Your doctor is a lying liar pants!

SuperSexyDork
SuperSexyDork Posts: 1,669 Member
in Food and Nutrition
Just kidding! She/he is probably not.

However, did you know that your doctor probably knows next to nothing about nutrition? I'm currently taking a college nutrition course and came across this gem in my textbook (Nutrition Concepts & Controversies, 13th edition):

"Only about 30% of all medical schools in the United States require students to take a comprehensive nutrition course, such as the class taken by students reading this text. Less than half of medical schools require even 25 hours of nutrition instruction. By comparison, your current nutrition class provides an average of 45 hours of instruction."

I'm not trying to tell you to not listen to your doctor, but perhaps if you have questions about nutrition, you'd be better off getting a referral to a registered dietition.
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Replies

  • ew_david
    ew_david Posts: 3,473 Member
    One of my best friends is a doctor. She asked me what kind of diet she should do.
  • taunto
    taunto Posts: 6,420 Member
    if you are gonna go to a lumber jack and expect him to make you a master piece of a kitchen cabinet set because he works with wood and should be able to do a carpenter job, then you get what you deserve.

    The good doctors do recommend. The problem is that in our society mind (you know, society also includes our doctors) weight loss is a topic who anyone and everyone will give recommendation on. Add to that the God complex of a Doctor, they will give you a recommendation of what they think is right.

    I personally think its both the doctors fault and the patient. Doctor isn't doing his job telling the patient what to do and the patient almost always feels insulted that the doctor isn't sharing the "secret pills" or "weight loss secrets" that he knows since he's a DOCTOR!
  • earlnabby
    earlnabby Posts: 8,171 Member
    I lucked out in that my primary care is actually a Nurse Practitioner and a Certified Diabetic Educator. I get better nutrition info from her than I did from my previous MD. She still sent me to a Registered Dietician for more in depth nutritional counseling.

    ETA: Nurse Practitioners tend to have much less of a God complex than MD's because they started out as nurses and we all know that nurses are the true backbone in health care.
  • SuperSexyDork
    SuperSexyDork Posts: 1,669 Member
    It's a funny thing. You always WANT to trust a doctor. But we've seen so many people with doctors giving them terrible advice, putting them on dangerous diet plans, even using their position to sell them gimmick products they profit off.

    Like the article states, they don't really learn much about nutrition. They don't learn much pharmacology either. To be fair, you gotta learn A LOT trying to be a doctor, so I get it that they can't learn everything. Just goes to show you have to be careful, if it's something important don't be afraid to get a second opinion, and always make sure you're taking advice from good sources.

    You make some good points but I know that it's HARD to make sure you're getting good advice from good sources because you want to trust certain people and because of the massive amount of misinformation out there. There is a whole section in this book devoted to finding credible sources of information in both print and from professionals.
  • SuperSexyDork
    SuperSexyDork Posts: 1,669 Member
    One of my best friends is a doctor. She asked me what kind of diet she should do.

    Did you tell her Paleo? LOL!
  • SuperSexyDork
    SuperSexyDork Posts: 1,669 Member
    if you are gonna go to a lumber jack and expect him to make you a master piece of a kitchen cabinet set because he works with wood and should be able to do a carpenter job, then you get what you deserve.

    The good doctors do recommend. The problem is that in our society mind (you know, society also includes our doctors) weight loss is a topic who anyone and everyone will give recommendation on. Add to that the God complex of a Doctor, they will give you a recommendation of what they think is right.

    I personally think its both the doctors fault and the patient. Doctor isn't doing his job telling the patient what to do and the patient almost always feels insulted that the doctor isn't sharing the "secret pills" or "weight loss secrets" that he knows since he's a DOCTOR!

    That's true! My GP was honest and said that she doesn't know much about nutrition. She let me know that she'd be happy to write a referral if I wanted one though. But yeah, God complex. The other problem is that so many people are willing to let them keep that God complex. Seriously, I know people that are afraid to ask for second opinions or even ask their doctor a question because he/she must be right. He's a DOCTOR!
  • hearthwood
    hearthwood Posts: 794 Member
    I think most doctors have a very good sense about nutrition, but a dietician has the expertise.
  • emdeesea
    emdeesea Posts: 1,823 Member
    Yeah, this sort of goes for nurses too, but honestly, I think nurses have more education in nutrition than doctors do.
  • SuperSexyDork
    SuperSexyDork Posts: 1,669 Member
    Yeah, this sort of goes for nurses too, but honestly, I think nurses have more education in nutrition than doctors do.

    I don't know. I'm starting nursing clinicals next semester but I've already looked over the graduation requirements for nursing at my school and they don't include any nutrition courses.

    BUT it's a prerequisite for the University of Maryland's RN to BSN program which I plan on taking sometime after I've started working as a nurse.
  • LazyCatPame
    LazyCatPame Posts: 112 Member
    Well... No news there, sometimes they pretend they know and just screw up. Mom got on several diets with different doctors, lost some weight and then either stopped losing it or gained it again without breaking any of her current diet's rules, and doctors kept blaming her. A couple of years later after giving up on them, she did some research on her own and lost 60 pounds... and yes, her diet was very healthy.
  • psych101
    psych101 Posts: 1,842 Member
    Every time I take my son to see the doctor he always quizzes me on how I'm losing weight, how much weight I lift, when I train and my macros lol then laments about his own weight gain
  • sarajenivieve
    sarajenivieve Posts: 303 Member
    Also as of 2010 most doctors were getting less then 19.5 hours of nutritional training scarier still is One survey published in 2003, “found that 96 percent of internists and 84 percent of the cardiologists who responded did not know that a low-fat diet, in general, would increase triglycerides in the blood. High triglycerides increase the risk of heart disease,” according to The Chicago Tribune.
  • mjudd1990
    mjudd1990 Posts: 222 Member
    As someone going through the process of becoming a physician right now I can tell you that we learn the nuts and bolts of nutrition but the amount of material that is already squeezed into a med school curriculum is so immense I find it hard to imagine they could squeeze an entire traditional nutrition course in. I always encourage my patients to exercise and eat healthy, especially if their particular condition responds to dietary intervention (diabetes, congestive heart failure, end stage renal disease, etc.) We are normal people and have a finite fund of knowledge just like everyone else and the vast majority of us want nothing more than for our patients to be as happy and healthy as possible.
  • Zerodette
    Zerodette Posts: 200 Member
    Doctor here, can confirm. Nutrition was a one-half of one semester class that nobody took seriously.
  • bkthandler
    bkthandler Posts: 247 Member
    Many years ago I was at my mother's doctor and asking questions (they love me especially when I take notes:devil: ). I was concerned about her being really inactive and the possible muscle atrophy. He informed me that atrophy is only a problem if someone is in bed for years.

    Her chronic pain never improves and she can barely walk out to the mailbox on a beautiful day. Her quality of life is awful.

    I still want to strangle him every time I see them.

    He's in his mid to late 40's and likes to call me and my mom "sweetheart".
  • RET68
    RET68 Posts: 88
    My doctor told me "oh you can't lose weight, neither can I, you'd have to go on like 800 calories, or exercise 4 hours a day" and this is a guy you have to wait 6 months to see, as everyone likes him. Whatever, smile and nod, good advice from long ago...:wink:
  • ew_david
    ew_david Posts: 3,473 Member
    Yeah, this sort of goes for nurses too, but honestly, I think nurses have more education in nutrition than doctors do.

    I took one nutrition class for my nursing degree.
  • mainergirl22
    mainergirl22 Posts: 1
    While it's true that most medical schools don't offer much in the way of training in nutrition, I would dispute the idea that all doctors know nothing. I am a doctor and do a fair amount of dietary counseling with my patients. And as for the remark about pharmacology, I took an entire semester (roughly 6 hours/wk for 14 weeks) of it, but recognize that new meds come out at an astounding pace, and it is hard to keep on top of all the new ones. Lots of my patients ask how they can lose weight, but I think much like quitting smoking, you have to be in the right state of mind to take on weight loss seriously. I thought I was "being healthy" because I was going to the gym 4x/wk, but I was giving myself tacit permission to eat ANYTHING I wanted and that cost me some significant weight that I'm now working hard to take off.
  • CyberEd312
    CyberEd312 Posts: 3,536 Member
    Yeah my Doctor is great when I walked into his office 5 years ago at 560 pounds he looked over my blood work and ultrasounds and ask if I wanted weight loss surgery. I told him No Way because if I could not fix what was broken in my head no amount of surgery would matter.. I was going to do this with diet and exercise or die trying... He said well the mental side of this you are going to have to look into on your own but "If you have a cold, I am your guy.... If you have a medical problem, I am your guy...... but I know just enough about dieting and nutrition to be dangerous so lets write you a couple scripts to go see the Endocrinologist (my blood work diagnosed me Type 2 diabetic) and a Dietician, He said I will work closely with them and together we will give you all the help that we can to get you through this...

    I have a lot of respect for my Doctor and he is always straight forward and brutally honest with me and that is what I like the most about him... No BS....... :drinker:

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