“Take Care!” With this traditional parting phrase, we express our feelings for our friends and show our priorities. When I see you again, be healthy. Keep your health. Not “Be rich!” or “Be famous!” but “Take care of yourself!”
This book is about how to take care of yourself. For us, this phrase has four meanings:
First, “take care of yourself” means maintaining the habits that lead to vigor and health and that postpone aging. Your lifestyle is your most important guarantee of lifelong vigor, and you can postpone most serious chronic diseases by making the right choices about how to live. You can prevent most bad health.
Second, “take care of yourself” means periodic monitoring for those few diseases that can sneak up on you without clear warning, such as high blood pressure, cancer of the breast or cervix, glaucoma, or dental decay. In such cases, taking care of yourself may mean going to a health professional for assistance.
Third, “take care of yourself” means to respond decisively to new medical problems. Most often, your response should be self-care, and you can act as your own doctor. At other times, however, you need professional help. Responding decisively means that you pay particular attention to the decision about going, or not going, to see the doctor. This book, more than any other, helps you make that decision.
Many people think that all illness must be treated at the doctor’s office. In fact, most new problems already are treated at home, and a much larger number could be. The public has not had guidelines to determine when the doctor is needed and when not. In the United States, the average person sees a doctor slightly more than five times a year. Over 3 billion prescriptions are written each year, about eight for each man, woman, and child. Medical costs now average over $8,000 per person per year—over 18% of our gross national product. In total, over $3 trillion each year. Among the billions of different medical services used each year, some are lifesaving, some result in great health improvement, and some give great comfort. But some are totally unnecessary, and some are even harmful.
In our national quest for a symptom-free existence, we make millions of unnecessary visits to doctors—as many as 70% of all visits for new problems. For example, 11% of such visits are for uncomplicated colds. Many others are for minor cuts that do not require stitches, for tetanus shots despite current immunizations, for minor ankle sprains, and for the other problems discussed in this book. But while you don’t need a doctor to treat most coughs, you do for some. For every ten or so cuts that don’t require stitches, there is one that does. For every type of problem, there are some instances in which you should decide to see the doctor and some in which you should not.
These are critically important decisions. If you delay a visit to the doctor when you really need medical attention, you may suffer unnecessary discomfort or leave a serious illness untreated. On the other hand, if you go to the doctor when you don’t need to, you waste time, and you may lose money or dignity. You may lose confidence in your own ability to judge your health and in the healing power of your own body. You can even suffer unnecessary physical harm if you receive a drug that you don’t need or have a test that you don’t require. Your doctor is in an uncomfortable position when you come in unnecessarily and may feel obligated to practice “defensive medicine” just in case you have a bad result and a good lawyer.
This book, above all else, is intended to help you with the decision of when to see your doctor. It gives you a “second opinion” within easy reach on your bookshelf. It helps you make sound judgments about your own health.
The fourth meaning of our title is this: your health is your responsibility; it depends on your decisions. There is no other way to be healthy than to “take care of yourself.” You have to decide how to live, what to do to age more slowly, whether to see a doctor, which doctor to see, how soon to go, whether to take the advice offered. No one else can make these decisions, and they profoundly affect your future health. To be healthy, you have to be in charge.
Take care of yourself!
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James F. Fries, MD Stanford, California |
Donald M. Vickery, MD Evergreen, Colorado |