Is 15 minutes really enough?

When you walk into a doctor's office, you are in for a hurry up and wait situation. You sign in with a receptionist to let them know you are there, then sit and wait until someone calls for you. You may then have weight, pulse, and blood pressure checked by a nurse or medical assistant. When the doctor finally arrives at the small examining room you are seated in, you get to spend a whole 15 minutes of the doctors precious time cataloging your ailments and being handed little strips off the doctors prescription pad. You walked in with one or more problems, and walked out with prescriptions for magic bullets that will cure your ailments and absolve you of any responsibility for your own well-being. If you have the same problems a week later, it is the doctors fault, or the pills did not work. It couldn't be your own fault for not taking proper care of yourself. I get aangry at this attitude now, even though I once had it myself. The problem is that most people don't see it in themselves. I didn't until I was forced into a situation that caused me to do so. If you are over 40, obese, or obviously not in top physical condition, the first words out of your doctors mouth should be, "What are you eating?" But that is not the case with 21st century medicine. Big Pharmacy has persuaded us that a pill is the answer to whatever ails us, and we are gullible enough to believe what we have been told. A doctors office is now an outlet for pushing pills that can have horrendous side effects. Medicine has gotten away from one of the first precepts set forth by Hippocrates, "Let food be your medicine, and medicine be your food." Recent research has found the Standard American Diet is the root cause of a whole series of diseases including heart disease, arthritis, Alzheimer's, and cancer don't forget to add in everything from ulcerative colitis and irritable bowel to restless leg syndrome. That is why they are calling the Standard American Diet- S.A.D., because that's what it is, and until people come to grips with that reality things are going to get a lot worse.