Healthy No Matter What by Alex Jadad & Tamen Jadad-Garcia

Author:Alex Jadad & Tamen Jadad-Garcia [Jadad, Alex & Jadad-Garcia, Tamen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Crown
Published: 2023-01-30T00:00:00+00:00

Too Much Medicine

There is a fine line between doing too little and doing too much. Sometimes doing nothing carries risk, including not using an effective vaccine, not performing a particular test, or waiting for some symptom to go away. Even staying in bed “resting” can cause lethal blood clots in the legs. More common, though, are the harms associated with doing too much.

Given our evolutionary history, it is natural and in principle good for your adaptability to worry and be alert about potential risks. At a time of abundant medical resources, more might seem like a good idea and soothe your worries in the present. However, more medicine, by itself, may become a greater risk than what was worrying you in the first place.

There is such a thing as “too much medicine.” This happens when diagnoses or medical activities increase with very little gain. More is done with lesser results, and in many cases causes much more harm than good.

What is underlying this excessiveness? Everyone is trying to protect themselves: patients, doctors, insurers, sales representatives, researchers, politicians, investors, administrators, and the list goes on.

Too much medicine is manifested through expanded disease definitions, the invention of bogus illnesses, uncritical adoption of population screening, commercial vested interests, intransigent clinical beliefs, increased patient expectations, litigation, aversion to uncertainty, and the unnecessary introduction of new technology. All of this stokes your natural urges as an individual to do more, making you feel that you are contributing to your adaptability. Instead, your efforts may be pushing you into harm’s way by increasing the number of unnecessary encounters with the medical industrial complex. This is seen all over the world, with doctor visits ranging from an average of 2 per person per year in Costa Rica to more than 17 in South Korea.

What is the best way to avoid harm from medical overconsumption? There are opportunities to curb this negative outcome by managing anxiety and better judging what is enough in terms of worrying, testing, diagnosing, treating, informing, and improving.

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