There is a new epidemic that’s plaguing our society. But it’s not what you think. These days, if you don’t have diabetes, but it runs in your family, you're diagnosed as "pre-diabetic." You don’t have anxiety but your prone to it, so that means you have “pre-anxiety”. If you're at risk of having high blood pressure, you have "pre-hypertension". There is a whole profit-driver campaign by pharmaceutical companies to create fear of a whole new category of illness - pre-diseases. Pre-diseases or preconditions aren’t real diseases. They are a way of getting you to buy medication for a condition that you don’t yet have.
Doctors and Researchers would have you think that a pre-disease is an early onset of symptoms of a disease or your likelihood to be prone to that disease. Some believe being ‘diagnosed’ with a a pre-disease is a wake up call to change lifestyle habits and help prevent your pre-disease from becoming the full blown out disease.
Preconditions don't always lead to actual conditions, but millions of Americans are seeking treatment for preconditions every day. Ivan Oransky, the executive editor of Reuters Health, spoke yesterday at TEDMED, a three-day conference on technology and medicine in Washington, explaining that more than 100,000 people die each year due to complications from medical treatments.
Oransky believes that the rising rate of prediagnosis is due to the profit driven motives of the companies that stand to make a profit on your meds, a common problem in today’s health care system. He believes that it creates greater demand for medication that isn’t needed by taking advantage of people’s desire to believe that every medical condition has a ready-made medical solution.
"You can actually, perversely, tell people to come" and be diagnosed with preconditions, Oransky explained at the conference. "You can convince them that they have to come."
"I have another name for these preconditions," said Oransky. "I call them preposterous."
In many situations, he says, over-medication can work against you. Instead of developing a healthier lifestyle, people seek medications from the doctors for what they perceive as a real illness. This medication is provided by pharmaceutical companies whose only goal is to sell as many pills possible. Not only that, but there are precondition advocacy groups whose depend on successful fundraising, and they have an interest in perpetuating this mistaken idea that preconditions are actually diseases that require medication.
Preconditions may not all be completely eliminated by changes in lifestyle. But the rising culture of diagnosing preconditions may be doing more harm than good.
"I have really bad news for all of you," Oransky said in closing. "You all have a universally fatal condition. It's called pre-death. Every single one of you has it, because you have the risk factor for it, which is being alive."
Of course early detection of disease can help treat it better however these days we are overdiagnosing and overmedicating as well try to find a cure for everything. For example we use to diagnosis an elderly person who was having minor memory issues with ‘benign forgetfulness’, now we have progressed that to pre-dementia or pre-Alzheimer's. We have this need to label everything. And some otherwise healthy person is freaking out that they now have a pre-disease and is spending money to treat it. In the long run this is more counterproductive than helpful.
When you try to treat a disease you don’t have yet, such as a pre-disease, you run the risk of overmedicating and adding stress to your body. Your body responds to stressors like this with the NeuroEndoMetabolic Stress ResponseSM system. Stress can affect certain areas of your body or whole organ systems. Overmedicating can lead to problems with your liver, kidneys and even your digestive tract. Not to mention so many drugs have warnings on the type of reactions it can give your body. It’s best not to treat a ‘disease’ until you have the disease. One of the main glands that helps treat stress in our bodies is the adrenal glands and if they become overworked it can not adequately release the hormone cortisol and can lead to a condition known as Adrenal Fatigue Syndrome. There are no real pros to treating pre-diseases. Early detection of disease will help you; thinking you have a disease that you have not yet developed can be harmful.
