Tonsillectomies Peaked at 1.4 Million a Year — Then a Study of 1.2 Million Kids Changed Thin #shorts

Why did we do so many tonsillectomies for over half a century that were not even needed? When I was actually in the military over in Germany, one of the things I found out over there is that if you actually had your— if you're an American over there and had your tonsils taken out, you might stay in the hospital for 3 to 5 days after a simple tonsillectomy procedure. It was quite bizarre. Tonsillectomies peaked in the United States at 1.4 million procedures by 1959, but by 2006 they dropped to 530,000. So as our American population rose in our country, We had a— it's magnificent— a big drop in the number of tonsillectomies because evidence showed that had no benefit and actually had harm. A 2018 study showed 1.2 million kids that had tonsillectomies tripled the risk for upper respiratory tract infection. You hear that? Removing your tonsils could triple your risk for an upper respiratory tract infection and, and 28% increased risk for infectious disease overall. So tonsils are actually the sentinel for your immune system. Tonsils top, your appendix at the bottom. And actually, when you chew things or get exposed to things, your tonsils are actually the first place where these B cells that actually get exposed to stuff, antigens, pull it up and actually start your immune system's process. Just common sense, remove that, it's gonna affect your immune system. Well, now we know again that this, this is a bad idea, yet we did it for half a century, commonly done. The question is, are there other blind spots, medical procedures in our healthcare system we're doing we don't need to do? I'd be curious if you think there's one out there, one you know of, share with me. I'd love to hear about it. Good to know that we're not doing as many tonsillectomies as we used to do, but are there other procedures we're doing that we don't need to? There are. We'll talk about that later.