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 still give today. Had statins been available then, I would have been giving them to everyone who walked through the door with elevated cholesterol levels. I would have been telling patients that these drugs were a gift from the gods and that the evidence was conclusive that they worked. And I would have been dead wrong.

Which brings me back to my first point. You are in control of your own health. And you likely know at least as much about nutrition as your doctor does. So, why worry about what he/she thinks or says about nutritional issues? Besides, he/she is working for you, not the other way around.

He goes on to suggest an effective way to get your doctor to work with you by highlighting a case study. Check it out.