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Tag : disease
Know Your Vitamin D Number test
You know your height and weight. You probably have a rough idea about your cholesterol number and what it should be. You might know your blood pressure. But there’s another number that most people don’t know, but should.
That number is your 25 hydroxy vitamin D level. Modern Americans avoid sun exposure in an effort to avoid wrinkles and skin cancer. But skipping the sunshine means that they don’t make enough vitamin D. Many studies have now established that the lower your vitamin D, the higher your risk of cancer, autoimmune disease, and premature death.
I recommend that everyone get their vitamin D checked
Posted in:
Dr. Mixon's Longevity Journal, Supplements
Is it Prevention or is it Early Diagnosis?
Everyone seems to agree that prevention of disease is critically important, but most of what doctors do under the heading of preventive care is not prevention, it’s really just early diagnosis.
Pap smears and mammograms don’t prevent breast and cervical cancer; they help us diagnose them early. Prostate exams, chest x-rays, and your annual physical don’t prevent disease, they help us find it early. It is possible not to have a disease, but still be weak, tired, and overweight, while robust good health means being fast, strong, lean, smart, and sexy.
But fast, strong, lean, smart, and sexy pretty much define optimal health, and optimal health requires you and your doctor working together to change your lifestyle, enhance your diet and supplements, move your hormones back to a robust youthful level, and boost your immune system. This is the direction I think medicine should be moving.
Posted in:
Dr. Mixon's Longevity Journal
The Danger of Undertreated Gout
Gout is the most common inflammatory arthritis in America. It is more common than rheumatoid arthritis. It has the capacity to completely destroy your joints and leave you severely disabled. It’s acute attacks are exquisitely painful, in fact, they are usually described as agonizing.
And yet, except when someone presents with an acute attack, the disease is often not taken seriously enough by either patients or their physicians. If you suffer from gout, make sure your doctor puts you on a daily medication designed to lower your uric acid level. You need to be taking this medication every day, even when you are not having an attack. Your uric acid levels should be carefully adjusted to the middle of a healthy person's range. A uric acid level in the high normal range is not acceptable for you.
You can effectively cure this disease, but you need to take control of your care.
Posted in:
Dr. Mixon's Longevity Journal
Spend Your Money on Something Other Than Your Annual Checkup
The annual medical checkup is worthless.
You have probably heard that you should go to your doctor at least once a year to get your annual checkup. But a recent meta-analysis of 14 large studies demonstrated that annual exams seem to have no significant impact on your health or survival. In fact, serious questions were raised about not just the unnecessary cost of the yearly routine physical, but about both the cost and harm being done to people due to over diagnosis and treatment of conditions that are found during the exams.
It seems that people who seldom or never get their annual physicals develop serious conditions, get hospitalized or die, at about the same rate as those who do. People who do go for their annual physicals spend a lot more money on both medications and medical care during their lifetime. But they are no healthier!
Spend your money with a comprehensive and preventative clinic like Longevity Medical Clinic. We believe we
Posted in:
Dr. Mixon's Longevity Journal
Ditching the Disease Management Model
We don’t have a healthcare system. What we have is a disease management system, but disease management is just second rate.
We should be working to make you as healthy as possible. Failing that, our fallback should be treating disease. Unfortunately, most doctors spend virtually all of their time treating disease rather than improving health. But improving health requires active participation by Dr. and patient, while treating disease is often done with the patient in a passive role. Unfortunately, most physicians have focused on treating disease for so long they don’t even know what the optimal laboratory and physiologic ranges are anymore.
When you see your doctor don’t accept normal as the goal. Ask what the optimal range is. If your doctor doesn’t know the difference between optimal and normal, change doctors.
Posted in:
Disease Prevention, Dr. Mixon's Longevity Journal
