THE MISCONCEPTION OF MODERN MEDICINE
While still a medical student, he goes to the emergency room in his spare time, almost always throwing himself to the ground by saying that he is in severe pain, in addition to traffic accidents or heart attacks, or We used to come across unconscious patients who would growl exaggeratedly between their locked teeth and occasionally measure the reaction of their surroundings.
Relatives in a panic would try to convince every white-coat person they saw of the urgency of the situation, saying that their patients had had at least three or four more seizures since the night. Since we do not have the responsibility to treat yet, we would be content with watching. One of us would surely smile mischievously and bring his index finger to his head, pointing out that the patient’s problem was in his mind. This signal would mean that, among us, that person wasn’t really sick. The patient was often given a sedative injection and sent home.
As noise and fuss soon overpowered the interesting view, we would get bored after a while, slowly slip out of the emergency room and leave ourselves to the freedom of the garden. Were these people really sick? Could throwing oneself to the ground or pretending to faint could be a disease in itself? If so, what prompted them to act this way? Moreover, we frequently encountered most of these patients in outpatient clinics where they applied with chronic diseases such as migraine, psoriasis, gastrointestinal diseases or asthma. They often did not respond to treatment. These diseases were generally grouped under the title of ‘psychosomatic illness’, which in Turkish means ‘physical illness of mental origin’.
It is interesting that although the fact that people can experience mental problems for social and economic reasons, and mental problems can cause physical diseases, is something even the most ordinary people know, what a comprehensive scientific explanation and explanation of our medical education on this subject, apart from naming it. nor was he proposing a useful treatment.
Today, although we have molecular level evidence of the relationship between social and mental factors and physical diseases, medical education and practices are unfortunately not much different from my student years! Today, we know that about 85% of diseases, from heart to migraine, colitis to cancer, have spiritual origins.
On the other hand, medical treatments almost always aim to eliminate only somatic complaints.
This approach is like treating people like a broken car. Let’s open this example, because it bears great similarities. A bad driver crashes his car left and right, does not maintain it, uses it inefficiently, and when there are many problems, he takes it to the mechanic. The mechanic also repairs the deteriorated parts of the car, paints it, patch it if necessary, and replaces the parts that need to be replaced. What they do resembles our drug treatments, by-pass and organ transplant surgeries. Then the mechanic delivers the repaired vehicle to the driver. A short time later, the car returns to the mechanic. Because the driver who drives the car has not changed.
In our modern medical method, bodily treatments are performed without focusing on the driver, that is, the mind and spirit that uses the body. The structure of the society in which people live and the effects of the economic situation on the health of the person are not discussed. The human spirit, which is constantly stressed, depressed and anxious, makes the body sick again and again as a result of both the direct effect of these negative emotions and the behaviors such as smoking, alcohol, drugs and overeating to cope with the problems.
Now, to give an example of this painting from daily life, let’s take a look at Mr. Hasan, whose real job is to be a driver. Hasan Bey is a 45-year-old, slender, gray-haired gentleman who earned his living as a taxi driver in someone else’s car. In addition to the tiredness created by the unbelievable chaos of Istanbul traffic, there is a fear of life safety due to the frequent extortion and murder of taxi drivers. On days when customers and income are low, he withstands the scolding of his boss. No job security. He could lose his job at any moment.
Since the money he receives is limited, it is difficult to even pay the rent for most months. One of her children is studying and the other left high school to contribute to the house and started working in a textile workshop with minimum wage. His wife suffers from constant knee pains due to the excessive humidity of their ground floor house. All this is a source of stress for Mr. Hasan. Constant stress causes some hormones and substances to be secreted from Hasan Bey’s brain and body. These substances are the kind that seriously harm his health.
The most common complaints are fatigue, shortness of breath, insomnia and pain in the chest area. A doctor he went to about five years ago told him he had heart disease. Hasan Bey needs to lead a stress-free life and pay attention to what he eats and drinks. He does not have the financial means to buy plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables, lean white meat, fish, and antioxidant vitamins necessary for a healthy diet, which is insistently emphasized in the health columns of the newspapers he reads at the taxi stand from time to time. Its diet mainly relies on floury foods such as bread and pasta due to its cheapness. Home meals are cooked with the cheapest margarine instead of olive oil.
The only entertainment in Hasan Bey’s world is the cigarette he smokes all day long. Although he has been feeling more and more uncomfortable after every cigarette lately, he cannot break from this habit. His world is very seedy and dark without dopamine, the molecule of pleasure that nicotine releases in his brain.
Hasan Bey is taken to the hospital by his friends at the bus stop when the pain in his chest intensifies one afternoon. Later? I don’t know what happened to Hasan Bey afterwards either. There are several possibilities:
Hasan Bey may have died on the way to the hospital. If Hasan Bey was alive, insured and able to receive sufficient attention in the hospital, his heart vessels were examined and he was recommended to have his coronary vessels replaced, since there were probably occlusions. The veins taken from his leg were replaced by the clogged veins in his heart with a surgery called by-pass. After the operation, if his former boss is merciful enough and Hasan Bey has the power to steer, he will return to his old job as he has no other source of income.
It’s hard to even imagine the conditions in which there is no chance of returning to his old job. If he can go back to work, the conditions that made him sick this time will not be late to say “welcome” to the new veins removed from Hasan Bey’s legs and inserted into his heart. Unfortunately, like the original veins that are removed, new vessels have limited strength, and there is no reason why they should not become inaccessible to the blood flow after a while, as long as the same conditions persist. Hasan Bey has most likely quit smoking, but the poverty and the stress of work is determined not to quit.
What a boring story, right? There are two reasons why I tell this unpleasant story of Mr. Hasan, which is not romantic and exciting at all. The first of these is to show how social and economic conditions affect our mental and physical health, and how some behavioral patterns that have become established as a result of this effect can make the soul and body sick again and again. It is clear that piecemeal repairs that do not take into account social and economic conditions will often not work in the long run.
The second is that Hasan Bey’s story is the story of all of us today, in one form or another. A very large part of our society lives in conditions similar to or worse than Hasan Bey’s. There are many things that can make us sick, from economic difficulties to environmental pollution, from unemployment to the ongoing war right next to us. This is our story. Therefore, whether we are patients or doctors, we all have to know this story. Let’s know that the end of the story will be different. Let it be humane and heal our wounds and heal our patients.
