I had to come back to this one. What they're ill informed about is anything regarding nutrition, or what a patient needs to do in order to go from being sick, to being healthy. They know even less about disease prevention. Their training is funded, or comes directly from the pharmaceutical companies, and they know only how to treat illnesses within the model they've learned about.
Physicians' training is not funded by pharmaceutical companies, at all. They usually have very little contact with them until they go into private practice (for those that do). Researchers are more likely to have projects funded by them, and sometimes education funded by them if someone worked with a pharmaceutical company prior to going back to graduate school to get their PhD. But these again are not the people who are dealing with the profit side of things- they're just trying to find ways to treat and cure disease. These are not the guys setting the prices.
Plenty understand disease prevention, but they are not the most effective outlet for preventing disease. That should really be a more communal, societal, behavioral thing. Plenty of docs would like to move to a more preventative model, as would insurance, and that is the way things are trending.
And yes, they know how to treat illnesses within the model they are taught, because that is true of anyone who was trained in any profession. So I agree on that point.
My brother is battling cancer, and is fortunate enough to be under the care of the best doctors in NYC. He's grateful, as am I, as they have undoubtedly kept him alive. They know however, and have made it clear that cancer is most likely what's going to eventually take him out. He currently lives in constant pain, he's addicted to painkillers, and he is far from being a healthy, happy, fully functioning person. He's surviving, until he doesn't any more.
I'm very sorry to hear that- that is an awful situation.
I am not sure how this affects your point, though- they are doing everything they can to keep someone comfortable in an impossible situation. People in those circumstances can have tremendous pain and discomfort, and feel absolutely awful.
If he is in constant pain from his cancer and needs painkillers to stay as comfortable as possible, I say go for it. I have a lot of issues with the way painkillers are doled out (an entirely different subject, but I imagine we probably agree about it), but in this circumstance, I would give him as many as he needed to be comfortable. He does not have to take them, after all.
When he asked those doctors (and more than one) if he should change anything in his diet, he was told, "Eat whatever you want. It makes no difference." There is so much evidence that proves that to be completely untrue... but these doctors, the best in their field, pass this along to their patients. They also feed patients processed foods and sugar in recovery rooms. If you believe this is fine, then I really do feel you need to read some of the above mentioned books, and it's pointless for me to argue this any more. Same for anyone else who's agreeing with you. I have to guess that those in agreement are being kept well by some sort of medication.
I will say that doctors are not nutritionists, and though they have a very good understanding of the biochemical processes in the body, it isn't really in their job description. But I'm not sure there is any data to suggest that a specific diet will treat his cancer- there is a lot of junk out there that is used to sell books that never came from peer-reviewed biochemistry, nutrition, health or medical science literature. If there was, docs would recommend every patient eat green tomatoes (or whatever) because their patients would survive better.
As for the comments about processed foods/sugars, everybody has their own feelings about it. I avoid processed foods when possible, but generally speaking, a molecule of sugar is a molecule of sugar to your body. Processed foods are usually just worse because they do not have much nutritional content per bulk.
Hospital food varies from hospital to hospital, but I agree, it's usually based on delivering basic nutritional essentials. It isn't going to kill anybody, though.
The last statement of yours was unnecessary, though. No medication here. I just read books like those with the same appropriate skepticism that I do when I read anything else (including clinical drug studies, for example)- because people are trying to sell books through some amount of sensationalism, and often twist and distort facts about their subject to fit their point. They know they are selling to an audience that will buy into it. It's no different than the way any company will spin the benefits of their product- it just happens to be the company is a person and the product is a book. I am fine that people support what is written in those books (I've read Whitaker and Scott's books), but I also think it is equally unfair to say that anyone who doesn't must be medicated. It's the FOX/MSNBC thing- the truth, as always, lies way in the middle often, and is much more gray.
As for the pneumonia example, the greatest discovery in medicine came in the treatment for that when antibiotics were born. It's the magic bullet model of disease control that came out of that, that started the problem. You can't kill everything the way antibiotics kill bacteria.
And that is my point also- many diseases flat out cannot be cured, but they still aim to cure. But they aren't, as you had said, trying to treat the symptoms but ignore or fuel the illness.
I also disagree that a cure for AIDS would make more money than the treatment. I'm not even sure how you can suggest that. Exercise has been proven time and time again to be equally or more effective than anti-depressant medication, yet we'll never see a TV commercial telling people to start walking a mile a day to treat "the chemical imbalances that can only be treated with pharmaceuticals".
It would make a lot of money for the company that produced it (including amazing amounts of free advertisement), so it will always be the goal.
Promoting exercise does not earn anybody money, so there will not be commercials. You should go after all the fad diets and BS weight loss programs that advertise for the same reasons, because in reality regular exercising would also be better for you than going Atkins.
Nor will you find a psychiatrist that will walk a person through an exercise program, investigate their diet, or test their blood for a Vitamin D (or other) deficiency. They will immediately start prescribing chemicals and experimenting with the patient's brain chemistry. If you want to call BS, call it on that, not the things you're calling it on.
This is absolutely true, but that isn't really a psychiatrist's job (though they will usually mention benefits of exercise on health). Health care professionals who the person would see more normally are usually responsible for that. And they would test for vitamin D deficiency if there were other appropriate symptoms (patients with vit D are more like to feel depressed, but it's never been implicated as a causative factor such that restoring vit D would treat the depression; usually if they have a true deficiency they'll have multiple other health issues).
Most good psychiatrists would rather someone exercise than take an antidepressant.
And fwiw, I do detect angry rhetoric beneath your posts also. You're just a better writer than me
. Calling a statement silly and unfair though is surely baiting someone. I bit and swallowed.
Nonono, not angry at all, and I don't mean to come across that way- just wanting a more discussion that evaluates the situation in a more wholesome way. There are issues on all sides, and I hate to see an immensely complex problem distilled down to vague talking points. Not trying to bait at all- but I did think that statement was silly.
Edit: 99.9% of people in healthcare are only interested in making people better. I think it is crucial to be open to everyone's experience, perspectives, training, strengths, weaknesses, limitations, pressures and realities rather than just demonizing ("100% evil") or denigrating ("don't know what they are doing") them. Communication is very hard to do that if your assumption is that the other person is evil, dumb or crazy (this applies to all sides of an argument, and everyone is guilty of this from time to time). There are tons of people who lump health professionals with pharmaceutical companies into some evil Borg-like entity, and there are plenty of health professionals who make fun of people who believe that selenium deficiency is at the root of every cancer. There is plenty of room at the table for both groups, and everybody should be talking. Everyone has something to offer, and we all just want people to be healthier. I just wish it would occur with less cynicism (myself included, no doubt).
