Page 30 - What Doctors Don't Tell You - AU-NZ (February-March 2020)

NEWS FOCUS

Most doctors said
they lacked the

confidence and

training to advise

patients on nutrition

become an internist, cardiologist,
endocrinologist—you name it.” 5

We know nothing
Doctors don’t disagree. A BBC survey of
UK doctors discovered they knew next
to nothing about the impact that diet
and lifestyle have on health, and what
they are taught about nutrition isn’t
relevant or applicable to the problems
they see in practice.
Around 80 percent of the patients he
treats have problems caused by poor
lifestyle and diet, Dr Rangan Chatterjee
told the BBC. In 2016, he was one of the
signatories to a letter to the UK’s General
Medical Council and Medical Schools
Council that called for the introduction
of teaching of “evidence-based lifestyle
interventions.” 6
It’s the same the world over. In one diabetes and thyroid diseases, among of pharmaceuticals and the treatment
survey, 87 percent of Canadian medical others, NICE has ruled that it would not of symptoms. One benefactor was
students said their undergraduate be considering this information when oil magnate John D Rockefeller, who
programs should dedicate more time to recommending the best approaches to funded new colleges that extolled
nutrition, and most doctors graduating treat the diseases (see page 19). the virtues of the first generations
from American medical schools said “It’s not a conspiracy. I honestly of pharmaceuticals, made from the
they lacked the confidence and training believe they don’t understand about petrochemical offshoots of his core
to advise patients on nutrition. 7 the effectiveness of nutrients,” said Mr product.
Greenbaum, director of the nutritional This limited view of disease and
Sorry, not here company GreenVits. healthcare seems inadequate today.
So, if nutrition is pivotal in disease To illustrate the point, he recalls One doctor, fresh out of medical school,
prevention and cure, why isn’t it being talking about using nutrients to treat related the day she was approached by an
taught? The problem goes deeper than macular degeneration with three leading obese woman who wanted to know how
just the medical schools— it seems to be ophthalmologists. Two of them said she got into that state.
systemic throughout medicine. they knew nothing about nutrition, and “The patient was asking a
NICE (National Institute for Health the third, the most senior of the three, straightforward question, and I think she
and Care Excellence), the UK agency asserted that “vitamins are dangerous.” was expecting a straightforward answer,”
that determines the most effective Going deeper still, the seeds of this she said—but her training hadn’t given
treatments, dismisses out of hand nutritional blindness can be found in her the knowledge to respond. She just
any nutritional therapies.Rufus the groundbreaking Flexner Report of didn’t know.
Greenbaum, who is a “registered 1910, which laid the foundations for the Bryan Hubbard
stakeholder” with NICE, says his teaching of modern “scientific medicine” REFERENCES
submissions on 20 diseases—all of in American medical schools, a blueprint 1 Lancet,2019;393:1958–72
which have suggested therapeutic levels that would spread around the world. 2 JAMA,2017;317:912–24
3 NutrJ,2004;3:19–40
of vitamins—have been rejected. Schools that were teaching 4 Circulation,2018;137;e821–41
Even though there is strong evidence homeopathy, natural medicine and 5 AmericanHeartAssociationNews,published
May3,2018
that nutrition helps with early-stage nutrition were closed and replaced by
6 BBC,March25,2018
breast cancer, macular degeneration, those that embraced the new medicine 7 CMAJ,2018;190:E94

30 WDDTY | ISSUE 04 | FEB/MAR 2020 FACEBOOK.COM/WDDTYAUNZ