One of my readers recently explicitly responded to one of my blogs on “believing” you can achieve your health goals.(Go to the post, "Diet Mojo for Weight Loss" blog under the comment section.) He said it helps to be supported by people who believe in you, referring to the medical community who responded by administering meds instead of giving solid support with healthy eating and lifestyle change. It’s unfortunate that some doctors frequently respond in this way but I think they also tire of the people who want an immediate fix or refuse to change or even are unwilling to change, or even more sadly do not know how to change. Surely there is a big gap here. There seems to be little empowerment given to the patients.
In my heart I want to believe their mission is to help their patients but nutrition seems out of their realm of expertise, not to mention that they don’t always have the time to spend with their patients in a way they could help. So what is the answer here? I believe doctors should employ caring empathic qualified nutritionists to help their patients as part of their care. Or is it because of the political influence from the drug manufacturers and their profits that this would not be a viable solution?
Perhaps I am a cynic, but I think it may be a variety of reasons:
ReplyDelete1.) Doctors don't care much about nutrition. They pay little attention to it.
2.) Most "nutritionists" have little training and don't know what they're talking about. Many RDs even preach ill-conceived doctrine.
3.) I don't think it is anything so sinister as drug company influence – I think it is simply that weight loss is the responsibility of the PATIENT. The doctor can only do so much. At some point, the patient must take responsibility for his/her own life and do the work.
I don't know why a doctor would tell a patient WHO IS TRYING TO LOSE WEIGHT that he/she would need "a lifetime of things like statins, diuretics, blood thinners, hypertension medications, and diabetes meds." That doesn't make sense to me, and seems like just the opposite of what a doctor would say. Am I misunderstanding the original poster's comment?
Oh, and I should have mentioned that in my comment about nutritionists, I was of course not meaning to insult anyone! :)
ReplyDeleteHi Molly,
ReplyDeleteWow, you really gave us "food for thought" there! Great comments! I have to agree with them! And yes, there are good and bad nutritionists out there just like in any occupation. I think it's about finding the right match sometimes too -Elaine
I think part of the problem is that most people, even those who aren't fixed on losing a ridiculous amount of weight quickly, are fixed on losing weight within a certain time frame. The result of "losing X amount of pounds in how many months" backs them into a corner. Most people are looking to loose body fat, and if you lose lots of weight quickly (say 30 pounds in within 3 months) you aren't going to lose all fat. This leads people to become frustrated with diet and exercise workouts and turn to meds because "diet and exercise alone doesn't work." Other situations that lead to the same result are patients not being honest with how often or hard they work out and how well they watch their diets.
ReplyDeleteIf I'm a doctor and want to keep business, I have a pretty poor incentive to tell a patient something that they will just ignore and go to another doctor who will prescribe the meds. It's like parents who "diagnosis-shop" ADHD for their kids, someone will give the patient what they want if they ask enough doctors, and the only question for the doctor is whether they want that business.
I think a solution to the problem is to get rid of the notion of loosing weight within a current time frame. Speaking personally, I have a BMI of 26.8 (and it's not high because of the muscle) but am a otherwise completely healthy 20something adult. I need to loose about 30 pounds to get my BMI down to the 22-23 and it will probably take a long time. But I have plenty of time to loose the weight too. Obviously, I'd like to see some serious progress within a year, and I'm going to weigh myself occasionally to make sure I make progress. But I think when you take off the timeframe you are more focused on forming habits and on living healthy rather than cutting corners to get that scale to read a number you want to see.
Obviously some people are so overweight that they do need to loose weight within a quick period of time. But that doesn't apply to everyone. And I think if the patients really focused on healthy habits and a lifetime commitment to staying healthy, they wouldn't even go to the doctor for meds (unless they actually needed the meds for some reason.)