We recently got a pamphlet in the mail from our HMO with “Preventive Health Recomendations.” Amongst the usual screening recommendations, it’s no longer High Cholesterol Screening, it’s Lipid Disorder Screening (a nice way to make it sound even scarier and more disease-like.) And under Diet and Exercise, beginning at age 2, it recommends: “limit fat and cholesterol, maintain caloric balance and emphasize fruits, vegetables, and grain products containing fiber.” With those recommendations, it’s would be very easy to create that ‘health halo’ mentioned in a previous comment.

Needless to say, those pamphlets usually go straight from the mailbox to the recycle bin.

God help us all.

Yeesh. What a terrible run of physician-induced bad luck. Hope it improves.

MRE

Undoubtedly the cause of her bilious look.

MRE

I’ll be following your blog with great interest. You, Dr. Uffe Ravnskvov, Dr William Davis and Dr. John Cannell have mentioned things which are simple to digest and make sense. No one I know really understands the hypothesis as it’s cloaked in mumbo jumbo to make you feel stupid and think “well, I’m not a doc, so they must be right.”

Happy New Year!

Thanks. Same to you.

MRE

http://www.amazon.com/Crazy-Makers-Industry-Destroying-Children/dp/1585426261/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1198999504&sr=8-1

Hi Anne–

MRE

Hey Gerard150–

MRE

As one example of the mainstream medical profession starting to wake up, I’ll submit a link to “Hooked Ethics” by Dr. Howard Brody http://brodyhooked.blogspot.com/ which you will find of interest if you haven’t already run across it.

Thanks again Dr. Mike for the public service you perform every week. And happy new year to you and yours.

Best,

W

Hey Wil–

MRE

An excellent choice in cover art.

MRE

In addition to medical schools only teaching the assumed-to-be-true hypotheses rather than presenting the actual science, the other thing I am increasingly alarmed by is the presentation of pseudo-medical “facts” in innocuous seeming features in popular magazines. Not only are the standard fat-is-bad, starch-is-good, and soy-cures-all messages repeated diligently, but they also have started making their own leaps in logic a-la-Keyes that boggle the mind and present their own conclusions as fact along with the recipe.

For example, in the latest January 2008 issue of Sunset magazine, a feature entitled “Power Starts” has a “Cran-berry green-tee smoothie” which follows all of the current popular recommendations. It has an assortment of berries along with green tea, which are touted for their antioxidant, fiber, and vitamin content. OK so far. But then we add a whole banana, soy milk, and honey or brown sugar (hey, if brown rice is better, ergo brown sugar?) which, along with the berries, bring us to a whopping 92g of carbs (11g fiber). In the editorial description, this smoothie is “a refreshing, satisfying, and healthy way to begin your day”. Yeah – I find that kind of insulin load dumping into my bloodstream extremely refreshing. Their assumption seems to be that as long as you keep fat low (2g) and toss in some known “healthy” items, any concoction is considered, and stated to be, healthy.

My problem here is that random “facts” are being lumped into seemingly logical groupings and being presented authoritatively as “healthy”, in a format where most people will not be particularly critical. Yes, berries and green tea contain potent levels of antioxidants, but the amount of berries alone in this recipe would wipe out almost my entire day’s carb allotment. Now let’s add soy for all of its “known” health benefits. And what could possibly be wrong with a banana and a bit of those “good” sweeteners honey and brown sugar?

Many people are naturally suspicious of drug advertisements, and maybe even take the advice of their physician with a grain of salt – second opinions are pretty common. But when pop-culture mediums not only perpetuate the cascade-effect of hypotheses being repeating until they are assumed to be fact, but also enhance the latest telling each time, we wind up with a truly insidious result: a seemingly well-educated public that has no idea their information source was more on par with the tabloids than scientific references.

p.s. Thanks for the book offer last month and keeping your blogs current and timely. I’ve managed to get some of my loved ones started down the road to better health because of all that you’ve done!

Hi Leslie–

Thanks for the astute comment. I agree with you across the board. And I, too, get extremely annoyed with the constant barrage of incorrect ‘health’ information peddled by most everyone these days. Since the majority of people love carbs, it’s easy to please them by recommending foods crawling with carbs that also have a couple of good things in them. This is called the ‘health halo’ effect. You find something that is good for you, say, berries, then you add to them a ton of stuff that’s dreadful, i.e., brown sugar, and all anyone focuses on is the health-benefit of the berries.

The concept of the ‘health halo’ has been recently exploited to great success with the Jared commercials for Subway. Jared lost a ton of weight eating at subway, so therefor anything Subway sells must be a food that helps people lose weight. Brilliant from a marketing perspective, but not so brilliant as a health perspective.

I’ve thought about putting up a directory of caregivers, but haven’t actually taken steps to do so yet.

Cheers–

MRE

It’s a small, small step in the right direction and long overdue. And, still, it’s cloaked in a bunch of caveats.

MRE