Doctor and Patient - Teaching Doctors About Food and Diet - NYTimes.com

Having been given tons of weird advice and information from doctors, I rarely trust them on "alternative therapies.

I've had similar experience.

For starters-- as the article explains, med schools teach very, very little about nutrition.

Secondly, conventional western medicine focuses on curing symptoms-- not treating the underlying imbalance. So what often happens is the symptom disappears-- oto be replaced later by another symptom-- as the actual cause was never addressed.

Finally-- Doctors are given free samples, and often wined and dined by reps from the Pharmaceutical industry. As a result, their first thought for almost any problem is to medicate.

Medicate-- or perform surgery.

Not only does this usually fail to address the real issues-- but it often makes things worse.

krishna: Very true. It's been my experience that most doctors don't really care to listen and don't help solve the problem or try to find the cause...they just push you off with some medications and shove you out the door, so that they can get the next one in the door.

For starters-- as the article explains, med schools teach very, very little about nutrition.

We certainly don't get a ton - but, we do get more than very, very little (well at least where I go to medical school).

Secondly, conventional western medicine focuses on curing symptoms-- not treating the underlying imbalance. So what often happens is the symptom disappears-- oto be replaced later by another symptom-- as the actual cause was never addressed.

Well, I think that depends - especially on the type of physician you are seeing. A DO or an MD...DO's are much more likely to look at the whole patient - which includes looking for imalances. That said, I do think that MD's are starting to do this more and more. Hopefully this will continue to change and more and more physcians will be looking at this.

Finally-- Doctors are given free samples, and often wined and dined by reps from the Pharmaceutical industry. As a result, their first thought for almost any problem is to medicate.

Accepting gifts from pharmaceutical companies is illegal in most states anymore. Where I live, we can't even take pens, sticky notes, etc. from pharm reps. Samples are tricky - on one hand, they need to be careful not to favor a drug because the rep gave them free samples; on the other hand, they do help some patients. There are a lot of patients that don't qualify for medicaid or medicare, but don't make enough to pay for their prescriptions (often it's their insurance doesn't have an rx plan) - giving these patients samples is sometimes the only way they get the medication they need.

Medicate-- or perform surgery.

Sometimes these are the only realistic options. Sometimes not. Sometimes why they are the only realistic options is because the patient doesn't want to comply with lifestyle changes. Honestly, I was working in clinic this summer, the physician was advising a patient on dealing with newly diagnosed high blood pressure and cholesterol with exercise and diet (standard first line treatment), telling the patient they might be able to avoid medications (and the potential side effects) and get their BP & cholesterol under control at the same time. The patients response "You know, doc, I won't stop eating my high fat diet and I'm not interested in working out." That patient got their medication as a first line treatment (of course everytime we saw him, the physician would talk to him about diet and exercise). That happens a lot more than I ever realized it would happen.

I worked at a pharmacy a couple of years ago and I also go to 2 doctors (once every 3 months) and I've been going to doctors for 5 years straight...at one time I was going once a month, and in my opinion, I believe certain doctors are being wined and dined by pharmaceutical reps and I have witnessed encounters very similar to that.

This is true, though it's a fairly recent development. I was working at a pharmacy two years ago and this was just coming into effect. It had gotten to the point where doctors were being taken on golf trips with prizes at every hole -- "Hey, doc. Great. You just won a case of Chivas for making a birdie.

Absolutely it's a relatively recent event - imo, it should've happened sooner. It's sad that this regulation even had to be put into place to begin with.

I still have a suspicion (one you may feel is totally unfair) that many doctors in the field are being given medical continuing education by drug and equipment reps who have a BS degree. While working for an insurance entity I made friends with an RN who represented a device company. She would attend the surgery the first time a physician was implanting the device to instruct him on proper procedure. I think the same is happening with pharmacology for physicians.

Possibly.

I certainly wasn't trying to make excuses - I was just pointing out how some things have changed, and how, in some cases people being on meds that they could choose an alternate treatment isn't always the physicians fault. Really, it seems that people expect a quick cure for everything, and when there isn't one, it's the doctor's fault. Or if there is a treatment (like lifestyle changes), the patient, at times, doesn't want to do the neccessary lifestyle changes - yet, somehow that's still the doctor's fault. One of my instructors, who's a sports medicine physician, had a patient say he was too busy to exercise. My instructor's reply was "Well, what fits better in your schedule - 30 minutes of exercise a day, or being dead 24 hours a day?" Fortunately, he had a good relationship with his patient, so he felt comfortable saying that to him.

Now, something I should point out about alternative therapies - most of them have very inconclusive scientific evidence. However, very few of them have negative effects for most people. They do need to watch that there isn't any cross reactions, etc. with meds they have to take. But, if it's not going to hurt you and it might help you, then I see no problem with them.

spudpundit - Thanks. I agree entirely with your above statement. It's funny that you mention Vitamin K - only because my son is always deficient in it even though he takes a multi-vitamin, extra vit. K, eats a very healthy diet. He's has a problem absorbing it - as a result, his clotting factor are low. Like I said earlier, while we get some training in nutrition, it isn't as much as on other things.