This is a tin-foil-hat conspiracy theory reaction.
Define "use it more often". Doctors recommend diet and exercise all the time. It's the first thing to recommend to patients. It's simply very hard for people to accomplish it, and the vast majority of people either can't or won't lose weight.
I'm 42, I've been involved with two major medical systems for 30+ years, both in Canada and the United States (Kaiser) - for one reason or another, I've been to a doctor maybe a dozen times. For about 15-20 years I was either on the cusp of obesity, was always overweight - and certainly was never in the slightest bit of good physical shape.
In that 30+ years, I solemnly swear no medical official has ever made any recommendations about diet and/or exercise, with one exception of a emergency room intake doctor giving me some guidance on drinking more water after I was checked in for dehydration and the second time, when I contacted Kaiser Intake (half dead from a case of pneumonia ) - and they recommended I drink tea with a bit of honey. Sum total of diet advice.
In general, the medical system is much more interested in "Fix it when it's broken" then they are "Prevent it from breaking in the first place."
And they really tend to reach towards surgery/and drugs any time there is a problem. Some are offended when you suggest that perhaps an affliction might be diet recommended.
It's not a tin-foil-hat theory reaction. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition has any number of peer reviewed observational studies on what happens to indigenous populations when they encountered western (refined) diets.
Taubes has an endless number of references in "Good Calories, Bad Calories" for those who are even moderately interested in how unbelievably important diet turns out to be when it comes to modern health.
But, where's the money in getting people to lead a healthy lifestyle?
People will need to figure this stuff out for themselves, it certainly won't be marketed to them the way HFCS laden beverages will be.
"I'm 42, I've been involved with two major medical systems for 30+ years, both in Canada and the United States (Kaiser) - for one reason or another, I've been to a doctor maybe a dozen times. For about 15-20 years I was either on the cusp of obesity, was always overweight - and certainly was never in the slightest bit of good physical shape. In that 30+ years, I solemnly swear no medical official has ever made any recommendations about diet and/or exercise"
I'm 36, I was a physician for 8 years (no longer practicing). I recommended diet and exercise to many many patients for general prevention and certainly for anyone with type 2 diabetes. And this was considered standard of care. I was not the exception.
This is lame-brain hand-waving dismissal in order to continue being lazy and essentially helpless in our personal health.
Doctors make standardized dietary recommendations that are not enough to protect and heal against lifestyle diseases. Compare the 30% fat American Heart Association diet to the Dr. Dean Ornish, Dr. McDougall, or Dr. Esselstyn diets that recommend 10% fat and whole foods, not products marketed as 'low fat' snacks and meals. The latter diets are clinically shown to reverse heart disease, essentially heal Type II diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, and many other diseases. There is ongoing research by McDougall into multiple sclerosis, based on past great success with the low fat Swank diet.
The standard dietary advice is given largely because people can't make enough changes to even follow that, much less make the effort to have every single meal conform to something as seemingly 'radical' as a 10% fat diet.
So yes, arn, "doctors recommend diet and exercise all the time", but it's not to the extent necessary to bring about meaningful results.
But carry on with your dismissal of anything that doesn't make you feel good (mentally, physically, or morally) as "tin foil conspiracies". And follow the herd and make sure others can take care of you (and pay for you) when you get sick.
"The standard dietary advice is given largely because people can't make enough changes to even follow that, much less make the effort to have every single meal conform to something as seemingly 'radical' as a 10% fat diet."
So you agree with me. People won't follow even a "moderate" diet. So why do you think they will follow a more stringent diet?
But (as the OP does) blaming it on a lack of financial motives does put it squarely in the conspiracy theory realm for me, as it ignores any individual responsibility and blames it on the "bad system" instead.
While there's no denying that nutrition is an important determinant of overall health, I think "can be used as a form of cure for nearly every disease" is going a little overboard. The vast majority of diseases of all kinds cannot be cured by diet alone. Eating an apple a day, for example, is not going to kill HIV.
And, just imagine, if people stuck to a simple diet (Zone, Atkins, Paleo, South Beach, Mayo - hell, even Weight Watchers/Jenny Craig - it doesn't really matter, just chose _something_ and stick to it, they'll all get the job done eventually) + a couple hours of walking a day + some progressive resistive strength training.
Can you imagine what kind of condition the average citizen would be in?
The only problems with this are:
o Who will buy all the refined foods?
o None of the above exercises cost anything. The resistive strength training
can be done very effectively as bodyweight in
your bedroom. (Pushups FTW!)
o Social Security costs would skyrocket as people start living longer.
I hate to rain on your parade, I do... But, you simply couldn't be further from the truth. Diet can only be considered a "cure" in an extremely small subset of all disease; and, furthermore, the word "cure" is practically never used to describe the effects of diet in any treatment scenario.
It's true that there is no money to be made by Pharma, and that's why they aren't funding this study. My words may be harsh, but it's people like you, spreading pseudoscience, that lead to desperate patients being taken advantage of.
He goes over the top but so do you. Diet is a word usually reserved for a temporary alteration in the type and amount of food we eat. But of course it also refers to a permanent change in what we eat. The evidence that an evidence-supported diet in the latter sense (eating 'properly') can protect us to varying degrees from the onset of much disease is overwhelmingly supported by countless peer-reviewed studies.
Right because desperate cancer patients that could clearly seek an alternative are being told that their only hope is Chemo therapy or death aren't being taken advantage of...
God forbid someone suggest an alternative as simple as gasp diet.
Well, to be fair, I don't believe there are a lot of peer-reviewed, doubly blinded, placebo controlled studies that provide evidence that diet helps in most cancers. Lots of evidence that suggests you can avoid them in the first place, but once you have Cancer, you usually have to turn to modern medicine, in much the same way you do when you have something like HIV. Diet just won't cut it.
It's also important to differentiate diseases resulting from pathogens, versus basic body health.
Type-2 Diabetes is almost 100% a function of nutrition - it almost doesn't exist in many populations of the world that haven't been exposed to a western diet, and, quickly develops in those populations as they adopt a western diet.
There are instances in which chemotherapy is the only option, as advised by sound evidence-based medical research, just as there are instances in which diet is a completely acceptable treatment, and those instances must abide by the same strict evidence-based guidelines.
However, when people go around claiming that diet can cure the majority of disease it plants a seed in the minds of patients that have no option, patients that should be discussing palliative care with their physician, that all they need is a pot of "herbs" and a low-fat, vegan diet to cure their terminal illness. Then the physician has to spend an exponentially larger amount of time than it took to plant that seed to dig it up and move on, time s/he could be spending discussing palliative treatment or even working with other sick patients.
Let me know if you disagree, however I think the problem so many people have in this thread (and an increasing number in today's world), and one reason a good number seek and believe in alternative treatments, is because the medical community (as viewed by individuals from the outside anyway) is viewed to be full of self-righteous elitists who believe they always know what is best when dealing with the human body, while a. People like to believe in miracles, and b. Successful outlier cases that are contrary to common medical understanding keep cropping up -- the media loves them and people notice them. One more reason could be that many have experienced alternative treatments be fiercely dismissed by their physician, even when it can be surmised that the dismiss-er is probably fairly ignorant on the particular topic -- it turns people off. Naturally physicians don't have to have an answer or even an opinion, so why does it seem like they often feel they have to? Can it be boiled down to personal insecurities and fears? Trying to live up to the stigmas around what a doctor should be and know?
I would agree that people like miracles and notice them. However miracles are by their very nature the exception, not the norm. Science works by quantifying what is the norm through carefully controlled studies. The reason that alternative treatments are fiercely dismissed by many physicians is because they know, on account of said science, that they should not be the first course of action. Empirically, they work far too infrequently. Until an alternative treatment can demonstrate that it works for a statistically significant sample size it should not be recommended as the first course of action. However, if it does prove to be a viable treatment in a statistically significant study, it becomes part of mainstream medicine, not an "alternative" therapy.
