I received an email from someone who read a recent article I wrote, and wondered if I could provide information about “how to find a primary care physician that will look at both my husband and me in a ‘whole’ way.

“I would like to find somebody who would actually think about my needs proactively, before they see me for my annual physical, or after, and then meet with me again to discuss recommendations about things to follow up on. I don’t want to be the one who is always proposing more tests based on articles I am reading. I want them to consider my family of origin in their deliberations, the latest in new discoveries and other services I should be considering at various stages of my life.

“If money was no object, access to POS/PPO, etc., how would I find the best doctor that would really be concerned about my getting the most out of my life?”

I had to chuckle. What a sensible request. So sensible, it is almost poignant in its barely contained sense of frustration. And it’s not like this individual is way out in a rural area—she says she’s from Massachusetts, which is known for its array of medical institutions.

My first response was to write something to this effect: “Hey, don’t you get it? The health care system isn’t about making you healthy. It’s about keeping serious illness at bay–you feed Big Pharma by taking lots of meds, but don’t bother the doctors too too much.”

But then I thought that sounded kind of cynical. Not everyone in the health care system thinks that way. There are some doctors out there who are committed to more than maximizing revenues and keeping the insurance companies out of your hair. These doctors tend to be at facilities that practice integrative medicine—applying both conventional and alternative methods. (A starting point is to do a Google search, “Integrative medicine, facilities, your city or state.) Family practice physicians also seem a bit more holistic in their training than internists.

But that’s not really the full answer, either. Maybe the question needs to be framed differently. Perhaps the question is this: “How do I best go about looking after my health?”

In that context, you, the individual or parent, are in charge of your health and your children’s health. A concerned and knowledgeable physician becomes an important consultant, ideally one of several consultants. These other consultants may include an acupuncturist and/or an osteopath and/or a nutritionist and/or a naturopath.

There’s an old business joke—that a typical consultant asks you for your watch and tells you what time it is. The reality is that you need to know enough to be able to evaluate the answers and advice you receive. You need to be prepared to question, and even reject, suggestions for pharmaceutical products. You need to determine whether your physician’s suggestions about nutrition are backed by any depth of knowledge.

No one individual is going to have all the answers. As Steve Bemis points out in his comment on one of my posts about E.coli, scientific researchers are discovering that even our medical scientists’ supposedly sophisticated knowledge of genetics may be incorrect, too simplistic.

Ultimately, we need to educate ourselves about best and worst health practices, to develop a point of view, or mindset, and to learn what types of foods and treatments tend to work best for us. Much as we’d like a kindly physician to hold our hand down the path of life, we are on our own.

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There’s an interesting article from the Associated Press about how Community Support Agriculture (CSA) farms are growing in popularity, with both farmers and consumers. The article explains how beneficial it is to farmers to be able to cut out the middlemen that suck the profit out of farming.