Hey, flag, come on. You can talk all you want and it won't impact diabetes. But it's undeniable that talk therapy can help people suffering from a variety of mental issues. I'm not saying everyone, but I'm also saying it's a lot more effective than attempting to talk someone out of a sugar coma would be. You can't medicine someone off of a ledge if they are already there. If you can manage your potential health problems without paying into Big Pharma, I say, do it. I also say, don't buy into a hot drug the pharmaceutical companies are pushing because it's a money maker - aka, just be skeptical. Anti-inflammatories are probably nowhere near the Cadillac or even the Mustang of drugs for drug developers. However, with the prevalence of depression in our current population, if you started pushing them as an add-on treatment non-discriminately you could probably build a large market rather quickly. If you can't, or if you can't reasonably, then use what you have available to you. I don't take aspirin often, but sometimes I have an awful headache and nothing else has helped. If you're obese and you haven't had success losing weight through traditional methods I'm not going to sit at the table and judge you if you go for lap band surgery. Frankly, not really my business or place to judge. I think we over-prescribe and I think we prescribe instead of treating problems via methods that promote, in general, healthy lifestyles. It is however foolish to say that, for instance, exercise will cure suicidal depression. In fact it's not foolish it's downright dangerous. Talk therapy works well for a lot of people suffering from a vast variety of disorders. Sometimes it's vital that patients also take medication, like a lot of BDP sufferers for instance. Therapy can help patients who aren't prone to staying on medicine once they feel "better" stick to it - people suffering from bipolar disorder for instance, who often go off their meds after a period of initial success. If we have to choose between medication that helps the symptoms of depression and no medication at all of course I choose the former, because any help is better than none. But I'm also extremely skeptical of the fact that we can fix people with ingrained mental issues only using medicine. You can make a poop pill to cure an anorexic but until the anorexic does a lot of work fixing what's in his or her own head, they will refuse that cure. I have seen people with mental issues or disorders who find that disorder comforting, who believe it is justified, and that living another way or trying to fix their issues would be failure. We have to talk to those people. We have to change their minds as well as their chemistry.
I see what you mean. But I think a lot of people get sadness -- let's call it small-d depression -- mixed up with Depression. I think it's very possible that talking helps sad people. I do not think that talking can help someone with a physical problem in their brain, or in their immune system. "Healthy lifestyles," to me, means getting rid of the disorder, not trying and potentially succeeding to get rid of the disorder using holistic methods because we're angry at Big Pharma. In a nutshell, this is where we disagree. I think unhappiness and negativity and that sort of thing ought to be fixed with talk therapy, to avoid needless dosages and chemical interference. But let's leave actual diseases to the doctors. Discriminating between the two is very difficult, right now, but the point of this article is that it won't always have to be.But I'm also extremely skeptical of the fact that we can fix people with ingrained mental issues only using medicine.
Here's a problem though. As it currently stands in the west, we isolate illness/disease/suffering from a person. In doing so, we isolate the person from most of their other normal social connections. In his book Stranger in the Village of the Sick, Paul Stoller details a fundamental difference between the Biomedical approach to healing that his oncologist/oncology team takes back in the States, and the approach of his sorcery master in Niger. I'll attempt to illustrate below. Someone gets a positive cancer diagnosis, and then suddenly their life changes drastically. They spend hours and hours sitting, sometimes alone, waiting for test results, or hooked up to various therapy devices. They are lied to about the discomfort of procedures (Common practice, becoming less common now. Honest docs get higher patient satisfaction ratings than ones who lie about pain/discomfort levels), and are often left without anyone to explain to them the 'why?' of it all. While a person with cancer may be receiving appropriate biochemical care for their illness, mentally/emotionally/spiritually they are left out in the cold. This void can be filled by religion for some folks, family/friends for others, but the biggest aid seems to come from doctors who are genuinely interested in their patients understanding of their illness, and who make the effort to not only look at the chart and biological data, but the person. Call it the placebo effect, call it the blessing of Aesculapius, all I know is that it makes people get better, and it usually makes them get better faster. A talented physician reduces suffering in whatever manner they can. If that includes allowing a patient a chance to say a quick prayer with the physician to whatever deity/spirit/ancestor they believe guards them, I say it is a goodness, and I would love to hear the counterarguments. Edited for clarity. It's late and I should stop posting like this.But let's leave actual diseases to the doctors.