If you live in the 'West' and you have a good GP Doctor you should consider yourself very lucky!

Most doctors in the west have a surprisingly limited array of options to offer you, and an even smaller knowledge-base of important related factors such as diet, lifestyle etc. I have been relatively lucky so far in life to not have had VERY serious health issues.. but i have had a few, as have my family. I am SO amazed by the differences i have found between my American and UK doctors and my Indian, Thai doctors that I feel compelled to share my stories.. If you don't have time to read this post, then make just take my final advice! When you are ill, save your money and go buy a plane ticket to India or Thailand and get treated properly at a fraction of the cost and have a free holiday at the same time!!!!

Calcium Stones in the Salivary Gland Duct

Most people will never have heard of this problem, but let me tell you this is a painful experience. This happens when you have a small stone made of calcium that grows inside your mouth under your tongue. It causes your saliva to stop passing through into your mouth and means that you have a lot of saliva pressure as you eat because the pipe is blocked! It hurts like hell when you eat, and i had it for a few months whilst i was living in America. Finally i decided to head to my local doctor. Phew .. or not! The doctor knew about these stones, which was great. The very first thing he did was to give me a waver form to sign. It said that if by his actions my face ended up paralyzed it wouldnt be his fault. Great! I signed it.  Then i got into his patient chair and he told me he was going to try to extract the stone, by putting a tiny needle into a small hole and try to tease it out. TO his credit, he gave it all he could.. he tried for about 40 minutes to do the impossible job of pulling a 4mm stone out of a 1mm hole. It hurt like mad, and it was not successful. So he said he was giving up. Then he said i had better come back next week and he would try again. If he was unsuccessful he said they would need to cut out my entire salivary gland! ;-(

Cost: 350 USD for unsuccessful treatment.
There was NO way i was going back to him! What did  i do? I went to the chemist and bought a scalpel. When i got home i opened up wide just made a small incision midway up the pipe.. HEY PRESTO, the stone came out!!! Thank the Lord. It hurt a lot but the problem was solved.

TWO YEARS LATER....

I was now living in India. A whole other world i can tell you. One day i noticed that there was a tiny stone developing again in the same tube. Oh dear! I lived with it for quite a few weeks and it got bigger, and bigger, and bigger. Oh dear! It got to the point where it was SO big that i could hardly eat without being in huge pain. Finally i HAD to go to the local hospital in India.

I went to a public cheap and best hospital in Madurai. I walked in and was fairly quickly seen by a doctor. The hospital was VERY busy and quite old looking. It didn't inspire me with confidence at all, but i was desperate! I explained everything to him, and at least he DID understand my problem. That was great! He listened well, and asked some questions. Then he said he wanted to consult with his colleagues as he wanted to come up with a solution. I went and sat and waited in a hot stuffy area for some time. I think about an hour later they called me back. They said they had an idea and were going to try it out. He explained to me that they were going to firstly cut it out, and then they were going to do something that meant that there would always be a little hole left so any new stones would not get stuck any more. Sounded good to me! So I agreed and immediately went to the operating theatre. Now, the operation was interesting. I must say i was a bit taken aback when half way through slicing the stone out he stopped to take a phone call on his mobile, and didn't even change his gloves. Mmmm. But he managed it and i had instant relief. I was then taken to the recovery room where i lay down with another doctor who was there. He was talking on his phone none stop, whilst kind of feeling up my legs and rubbing me.. That was really weird. I was pretty sure he was enjoying it a little too much! Oh boy, i got up fast and told him i was leaving. He said i should wait but there was no way i was going to sit around and get groped by some random doctor / stranger. So i left and i went home with some antibiotics.

Cost: 25USD

10 years later, I still have a little hole in the tube and that stone never came back! wow!

So here is one thing! These Indian doctors are FREE to think! They arent worried about being sued to hell and losing their jobs. They are able to come up with NEW ideas and try them out. They did an amazing job despite the unprofessionality of it all. Had I stuck with that American doctor i would have likely had half my face chopped up and a 20K bill to find out how to pay.

This isn't the only experience I have had like this. I have actual horror stories from my two brothers as well as many other people I know with western Doctors. They seems to be utterly clueless about basic health ideas and don't seem to give any useful advice that can be given along with any normal treatments. ALL they seem to know is to prescribe, prescribe prescribe. What a sham! Backed and pressured by big pharma these doctors are highly pressured to give medicine even if it isn't going to help. They have no training in the holistic sense, which is actually vital to being a good doctor. If you are a specialist in one thing, then you end up not knowing or understand how the whole entity works. And if you dont really know how the whole body works as a connected whole, you are missing the whole story!

My doctors in India and Thailand have a background and culture steeped in ancient knowledge. They still posses this as a normal background that they can use in conjunction with their allopathic knowledge. This means they understand us much much better than a doctor with just a basic science degree. The doctor I last visited in Thailand was quite wonderful. Although she did test me scientifically to check for any problems with my health, she was already able to be very confident that I didn't have anything too nasty based just on looking at my eyes, tongue and general appearance. I felt like i was in really good hands!

So to keep this short as i could give you so many more examples.. 

If you are not well, I really would advise you buy a plane ticket to India, Thailand, China , or somewhere like that. You will save an absolute fortune and you can have a nice holiday at the same time. Having a good rest is a big part of recovery and healing. Eating hospital food in the UK or America is really not something to be cherished. So why not go to Thailand or India and eat like a royalty for very little cost. Incidentally, the Thai hospitals are way more advanced than the ones i have seen in UK. They have the latest equipment and huge amazing hospitals. 

Wishing you very good health!