My Docs
I might as well be boycotting practitioners in the medical professions, for all intents and purposes. If I haven’t broken any bones, I’ll generally stay away. Mainly because I’m paranoid, I guess, which I might consider seeing a doctor about.
Reading Gary Taubes’s Good Calories, Bad Calories (2007) several years ago definitely struck a nerve with me, causing me to question a lot of the standard medical advice—the sort of stuff that’s so widespread in our common culture as not to require visiting a physician to hear it repeated. Before I read Taubes’s books, I also believed there was some truth to the foundational medical and health advice that dietary fat leads to heart disease and that anyone struggling with obesity was just eating too much fat and not exercising enough: the conventional eat-less-move-more recommendation from the medical profession.
Taubes questioned the conventional approach by pointing out that none of it was supported by serious, replicable research, and much of it was, in fact, profoundly contradicted by the bits of research that had been done. It wasn’t just me who Taubes won over. There were also several physicians in private practice and researchers in the fields of medicine and health. Almost all of these doctors were people who, like me, were feeling the cumulative effects of eating the standard American diet over many years. Most of the ones who became converts to Taubes’s thinking also became converts to the low-carb diet similar to the diet that Dr. Atkins had kept going in his practice in New York City over many decades, as well in several best-selling self-help diet books. Taubes described a long chain of scientific support leading up to the Atkins diet approach.
I try to point out in these newsletters on the topic that I am not a doctor and no one should rely on me for medical advice. I don’t have any credentials for that, and for all anyone knows, I’m misguided and insane. Nonetheless, it is subject matter that I have spent a lot of time exploring for the last dozen or more years, and the low-carb diet tips I have applied to myself have led to improvements in my own weight and overall health, all based on my own personal observations, but not backed up by any lab work or examination by any physicians. As I said, I stay away from doctors as much as possible. The nice thing about following these tips is that they are strictly dietary, and they don’t involve starting a long-term, costly regimen of prescription medications.
Which is where the paranoia comes into play. Or comes out to play. Or whatever.
The doctors and researchers that I trust consistently point out that the low-carb method of improving health is ignored by the conventional medical system from top to bottom because it doesn’t involve taking medicines of any kind. In fact, many people who have tried the diet in its various forms have managed to come off of long-term pharmaceutical prescriptions. Many—by no means all—have experienced weight loss and a range of improvements to health, large and small, without requiring prescriptions of any sort. Most used to give their patients the conventional advice: eat a low-fat diet and get enough exercise—until they found this prescription was not making their own health better, but often worse. These doctors were gaining weight and seeing their own health decline by following the conventional recommendations they were giving their patients.
Some argue that it is the lack of profits for drug companies that prevents the conventional medical system from promoting the low-carb diet as a solution to the so-called obesity epidemic. The drug companies can’t sell prescriptions to block-buster drugs for conditions that a change of diet can resolve. And the multinational processed food companies, too, are not in favor of the low-carb diet, since their products are based on adding sugar, carbohydrates, and seed oils to make their wares so tasty and addictive: all the things the low-carb practitioners recommend completely avoiding.
And it isn’t just the companies with their profits at stake. It is also the health and medical organizations who rely on donations from these companies, like the American Heart Association, the American Medical Association, the American Cancer Society, and so on. It even encompasses different parts of the federal bureaucracy in charge of overseeing the nation’s drugs, foods, and agriculture. That amounts to a lot of people and institutions exerting a lot of force for preserving the status quo, for preaching against alternatives.
Unfortunately, that in itself doesn’t tell us if the alternative approach is, in fact, the best one. The evidence that my preferred physicians and researchers have presented leads me to believe the science strongly supports the low-carb interpretation, and the view that the conventional interpretation is wrong. Personal experience shows the alternative works for me. The proponents of the alternative view—the ones that I find convincing—aren’t marketing a lot of products generally, but they are making a portion of their livelihoods selling books and going on the low-carb conference circuit, which probably isn’t enough to earn a living from in most cases. Some earn money by coaching, making videos, taking donations, or running low-carb social groups online. So it wouldn’t be fair to claim they’ve got no financial motives at all.
At the very least, since it is a dietary intervention, it is something anyone could try without needing to see a general practitioner, at least in theory. Sadly, though, a GP may not be very supportive of the approach due to their conventional training, as well as the health system’s path dependence. Most who try the diet and find it helpful also see their LDL blood cholesterol levels rise—which the conventional view interprets as bad—even as all their other indicators improve, even as their other health problems vanish along with their need for prescription drugs.
At any rate, this makes for a lot of talk about why I believe what I believe about health and diet. I will wrap it up with a discussion between Kelly Hogan, a young lady who has found great health benefits from eating nothing but meats for the past 13 years, and Dr. Philip Ovadia, a cardiac surgeon who came to the diet after years of being morbidly obese and discovering substantial health improvements from the low-carb diet. As you might guess, this won’t be the last thing I’ve got to say about the matter.
I have an aversion to doctors for a couple of reasons, but I go see my Doc every single day...several times a day, in fact. Not hard, since he's always hangin' around out back somewhere, and he's never overbooked, so he always has time to fit me in.
If he'd bothered to hang out a shingle over his stall...er, office...it would read Dr. Glo's Cool Remedy. But everyone 'round here just calls him Doc, partly in honor of his daddy, Cool Doc Remedy, but mostly because a visit with him is usually good for whatever might be ailin' ya'.
Churchill said that there's something about the outside of a horse that's good for the inside of a man, and Steinbeck opined that a man on horseback is both physically and spiritually bigger than a man on foot. But perhaps the sagest words regarding the relationship of a man to his horse have no definitive attribution:
The hardest thing about riding a horse is the ground.
(Don't ask me where QH people come up with some of the names they hang on their nags when they register them. It's often the custom, though, to mix and match and incorporate names from a foal's bloodline for its 'official' name. Doc's mamma was 'Miss Glo Dee Bars'. I did what I could with what I had to work with.)
"I try to point out in these newsletters on the topic that I am not a doctor and no one should rely on me for medical advice."
What a coincidence I'm a doctor as well and no one should rely on me for medical advice either!