Looking at my latest lab tests, I began to realize the “system” behind what my doctor is 
doing with the help of my lab and my insurance company.
My doctor is looking for lab results that allow him to prescribe a medication. The lab just tested my cholesterol, triglycerides, and A1C at my doctor’s request. These are all standard tests covered by Medicare and ordered as standard from the lab.
Now what you have to understand is that these tests show symptoms. There is an underlying cause for these numbers increasing year after year and as they do, the doctor is going to prescribe me something to treat my symptoms.
The next thing I’m going to hear is that I should begin taking Statins – Lipitor, Crestor, etc. Now after I take this for a number of years, I’ll begin to develop pain and inflammation and we will have to add other drugs to counteract the longer term affects of the Statins.
But make no mistake, the Statin only treated the symptom – it treated high cholesterol by lowering cholesterol.
Meanwhile let’s say that hypothetically I have a longstanding food allergy to milk or to grains – but we didn’t test for any allergies – those would be causes of the problem, not symptoms, and the insurance company and my doctor and most labs aren’t setup for that.
Do you think this scenario is far-fetched? Do you disagree with my characterization of lab tests as simply testing for symptoms? There has been a lot of time and money spent for many years conditioning us to believe the healthcare dogma. I really believe that even our traditional doctors believe in it. They test, and prescribe. My insurance doctor still advises me to “eat less and exercise more.” That pretty much sums it up. Traditional medicine still thinks that overweight and metabolic syndrome symptoms come from poor discipline and eating bad foods.
As time goes on, there are more and more functional medicine doctors springing up around the country – these are doctors who will run tests to check for root causes of problems and won’t assume that they know something just because you have the symptoms.
It’s like this – if you had your foot on the gas peddle of your car and you had it all the way to the floor, but the car was slowly losing speed and slowing down, and you looked at your speedometer and saw it going slower and slower, would you assume the problem was the speedometer? Should we prescribe a Statin for the speedometer to see if it gets better?
