During the recent search for my father, I stayed with one of his close friends.  This friend intimated to me one of the rare confidences that my father ever made to anyone: he was deeply conflicted about his own inability as a physician to heal my mother as she was dying of cancer in 1977.  As a doctor, he should have been able to do something.  Thirty-six years later, my father has disappeared and we suspect that his Alzheimer’s disease had something to do with it.  Both my parents were physicians.  Neither were healthier as a result of their knowledge and experience as physicians.  Dr. Peter Attia speaks of this same dilemma when he discovered that he had insulin resistance, despite his following the standard dietary advice provided by the medical community.

When will the medical community realize that the advice that they’ve given to eat whole grains in order to have sufficient fiber and to reduce red meat and saturated fat, that this advice is ineffective?  Forty years of this and we have a epidemic of diabetes and obesity.  It is iatrogenic nutritional advice.  The low-carb option is out there, and there are some exceptional physicians who recommend it including Dr. Richard K. Bernstein, a Type 1 diabetic who has healed himself of the detrimental effects of uncontrolled blood sugar; and Dr. Peter Attia, who has successfully reversed the effects of metabolic syndrome.  These are the men that I respect because they have put into practice their advice and have been able themselves to experience good health.

Physicians like my parents, who die from ignorance and lack of suitable treatments, I still love and tolerate but I wish they would have an open mind.  Above all, I just wish that their advice wasn’t killing their patients along with themselves.