Free The Animal

Good advice from Doc Eades (author of Protein Power and others) on how to deal with your nutritionally ignorant doctor. The important thing to remember is that you – not your doctor – are the one ultimately in control of your health. I can guarantee you that if you have been reading this blog for any length of time or have roamed through and read in the archives, you are much more nutritionally savvy than the vast majority of doctors out there. The old saw is absolutely true: doctors get very, very little nutritional training in medical school and even less in their post-graduate training. In my own case, I got exactly one lecture on nutrition in medical school, and that was from a registered dietitian, which should tell you all you need to know. And it wasn’t even a lecture on nutrition; it was a lecture on how to write orders for various diets for hospitalized patients. Virtually all of my nutritional knowledge was self taught. And most doctors don’t bother – I didn’t bother for the first five years of my practice. I said all the same ignorant things and gave the same terrible advice that most doctors…

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Since blowing my top the other day, I’ve waited until a few of the excellent reviewers out there had a shot at the recent diet study. I’ll point you to three excellent, substantive, thorough reviews. Otherwise, you’d have only fat-faced liars like Tara Parker-Pope of the NYT. First up: Stephan at Whole Health Source, who notes that the diet, indeed as I suspected and speculated, wasn’t particularly low in carbs. Also: And finally, it caused the biggest improvement in the triglyceride:HDL ratio. This ratio is the best blood lipid predictor of heart disease risk I’m aware of in modern Western populations. The lower, the better. They didn’t calculate it in the study so I had to do it myself. Click over to see the chart he created; and: Other interesting findings: despite the calorie restriction, diabetic participants on the AHA group actually saw a significant increase in fasting blood glucose. I’ve speculated before that wheat and sugar may cause hyperphagy, or excessive eating. We can see from these results that reducing carbohydrate (and probably wheat) reduces overall caloric intake quite significantly. This squares with the findings of the recent Chinese study that showed an increase in calorie intake and weight,…

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