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• Karen A Tutt
  Published on: 23 November 2015

• Published on: 23 November 2015

  • Karen A Tutt, Hospital Aide

  Dear Dr Jorgensen,

  Several things occur to me from your article.

  1. This study took place in a Western country. I suggest that the sample with undiagnosed illnesses are more likely to have fallen prey to the Western delusion that we can live on a poor diet, overeat, drink alcohol to excess, do no exercise, not sleep enough, and when our bodies start falling apart, the medical system will be able to ret...

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  Dear Dr Jorgensen,

  Several things occur to me from your article.

  1. This study took place in a Western country. I suggest that the sample with undiagnosed illnesses are more likely to have fallen prey to the Western delusion that we can live on a poor diet, overeat, drink alcohol to excess, do no exercise, not sleep enough, and when our bodies start falling apart, the medical system will be able to return us to 100% health using drugs and surgery. These people's perception that their health is "good", is part of this delusion. I have noticed that Westerners accept a very low state of health as "normal": osteoporosis and arthritis are seen as part of getting old, when in fact they are Western diseases, with diet and lifestyle components; stress incontinence is seen as being part of being a woman, while it is actually much more common in overweight people; a state of permanent mild constipation is mistaken for healthy bowel function. While I don't know about thyroid dysfunction, I believe that diabetes mellitus and hypertension are diseases of Western civilization. So a sample with these diseases is perhaps more likely to comprise people who are well and truly immersed in the above delusion.

  2. The Western medical paradigm pays little attention to an individual's ability to maintain good health on a day-to-day basis, using diet, lifestyle, and simple home remedies. Until recently, our health system was authoritarian, with an expectation that "patients" will do what the doctor orders, without question. In this paradigm, a person finding that they have signs of incipient disease is likely to feel helpless. Pharmaceutical companies, which I understand fund a lot of medical research, have no interest in the population realising what can be achieved with simple things like dietary changes. Cultures where traditional medicine is practiced alongside modern medicine, such as China and Germany, may have a different attitude to health and disease.

  I may have drawn mistaken conclusions, as I was not able to read and understand your entire article, and my initial impressions were gained from a Reuters news item about your work. Bearing this in mind, my feeling is, the fact that early diagnosis can lead to poor self-rated health, which in turn is tied to a greater risk of death (in a Western country) suggests, not that we should keep people in ignorance, but that we should change our perception of what health is: not merely the absence of those diseases detectable by current Western medical practice.

  Conflict of Interest:

  None declared

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  Conflict of Interest:
  None declared.

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