In the United States, there are many ways to seek medical treatment – and many different medical professionals available to help you when you need medical attention the most. From detox doctors to the osteopathic physician, doctors come in many different specialities. Of course, if you are unaware of how to find a specialist such as an osteopathic physician, your family practice doctor is likely to be able to give you the osteopathic physician recommendation that you are in need of. Aside from the role of the osteopathic physician, other specialists might also be required, such as psychiatrist and psychologist as well as weight loss doctors (particularly here in the United States, where obesity has become such a truly prevalent issue).
If you are having issues with your testosterone, for instance, you might not want to see an osteopathic physician or even a family practice physician. Instead, you’ll want to be referred to a specialist in the area, someone who likely has a great deal of experience handling such matters. After all, issues of low testosterone are quite common in men, with up to 13 million of them dealing with such on a regular basis. However, seeking diagnosis and treatment when a problem is noted is absolutely key, as unfortunately the vast majority of men who have low levels of testosterone – up to 90% of them, as a matter of fact – will never have this problem addressed by a medical professional in any field.
For patients who are in the throes of drug or alcohol dependency, as specialist will also need to be seen (not an osteopathic physician, of course, but a detox doctor that has been highly recommended by the family practice doctors that they have worked with). Before rehab treatment can begin, the process of coming down from the drug or substance in question must first be completed. However, this can be quite a difficult feat, as the process of detoxing is quite painful in many a case, and the vast majority of people will fail to detox fully unless under the watchful eye of a doctor who is well trained and well experienced in such matters.
But for many addicts in today’s world, the problem of drug addiction is becoming more and more serious and the drugs in use ever stronger and life threatening. Unfortunately, drug overdose has become the leading cause of accidental death here in the United States, surpassing even obesity, which once held the title of most common killer. In the year of 2015 alone, there were more than 52,000 people who died from overdoses, a number that has only continued to grow in the years that have followed.
Opioid addiction is one of the leading killers in terms of drugs currently prominent in the United States. Unfortunately, as many as 32,000 of those overdoes deaths in the year of 2015 could be tied to the consumption of painkillers or even heroin. For many people, heroin is a natural step up from painkillers, once the painkillers themselves become difficult to find. Heroin is so popular among former painkiller users that the data even shows that up to 80% of new heroin users in this country did not start with heroin itself but first abused prescription painkillers of varying natures.
And heroin abuse and painkiller abuse is happening among people of all ages, even among teenagers. In fact, far too many teenagers and adolescents are becoming addicted to such substances, with more than 21,000 adolescents using heroin alone over the course of 2015 by itself, let alone in any of the years that have followed it. Of these teenagers, an unfortunate 5,000 or so have become addicted to the substance, with many of them still in the throes of addiction today.
But like the typical osteopathic physician can treat certain medical concerns, so too can the detox doctors that can be found all throughout the United States. After all, addiction is a medical concern, a matter of brain and body chemistry, and there are medical paths that addicts can take when trying to break their addiction. Rehab often helps, of course.
