Is Google a Health Resource or a Rabbit Hole of Fear?

Have you used Google search to look up your symptoms?
Have you speculated about what you are suffering from and found Google useful?
Have you looked up health tips?
Foods to eat?
Exercise regimes and tips?

If you answered yes to any or most of these questions you are in good company!
Because the truth is that, even though Google searching is fraught with the potential for wrong information and misdiagnosis, the benefits, at least to this writer and researcher, far outweigh the drawbacks.

Imagine a world without a decent search engine. Imagine it being taken away from us at this point where we have got so used to it. It’s nigh on impossible to imagine. Google is intertwined with our existence, for good and bad, and usually both, and like most of these things, we either make it work for us or it may well work against, or leave us behind.

Make no mistake, it’s almost a certainty that the doctor you go and see in real life, who you depend on for precision diagnosis and ‘absolute authority,’ uses Google. Some don’t, most do. I have witnessed this with my own eyes twice, and at first it shocked me and even made me laugh, but since the second time I remember actually thinking, ‘Why Not?’
What is wrong with my doctor using this extensive resource?

I think we have old paradigm beliefs about the sacrosanct role of the doctor. Somehow we have elevated doctor to the level of wise man, sage, ultimate authority and ‘god.’ Well maybe god is a bit much but you get my point! We expect the doctor to be the font of all knowledge and never have to refer to books or Google. Surely they are supposed to know all?

MEDICAL SYSTEM IS THE NEW CHURCH.

But this is quite obviously an illusion and I believe we should cut these doctors some slack and realise they are just the arbiters and representatives of a system called the medical system. While we uphold the medical system as the only system, the ultimate body church we all pray at, and the only answer to this vast issue of illness, we are going to be trapped in the need to elevate the doctor onto a pedestal. And we all know what happens when one is on a pedestal, the only way is down.

What I am saying is lets realise the doctor is fallible, human, and in the dark about many things. I have been let down, disappointed and frustrated as many times as relieved, by my doctor. So much of the time they simply don’t have answers and go through the ‘referring you to a specialist’ stuff. They don’t know about food and diets, they don’t know about how interconnected the mind and emotions are with health, they don’t know about herbs and traditional remedies and, in the UK, only spend 10 short minutes with you anyway. 

10 minutes is not enough time to get to grips wth your health or illness. Period.

Unfortunately the doctor is also caught in the elevation of their starring role in your health. many of them are caught up in their own power I am afraid to say. And then if you go to see them and happen to say ‘I have been researching my symptoms on Google and have some ideas,’ you may well get the ‘eye roll’ as I call it. Or they could be downright hostile to you.

DO NOT LET THAT PUT YOU OFF.

Recently I have had a relatively new doctor I have seen for this unbelievable rash I couldn’t get to grips with. I talked to this doctor honestly and openly about preferring natural healing, wanting to take responsibility, and what I have been exploring on Google. I was totally non confrontational and actually asked for his help. Luckily he was open to my ideas and we explored them. Some of them he said ‘Absolutely no way it could be that,’ and other ideas he said, ‘Let’s test and see,’ and so we did.

He reflected my need to be directly involved in my own health investigation. He could see how important it was for me to know what was causing this issue. I didn’t just want medication, in fact I didn’t want meds at all, but I wanted to know.

And he responded to this warmly and encouragingly. That is how change will happen.

Sometimes I think we want the system to change from the outside first, we want the doctors and the medical system to wake up and transform itself. But it has been proved time and time again that systems only change when there is a movement that forces them to change.

Which brings me back to Google. Now I am not suggesting Google is the answer to the problems facing us in illness and health. Google itself will not spark the revolution in health we so badly need.

BUT. Google is empowerment of the patient. Google is information. It is such a valuable resource it has to be included in your toolbox of resources. And the more you use it, diligently and intelligently, the better it gets and the more it reveals.

A couple of tips for using Google:
Take the emotionality out of it. Don’t let it inflame your fear. It can and it will feed fear if you let it. If you are afraid and fearful, don’t use it. Computers and internet tend to amplify our mental and emotional states, believe me I know this for myself. So be warned, and if in doubt do not use!!
Be open to what arrives through Google, and try different phrases and words, scroll down and find alternative sites not just the top ones, particularly the sponsored ones, and use it as an exploration of possibilities, until you get more experienced.
Ask a loved one to help and do it together. It sounds like weird fun but actually it engages you both in a kind of detective mission.

THE EMPOWERED AND INFORMED PATIENT OF THE FUTURE.

Consider this. You are, in the long term, changing your relationship to this holy ‘doctor’ idea. In the longterm it is you who are going to be at the centre of your health and wellbeing. With radical new testing gadgets and apps coming on line and usable at home, and with so many alternative possibilities available for healing illness, the future is all about change. And that makes the doctor a vital part of your health team, but only a part, not the whole thing.

And Google, or other search engines if you prefer, is going to be a very useful and necessary part of your research and responsibility.

But you are going to be at the centre of it. It is a vital part of the change. When we say, and this quote is so often used, ‘Be the change you want to see in the world,’ we need to include our personal care responsibility with every other thing we do. An informed and insightful, a wise and intelligent patient is one who will take preventative action as well as remedial.

There is a revolution taking place this century, and informed and engaged patients are at the centre of it. It is very exciting.

If you don’t believe me, check out this article recently published.
The Blockbuster Drug of the Century – An Engaged Patient.

Thanks for reading, happy searching!

Patient and Doctor Must Awaken. It’s Not About Taking Sides.

I just had a good interaction with a doctor I saw for the first time!

I know, Im shocked as well. I try and avoid doctors I must admit, for a variety of reasons. But sometimes its necessary because there is something that only conventional medicine can do, like acute stuff, some blood testing (in the UK) amongst other things. I don’t mind telling you that our local surgery down here on the south coast of the UK, which is quite a poor area, has been a disaster for me over the years. The first doctor I saw back on 2011 was holding on for retirement and was somewhere between inept, beaten down after years of work, and indifferent. I complained about him (something I rarely do) and moved doctors. Since then I have seen a number of different doctors, temporary most of them, and been met with impatience and rudeness, or curt coldness. It hasn’t been easy but one presses on.

And of course for a guy who will defer to natural, alternative solution, 95% of the time, the conventional model cannot really offer any solutions anyway. Oh god the stories I could tell you…

But anyway, I have had a growing problem on the back of my leg, a kind of spot that didn’t heal and has grown into a kind of ulcer. Ive spoken to someone who flagged up that it needed attention, and it wasn’t responding to all the usual natural treatments, so off I trotted this morning expecting the usual treatment, and I was really pleasantly welcomed by this guy.

He listened as I told him, a bit chaotically, about the two things I was there for, a check of thyroid, and this ulcer thing on my leg. I told him about my history with Inflammatory Bowel Disease and how I choose natural healing always if possible, and he actually asked a really good question! Ive never been asked by a doctor before in 12 years of healing Ulcerative Colitis how I dealt with the acute phase.. NEVER…And that is a great question because its the time that people are hospitalised or take the volume of steroids…It doesn’t matter what the answer was but the fact that we had the dialogue and he listened to my answer, which was about detoxification and Ayurvedic medicine, showed that we were in relationship. He was really listening!

It was two way. I respected him and he respected me. He said that when there was something worth listening to he listened, therefore validating my experience. It wasn’t a situation whereby he was defending conventional medicine and I was attacking it. I have moved very much from that stance over the years, and see things from a very different perspective now. He himself advocated a more integrated system that could offer people choice instead of this monopoly based system we currently have. But his hands were tied by the very system he was serving. It was so refreshing to hear him speak in this way I shook his hand and left really quite elated. I was there 10 minutes, but those 10 minutes were valuable in so many ways.

You see to me there are fundamental flaws in the system, and many people know it. Those people are frustrated doctors as well as frustrated patients. Doctors really are not all bad drug pushers, and many are as enslaved by the shortcomings of the system as the patients. Over the years I have been quite damning about doctors, but recently I have turned my attention to patients. I know that the solution to current problems of the mostly dysfunctional relationship between doctors and patients will only be solved by all parties and systemically, but patients do have a big role to play.

What does that mean?

It means patients have to play a bigger part in their illness, their lifestyle choices, their food choices, their addiction, their relationship with their own health and wellbeing.
And so often, I’m afraid to say they are not.

We, and I include myself in this patient thing, really need to wake up and see that this almost total dependency on the whole institution of medicine as the solution to all health problems is a red herring that only feeds the pharmaceutical corporations and renders us, the public, quite powerless to explore alternatives.
And that is simply because conventional medicine is a monopoly. It is a single product system, and owns the market 100%.
Look anywhere else in the market place, at any other area of life, pretty much anywhere, and you see choice, variety, competition. The whole of the modern world is built on the fundamental principle of competition and choice. But when it comes to end user choice in what we call medicine the only choice is conventional medicine. What happened to Homeopathy, herbal treatments, diet, Ayurveda, Naturopathy?
I think anyone who has any awareness and knowledge knows that the system was hijacked by pharmaceutical corporations, and thats that.
Alternative options have been eradicated by this monopoly during the 20th century. And we the people are paying for it.
Lack of choice is unacceptable.

We the people need to help doctors, not to blame them.
We need to tell them we are not happy and that we demand choice and freedom to investigate alternatives.
Doctors WILL NOT BE ABLE TO MAKE ANY CHANGES BY THEMSELVES. Their hands are tied. They are bound by contracts, bound by rules that tell them what they can and cannot do. Look into the cancer industry, really look, and research, and you will be horrified by how manipulated it is. It is scandalous. But the general public, ignorant of such things, and in a state of confusion and fear at the state of their health, just go along with the whole thing without questioning it at all.

The absolute bottom line here is this. Each human being has a choice, at least we are still free enough to have a choice. Whether ignorant, sane, hoodwinked, manipulated  and cheated, each person who walks into the doctors is making a choice. When you free yourself up from the shackles of thinking that the only choice is conventional medicine, and you (or someone you know), choose a natural alternative treatment, AND IT WORKS AS IT DID FOR ME, then the system will have to change. It really comes down to choice. Choice is fed by education, awareness, information and action. As each one of us bucks the system and heals, tells their doctor and spreads the word, so things change. they can’t stay this way forever, so something is going to happen.

It is up to each us to start to build a better relationship with themselves and their doctor.

Thanks for reading!