For those who have personally researched real food-low-carb dieting and have applied the principles and seen the results on their health, you eventually reach a point where you realize that your Doctor, your family physician or your HMO nutritionist gives you dietary advice that YOU KNOW IS WRONG. Yet these are the same professionals who may have treated an illness you had or set a broken bone or even performed life saving or life-changing surgery on you. They are highly intelligent, educated and furthermore, you've known them for years and you simply feel good when you see them, because you know they genuinely want to help you with your health problems...
....but they give dietary advice that you know damn well is outright LIES.
It's not the Doctor's fault...really. It's endemic to our health "care" system.
I was brought to this train of thoughts today, because I just read a post by a Dr. who definitely understands the truth about diet and nutrition, Dr. Michael Eades. From The Pitiful State of Medical Ignorance:
It’s difficult to imagine the number of people who go into doctor’s offices every day with weight problems, elevated blood sugar, high blood pressure, and abnormal lipids and are told with great authority to eat less and exercise more. If the patient asks the doctor for a specific diet, the doc usually has the nurse give the patient the standard 1800 kcal low-fat diet sheet. Depending upon the motivation of the patient, this diet may or may not be followed. If the patient does suck up and follow the diet, many, of not most, will fail. When these poor folks come back for their recheck, their doctor then wants to put them on some sort of drug. Believe me, the stories above aren’t atypical. This is happening all across the country thousands of times every single day.
And I’m mad as hell because it doesn’t have to be this way.
There is another option. These poor people could be given a low-carbohydrate diet to try. Most of the doctors who prescribe the 1800 kcal diet (along with a recommendation to exercise more) could give people the choice. A low-carbohydrate diet or a low-calorie diet. But the vast majority of them don’t. They simply opt for the low-calorie diet, then resort to drugs when it doesn’t work.
Dr. Eades, a licensed physician, doesn't ever really get around to actually trying to point out WHY so many Doctors "opt for the low-calorie diet, then resort to drugs when it doesn't work."
I left the following comment on his blog, and I'm curious to see if he lets it show up (he moderates all comments).
If you want to know WHY so many Doctors dispense bad dietary advice, and refuse to believe their own eyes when their patients improve after going low-carb, you have to look at the big picture.
Low Carb is the exact opposite of what the USDA advises with their High-Carb Pyramid.
Follow the money.
Who regularly gets appointed to the highest echelons of the USDA? Big Agriculture execs for the likes of Monsanto and Cargill.
And who profits from having a populace deliberately mislead, literally slowly poisoned by their high-carb, processed food diets?
The Pharmaceutical industry (Who get there execs appointed to the FDA…are we starting to recognize a pattern?)
Big Money corporations buy influence by giving their money to politicians who than appoint their lackeys to the regulatory agencies who literally control the messages being promoted by our mass media and medical community regarding diet and nutrition.
Most Doctors are not deliberately prescribing these diets because they’re happily rubbing their hands together because they are receiving perks from Pharma reps for prescribing statins (although that does play a part), you also have to understand that most of the Doctors are reading peer-reviewed journals and/or given the latest “results” provided by the Pharma companies themselves with deliberately misleading results that all promote the same outcome – keep the sheeple eating the grains and prescribe the profitable drugs that mask the symptoms that result from the long term consequences of the conventional wisdom’s dietary advice.
My own personal family physician recently retired. He’s close to 90 lbs. overweight. He has chronic asthma. When I related my own discovery of low carb dietary knowledge, and how I lost 35 lbs. in 4 months and have kept it off for 4 years straight now by “eating bacon and eggs cooked in grease and butter” every morning, it simply did not compute with him. It was like his eyes glazed over and he simply tuned out what I was saying.
He simply could not come to grips with a living, breathing example of a person who was doing everything contrary to what his medical journals and professional nutritionist guidelines of our HMO direct him to apply to his own medical practice.
Quite simply, Doctors, like most people that have imbibed a lifetime of government/corporate propaganda via our mass media and public school curriculum, can’t deal with the cognitive dissonance of real live examples that are contrary to their own indoctrination that is repeatedly reinforced both inside (pharmaceutical sales reps sales sheets and peer review journals touting bad diet advice and pharmaceutical remedies) and outside (our mass media dietary zeitgeist) of their professional environment.
Most Doctors that prescribe bad diets and even worse medication to ameliorate the symptoms of those bad diets, are simply nothing more than highly educated and licensed useful idiots.
14 comments:
Don't tar the whole profession, just North American doctors. British doctors are largerly free from pressure annd control from predator multinational organisations.
My first year at (UK) med scool we covered how 25 to 50% of people have a genetic/epigenetic layout that makes them prone to weight gain.
Throw into that mix a high-calorie, high-sugar, high fat (and by fat we mean the 'bad' omega-6 and trans-fatty acids), eating 'wrongly' (no/little breakfast, big dinner) and little exercise, and you get obesity.
Which then beggets more obesity - babies of low or very heigh birthweight then acquire epigenetic markers for weight gain prone metabolisms.
Too true! I just had a nice, expensive appointment with a GI specialist about what they are saying is either viral gastroenteritis or ulcerative colitis, and it's been going on for over a month now. I wanted to ask some questions about nutrition.
(Interestinly, the UC folks aren't even into a low-carb/Paleo lifestyle and yet their dietary guidelines are remarkably in line with them.)
I have been eliminating the things the UC/Paleo folks identify as problems, starting with wheat/whole grains. I was feeling good about being on a good track with changing my diet to better my health AND help this rather distressing condition when I asked the GI specialist about what dietary guidelines someone with this condition should follow, since so far I'm just going on what I got off the internet.
He waved his hand in a dismissive manner and said "Diet has nothing to do with it. You need pharmaceuticals to help this."
What?!? A stomach doctor who says diet has nothing to do with it? Furthermore, I'm pregnant and can't take those pharmaceuticals even if I wanted to. I've been struggling with this for over a month, can't walk sometimes I'm in so much pain, and failed to gain any weight last month when I was supposed to gain 4 pounds. The doctor offered no advice or help other than to get a colonoscopy after the baby came. Thanks. Glad he's getting paid for nothing more than shelling out prescriptions and ordering tests.
Until doctors get away from this belief that drugs solve all and diet doesn't matter, we're only going to get more and more sick. I have an appointment today with a different GI specialist, but I'm getting the impression I'm going to be on my own here, and it makes me pretty mad that I can't even go to a doctor for my medical condition.
This subject really makes me angry. What big pharma is doing to America is outrageous. These companies, with the help of Gov't, are poisoning millions of people with useless (for the most part) medications. It's truly shocking what they are getting away with. I don't take any meds at all. And won't unless it's absolutely necessary. I refuse to become a pharma junkie.
Hughman -
"eating 'wrongly' (no/little breakfast, big dinner) and little exercise"
Just wanted to point out that meal frequency has already been debunked - skipping breakfast/lunch doesn't matter.
Also, controlling calories is still the most effective way to lose/keep off weight. Exercise has its benefits, yes, but on the whole isn't necessary.
One reason that MDs do not spend much time thinking about nutrition issues is that in real life it is so extremely rare that patients pay any attention to what they say.
Shit, hardly anybody takes meds as prescribed even when they clearly work; like for high blood pressure.
Patients lie about nearly everything and Doctors smile and pretend to believe them.
Trust me on this.
Oh, man! Hot lard tastes so good! Delicious!
Low carb; high fat makes you healthy, period.
And, to the one person, no, low calorie is not the answer for most people. Pure nonsense.
Anonymous age 68
Anon68 -
Calories do matter, but low-carb high-fat/protein satiates quite well. In other words, it controls your caloric intake naturally, which the standard american diet definitely does not.
[You can retort with the role of insulin and fat storage hormones and the like, but I'm not going to attempt to eat 10,000 calories of lard per day just to prove a point.]
Regardless, I was more stating that exercise is misunderstood and oft times overrated by the medical community.
Anonymous, the data I've seen indicates skipping meals is a bad idea. More likely to engage in overcompensation eating events, and causes a spike in stress hormones.
Equally, exercise is useful. Helps regulate blood sugars, blood triglyceride levels, builds up muscle bulk, elevates mood. All useful for a healthy lifestyle.
I wonder if patients lie because they know their words will go straight into their premiums.
No matter what your lifestyle or caloric intake, body type, genetics, where you live, anything...
You can not beat simple biochemistry, taking in more calories than you consume will equate to weight gain. Burning more calories than you consume leads to weight loss.
It is that simple. this works for large, small, old, young, healthy, sedentary. It is the basic rule
So, to lose weight, either exercise, or eat less, that simple. (of course, what you eat will also determine how healthy that weight actually is).
-Chicagoman
Hughman -
Plenty of data supporting short fasts (8-16 hour range) and some new data on fasted workouts as well. Check it out if you want (google "intermittent fasting").
I didn't say exercise was not useful - I said it was misunderstood and very often overrated.
There's a difference between fasting and skipping meals.
Hughman -
So that we're on the same page, explain to me what the differences are between fasting and skipping meals.
Thanks for the link to this; the meta-analysis pdf is going to be useful talking to people about it.
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