Sandra Paterson: Treating the symptom rather than the cause

I was supposed to be hard at work in front of the computer on Monday, but ended up lying in bed for hours with the curtains drawn. I have suffered from migraines for about eight years now. Thank goodness I have kind neighbours and family members living nearby who can make my daughter breakfast or take her to school when I simply cannot move.

It is a debilitating problem, but what frustrates me almost as much as the condition itself is the way the medical profession deals with it. Or, rather, the way the way they don't deal with it.

As far as my GP is concerned, we have found a drug which gets rid of the headache in a few hours rather than a few days, therefore problem solved. Get headache, take drugs.

Don't get me wrong, I really like my GP. And I'm grateful for the medication and for the Government subsidy, which means I pay $3 for eight tablets instead of $155.

I just wish more doctors would try to get to the cause of a problem instead of merely treating the symptoms. So often, it seems, all conventional medicine does is mask pain without trying to find what is behind it.

Let's say, for example, a GP has 20 people on his books suffering from asthma. Sadly, in most medical centres they are likely to be prescribed the same handful of drugs depending on which one is the flavour of the month.

Surely it makes more sense to treat the whole person, not just the condition, and to try to find the root of the problem. There are so many possible factors in any disease - nutritional deficiency, environmental toxins or stress levels, for example - but these are rarely touched on in an average 20-minute appointment.

Not that GPs should shoulder all the blame for what is essentially an ingrained way of thinking. Generally they do not have the time thoroughly to investigate each case; and, even if they did, they do not have the expertise in areas such as nutrition.

Medical schools are heavily funded by profit-driven pharmaceutical companies and young doctors are taught to approach a problem in a rescue-medicine kind of way, focusing on disease and not prevention.

A few break out of the mould and take a holistic approach, such as the group of GPs in Gisborne who want to run trials on Buteyko, a breathing technique taught to asthma sufferers which appears to reduce significantly their need for medication. So far, however, their requests for Government funding have been turned down..

Of course, conventional medicine is usually the best approach when it comes to surgery, emergency or trauma. I had a tumour removed when I was 21; and I am thankful for my surgeon's expertise.

But the more I read about superbugs, medical mishaps and equipment failure - such as finding blood and bone on sterilised instruments at Auckland Hospital - the keener I am to avoid hospitals.

Unfortunately, my friend Julie is going to be there a while. She suffered a major spinal injury in an accident three weeks ago and the doctors are uncertain whether she will walk again. That's tough enough for anyone but it is harder when mistakes are made and the overall care is not as good as it could be.

Lunch on the day we visited earlier this week was a sad-looking pile of mince with not a fresh vegetable in sight. How are people supposed to cope with trauma without excellent nutrition supporting their immune system?

The ward was noisy, with loud music and conversation often preventing patients from sleeping. The cleaners had been complaining about the carpeted floors - cosy-looking but impossible to rid of urine, blood and vomit. And a harried-looking nurse (they so deserve their pay rise) mentioned there was only one high-tech thermometer for the whole ward.

I left the hospital wishing Julie were in a place where there was enough money to do everything with excellence; and where conventional and alternative medicine were combined to make patients comfortable and to help them to heal.

The day after our visit, the doctors discovered her pelvis was also broken, a fact that had somehow escaped them for three weeks. No wonder she had been fainting when she was made routinely to sit up. Oh, and she now has further complications, apparently because they forgot to give her anti-clotting medication.

Doctors are only human and we all make mistakes. But some 1500 people are dying every year as a result of highly preventable medical error in New Zealand's hospitals.

According to Auckland risk and policy analyst Ron Law, preventable medical injury is the number one cause of death for under-45-year-olds in this country. That's pretty scary.

More money would be a good start, money to spend on equipment, on making sure it works, on safety procedures and on research. But the whole culture of conventional medicine needs to change, too. Limitations need to be acknowledged and mindsets broadened.

Oh, and if anyone finds a cure for migraines, please let me know.

* Sandra Paterson, of Mt Maunganui, is a freelance journalist.