done by controlling your diet, eating the right amount of nutrients, reducing stress, avoiding bad foods - junk food, artifical foods, alcohol, not sleeping to name a few. A person should actively create his / her own health and avoid diseases and disease treatment.

Creating Health is taking care of one's health. Setting health goals to achieve and motivate yourself to get the best resuts. However, there are a few mistakes which should be avoided : taking antioxidants, taking hormones and ignoring your weakest link. . 

Always remember, the health care system is very top heavy. It's doctor and hospital focused vs patient- and community-centered. The health care system has led people to believe that their health has to be in the hands of the health care system, that they don't have the power to control their health.  It's my opinion, that we do have the power to control our health and we do not have to wait for the health care system to solve our health care problems. 

I'm a firm believer that self-care is where this all starts, and that health conditions can be solved without a physician. In fact, those patients who are going to physicians to solve those problems are not getting results -- people with migraines and irritable bowel and reflux and obesity and diabetes and high blood pressure. They're getting medications that are band-aids on the symptoms but not really dealing with the cause. 

I'm encouraging people to not treat disease but create health because when you do the disease goes away as a side effect of creating health. So the plans that Naturopathic Doctors give people, and the programs they implement are pathways for people to take care of themselves and to solve their own health issues. They Create Health And you can do that by finding out where your imbalances are and taking a series of action steps. 

So, how do you become an Empowered Patient? 

• Do your own research. 
• Find out what kinds of treatments are available that your doctor may not know about that can help you. 
• Find an MD who supports Naturopathic health. 
• Find a Naturopathic Doctor
• Learn about natural healing and how changing your lifestyle can help.

At the end of the day, you're the one who makes the decisions about what to do for yourself, whether to take this medication or not, whether to change your diet. Whatever you're doing is your choice, and you have to find a MD or ND (Doctor of Natural Medicine) who you can partner with. 

And I encourage you to ask questions, to engage MDs and NDs, to be an active patient, to be an empowered patient, to not just take everything at face value, to do your homework. 

It's your body. It's your life, and handing it over without any sense of ownership about that, is not a great idea. 

What steps are you taking to becoming an Empowered Patient?

Donald Grandy

Precision Nutrition Certification - Pn1
Sport and Exercise Coach

dongrandy@gmail.com

*This content is strictly for informational and educational purposes only. It is not intended to provide medical advice or to take the place of medical advice or treatment from a personal physician. All viewers of this content are advised to consult their doctors or qualified health professionals regarding specific health questions. All viewers of this content, especially those taking prescription or over-the-counter medications, should consult their physicians before beginning any nutrition, supplement or lifestyle program.