Posthospital syndrome is a term used to describe the vulnerability of a patient to a wide range of conditions after having spent any time in a hospital. What this means, is that instead of everyone coming out healthier, many come out in similar or worse shape than before. As William Osler, MD once said, “The person who takes medicine must recover twice, once from the disease and once from the medicine.”
Three decades ago, hospitals routinely kept patients for as long as their condition necessitated them to be there and receive care. In the 1980s, insurance companies stepped in and mandated that all patients be discharged from the hospital within 3 days, unless a doctor could justify longer care. This lead to many people being discharged before they were ready to go home, and often in less than healthy conditions. As a result, people often wound up back in the hospital within 30 days after discharge.
Now, the Affordable Care Act is going to penalize hospitals for readmissions, which will cause new policies that once again consider the patient last.
A large number of patients require readmission as a result of the effects of having received antibiotics in the hospital. This leaves them in a weakened state by destroying their natural beneficial bacteria, creating antibiotic resistant strains, and suppressing their immune systems.
Shockingly, another cause for re-admission is malnourishment. That’s right, people coming out of the hospital are suffering from malnourishment. Hospitals filled with doctors, nurses, and nutritionists are sending people home malnourished and vulnerable to infections. After decades of complaints, hospital food still isn’t any better and it does nothing to make patients healthier. Even though hospitals are staffed with nutritionists, people are leaving malnourished.
Other causes of Posthospital Syndrome readmissions include surgeries, catheters, antacid medications, steroids, sedatives, anesthetics, and pneumonia. Strangely enough, people who go to hospitals for pneumonia are most likely to have to go back for pneumonia.
Faced with a lack of coverage from insurance companies and penalties from the government, the most likely option that is going to come to the forefront is the use of more antibiotics during and after hospitalization.
In spite of government warnings about increasing levels of antibiotic resistance and predictions of 300 million deaths from antibiotic resistance by 2050, doctors are most likely to do what they’ve always done and hand out more antibiotics. With infections being one of the main reasons for readmission, doctors only know one thing to do for infections and that is to prescribe more antibiotics, three at a time if necessary.
While other options are being recommended, these options have already been recommended before and never followed up on.
In many cases, if you’re going to the hospital, chances are that you haven’t been taking care of yourself for quite a while. Now is the time to start taking control of your life and improving your health. The future of healthcare looks bleak and costly in many ways.
I recommend re-establishing a foundation for health in your body through the Candida Plan. What you do today will determine where you are tomorrow.
“The next major advance in the health of the American people will be determined by what the individual is willing to do for himself.” -John Knowles, Former President of the Rockefeller Foundation
Dr. Jeffrey S. McCombs, DC, is founder of the McCombs Center for Health, the Candida Plan, the Candida Library, and author of Lifeforce and The Everything Candida Diet Book.
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