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Thursday, July 19, 2012

M.D. = No Knowledge of Nutrition

An interesting development in Europe: Dark chocolate is a "health food."  Cocoa flavanols can increase blood circulation (see this).

I have posted here a lot on health - this fact about cocoa being just another "point" on a growing picture of how the modern medical system is failing us...

Yesterday I was speaking with a local nutritional expert. He is very interested in how your body systems work: digestive, endocrine, and so on at the biochemical level.  He addresses how proper nutrition helps and/or hurts these systems.

As we were speaking he made an interesting comment: "I have a lot of doctors as patients."  He went on to describe how he had various doctor groups as patients.

Now this guy was a chiropractor, not an M.D.

I thought this was an interesting point.  I wondered how he got whole groups of M.D.'s as patients (I always thought that M.D.'s looked down as chiropractors because their profession was not part of the "AMA" world).

He told me that one had contacted him, his nutritional program had worked well, and that the M.D. had told the others in the practice.  Soon the entire practice was a seeing him for nutritional issues.  This spread on to other practices and doctors.

I found this odd.

I wondered why doctors would do this - after all - didn't they have to to to medical school and learn all this biochemical and nutrition stuff as M.D.s?

The surprising answer was a resounding "no."

Medical school does not teach nutrition nor how nutrition affects the biochemical pathways in the body.

He told me that doctors were amazed to learn this information.

I wondered what M.D.'s did learn in school if it wasn't how the body's biochemical systems worked or what was important about nutrition.

Unfortunately we didn't get to discuss that...

So what do M.D.'s learn in school I wonder?  I guess they learn from big pharma what pills people need - but not why and certainly not why they work or don't work or are good or bad for you.

So you really have to ask: what's nutrition?

Does the guy who "sun gazes" all the time really get something from it?

A placebo effect?  Actual energy?

Sun gazer's certainly think so...

And what about foods and herbs?  Do they work?  Some certainly seem to...

And things like "Dr Dan's Water" - this too...

But medical science is not like a "whole earth" catalog of how your body works apparently.  It seems more like a menu of "if A and B then big pharma offers C".  If you can't find A or B on the menu, then they can't help.

Which is why the US is full of alternative medicine - because most people don't fall into A and B in one way or another.

Our health is being thrown over a cliff in the name of "access for all."

Access to what?  Prescriptions?

By people who do not understand the biochemical processes in your body?

What can they really do if they don't understand how it works?

And more that just me is seeing this today.

Its time to pay more attention.

2 comments:

  1. As a current medical student, I can tell you that while this may have been true in the past, it is not true any longer. During my basic science year we spent a week learning only about obesity, and have lectures on nutrition when we cover the GI system, the heart, etc. Our licensing exams also test nutrition. For example, the first line treatment for someone with high cholesterol? Correct answer on the exam: diet and exercise.

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  2. I was talking to someone who was dealing with various older MDs (probably 35 and older) - so its good to hear that its being taught again.

    Though I guess I wonder what happens if "diet and exercise" fails?

    There is also quite a bit of interesting stuff related to why there is currently an obesity "crisis"... Common oils are bad, etc. What's the thinking here?

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