Conventional Doctors: We Don’t Need No Education!
Doctors are highly educated people who we believe truly want to help their patients heal and live comfortably. They spend years studying; working long hours, and pay exorbitant tuition costs and malpractice insurance premiums in the hopes of earning a good living.
The problem is that they aren’t taught much, if anything, about nutrition in medical school. According to an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association (“JAMA”), “Beginning with medical school, the time devoted to nutrition is limited, with an average of 19 total hours over 4 years and is focused largely on biochemistry and vitamin deficiency states. This is an incorrect focus, because diseases related to nutritional deficiencies, such as scurvy and beriberi, are not major problems in the United States. Following medical school, nutrition education during the three or more years of graduate medical education is minimal, or more typically absent altogether.
Nineteen hours over 4 years? Ask any conventional doctor and they will confirm the lack of nutrition and diet education. Without a true understanding of what the body requires for nourishment and what foods and lifestyle habits cause toxicity and inflammation, how can doctors help us to recover and heal from ailments, most of which are preventable and treatable through lifestyle changes?
The Center for Disease Control (“CDC”) estimates that 6 in 10 (60%) adults have a chronic disease and 40% have two or more. According to the US Census Bureau, there were 250 million adults living in the US as of July 2017, so 150 million have a chronic disease and 100 million have two or more. That is staggering! The CDC also states that “Chronic diseases and conditions—such as heart disease, stroke, cancer, type 2 diabetes, obesity, and arthritis—are among the most common, costly, and preventable of all health problems.”
A Pill for an Ill
A principle belief that has been indoctrinated in our society is that doctors need to fix your ailment or health concern. Generally, most doctors will try to do this with “medications” that are toxic to the body and often damaging to our organs.
Now your doctor might suggest that you exercise more; eat less red meat; lower your salt intake, or drink more water. But rarely, if ever, is there an in-depth discussion of diet and lifestyle as the potential cause of any ailments or health concerns. And when you don’t investigate the cause, you can’t treat the problem at its root.
Instead, what ultimately results from most doctor visits is disease or discomfort management where symptoms of a bigger underlying problem are addressed and not the actual cause. For the most part, they either perform surgery or prescribe medicine. This feeds the coffers of the pharmaceutical industry which is expected to grow to over 1 trillion dollars in revenue globally by 2021!
Eight of the top 10 drugs prescribed in the U.S. are for the “treatment” of high blood pressure, chronic pain, diabetes, high cholesterol, and suboptimal thyroid functioning (the other two are antibiotics). Hundreds of millions of prescriptions written every year for just those ailments. Have you seen some of the side effects of many of these drugs? They can be scarier than the issue they are designed to “treat.” It is our belief that dietary improvements along with adequate sleep and exercise are more effective in preventing, alleviating and possibly eliminating entirely these health challenges.
Doctors are too busy, and they make mistakes!
In a recent study, sixty-two percent of doctors surveyed recently reported spending on average 13 – 24 minutes with patients per visit. Twenty-two percent spend 9 – 12 minutes and 5% spent less than 9 minutes. The remaining 11% claimed to spend 25 minutes or more. And that’s after waiting up to weeks if not more to actually get an appointment. None of this is all that surprising when you consider the level of ailments and chronic disease prevalent today.
Here is something truly disturbing. Did you know that according to a Johns Hopkins study done in 2016 that more than 250,000 people in the U.S. die every year because of medical “mistakes” making it the third cause of death after heart disease and cancer? That’s from human error or misdiagnosis. That is astounding. What’s even more interesting is the fact that physicians, funeral directors, coroners, and medical examiners rarely note human error or system failures as a cause of death on official death certificates.
“Let food be thy medicine.” – Hippocrates
What if instead of being so quick to prescribe pills or perform surgery, we made the effort to dramatically change our diet and lifestyle in a way that allowed our bodies to heal with proper nourishment, regular exercise, and rest? The human body is designed to function in a healthy state with its own balancing mechanisms. It is always seeking homeostasis: “the tendency toward a relatively stable equilibrium between interdependent elements, especially as maintained by physiological processes; internal balance and stability.” In other words, our bodies are designed to operate cleanly and efficiently; to be healthy.
Now, if you break a bone; are born with a congenital disease; suddenly experience acute pain; or God forbid you are in a horrible accident, doctors and hospitals can be life-savers worthy of our gratitude and praise. To be clear, doctors do save and extend lives using surgery and technology, and for that, they are to be highly commended. They can also order important diagnostic tests that are crucial in flagging problems or imbalances, especially if they are designed for early detection. But, in the end, a doctor’s main choices are still to prescribe medication and/or operate. We believe that either option should be a last-ditch outcome whenever possible and used only AFTER lifestyle and dietary alterations have been suggested and implemented.
Clearly, our medical system is wrought with problems, and we need to do a better job at educating our doctors properly about how to use nutrition and lifestyle changes as a means for stimulating the body’s natural healing response. In the meantime, however, each of us needs to start taking more responsibility for understanding how to do this on our own.
That is where we come in. Book a free consult with us today and let us help you address your concerns and develop a plan to reach your health goals through proper diet and lifestyle.
