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These days doctors have so many
tests and patients have so many nits to pick that there is a high
probability that patients will be labeled with some disease,
ailment, or condition requiring some sort of medication and further
testing. |
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Going to a doctor to micro-manage
and fine tune your health may expose you to getting mongered.
Mongering is the newly applied term to describe the over-medicalization.
The labeling of patients with micro-trivial, slight abnormalities
based upon some pseudo standard. Sometimes if a patient's test
results fail to fall within some broadly generalized range of
numbers, the doctor labels him as diseased and prescribes
medication. But perhaps this patient's numbers are normal for him,
even though not for the chart's population. |
| Dr.
Lisa Schwartz of Dartmouth Medical School calls
it disease-mongering. She has calculated that if everyone had the
recommended tests for cholesterol, body mass index,
diabetes, and blood sugar, 75% of all US
adults would be called diseased. |
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Women
get mammograms starting at age 40
and every year thereafter. Thyroid
cancer screening is on the rise. Free
skin-screening clinics pop up and doctors
advise people to have their skin examined regularly for cancer. Men
over 50 routinely get a PSA blood test for
prostate cancer as a part of routine
exams. |
| Dr.
Hadler of North Carolina, says the lesson for
Americans is avoid getting labeled through unneeded testing. He
says, "I call that medicalized...
And one of my creeds is that you don't medicalize people unless it
is to their advantage. When you medicalize people, they think
they're sick and in our culture it's, 'Do something, Doc. Don't just
stand there'." |
| Dr.
Hadler's new book about over medicalization is
entitled, "The Last Well Person: How to Stay Well Despite the
Health Care System". The title refers to a story
told by Dr. Clifton K. Meador, director of the Meharry-Vanderbilt
Alliance. The story goes that one day a
doctor-in-training was asked by his professor to define a well
person. The resident thought for a moment and
responded, a well person is "someone
who has not been completely worked up." |
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The lesson is obvious to people
who can consider the obvious. That is, it makes sense to be alert to
changes in our body's functions and appearance. But there is no need
to run to a doctor for tests to uncover something, just anything,
get medicated, and then consider ourselves more healthy. We may
relax our awareness and be more vulnerable to a genuine medical
problem. |
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