Health care Lecture Essay

Summary Dr. Curtis’ lecture was one of healthcare and how it relates to his profession, chiropractic medicine. He also hit on health in general and medications. Dr. Curtis started rather quite abruptly with his self helping theories as to what he does as a profession and also what other medical fields are doing to help him become rich, yet keep the healthcare level of the United States down to the lower levels it has been hovering at for years. This may be in direct contradiction to the fact that even though the United States only has three percent of the world’s population, it still consumes more than half of the drugs produced in the world. What does this tell the reader? Dr. Curtis explained that a lot of these drugs are not needed, and in fact have actually hurt the patients. As proof, he stated some startling facts from the American Journal of Medicine and the New England Journal of Medicine, perhaps the two top most medical specific journals in the world. Some of these facts included that one hundred and sox thousand people die every year from properly proscribed drugs. Per year, there are seven thousand medical errors resulting in someone dying. One point five million people have Introgenic diseases, or physician caused diseases. It is estimated that the United States as a whole is spending seventy seven billion dollars a year fixing these problems. These indeed are very troublesome statistics. Dr. Curtis also goes on to explain that the reason why the United States continues to spend excess amounts of money for drugs and procedures they do not need is because of mainly one thing, advertising. Billions of dollars are spent on advertising for drugs every year. Over one hundred and thirty  two dollars were spent last years on advertising alone. Often companies give kickbacks like trips or bonuses to doctors that proscribe a certain number prescriptions of a specific drug. This practice, which should be illegal, is what is known as Off Label Promoting. The United States populace continues to believe advertising of drugs. The advertisements don’t tell the truth most of the time. For example, twenty percent of antibiotic prescriptions are useless. What is bad is that when people take unneeded antibiotics, they raise their immunity to them, and they will not work next time, or people will have to up the dosage to get it to work. This is extremely bad for health reasons, considering that if patients were to mix two or more drugs, there is an eighty eight percent change of adverse side effects, even more illness and injury. The Food and Drug Administration Agency is not helping matters either. The practice of rushing promising drugs like Fen-Fen to the market without proper timed tests has added to the health problems of the United States. Dr. Curtis is not saying do not go to the doctor, he is just saying to make sure you are doing the correct thing, which included getting second opinions, and doing your own research on drugs and what they can and cannot really do. Sometimes Doctors can not be trusted because of the one hundred and sixty drugs labeled by the FDA as ‘do not use’, people still proscribe them. With only a selection of twenty three out of those one hundred and sixty drugs, there are still one hundred million prescriptions being filled. These are drugs known to do harm, and they are still being prescribed. One must be vigilant in his own healthcare is the message of the day. Reflections At first I didn’t even know what Dr. Curtis was a doctor in, however due to time constraints I understand that the normal introduction and background speech has to be cut. I have listened to many doctors speak and lecture, not nearly enough as professors and other professionals of course, but enough to know that normally there is at least five minutes of talking about oneself before the actual lecture begins. Also, he being young did not add to me actually listening to his opinions that well. However, Dr. Curtis did not  give many opinions and his statements were backed up quite well and documented quite nicely as well. He obviously put in the needed time to prepare the lecture. Time constraints not only cut up his lecture, but also his speech pattern as well. Normally lectures should be flowing, his statements were extremely choppy. He states many things that were actually surprising to me. Not the fact of advertising, I already knew that, but I didn’t realize the actual statistics of these healthcare problems, and that a lot were caused by those in the healthcare field. His explanations as to how his field fitted into his lecture were actually quite easy to understand. The fact that stress messes up your nervous system, which in turns messes up the rest of you, is basically what he was saying without stating his words verbatim. He explains that even though the United States is third best in the world in what we eat, we still have one of the lowest life expectancies. I enjoyed his explanation as to how posture really controls a lot of health problems. He explains that proper diet, mental attitude, exercise, a non-stressed nervous system, and plenty of rest and relaxation are the keys to keeping the body as self healing as it is designed to do. Overall I enjoyed the lecture and learned quite a lot out of it.