Treating symptoms instead of root causes often leads to the rise of new symptoms, often called “side effects”, which then require more tests, drugs, and surgeries of their own. The physician prescribes yet more medicine, and up goes the risk of these different symptoms becoming another disease as the initial condition morphs into others, driving the chaos and the expense even higher. Meanwhile, the dentist just keeps fixing the broken teeth and performing root canals on the ones that hurt. The treatments of disease causes even greater disease, recovery becomes more difficult, and further diagnosis of the root cause becomes even more impossible. It is a true case of the blind leading the blind.
Unfortunately, this approach feeds another phenomenon: fear-driven medicine. Doctors are burdened by two rivaling fears: 1) the fear of making a mistake and being sued by the patient; and 2) the fear of punishment by their boards the authorities who supervise and license them if they dare depart from accepted standards of practice, regardless of whether those standards are actually sound or even helpful to the patient.
These fears are real, and they root deep in a doctor’s psyche. The threat of losing one’s professional license eventually evokes a knee-jerk fear response. Doctors and dentists start to practice defensive medicine. They over-test, over-treat, and over medicate, driving costs even higher. The impact of this affects more than our pocketbooks and the pocketbooks of our country. It negatively impacts everyone’s health, the quality of our society, and the health of our planet.
At BioDentist, we aggressively practice proactive, biological medicine. We don’t take insurance, which means we don’t answer to for-profit corporations when it comes to making the best choices for your health. And we expect our patients to play an active, engaged role in their health. More than anything, your health will define the quality and quantity of life that you live. And it all starts with a healthy mouth.
Yours for Better Health,
John E. Augspurger, DDS
