Your doctor is a lying liar pants!

Yeah, but the benefit of seeing a doctor is that they can see the whole picture. Taking a 45 hour nutrition course may inform you about some stuff, but last time I saw the syllabus for one of those a few of those hours covered anatomy and physiology and gastric hormones and peptides, which wouldn't be in a nutrition course for a medic, it's in the first year. Any nutritional information is absorbed into the rest of the modules, and the benefit is that they understand your medications, general health, mental health and so on. A nutritionist making those decisions for you should be fired. If a medical doctor also specializes in digestive health, you can bet that they've put a lot more than 45 hours into understanding the way the body reacts to food.

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.

With all due respect, claiming to know a great deal about pharamacology because you "took an entire semester" is like claiming to be an expert mathematician because you took Algebra last year. 84 total hours of training isn't going to make you an expert on *ANYTHING*.

The problem with doctors (in general, not specifically you) is pretending to greater knowledge than they actually possess. This is one of the reasons for so many malpractice suits (aside from the abusive ones by bad actors): doctors have promised results they couldn't deliver based on inadequate training/knowledge in a field they were claiming expertise in and patients not realizing that their doctor doesn't know as much as he claims to know and therefore believing what he says without looking into it themselves.

Case in point, I was recommended a treatment two years ago that would have resulted in sterility despite me explicitly telling my doctor that my wife and I were going to try for another child and despite there being other alternatives available. Had I not checked up on what that doctor was telling me, you can bet there would have been a lawsuit for that doctor's incompetence.

Taking a course in nutrition or pharmacology isn't enough knowledge or practice to be an expert in it. Period.

Part of life is acknowledging your own limitations and working within them. But doctors are wrongly believed to be the font of far more knowledge than their actual training provides.

I think most doctors have a very good sense about nutrition, but a dietician has the expertise.

They also don't know anything about exercise or athletics (unless possibly if they are an athlete themselves).

I don't think this applies to doctors outside of North America, it's very, very, very rare that a European doctor would be subject to a malpractice suit. And I don't think it's "pretending to know more than they do", I think it's just no-one is perfect INCLUDING doctors...they do know this. Human error is a part of all careers and to be honest, the doctor knows more than the patient in most cases (not all!) One benefit in the UK is that the doctor can be more flexible with the drugs he prescribes rather than having to push the ones he's sponsored by or the ones that the patient can afford...I think some of the malpractice suits might be due to that rather than the doctor being an arsey git, tbh.

1) The reason there are far less malpractice suits in Europe than the US is primarily because of the difference in laws between the two: In a government-run healthcare system, you would essentially be suing the government, which has far greater resources to quash a malpractice suit than in a privately-run system - so only the most obvious, egegrious examples ever get taken to court in the first place. They also have the ability (and have actually) made it much difficult to win a malpractice suit because, unlike private doctors, they have the power to change the laws to make it so.

2) You presume to know an awful lot about the American medical system which simply isn't true. No doctor in this country is *required* to prescribe any particular medication, so your claim that European doctors somehow provide a higher level of care because they aren't acting under such restrictions is, at best, badly misinformed, and more likely, simply defamatory. And as far as resrictions on the patient's ability to afford medication, that's not true either. There is a significant social safety net in this country that ensures people receive the treatment they require. There are actually more restrictions on what European doctors are allowed to do and prescribe because of government regulations than there are on American doctors who have far more freedom to prescribe "off-label" uses of medications (one of which wound up being the treatment appropriate for me, and which I could not have been prescribed by a European doctor because of that). So if you're going to make comparisons, at least have the common decency to be well-informed on the subject first.

3) The treatment I was recommended simply happened to be the most common one: it wasn't the most expensive one. The doctor simply had no clue that it would result in infertility, didn't bother to check it out, and scheduled me for an appointment to begin that treatment assuming that I would go blindly along without checking up behind her. It was flat-out negligence/malpractice on her part. Where she practiced medicine was irrelevant to the situation.

Although, hypocritically you presume to know a lot about the European medical system.

Funny enough when I read this post, I though of when my dad had a heart attack and his cardiologist asked if we had questions before he left. Of course we had a million but mostly food related. (This was about 7 years ago when we could care less about fat) we asked what oil is best to use, what to not to eat health wise as in is it OK to eat beef once in a while (again totally new at this at the time) and his answer was "I have no clue I eat whatever I want, ask the nurse" I couldn't believe my ears!!

Want to see how smart your doctor is?

Ask him or her these questions (answers based on you being otherwise healthy):

1) Do I need to eat breakfast every day?

a: no

2) Do I need to eat three square meals a day?

a: no

3) Is there metabolic machinery that needs to be started up in the morning?

a: no

4) When we sleep, does our metabolism go into a special mode, like a computer?

a: no

5) Does genetics determine a pre-disposition to gaining weight?

a: no

6) Is 60 the absolute lowest my glucose should go?

a: no. People get into real problems only when it is below 30. This assumes you are not on any glucose-lowering drugs.

7) Is fructose bade for you?

a: no

8) I want to water-fast for three days. Will that hurt me?

a: no

9) Is there a "best" type of carbohydrate to eat?

a: no. Carbs vary on absorption time, but all carbs absorbed eventually enter the bloodstream as 95% glucose, with a little fructose and galactose to make up the difference.

10) If I eat a high-cholesterol food, will that raise my cholesterol?

a: no. All ingested cholesterol is broken down. All human cholesterol is made by the body.

and so on and so forth

source: Guyton's textbook of Medical physiology.

for a general overview, read the freebie kindle pages of Dr. Hagan's "Breakfast: The Least Important Meal of the Day". No need to buy the book.

Doctors are great people, but most are ignorant, and today a lot want to be popular so as to get a good evaluation from you. So they will softball the truth in order to make you feel better.

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.

Bwahaha! That's why we have nutritionist/dietician.

Hahahaha! Did you jus' realize you are expecting barber to bake you a birthday cake?

Who told you docs are trained in nutrition. Most MDs have Anatomy/chemistry/Micro-Biology as their majors. Nutrition is not even in their pre-requisites.

Maybe so but a lot of people go to their doctors if they are looking for advice on losing weight OR their doctor might suggest certain foods/diets for them as well.

I honestly don't really trust any doctor. The person I used to use as my PCP was a joke! He gave me an RX for an anti depressant when I went to him for sleeping issues. :huh: I am the least depressed person out there. I was just suffering from a little bit of insomnia!

I personally don't see how doctors can keep up-to-date with the medical advancements and new studies on things and really don't believe that they do. That same PCP who prescribed me an anti depressant was still quoting a very old and extremely flawed study that said Vitamin E isn't necessary. Yeah. I don't go to him any more.

ETA: Never mind the fact that a doctors answer to everything is to prescribe some type of drug.

Funny enough when I read this post, I though of when my dad had a heart attack and his cardiologist asked if we had questions before he left. Of course we had a million but mostly food related. (This was about 7 years ago when we could care less about fat) we asked what oil is best to use, what to not to eat health wise as in is it OK to eat beef once in a while (again totally new at this at the time) and his answer was "I have no clue I eat whatever I want, ask the nurse" I couldn't believe my ears!!