13 – Be Your Own Customer

Nutrient deficiencies and nutritional deficiency diseases are a widespread and greatly underestimated problem in Europe. In Germany in particular, where the (recommended) upper limits for daily nutrient consumption are set so low that it is virtually impossible to meet seven requirements, the number of people with nutrient deficiency diseases is rising continuously.

A few years ago, I also had a severe nutrient deficiency and a resulting deficiency disease, which was not properly diagnosed for several years and was therefore not treated. And this is how many patients feel, because the symptoms of a deficiency disease are very unspecific and range from headaches, fatigue, abdominal pain and dizziness to simply dry lips. As a result, they are often not interpreted correctly and/or misdiagnosed. This inevitably leads to a vicious physical cycle, which results in an increased need for nutrients to compensate for the deficiencies, which in turn cannot be met – the symptoms become more severe and, in the worst case, are treated with appropriate medication, such as painkillers, which in turn increase the need for nutrients, further exacerbating the deficiency.

In addition to the already very unspecific symptoms, which are difficult to interpret, nutrients and their deficiency diseases are hardly discussed in medical studies, if at all. As a result, doctors in Germany are often completely overwhelmed when it comes to the topic of nutrient deficiencies – including my doctor at the time:

At first, he simply wanted to send me away when I told him I wanted to have blood work done (doctors don’t get paid for this service, patients have to pay for it themselves with their health insurance). When I then had my appointment to have my blood taken, I realized that the financial reason didn’t seem to be his only reason.

I had to explain to him how he could take blood in the first place, then I had to help him set the right checkmarks on his PC so that the blood count would later show the correct values. He had apparently never sent a blood count to a laboratory before in his life, because after we had filled out the form together, he asked me: „Where do I have to send this now? Where did your previous doctor always send it?“

I was glad to already know all this from my previous doctor and to be able to answer his questions accordingly with my half-knowledge, rather uncertainly, because if this had been my first blood test or if I had been an older, slightly confused woman, for example, who usually needs blood tests for something – I would have been at a loss.

The results arrived a few weeks later. I went to the appointment without any great expectations. I had already had several years of experience with such consultations and thought I knew what to expect. But after I entered the consultation room, my doctor said: „Your results are in…what do I do with them now?“

I had really expected a lot – but not this! I explained the individual fields to him as best I could and he wrote everything down. He then asked me what he should do with the results. He seemed totally helpless, which, as it turned out later in the conversation, was because he had probably never done a blood count before (at least not to check the nutrients). I explained to him what he should prescribe for me and left.

This led me to the next step of interviewing doctors to find out if my doctor was just a bad exception or if this was actually a problem that I could address with a design project.

To begin with, it can be said that nutrients seem to be hardly part of the curriculum in European medical studies. The prospective doctors learn that there are nutrients and how they interact on a biochemical level, but nothing about what happens if you have either too much or too little of a nutrient in your body – and this is reflected in the experiences of almost all the patients I was able to speak to for research purposes. Although most of the experiences I heard about in this regard during the semester are not quite as serious as the one I described above, I was only able to speak to one (former) patient whose experience with blood tests to determine various nutrients was „good“, if not „optimal“.