The Great Question

The Great Question is:

What impact will this medicine or medical procedure have on my microbiome. And if it does have an impact, how will we monitor it and restore it to health?

The Great Question is a patient's response to The Great Assumption.

No Great Answers

Considering all the hype in the media these days about how important our microbiome is to good health, The Great Question sounds like a logical thing to ask your doctor. Right?

Not exactly. It is a valid question but unfortunately it is not a topic doctors are comfortable discussing. Our microbiome isn't something they are trained for.

This leaves patients concerned about maintaining a healthy microbiome confused: Their doctor prescribes a medicine and they are interested in the risk to their microbiome caused by it so they know better how to patch it back to health. Unfortunately information like that is very hard to find if even available. Big Pharma may know but it is very unlikely they would share that information.

Why Ask?

So why ask The Great Question?

• To communicate to medical professionals the interest their patients have in their microbiome.
• To make patients aware of the lack of capability of conventional medicine to address problems caused by medicines to the microbiome or microbiome problems in general.

Caveat

Asking your doctor The Great Question is unlikely to produce any usable info and is likely to create an uncomfortable moment with them because they know it is a valid question but don't have an answer.

Beware, asking The Great Question may earn you what I call the Mark of Elaine.

A Difficult Patient - Seinfeld - season 8, episode 5

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJ2msARQsKU

• • So what is a patient to do? **

It can be intimidating and unproductive to talk to your doctor about your microbiome.

At a minimum it is important for a patient to ask themselves and consider The Great Question in order to fully grasp the impact a medical treatment will have on their overall health.

Patients need a Microbiome Bill Of Rights to guarantee the sharing of information regarding the impact of a medical treatment on their microbiome. It is necessary to enable patients to be stewards of their own microbiome.