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Location: Blogs Marc Ullman FYI Blog |
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| Posted by: marc |
11/13/2007 4:53 PM |
Last week I had the misfortune of hearing the words “periodontist,” “gum,” and “cut” in the same sentence when I visited my dentist for treatment of what I thought was a simple problem with an old filling. As it turned out, my tooth problem was far from simple and the resolution involved providing my medical history to an oral surgeon. My response to his question about the medications I was using should be an object lesson to us all.
Tomorrow morning, one of the molars on the upper left side of my mouth will be extracted. Unfortunately for me, this is an important tooth, and between the extraction, bone graft and preparation for an implant, I have anywhere between 3–5 “surgeries” to look forward to over the next 6–9 months. (This is doing wonders for my mood).
Once the oral surgeon and I determined that this was a necessary course of action, he sent his nurse in to go over my pretty bland medical history. One of the questions she asked me was whether I am currently taking any “medication.” I responded, “No.” When the doctor returned to go over this information again in order to make sure that my responses were consistent and that we had not missed anything, he also asked if I was currently taking any “medication.” I again responded, “No.” Then he asked, “How about supplements?”
That question elicited a different response. We then had a long discussion about whether my multi-vitamin was a single table dose, or a multi tablet product. When I asked why this was important, the doctor said that no single tablet daily multi-vitamin would have enough vitamin E in it to cause him concern about excessive bleeding. So I am still taking my multi. We decided that I should discontinue using the fish oil supplement that I take every morning because some literature suggests there might be an issue with increased bleeding associated with these products and my cholesterol/triglycerides are not a problem. We reached the same conclusion with the astaxanthin supplement I take because the surgeon was not familiar with this product and suggested that being over-cautious couldn’t hurt. (I told him it was a potent carotenoid and antioxidant and he said he was interested in finding out more).
In hindsight, what really struck me about this experience was that my answer to the question about medications was “No.” I did not provide pertinent information until I was specifically asked about my supplement use. I responded this way, even though I am certainly in the 99th percentile of awareness when it comes to understanding the importance of discussing supplement use with your healthcare professional (doctor, dentist, pharmacist, etc.), and especially with a surgeon. If I answered “No” to the generic use-of-medicine question, I am certain that there is next to no chance that the average patient would discuss supplement use with their doctor unless specifically asked. Fortunately, my doctor/surgeon knew to probe further by asking about supplements. To me, this was really a wake up call on how far we need to go as an industry to educate consumers and physicians alike on the need to communicate information about supplement use to healthcare practitioners, even if the subject is not specifically raised during a medical history. It would be a tremendous accomplishment, if we could reach the point where this type of conversation is not unusual, and if such talks actually include a discussion of what supplements might be useful post-treatment! |
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