Tag: doctors

Sep20201620th Sep 201620th Sep 20168Commentsby Marika

Type 1 diabetes: when doctors’ good advice turns bad

Posted in Diabetes

doctor

By Marika Sboros

Here’s a fascinating blog that throws up an ethical dilemma for doctors, nurses and dietitians who dish out orthodox advice for type 1 diabetes.

The writer is Lemming Test-Pilot, the alter ego of a British GP who has type 1 diabetes. Last year, Lemming ditched “the almost impossible dark art of carbohydrate counting”, went on a low-carb, high-fat, ketogenic diet and survived. Actually, Lemming  hasn’t just survived but has thrived in body and mind. And has been running half marathons faster ever since, even after fasting.

Doctors and nurses told Lemming to go on the wrong diet for type 1 diabetes for 20 years. Lemming is understandably miffed about that but says with admirable restraint: “Any other condition managed with the wrong treatment for 20 years would rightly merit a lawsuit. The guideline advisers are getting knighthoods.” Here is Lemming’s remarkable, poignant, real-life story:

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Sep16201616th Sep 201616th Sep 20161Commentby Marika

Medicine’s dirty little secret: ‘drug whore’ doctors

Posted in Food for Thought

doctors drugs moneyIt’s a very real sickness in medicine. It is doctors in the thrall of the drug industry. It creates what British cardiologist Dr Aseem Malhotra calls ‘an epidemic of misinformed doctors and misinformed patients’. It causes biased research funding  – research funded for profit, not patients’ benefit, says Malhotra. 

It leads to biased reporting in medical journals, commercial conflicts of interest and medical curricula that ‘fail to teach doctors how to understand and communicate health statistics’. This year, for the first time, the US Surgeon General has reprimanded doctors for promoting Big Pharma at patients’ expense.  

At heart, it’s about doctors who flout the Hippocratic oath for a quick buck.  Here, Canadian nephrologist Dr Jason Fung takes a scalpel to expose the scandal of ‘continuing medical education’. He eviscerates doctors who, by default or design, act as agents – pushers, really – for drug companies. He calls them ‘drug whores’. It’s a disturbing read. – Marika Sboros

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Jun17201617th Jun 201617th Jun 20161Commentby Marika

Physician, heal thyself, learn nutrition!

Posted in Living well

Photo credit: clevercupcakes via Foter.com / CC BY

Here’s a brilliant blog everyone should read – doctors, patients, perfectly healthy people. It’s why doctors need to be frogmarched back to school if necessary to learn nutrition. I’ve always been puzzled (shocked really) that doctors aren’t taught nutrition in medical school. That they don’t routinely ask patients what they are eating that is keeping them fat and sick. It’s as if the medical powers that be (who are wedded to the pharmaceutical model) don’t want doctors to know food can be the most powerful, safest medicine or slowest poison (as Lithuanian–American holistic health practitioner Ann Wigmore once said). My ancient forebear Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine, must be gyrating in his grave at how doctors defer to dietitians – and both defer to food and drug industries. Below is a shortened version of the blog by British health journalist and author Jerome Burne. Scroll to the end for a link to the full version. – Marika Sboros

By Jerome Burne*

Here’s a really bad idea. Send a dozen nutritionists to work alongside regular doctors in a Medecins Sans Frontières team providing emergency treatment to the wounded in a war zone:

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Jun14201614th Jun 201615th Jun 20162Commentsby Marika

Britain’s ‘fat wars’: PHC warriors take up low-carb arms

Posted in LCHF

By Marika Sboros

stormtrooperBritain’s “fat wars” are spreading, as sporadic skirmishes break out between the newly created independent Public Health Collaboration (PHC) and the establishment Public Health England (PHE).

The latest salvo was the PHC’s inaugural annual conference in Birmingham on June 11. The stellar panel of speakers drew heavy armoury of scientific research to challenge conventional public health advice and call for a complete overhaul of the UK’s official dietary guidelines. 

A leitmotif running through the conference came through a study by one of the conference speakers, top British obesity researcher Dr Zoe Harcombe, published in the BMJ Open Heart in 2015. It showed that the US guidelines on which the UK’s guidelines are based, were without scientific foundation when first introduced in the late 1970s, and remain so today. Results have been catastrophic: 

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May17201617th May 20169th Oct 20168Commentsby Marika

NOAKES: DISHING UP ‘REAL MEAL’ DIRT ON ‘DOCTORS OF DISEASE

Posted in LCHF

By Marika Sboros

Prof Tim Noakes

Prof Tim Noakes

Many doctors “have outsourced their  brains to the pharmaceutical industry”, says University of Cape Town emeritus professor Tim Noakes. Ditto for dietitians who belong to the Association for Dietetics in SA (ADSA). They dismiss the nutritional approach to disease prevention without even reading the literature, he says.

Here, in the second of a two-part Q&A, Noakes looks at why modern medicine has created many “doctors of disease”, not health. He  fingers the real medical “criminals”. These are the doctors who, he says, will ultimately prove to be responsible for killing their patients because of their commitment to conventional medical “wisdom”. 

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Apr12201612th Apr 20164th May 20161Commentby Marika

DEATH BY MEDICINE: DOCTORS WHO HARM MORE THAN HEAL

Posted in Living well

deadly medicine

I HAVE the greatest respect for the marvels of modern medicine and doctors who practise it as a calling. I’m not much of a fan of the ones who are in it for the money, who expect us to treat them as if they were omnipotent, omniscient creatures. Doctors are only human and fallible like the rest of us lesser mortals. The big difference between us and them is mostly that when they make mistakes, they can kill. That’s why I like doctors with open minds. Not so open that their brains fall out, as one wag put it; just enough to know orthodox medicine doesn’t have all the answers, and doctors would do a lot less harm if they prescribed real food instead of drugs. Here’s a look at doctors who say doctors should be a little more mindful about the medicine they practise. 

By Marika Sboros

Doctors have always had a name for it – iatrogenic disease – and for good reason. It comes …

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Apr0420154th Apr 201528th Aug 20170Commentby Marika

Dr Jason Fung on doctors who betray patients’ trust

Posted in Living well

Doctors moneyYOU don’t expect your doctor or dietitian to collude with food companies in spinning yarns about health benefits of their products. It’s called ‘healthwashing’.  Many doctors and dietitians collude by accepting sponsorship from Big Food for research or to run their voluntary associations.

Dr Marion Nestle, professor of nutrition, food studies, and public health at New York University has said that ‘sponsorship perverts science’.

Here, Canadian nephrologist Dr Jason Fung takes an even bleaker look. He unravels how and why doctors, by default or design, regularly betray patients’ trust. – Marika Sboros

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