Healthcare reform and hypogonadism - Part 1 Comments

There is a lot of prejudice and passive acceptance in these kinds of issues especially in the medical profession. I am willing to open up wellness.com with the Personal Care Community to make this one of our center piece issues. Wellness.com has the power to organize around zip codes and to find pharmacies and physicians who will support this. We might even have labs where people can order their own testing. I have two close nieces (one is a nurse) in London that could help us in the UK. The point being is that people and their play group (what I call work and play) need to take charge of this issue themselves and self organize. Beth, can you outline some points and we can design this thing on the blog and create appropriate web pages? (e.g., books, writings, resources, discussion sections, etc) I would expect people to pay something for you guidelines, and I would expect any lab or labs to be sponsors or something. In my ideal world, people take the center of their preventive health care: not hospitals, doctors, insurance companies, or government. I see Wellness.com as the tool they use. Health care can only be personal. donald

It is very difficult to get Health Care providers to agree that hypogonadism is anything other then natural, normal and indeed desirable. I'm in the Uk where I have been following the USA Heath Care reform debate with interest. The British NHS is hostile towards allowing long term treatment of female hypogonadism. It is my belief that often these people are using a sub conscious knee jerk reaction and effectively stating " nature has deemed that you have finshed your fertile years - therefor we have no interest in preserving your standard of life and it is time for sufferers of hypogonadism to fade into the background" I have located a very good endocrinologist but many other women are left to suffer and effectively are robbed of an enjoyable life because of Western cultural belief that hormones are only for younger people. Things must change and I will do all that I can to raise awareness of this covert discrimination. Louise

Donald, Empowering both the general public and the medical community with information that is not tainted with politics should be a goal of our healthcare system however sadly, it is not. Providing information that can be used to treat a mild illness to prevent it from becoming a major illness is a good example of preventative medicine. I would be happy to publish my guidelines for the treatment of hypogonadism and profound hypogonadism. I know that many people would be interested because I am asked regularly for referrals for all over the US, Canada, England and Australia. I am also asked regularly by medical practitioners for information on how to treat these endocrinopathies and to refer them to patients seeking this treatment. Please, count me in. I would like to be part of the wellness.com community that helps to support those interested in creating a healthcare system based on prevention of disease rather than the way it is now. Beth

Beth: I totally agree. The disease industrial complex has become an end to itself as it bankrupts our economy. It is so frustrating as a physician to work in this environment with good people, yet they are so stuck in the disease model that cannot see the “forest in the trees.” It is absurd what we are paying for health care and absurd for the poor outcome we get relative to the money we spend as a national community. I had prostate cancer myself in my forties and my testosterone levels were low. But, there is no financial benefit to study prevention, especially with natural replacement, in the way the disease industrial complex is structured. Only disease treatments make big money it seems. My solution is to arouse the common sense of the people and create a market force for reasonable natural hormone replacement for men and woman of appropriate age and seriously look at the so called ‘alternative markets’ in nutrition, traditional Chinese medications, homeopathy, and health psychology, which are all based in lost cost prevention. But, above all, I believe that people in their own personal space need to take charge of their health to the best of their ability and demand the kinds of prevention that they want to do anyway-- if anyone would listen to them. Individuals have little power. Groups have a lot…. What if women and men wanted preventive minded physicians and other practitioners to follow our guidelines? What if we (wellness.com) were organized as a market force? Wellness.com has the electronic structure to do this by recruiting people and practitioners based on common sense philosophy and practices regardless of the national politics. What if your guidelines for hormone replacement therapy were published on wellness.com with appropriate resources and the people demanded to know what practitioners in their zip code understands this or is willing to look at it? It seems so simple. Yet, people I expected to support me in this so far talk a lot but do not engage. Any ideas? Donald McGee