Why Your Doctor May Question a Low Carb Diet (US)

[Northerner]

I am a retired physician who graduated from Emory University School of Medicine in 1986. A vast majority of physicians I’ve encountered during my career have the patient’s best interest in mind and want to improve their health.

So if you learn about the benefits of a low carbohydrate lifestyle from books, articles published in medical journals, or God forbid, the INTERNET, you might wonder why your doctor is either not supportive or even cautions you against it.

The answer is simpler than you might think. It is not that your doctor does not want you to experience the benefits. It is most likely that your doctor was not educated about the effect of diet on disease. To understand this, let me give you some background about medical education.

In order to get into medical school in the first place, you have to be an excellent student. In our current education system, being an excellent student means being able to learn and retain lots of information in a short period of time and accurately recall that information on a test or later in medical training with their patients. It does not require that they be creative thinkers or innovators, or question what they are being taught. Once a student enters medical school, the amount and pace of learning is accelerated further. There is literally no time to question the validity of the material.

http://asweetlife.org/feature/why-your-doctor-may-question-a-low-carb-diet/

 

[trophywench]

It was very odd - I was recently a 'Patient speaker' at a diabetes day for W Mids medical and peripheral staff - where I started by asking the room How many diabetes patients do you treat? - and then went on to describe how whatever they thought the answer was - the only correct answer was 'Nil' - since their job actually (unless we were new or unconscious/incapable for whatever reason) was really to explain and advise and prescribe and in total, just to facilitate all their diabetes patents to treat themselves!

This came as a bit of a shock to some of the audience - but there was a bloke there (who, had you asked me to describe him, I would say he was a Muslim man, getting on in years with a long, grey and white beard and a hat like 'Citizen Khan' wore on TV - ie nothing like me and mine and one would not have batted an eyelid had he been furious at me saying what I did) who was saying 'Hear Hear!' in appropriate places and nodding, and warmly applauded me at the end. He was sat on a table near the front with a number of T2 patients, none of a similar ethnic group to himself. I assumed he was probably also a patient. However - after the next presentation he asked some questions - and it turned out he was a B'ham GP. Obviously one who KNEW how it really is!

The 'Consultant' types were all actually singing from the same hymnsheet as were the DUK reps and the NHS honcho - Mike has experienced this with the same groups of different people during his contributions - so I do think we are actually getting there from the top. It's just how long it takes to reach the bottom isn't it?

(Elsewhere this week, we have learned that in Scarborough a T2 who moved there from Brum recently to retire, has been told by her GP surgery nurse that the official 'X-pert' course was dropped like a hot cake when they were found to be giving 'dangerous dietary advice concerning lowering carbohydrate intake' to patients - whereas 'the whole of the York area' knew very well that starchy carbs rammed down the throat at every opportunity, together with low fat, was the correct advice, so they've taken over the job themselves forthwith with their own course, to give the correct high carb low fat advice ........ )

 

[Northerner]

(Elsewhere this week, we have learned that in Scarborough a T2 who moved there from Brum recently to retire, has been told by her GP surgery nurse that the official 'X-pert' course was dropped like a hot cake when they were found to be giving 'dangerous dietary advice concerning lowering carbohydrate intake' to patients - whereas 'the whole of the York area' knew very well that starchy carbs rammed down the throat at every opportunity, together with low fat, was the correct advice, so they've taken over the job themselves forthwith with their own course, to give the correct high carb low fat advice ........ )

😱 Oh my giddy aunt! 😱 That is truly frightening

 

[Lynn Davies]

😱 Oh my giddy aunt! 😱 That is truly frightening

Your frightened! Guess who my PCT is! 🙄

 

[trophywench]

Yep - well it was on 't'other DSF' and it is a lady who has been with us a number of years and doing well cutting carbs etc but with the stress of upping and moving house etc etc had taken her eye off the ball - but anyway needed to go to the docs to register and get all the usual - and that was what she got.

So she'll stick with us - and just say 'yeah, yeah, yeah' to the nurse.

 

[KookyCat]

I think it goes much deeper than they don't have time to question, I think they actually actively recruit scientific rationalists who by definition don't question fact. The personality type of doctors is by majority those who seek to control. I've said a number of times the human body is more of an art than a science and I stick by that. Art requires intuition and hunches and suspension of disbelief. Science is the direct antithesis as it is practiced today. It's evidence based and so is a system of compounded error for the most part. Suggesting that they are not treating diabetes erodes their fundamental control, they are programmed to believe that you pop a pill in a fixed dose and the body will obey science. It's why mental health is too difficult for them, because it is hugely irrational and uncontrollable. That's also why a patient who doesn't respond must be failing to comply, because there just is no other possible reason. It's the basic dichotomy of diabetes care, you are at fault when it doesn't work but they are treating you when it does. They have to encourage you to be active, but they only want you to active if you're following their prescribed methods. I know there are differences between individual doctors, and I'm not criticising them really, because we're asking them to acknowledge something that rallies against their belief system. Interesting area. That's my philosophy done for the day

 

[Northerner]

I suspect the really good doctors we come across are the well-rounded individuals who can combine encyclopaedic knowledge with empathy and intuition 🙂 A lot of it is historical as well - doctors used to be held in much higher esteem in the past, whereas nowadays we see them more as human beings, with frailties and flaws like the rest of us 🙂

 

[DeusXM]

I also think it must be very easy to become incredibly jaded as a doctor who works with people with diabetes (I nearly said 'treats', sorry Jenny!).

Think about it.

Every single person who sits in that chair opposite you doesn't want to be there. Every single person you are trying to help doesn't want to be in the position where they need help. Every single person hates the reasons they are in that room with you and by definition is likely to end up hating you too.

It's got to be hard to stay motivated under those circumstances. It must be even harder when probably, 95% of those patients, no matter what you do, will continue to make poor choices, refuse to take any action themselves and generally just not care.

Imagine that - 95% of your day, you're dealing with people who actively hate you and don't even care that you're trying to help them. No wonder plenty of them don't bother to challenge the original advice they might have been taught 20 years ago. They're just trying to get through the day, and why would you bother to improve yourself when the people you're trying to improve yourself for are those 95%.

I'm a great believer in calling doctors on their mistakes and will happily challenge their advice if it doesn't seem to stack up - but I'm also a great believer that it's not entirely their fault if they're not as effective or motivated as we'd like them to be.