Doctors own the concept of medical, but not health. Medical is acute and chronic illness that can be treated with pills or procedures. Health is an everyday series of decisions we all make involving our:
work and home environment
harmful habits (cigarettes, alcohol, drugs, etc.)
bodies (massage, acupuncture, etc.)
Of the 40,000 hours doctors spend in training, 19 hours are devoted to nutrition. We get even less training in the other factors that contribute to health. Doctors are horribly unprepared to tackle health, but do pretty well with pills and scalpels. So letâs just stop pretending doctors are experts in health.
In the medical world, we have specialists, like cardiologists, and generalists, like primary care physicians. In the health world, there are specialists like nutritionists and exercise trainers, but there is no health equivalent of a primary care physician. The health world needs a new generalist professionâ someone who specializes in all things health and knows when to refer to health specialists when appropriate.
Every day, we are bombarded with new âscientific researchâ claiming some new health benefit. This article, I Fooled Millions Into Thinking Dark Chocolate Helps Weight Loss. Hereâs How, is exactly whatâs going on in this world of health âresearch.â Health sites, dependent on the traditional ad-driven business model of more content  for contentâs sake, are driving the demand for this kind of research. Combine this with the following summary of the state of scientific research from one of my favorite articles ever, Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science:
âSimply put, if youâre attracted to ideas that have a good chance of being wrong, and if youâre motivated to prove them right, and if you have a little wiggle room in how you assemble the evidence, youâll probably succeed in proving wrong theories right.â
And to complete the perfect storm of health deception, easy self-publishing and almost zero cost to start what appears to be a real scientific journal that exists solely online without peer review is leading to fake scientific âjournals.â If youâre a lazy journalist, youâll accept a finding as scientific if it comes from one of these journals that publish any scientific study in exchange for a fee.
As the public becomes more and more health confused, we need a health generalist to sort through all the BS and distill it down for you and your life in the vein of Michael Pollanâs simple prescription for food:
âEat food, not too much, mostly plants.â
Iâm interested in talking with people who have the skills and experience to become a health generalist. Itâs a profession that needs to exist and it blows my mind that it doesnât. This will not be a western medical doctor. This will come from a health profession, not a medical profession. They will partner with you to create a realistic health plan for your life, figure out your motivations, and in a way that doesnât feel like nagging, hold you accountable. If this resonates with you, shoot me an email. Letâs talk.
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