# How to implement healthy treatment solutions

## Lean toward preventative treatments

Prevention is *always* better than treatment.

- Aim for lifestyle habits that can avoid the problems you face instead of external methods to treat the symptoms of your lifestyle.
- From a [marketing perspective](marketing.md), the most [financially advantageous](power-types.md) situation for [many large organizations](mgmt-badsystems.md) is for you to be miserable and dependent on their product (i.e., pharmaceuticals and treatments).

Learn to [stay positive](mind-feelings-happiness.md).

- Often, our [fears](mind-feelings-fear.md) of health problems tend to *increase* our chances of anxiety-based health issues like heart attacks.

Skin moisturizer generally works, but many brands also use desiccants (e.g., formaldehyde) that dry out skin long-term.

Not all vaccines are the same:

1. Some vaccines are simply placebos, meaning they do *nothing* except what you believe they'll do.
2. Historically, most vaccines are collections of dead virus cells that allow the body to attack a dormant virus and learn its specific DNA signature.
   - However, it's not uncommon for vaccines to still have *live* cells mixed into them, so there's always a risk of actually *getting* a small dosage of the disease you're trying to prevent.
   - The vaccine for shingles has been linked to preventing dementia cases.
3. Starting with COVID-19, some vaccines are mRNA gene therapy.
   - They use an advanced technology that swaps out the genetic code in your body's cells.
   - This is, as of the early 2020s, highly experimental, and could potentially cause cancer in the long term.

Most wrinkle-preventing solutions don't work, but tretinoin (branded as Retin-A) does. It also increases UV intake, meaning an increased chance of sunburn.

As soon as you feel a risk to your health or [start aging](hardship-aging.md), adapt a habit of taking routine exams:

- Dental cleaning and checkup every 6 months.
- Blood tests every 6 months.
- Mammograms (for women) yearly after age 35.
- Prostate exams (for men) yearly after age 45.
- If your family has a history of diabetes, get a fasting blood glucose test yearly after age 40.
- However, general annual checkups (even when you're healthy) do *not* do much to save lives because it gives people the [bias](mind-bias.md) that they're fine because the doctor had checked already.

The body works best when it [faces resistance](goodlife.md), but most doctors tend to recommend bed rest for recovery.

- When we push against something, we get stronger, even when recovering.
- Resting after an injury often (even for lower back pain or a heart attack) causes *more* damage.
- If you haven't worked out in a while, shorter bursts of rigorous exercise are *far* faster at getting your body in shape again than prolonged low-exposure exercise.

Cold exposure has been loosely proven to reduce tumor growth.

Many over-the-counter painkillers are *very* effective at suppressing pain:

- Ibuprofen affects the kidneys, and a healthy adult shouldn't go past 3200 mg/day.
- Acetaminophen affects the liver, and a healthy adult shouldn't go past 3000 mg/day.
- Naproxen sodium affects the liver, and a healthy adult shouldn't go past 1375 mg/day the first day and 1100 mg/day every day afterward.
  - Of the three, naproxen sodium is the most effective at treating headaches.

If you need medical equipment, look into what the private payment price is (rather than billing your insurance).

- Most medical equipment (or an inferior version of it) can be purchased at a drug store or online for *far* less.

## Supplement with medication

Doctors can prescribe medication, and the scope of their prescription always gives some clue to its severity:

1. Over-the-counter - can be bought without a prescription, at least in a smaller potency than a prescription
   - These are typically very safe to consume in recommended doses (e.g., cough syrup).
   - If you've received a prescription for a large dose of the substance, you can [save money](money-saving.md) by [doing the math](math.md) on the dosage and taking the over-the-counter equivalent.
   - Barring a major personal health risk, t's almost always worth taking, even if it only alleviates *some* pain,
2. Low-risk - has very few side effects, so doctors will prescribe it nearly every week
   - Take them as prescribed, but don't treat it as a long-term solution.
   - Some of them can be very [addictive](addiction.md) (e.g., opiates).
3. Moderate-risk - has some side effects (especially in a misdiagnosis), so doctors will run a test to be sure
   - These medications are often *very* effective at what they do, to the point that it may be easy to dramatically harm you (e.g., blood pressure medication).
   - Only take them if it's a legitimate emergency and there are no other alternatives like diet or exercise.
4. High-risk - has severe-enough side effects that it requires *other* medication to offset that medication's side effects
   - Only take them if you have no other choice

## Be careful with hospitals

Hospitals are where sick people go.

- A hospital is an incubator for *many* diseases that would otherwise be in manageable doses elsewhere in nature, or wouldn't exist elsewhere.
- If you're only a little sick, aim for urgent care or a remote diagnosis.
- Since your skin is the first line of defense, try to keep any exposed wounds from contact with the air in a hospital.

There are only a few health advantages to being a hospital:

1. All the medical personnel are *very* close, so they'll likely be able to address any urgent event within a few minutes.
2. The hospital has plenty of equipment for dealing with various afflictions that you won't typically find elsewhere.

Therefore, only go to the hospital if it's a severe-enough event that worsens without any explanation.

- If it's a minor issue, you may take home a worse disease than you brought there.

Before going to the hospital, call the nurse line on the back of your insurance card to avoid an expensive or risky trip.

- By calling and being recommended to go to the hospital, the insurance company is more likely to cover you.
- However, if they tell you that you *don't* need to go, you'll likely have to pay the bill yourself.

Make sure, *before* you need it, what your [insurance](money-insurance.md) rules are regarding hospitalizations and care.

- Pay attention to what's in-network and out-of-network, and the conditions that make care covered versus not covered.
- Irrespective of the situation, send *all* medical bills to the insurance company, since they may be able to negotiate a lower price for you even if they don't cover it.

If you *do* visit a hospital, your bills are often negotiable.

- Always ask for an itemized bill, then [haggle](money-4_spending.md) over the clearly arbitrary items.
- Hospitals will often take pennies on the dollar if you're willing to pay directly to them right away.

While in a hospital, the staff will ask what your pain level is, from 1 to 10.

- For some reason (possibly [drug addicts](addiction-substances.md)), they will [bias](mind-bias.md) your experience of 10 as being dramatic, even if it truly is the most severe pain you could imagine.

If you've received similar treatment before, you can save a *lot* of time and energy by communicating what happened and what was prescribed.

- HIPAA regulations make it difficult to access medical records, so you likely know *much* more about your medical history than they do.
- Further, after enough time, medical records sometimes simply disappear.

## Carefully consider invasive treatments

Aim for the least-invasive procedure you can.

- Surgery with local anesthetic is better than general.
- Antibiotics are better than surgery.
- When they're effective, herbal supplements and dietary changes are better than antibiotics.

Often, doctors will [misdiagnose](https://adequate.life/fix/) you:

- No matter how much training they receive, dentists and doctors can still be [technical idiots](https://gainedin.site/idiot/) as much as any other profession.
- There are simply too many possible causes for something that doctors can't read all the available information.
  - Medical error kills 3-10x more people in the USA than [auto](autos.md) accidents every year (not accounting risks from hospital germs), and likely kills more than any cancer.
- For that reason, they'll often pick a "safe" diagnosis (because it's the [greatest risk for them](legal-safety.md) receiving a malpractice lawsuit) or a [fashionable and trendy](trends.md) diagnosis.
- Further, most medical professionals can be paid by pharmaceutical companies to promote medications and treatments that are *not* in your best interests.
- Many edge cases of this playing out:
  - Most doctors trained to do surgery are more likely to recommend surgery, even if it wasn't the ideal treatment ([Law of the Instrument](mind-bias.md)).
  - Cancer treatments are far more [profitable](mgmt-badsystems.md) than cancer cures, which is why there aren't many advertised.
  - Often, anemia diagnosis (iron deficiency) may come from multiple other factors.

Stay cautious about *any* bodily surgery.

- Your body's systems are designed to work *very* well without any further involvement, so only take surgery as a last resort.
- Even minor surgeries (e.g., laser eye surgery, stomach stapling, plastic surgery) come with unadvertised risks.
- Get a test of your affected organs (e.g., EKG, MRI) *after* the procedure to ensure it's resolved.

If you ever need technology installed (e.g., pacemaker), opt for the computers in it to be [open-source](legal-ip-floss.md).

- You should have control over everything in your body, even synthetic things.

The medical industry is always finding new techniques that *aren't* invasive.

- Prostate cancer could be cured with electric currents.
- New engineered materials can reconnect severed nerves.

Consider all the side effects of *any* drugs you choose to take.

- Some drugs' side effects are worse than the cure.
- Often, we can become over-reliant on prescription drugs instead of [letting our body perform for itself](trends.md).
- If the drug is an opioid, it's addictive, and if it's a painkiller its *results* can be addictive.
- Some treatments are simply productive uses of dangerous things (e.g., Botox, or "botulism toxin", is injecting localized botulism into your face).

If you're going to die soon anyway, it really doesn't matter.

- Our lives all end [far too soon](legacy.md), and the side effects of a treatment that may save your life are worth it for yourself.
- If there's an experimental treatment you wish to use, take advantage of right-to-try laws.
  - Often, you may have to find another doctor or move to a different region to get the treatment you need.