HEALTH
SO, HERE ARE A FEW TIPS ON HOW TO
APPROACH DOCTORS ABOUT A TREATMENT THEY MAY NOT HAVE HEARD OF.
First—and very important—DON’T say, “I found
this treatment on the INTERNET.” Doctors hate
that. It reminds me of my Dad, a general practitioner in the 1960s and ‘70s. Patients used
to bring him articles about treatments they
learned about in the Readers Digest. He hated
that. He found the idea that his patients might
believe the Readers Digest knew more than he
did very upsetting. Doctors today view the information you find on the Internet the same
way.
When people call me and say “I told my doctor I
found a treatment on the Internet that I want to
try,” I tell them, “I wish you had spoken with me
before you did that.”
HERE’S WHAT YOU SHOULD DO.
First, learn a lot about the treatment you want
to try. Go online; research. Before you ask your
doctor to prescribe a treatment for you, know what
you’re talking about. Gather a LOT of information,
but don’t share all of it with your doctor. Put together a FEW articles you think will be convincing
and put them neatly in a folder designed to make a
convincing presentation.
I help my clients figure out which articles to share
with their doctors. I tell them to choose the articles
that are CLOSEST to the kinds of scholarly articles doctors like to see.
With Low Dose Naltrexone, I share an article that
was published in Alternative Therapies Magazine:
an interview with Dr. Bernard Bihari, the doctor
who pioneered the use of LDN for autoimmune diseases. This interview is impressive: Your doctor will
learn that Dr. Bihari was Harvard-educated, and
double-board certified in neurology and psychiatry, and that he ran several New York City programs
for heroin addicts. Your doctor will also learn about
how Dr. Bihari became knowledgeable about naltrexone, a drug originally approved by the FDA at
high doses for treating heroin addicts, and how he
discovered that lower doses helped many people
with autoimmune diseases. It’s an impressive arti-
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cle that happens to be published in an alternative
medical publication. But still, it would influence
any doctor who is at all open to learning about
something new from a patient.
So if you can, find an article like this that is equally
impressive about the treatment YOU want to try.
Second, a lot of these treatments have had studies performed on them. Small studies, but studies
nonetheless. And often these studies have been
performed at prestigious institutions and published in equally prestigious publications. It will really help your cause if you share studies like these
with your doctor.
If possible, bring the WHOLE studies as originally
published, rather than abstracts.
For instance, if you happen to have Crohn’s disease
and want to try Low Dose Naltrexone, three studies
performed at Penn State show LDN to be effective
for Crohn’s. The studies were published, respectively, in the American Journal of Gastroenterology,
Digestive Diseases and Sciences, and the Journal of
Clinical Gastroenterology. You may have to pay to
get the full articles, but you usually won’t have to
pay much.
Similarly, if you want to try Low Dose Naltrexone
for fibromyalgia, three studies were performed at
Stanford University, published respectively in Pain
Medicine, Arthritis & Rheumatology and Clinical
Rheumatology, all showing LDN to be effective.
Before you ask your doctor
to prescribe a treatment
for you, know what you’re
talking about. Gather a LOT
of information, but don’t
share all of it with your
doctor.