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DIY Health: You’re Smarter Than The Health Care System

You don’t need to rely on our “top heavy, doctor and hospital-centric” system to take control of your own health. Dr. Mark Hyman says self-care is the key to being a healthy person today.
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What’s the Big Idea?


“We’ve basically led people to believe that their health has to be in the hands of the health care system, that they don’t have the power to control their health, to regulate their health, to create health,” says Dr. Mark Hyman, the author of a new book called The Blood Sugar Solution: The UltraHealthy Program for Losing Weight, Preventing Disease, and Feeling Great Now!

And yet, you don’t need to rely on our “top heavy,” “doctor and hospital-centric” system to take control of your own health. Dr. Hyman says self-care is the key to being a healthy person today.

Watch the video here:

What’s the Significance?

According to Hyman, our health care system is grossly underperforming because people are going to physicians and getting medications “that are band-aids on the symptoms but not really dealing with the cause.”

So Hyman encourages people to “not treat disease but create health, and disease goes away as a side effect of creating health.” But what if you’re not a doctor? Isn’t there a danger in misdiagnosis?

“I want to break the guild of secrecy around medicine and diagnosis,” Hyman says. At the heart of Hyman’s system of Do-It-Yourself Medicine is

finding out where your imbalances are through a series of personalized quizzes and taking a series of action steps.  And there’s also a wonderful guide I have on how to work with your doctor to get what you need.  What are the right tests to ask for?  How do you be an empowered patient?  What are the kinds of treatments available that your doctor may not know about that can help you? 

To learn more, you can visit Dr. Mark Hyman’s site, Blood Sugar Solution.  

Image courtesy of Shutterstock

Follow Daniel Honan on Twitter @Daniel Honan

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