LifeCare Chiropractic

The Best Chiropractic Care in Mesa, Arizona

colonoscopy

DIETARY CHANGES CAN IMPROVE INFLAMMATORY DISEASES – (03-27-06)

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Bifidogenic growth stimulator for the treatment of active ulcerative colitis

Out of all the autoimmune conditions I see in my office, inflammatory bowel disease definitely tops the list. Just last week I had a patient who had a colonoscopy done and had some mild inflammation. Her GI doc’s recommendation? Wait and watch. How’s that for proactive prevention?

A better management approach would include dietary changes to include increased soluble fiber, probiotic supplementation and EFAs. All of these have been shown to lower inflammation in the GI tract. Or, you could just wait until the inflammation builds enough to actually be classified as a disease state…

Read entire article here

BENEFICIAL EFFECTS OF VITAMIN D – (02-11-07)

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Vitamin D Status in Relation to One-Year Risk of Recurrent Falling in Older Men and Women

While I have not seen any guesses as to the mechanism of how this occurs, the findings in this study are staggerring.  Low levels of Vit D led to almost 5 times the risk of falling.  Five times.  I firmly believe that our current public health stance that produces fear mongering sunlight exposure is one of the more damaging things that is occurring to our health.

Some studies find that Vit D deficiency is as high as 75% of the population.  Given the wide range of beneficial effects of Vit D, these findings should be viewed as a public health alarm, gravely more dangerous to our health than not getting our flu shot or making sure you don’t miss that colonoscopy.  So why does this remain a secret?  There may be some serious face lost if we have to reverse our national recommendations for sun exposure.

Read entire article here

IS COLONOSCOPY OVERUSED?

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I’m pretty sure there are no readers out there that actually enjoy the process of a colonoscopy.  (actually–it’s the day BEFORE the procedure that’s the rough part)  We have them done because we are fearful of the ramifications of not finding a cancer early enough.  We follow our physicians’ recommendations as to how often they should be repeated if we have a clear report.  Our doctors are, of course, following the recommendations determined from the medical literature, right?

Not even close.  The recommendations for those with a clean colonoscopy is to wait 10 years before the next one.  In this particular study of Medicare patients, repeat colonoscopies were done too soon in almost 43% of patients.  This is a tremendous waste of resources.

Now, I understand that early detection saves lives.  But we also need to understand that false positives, which occur with a degree of regularity with any cancer screening, come with their own set of problems.  Dangers with the procedure itself (anesthesia, biopsy, etc..) or the stress of a potentially dire diagnosis create additional testing and costs.  With any type of screening, there is balance that needs to be obtained.  We cannot afford to test every single person every single year and identify potential problems that may never develop into real problems.  The health care system here in the US is already massively expensive without this added burden.

The answer?  Prevention coupled with appropriate screening.  Colon cancer has a very long list of things that we KNOW contribute to it.  Prediabetes, animal based diets, constipation, low fiber (both soluble and insoluble), imbalanced bacteria in the gut, heterocyclic amines from grilled foods and probably 20 other things I’m forgetting right now.  The more we do on prevention, the less important the screenings become.  The poorer our lifestyles, the more important the screenings become.  Personally, I would rather prevent something from happening rather than catching it earl

http://archinte.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/archinternmed.2011.212?etoc