Contents
Pregnancy is not a disease. But for some reason, we often approach conception as a medical project.
Once, and it turned out – this is, of course, the ideal format for conceiving a baby. But in practice, family planning is more often than not endless trips to doctors, laboratories, pharmacies. And often not because of real indications, but because the obstetrician-gynecologist, founder and head of the International Academy of Healthy Life Elena Berezovskaya calls “commercial diagnoses.”
How to avoid medical errors and not become victims of someone’s financial interests, as well as many other issues that couples face on the way to parenting, Elena tells in her new book “When you are ready: how to calmly plan a pregnancy and tune in to a conscious motherhood”. We publish excerpts from it today with the permission of the publishing house “Bombora”.
obstetrician-gynecologist, founder and head of the International Academy of Healthy Life
“Commercial diagnosis” is diagnoses that do not exist in modern medicine and are outdated or do not exist in a particular person, as well as those whose diagnosis and treatment is beyond the scope of acceptable international and national recommendations. This is often a medical error, although it often turns out to be in combination with the financial interest of a doctor or a medical institution as a whole. The worst thing is when, without even trying to get pregnant, the couple plunges into endless visits to doctors in search of diagnoses.
I have seen many multivolume case histories created over a short period of time – just one or two years. It is sad that such “volumes” of the results of examinations and treatment of various bouquets of invented diagnoses appeared in perfectly healthy people. “
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“I have met quite a few women who have been taking hormonal contraceptives for months and years to“ straighten the cycle, ”aiming for a 28-day cycle. They were extremely disappointed that the pregnancy never came.
Unfortunately, a huge number of couples are still falling victim to the illiteracy of doctors, a commercial approach to assessing their health and providing assistance. But the less people know about how children are born, the easier it is to manipulate them, to impose too aggressive or too voluminous, often unnecessary examination and treatment. “
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“In the annotations of many commercial pregnancy tests, it is said that they can determine the presence of pregnancy literally 2-3 days after intercourse. I do not recommend “getting hooked” on such tests, as if for drugs. Imagine that the majority of women who use them, after a surge of joyful emotions, will be very disappointed with the onset of menstruation at the usual time or with a slight delay (we are talking about a biochemical pregnancy, when it is interrupted in the first seven days after implantation. ). Such tests can have only one positive prognostic factor: they say that a woman has ovulation and her fallopian tubes are patent (if conception occurred and hCG appeared, to which they reacted). “
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The group of commercial diagnoses includes the following:
outdated diagnoses and those conditions, symptoms, laboratory parameters that are not diagnoses at all: biliary dyskinesia, toxicosis, leukocytosis, “thick blood” and others;
diagnoses that a particular woman or man does not have (in fact, this is a medical error);
diagnoses that the patient may have, but the examination or treatment is significantly outside the scope of generally accepted recommendations.
“If a woman and a man of reproductive age (18–45 years old) have no complaints, but the doctor still recommends them to undergo a huge number of examinations“ just in case ”, prescribes several medications and food supplements (dietary supplements), conducts long courses of treatment and does not allow getting pregnant, frightening with a disastrous outcome, in 99.9% of such cases the patient is a witness to a banal commercial approach or a backward, illiterate approach of a doctor (and most often both options are present).
The progressive doctor never intimidates! The task of the doctor is to provide the patient with truthful information about the state of his health. “
“A visit to a progressive doctor does not end with a long list of tests, especially expensive ones, as well as invasive procedures (laparoscopy, hysteroscopy). Also, such a doctor does not prescribe treatment, which includes a large number of drugs and various additives, not to mention long courses of treatment. Interestingly, the treatment of many malignant diseases, HIV infection and serious systemic diseases involves a combination of two to five drugs (and even then not always). And pregnancy is usually planned by perfectly healthy people. Therefore, what kind of treatment with a string bag of drugs and supplements can we talk about when planning it? “
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“It is interesting that the more examinations you take, the more deviations you find. This is natural. When passing ten analyzes, there may not be any deviations. But if you checked more than 100 indicators of blood and urine, then you may well find ten minor deviations from the reference values of the norm. This may be your peculiarity, because the norm includes 90% of the average statistical indicators, often without taking into account age, region, country. In addition, you may encounter a common laboratory error, which is also not uncommon. Often the analysis of survey results requires an integrated approach, rather than nit-picking one indicator. And let me remind you once again that we do not make diagnoses and do not prescribe treatment based on one result of a single analysis ”.
What examinations and analyzes do not have to be done by everyone
Gynecological examination, if the woman has had it within the last 6 months.
Vaginal swabs, if they were also previously taken during the last six months, if the results are normal and the woman has no complaints.
Cytological examination, if it was carried out in the last 2-3 years, and the results are normal.
Consultations of specialized specialists WITHOUT indications.
Analyzes, except for a general analysis of urine, blood, and a blood test for TSH. Additional examination is required in the presence of diseases or with prolonged unsuccessful attempts to become pregnant.
Consultation with a geneticist, if there is no indication for that, among which the age is over 35 years, the presence of births of a still child in the past, the presence of children with congenital malformations, and more.
Testing folate levels in women planning a pregnancy is not recommended. It is required for low weight, bowel disease, after resection of the stomach and in the presence of megaloblastic anemia (detected by a general blood test).