A Real Doctor

 

Most exciting news of the week!! The RejuvaMatrix not only continues to show regeneration of telomeres, a masters student has just reported that tissue culture cells of liver and kidney live over TWICE as long as controls when exposed to the RM daily!

“What this patient needs is a REAL Doctor” (C)
C. Norman Shealy, M.D., Ph.D.

Dr. Eugene A. Stead, Jr, Duke’s Internal Medicine Chief when I was in medical school, often said laconically, “What this patient needs is a good doctor.”  He never defined good but his questions and model were obvious. To me a good doctor is a REAL doctor! A real doctor is one who really listens to the patient AND looks at every possible explanation for the total picture. Admittedly this was over 50 years ago when life was far less complicated and when the PharmacoMafia did not OWN medicine and when the Insurance Mafia did not control the schedule. And I might add when HOSPITALS did not own physician practices. Talk about a conflict of interest!!

In emergency situations, one often has to use instant judgment to save a life. In the vast majority of situations outside the emergency room, one needs TIME and patience to evaluate and address the patient’s needs. I never spent less than an hour with a new patient or half an hour with a return patient. I think it is IMPOSSIBLE to evaluate and decide the optimal approach to any non-emergency situation in 7 minutes!

I have now seen scores of patients who have had coronary by-pass surgery with no evauation of homocysteine and essentially no evaluation of lifestyle. I have seen many patients who have spent thousands of dollars at that big midwestern clinic that is the “court of last resort”. Often I have seen total ignorance in their records of evaluating or commenting on “incidental” findings such as polyneuropathy, memory problems, etc. A slightly elevated cholesterol is treated as if there is a deficiency of statins! No attention to stress, diet, exercise, relaxation, or safe nutirents which reduce cholesterol. They often do not even suggest the safest alternative introduced at THAT famous clinic 50 years ago–niacin!

Common sense has indeed become the most uncommon commodity in American Medicine today. Real doctors are a thing of the distant past. Until we return to REAL doctors, the mess we currently have will only get worse! And as long as hospitals own physician practices and private insurance companies capriciously decide who lives and who dies there can be no real doctors in “the system”. The few that exist struggle outside the system which is currently slated to become far worse!