Ever get bad advice from a professional?

What's wrong with eating six times a day in small portions? I've been doing that for couple of months now. Although, mostly its 5 times a day. The theory behind it, is that if you eat two or three times a day, you can get to the point when you feel really hungry. And when you finally consume food, your body most certainly would want to store some food/fat on side, just in case if it will go in to hunger mode again. Our body is smart machine on its own If you eat 6-8 times a day, your body doesn't experience hunger as much, there for it doesn't store any fat. It doesn't need to, it remembers that in two or three hours there will be another portion of food. And second, because you eat in small portions, your stomach will shrink. In couple of month, you just won't be able to consume big portions as before

sucampbeN wrote: »

Had a personal trainer advise me to eat 6 small meals a day and use the machines instead of free weights. Fortunately I was not paying him and that one free session was enough to put me off joining that gym.

My doctor tried telling me that in order to lose weight, I just need to add a zero to whatever I want to weigh in a year and then eat that many calories. Not factoring in age, height, current weight, activity level, or even if the goal weight is healthy. I even brought up what that would mean if I wanted to be 100lbs (totally unrealistic and unhealthy for my height). "just eat 1000 calories a day for the next year." I switched doctors.

I went to an RD/MSN/LCSW for an ED issue that I've had since I was 11 years old. After 9 months with her, I had gained about 10 lbs trying to work on "re-feeding" and I had an appointment with my OBGYN. I had been blind-weighing with my specialist and told my doctor under no uncertain terms is she to discuss weight with me. I'm working with a specialist.
She proceeded to give me a calorie counting brochure and call me obese - my BMI was 26. I left there crying and never went back to my nutritional therapy again.

Professionals are just like everyone else. Some are good at their job and some are bad at their job. Just because they have an MD after their name doesn't make them a super human.

FYI, medical school spends a dismal amount of time on the basics of nutrition and weight loss. Most doctors don't know much more than the public on the subject.

Nutritionists are a dime a dozen. Anyone can be certified as a nutritionist online. If you really want advice from a professional, seek out a registered dietician.

Hoo boy...there's two big ones that come to mind.

First bad guy was a dentist when I was a kid. In a period of about a year or 2 he drilled every single tooth in my head except the bottom 4, and over drilled them so that there wasn't enough tooth integrity to hold the fillings, and over time they all fell out. When I was about 18 I called my dad to get my records from that dentist when I was trying to get all his *kitten* work re-done, and he told me that he had his license taken away for performing unnecessary work on his patients, and according to my first xray there (that I brought to the new dentist) I only had 3 small cavities when I first went to see that guy. Pretty much my entire adult life has been spent trying to have enough money to get all of that fixed before it got worse, with many years of not being able to afford it and having a total of 5 root canals, 3 of which were being re-done on one's he'd done. At one point I spent 4 days and nights with an abscessed tooth before anyone would agree to see me (aka my definition of hell). I ended up with a cyst in my sinuses from a poorly done root canal he did, and i've had the back 2 molars completely removed because they couldn't be saved. It's a gorram nightmare. In trying to find a dentist who's willing to take ON that much work, it's been demoralizing and frustrating. I actually had one tell me that he hoped I had grandparents who'd die and leave me money so I could afford what he wanted to do, which was to remove all my teeth and give me dentures. *kitten*.
Thankfully I found a wonderful dentist who worked with me and listened to me and i'm 80% done with everything that was wrong, finally, at 30 years old. All I need now are 3 crowns put on some build ups I have, and a couple small cavities, everything else would be purely cosmetic (since the filling he used doesn't actually match my tooth color in the front) but I don't care much about that part.

The other is when I was 14, I started having horrible mid/upper abdominal pain that shot straight through my back. These episodes would come and go, and last anywhere from half an hour to 5 hours. When I was 16 it was so bad I ended up in the ER (waiting for 5 hours, vomiting and passing out, the whole 9 yards) and the surgeon on call wanted to take out my appendix, before any tests at all had be done to me. (found out later from my aunt who works at that hospital that he was drunk and she'd never have let him touch me anyway)
They took some blood and did an ultrasound of my LOWER abdomen because they just assumed I was on my period. Then they asked if I was sexually active, I said no (because I wasn't yet) and the guy said "dont lie just because your parents are here." Ugh. (this was after they already did a vaginal ultrasound btw) I had high blood levels but they couldn't figure it out so they kept me overnight then sent me home. Because of that experience, every time it happened I just wrapped a heat blanket around my abdomen and stayed in bed, whimpering. Fast forward over 10 years, and I end up at my rheumatologist, and I happen to bring up all that mystery pain to see if he has any idea. I get every test known to man on all my insidey parts, and guess what? It's my freaking pancreas. My grandmother has pancreatic cancer, and mine has been randomly flaring up for over half my life. There are no tumors or growths or anything odd about it other than occasionally it will develop a lesion and hurt like hell. Currently my rhemy thinks it's related to my autoimmune disease, which is weird since it only really effects my connective tissue.
Since finding my rheumy I haven't had an attack in almost 3 years, which is freaking unbelievable.

Yes. When my youngest son was about 10 months old we got thrush. After his pediatrician diagnosed him, I called my doctor and asked if I really needed to be seen, or if they could just prescribe whatever I needed. I was told that thrush doesn't cause pain (?!) and so it must be a breast infection and since he was "so old" I could wean him cold turkey and put him on cow's milk. I found a new doctor.

Recently a dentist told me that my teeth, which she has been cleaning every six months for years, were "very bad" and needed a deep cleaning. And that she needed to use a laser on my teeth and if I didn't use this laser, my gums would "never" heal. This was especially interesting since she deep cleaned them years ago, without any laser, and they healed just fine. I went and got a second opinion and was informed that my teeth looked great. The second opinion is now my dentist. (The laser treatment was hundreds of dollars not covered by insurance, probably because it's freakin' unnecessary.)

Not medical advice, but I've had several doctors that were rude and called me vile names during the appointments. Best memory (any why I have a severe anxiety of dentists) is the childhood dentist (former Army) I went to see when I was 14. He had a brusk manner and pretty much wanted to get the job done and get out, regardless of how the patient felt. I was anxious being there on my own, got scared and started tearing up. As he put the bib on me, he told me to "stop being such a pu$$y and quit bawling". I really started bawling, ripped the bib off, and ran out of the office.

I took my 2 week old daughter to the ER because she hadn't had a wet diaper for 2 days, and they called me a hysterical mother. Took her to her pediatrician the next morning and was told her girl parts had sealed which was why she wasn't wetting.

I've only had one occurrence of "bad advice". It was from my orthodontist. I had been going to him for years since all my adult teeth came in. He had fixed my overbite and the gap between my front teeth. I was 16 and had been wearing a retainer for years (and thought I was done with the ortho) when all of a sudden he's like you need braces. He'd literally never mentioned braces before. I asked why, and I s*** you not, he said "you'd have a prettier smile". I have one jagged tooth in my lower teeth that caused one of my top front teeth to slightly push out from the rest. I never went back. I've had a couple misdiagnoses too, but I had a really rare condition so don't really blame the doctors.

Mr. Pineapple, however, had a pretty recent experience with this. He has restless leg syndrome and was getting it every night. It was really bad; he wasn't sleeping and I wasn't sleeping because he was moving so much. He finally goes to his doctor and tells him he has RLS. The doctor told him not to self-diagnose and to tell him what his symptoms are, to which he replied, "I have restless legs at night and can't sleep". The doctor told him he didn't have RLS because he's too young to get it (??) at 34 and proceeded to make him undergo an unnecessary and painful procedure (it had something to do with shocking I think). Not to mention the $$. He went to a new doctor after that and got prescribed some RLS medication. We sleep at night now. It's great.

So the doctor I was mentioning above told me today to eat a low cholesterol diet to keep my cholesterol in check. I just nodded and didn't say anything lol. It's sad. Seriously, it should be a requirement for doctors to stay up to date on nutrition requirements. Wasn't it proved years ago that dietary cholesterol has no impact on blood cholesterol?

And yeah, my childhood doctor. In restrospect, he was awful. He got my father killed by saying his blood pressure was fine and he didn't need medicine for it (until his aorta split open because of it). And I had horrible asthma growing up and he just gave me emergency inhalers to handle it. So for years I had horrible grades in PE because I couldn't run without losing my breath... What saved me is when I was 14 (!!!) and my PE teacher took an interest in me and told me to go see her allergist. When I got the breathing tests done for it, they wanted to hospitalize me because my breathing was so awful... and I had been that way for years. I finally got it treated properly and got a good grade in PE at the final exam... I will always be thankful for that teacher, heck she might have saved my life...

The other day I saw my new endocrinologist for the first time (type 1 diabetic). I explained to him that I was diagnosed with an A1C of 17.1 and that I had brought it down to a 6.4 in three months. He told me that wasn't possible. Then the nurse walked in with my prior medical records that she'd just printed out. He says, "Oh, so I see that you went from an A1C of 17.1 to a 6.4 in three months....You probably had way too many lows with that though, so I'm going to recommend you set your BG goal to 120 at least."

When I was hospitalized from the ER, a doctor walked in the room while I had family members (including my son) visiting, and began discussing my ED in a very condescending tone. Despite the fact that they were told that my medical information was only to be discussed with myself and my husband in the room.

I took my 1.5yo to an allergist after she had a mild reaction to peanut butter. He just said keep her away from peanuts for a year and a half. I did that, and at 3yo I had to call 911 because she was in full blown anaphylaxis after giving her a peanut (I was young and since he didn't say he wanted to follow up at a later date or seem concerned, I took his advice at face value - he made it sound like a year and a half of avoidance would let her outgrow the allergy) I know now that if we were going to try and introduce peanuts it should have been in a controlled medical environment. Sigh. She's now 15 and hasn't had a major reaction since, thanks to super diligent avoidance.

madhatter2013 wrote: »

zyxst wrote: »

I took my 2 week old daughter to the ER because she hadn't had a wet diaper for 2 days, and they called me a hysterical mother. Took her to her pediatrician the next morning and was told her girl parts had sealed which was why she wasn't wetting.

I hope you don't mind but I have to ask. How does this happen?

It's called labia fusion and apparently happens a lot. The inner lips get stuck together and stay stuck. Daughter got a script for a cream to apply and it cleared up a few days later.

Am I the only one surprised the 21 day meat detox hasn't come up yet?

zyxst wrote: »

Not medical advice, but I've had several doctors that were rude and called me vile names during the appointments. Best memory (any why I have a severe anxiety of dentists) is the childhood dentist (former Army) I went to see when I was 14. He had a brusk manner and pretty much wanted to get the job done and get out, regardless of how the patient felt. I was anxious being there on my own, got scared and started tearing up. As he put the bib on me, he told me to "stop being such a pu$$y and quit bawling". I really started bawling, ripped the bib off, and ran out of the office.

I took my 2 week old daughter to the ER because she hadn't had a wet diaper for 2 days, and they called me a hysterical mother. Took her to her pediatrician the next morning and was told her girl parts had sealed which was why she wasn't wetting.

I think new mothers are in such danger of having their concerns ignored. It pisses me off. When my first was a newborn, I knew something was wrong. I couldn't figure out what but I KNEW it. Finally, it turned out that my baby had a boil. They stay under the surface for a few days apparently. So he WAS startling in pain, he was lethargic, everything I had told them and they blew off. Yes, they might not have found it until surfaced either, but they could have listened to me and looked at him. Oh and then after I found the boil, one caregiver told me "Babies get bumps, put some Desitin on it." When someone finally looked at it and realized what it was, he had to get a spinal tap and be admitted to the hospital because he was so young.

maidentl wrote: »

zyxst wrote: »

Not medical advice, but I've had several doctors that were rude and called me vile names during the appointments. Best memory (any why I have a severe anxiety of dentists) is the childhood dentist (former Army) I went to see when I was 14. He had a brusk manner and pretty much wanted to get the job done and get out, regardless of how the patient felt. I was anxious being there on my own, got scared and started tearing up. As he put the bib on me, he told me to "stop being such a pu$$y and quit bawling". I really started bawling, ripped the bib off, and ran out of the office.

I took my 2 week old daughter to the ER because she hadn't had a wet diaper for 2 days, and they called me a hysterical mother. Took her to her pediatrician the next morning and was told her girl parts had sealed which was why she wasn't wetting.

I think new mothers are in such danger of having their concerns ignored. It pisses me off. When my first was a newborn, I knew something was wrong. I couldn't figure out what but I KNEW it. Finally, it turned out that my baby had a boil. They stay under the surface for a few days apparently. So he WAS startling in pain, he was lethargic, everything I had told them and they blew off. Yes, they might not have found it until surfaced either, but they could have listened to me and looked at him. Oh and then after I found the boil, one caregiver told me "Babies get bumps, put some Desitin on it." When someone finally looked at it and realized what it was, he had to get a spinal tap and be admitted to the hospital because he was so young.

Oh yeah. When my daughter was 11 months, I thought it was odd that she wouldn't put any pressure on her feet when we were assisting her to stand and would only stay on her tiptoes. The doctor shrugged it off. I didn't give up and eventually got a referral for a specialist and she ended up needing a cast series when she was 18 months because she couldn't bend her feet.

Then my son was coughing a lot when eating (sometimes ending up throwing up as a result) and everyone thought I was crazy when I said that something must be wrong, so eventually last year we had a feeding test done... and yeah food gets stuck at the back of his throat if he doesn't swallow strongly enough. Unfortunately nothing can be done short of surgery and I'm not making him go through that when it's not life threatening and it goes away when he swallows properly... but I wasn't crazy!!!