By wendy, on November 3rd, 2011%
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By Wendy Burnett
The Health Activist Writer’s Month Challenge Prompts (#HAWMC) for day two is to write about a TV show based on my life or blog . . . I LOVE this! My mind is going wild with ideas, but they’re all based on the same theme. The only real problem right now is a name. I have absolutely no idea what to call it, and I’m hoping that by the time I hit the end of the post I’ll have come up with something.
The format is dead easy, as soon as I read the prompt I knew I wanted something like a cross between Dr. Oz and Dr. Phil (without the confrontational pseudo-therapy.) The focus is living well in spite of having chronic illnesses and educating “normals” about the difficulties we face every day.
This gives me a huge range of possible guests; life coaches and psychologists, medical doctors that specialize in pain management and various chronic illnesses, massage therapists, herbalists, aromatherapists, acupuncturists, reflexologists, chiropractors, health activists, nutritionists, specialists in ergonomics and accessibility, lawyers that specialize in disability issues and patients with different issues and combinations of illnesses.
Not only that, but the combinations are endless. Panels of patients discussing how hard it is to get adequate pain relief or trying to find doctors that don’t treat them like addicts, debates between allopathic physicians and holistic physicians, massage therapists and aromatherapists discussing how their specialties can be combined, discussions between pain management doctors who believe that opioids are a necessary tool and doctors who refuse to prescribe pain medications at all, etc., etc., etc.
So many possibilities, so many topics . . .
This post was written as part of NHBPM – 30 health posts in 30 days: http://bit.ly/vU0g9J
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By wendy, on November 2nd, 2011%
 By Wendy Burnett
WEGO Health is having a month long event called “The Health Activist Writer’s Month Challenge” (#HAWMC) through November. It sounded pretty interesting, and I can always use more ideas for posts, so I decided to participate even though I didn’t find out about it until I was getting ready for work yesterday. I’m already a day late with my first post, but I figure what the hell, it’s only one extra post, so here we go . . .
The prompt for the first post is “Titles of my future book. Come up with 5 working titles and a quick book jacket synopsis.” This is actually an easy one for me, since all of these books are in the process of being written, and the synopsis is just the basic premise of each book. I don’t know if they’ll ever be published through a traditional publisher, but they will all be available as both e-books and Kindle editions when I finish them.
Making Your Own Medicine: A Guide to Adding Herbs to Your Treatment Plan - The use of herbs (and other alternative treatments) can improve quality of life and reduce the need for medications, IF they are used safely and appropriately. This guide provides information about how to safely integrate alternative treatments, how-to’s for creating herbal treatments, and resources for finding more information.
Suffering is Optional: My Life with Chronic Illness - Although I have pain and fatigue (and lots of other symptoms,) I don’t suffer from them. They don’t make me miserable, or cause me psychological distress, or make me unhappy. Continue reading Current Projects: Titles of My Future Books »
By wendy, on July 26th, 2011%
By Wendy Burnett
Hypocrisy runs rampant in medicine. Check out this little excerpt from an article about ginger for medicinal use, and pay particular attention to the italicized sentence.
Osteoarthritis
Trials exploring the anti-inflammatory and pain-relieving effects of ginger have provided mixed results, with the majority of trials showing a trend toward pain relief greater than placebo but less than traditional anti-inflammatory drugs. Several trials have methodological flaws, including sponsorship by ginger-manufacturing companies. (emphasis mine) Mechanisms of action have been proposed and include inhibition of prostaglandin and leukotriene synthesis. – excerpted from http://www.drugs.com/npp/ginger.html
Now think about who pays for the studies on prescription medications. The FDA? Nope, not even close. The US government? The government does sponsor some studies of prescription drugs, but not even close to all of them. You want to know who funds the vast majority of clinical trials of prescription medications? The companies that make them, that’s who!
So why is it that clinical trials and studies of prescription medications are considered trustworthy, even though they’re paid for by the very companies that have the most to gain from a positive result? If those studies are acceptable, why are studies sponsored by companies that make herbal supplements considered “questionable” simply because they’re also paid for by a company that has a vested interest in the results?
This kind of attitude causes the medical establishment to refuse to consider alternative treatments, even when those treatments have good science behind them, simply because they’re paid for by the people who make money off them. Doesn’t that mean that they should also take a second look at prescription medications when the studies supporting them are paid for by the company that makes them?
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"The moral test of a society is how that society treats those who are in the dawn of life . . . the children; those who are in the twilight of life . . . the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life . . . the sick, the needy, and the handicapped."
---Hubert Humphrey
Welcome to the new home of Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired. I hope you'll enjoy the changes, and the new resources I'll be adding as I have time to work on the site. Things will look a bit odd while I learn where and how to modify the appearance, so please bear with me.
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