For all of you taking your health seriously I say bravo! I also extend a word of caution regarding doctors and give you my dad's and my example as informational reasons ONLY why most doctors cannot be completely trusted. This is to throw caution your way and in hopes you consider all avenues for OPTIMUM health, not just what your doctor says because the truth is they don't know everything, didn't go to college for everything and most of them have never gotten more than the one week of nutritional study in their 8+ years of med school. This may seem like I'm smacking on doctors but I'm not. I want to be very clear about their limitations and I am purposely steering clear except this brief blip regarding doctors involved in research of some kind who get a kick back of some kind or donation to their research when they prescribe certain pharmaceuticals.
I developed arthritis at 42, something completely unexpected for me as I was fairly active and considered "healthy". I wasn't obese but was chunky however my weight didn't get in the way of my activities including riding horses and other physical pursuits. I smoked and socially imbibed in alcohol. It should have been a wake up call as a few years later I was diagnosed as pre-diabetic and appeared I was developing a pre-cancerous condition. That my mom and grandma(her mom) had cancer I was very concerned. So concerned I did nothing about it except most of what my doctor told me; take it easy on my joints to prolong the damage, ibuprofen for pain and swelling, elevate my legs and wait. I stopped going to the bar on the weekends on my own and didn't drink at home anyway. I didn't quit smoking nor lose weight and nothing else happened, everything remained the same because that's what the tests told me. This should have been my first lesson that I was maintaining being ill while silently getting worse, not getting better.
Jump forward 5 years I've quit smoking by then and I'm back at the doctor with incredible pain in my knees, cortizone shots didn't do anything and he's now prescribed me a ghastly amount of prednisone. My teeth began to rot very fast, I gained an enormous amount of weight, my hair was falling out and I was not getting any better! My circulation got so bad that from halfway down my calves to my ankles was turning black to the point of being told I may have to get my legs amputated. Coincidentally my 17 year old cat was sick too and clumps of his coat were coming off his sides and the vet couldn't figure out why.
I jumped online to research why my cat was so sick and found out how bad dry kibble was for animals especially cats. I transitioned him to raw and he got better right away(within 2 weeks right away), so much better that he started acting like he did when he was 5. The light bulb went on. If I was feeding my cat more species appropriate food especially as an obligate carnivore, what is species appropriate for me?
I won't get into the details but it involved a very high amount of produce, no meat, no sugar, no white flour products and especially NO dairy, and I weaned off prednisone. Within 2 weeks I had NO PAIN unless I got down directly on my knees and even though I had become morbidly obese I could walk again without pain or feeling like a cripple. I went back to that same doctor who bitched at me for stopping the prednisone and wanted to schedule me for surgery so I did the only smart thing I could think of:
I fired him.
Yep, I told him he didn't know a damn thing except how to drive a prescription pad and I walked out. Eventually I found a woman doctor that was completely open to treating me nutritionally first. In an amazing moment of luck I found a doctor who had come from a small village in Ghana so she grew up in an area that didn't have a doctor or medical facility. When sick they'd see what we would call an herbalist and/or nutritionist and only the sickest went into the "big city". I spent the next few years studying nutrition online, from books, film, anything. While doing so I was getting better. Not super obvious better but I could feel it inside. My blood sugar dropped to normal and no unusual cancer screens. I still felt exhausted a lot but this doctor reminded me that my body had undergone a decade of being damaged and it was probably going to take just as long to repair it. It was tired too! The blackness in my legs started to go away and I was no longer under the threat of amputation!
Then my dad called to tell me he had cancer again(#5!). I moved across the country to take care of him. While doing so I saw he was on a long list of prescriptions. I asked him if he would consider another way. These were most of his medical issues:
Prostrate cancer
Atrial fibrillation
Leaking heart valve
Stage 4 kidney disease
Deep vein thrombosis
High blood pressure
Anemia
Pre-diabetic
Acid reflux/Barrett's esophagus
Breathing issues/short of breath
Constant constipation
Diverticulitis
Sleep apnea/sleeping issues/restless legs
Leg swelling
He'd also had surgery for blood clots in his legs. It was so bad they had to remove other veins to repair the damage to the arteries in his legs. The scars went from his groin to his ankles.
I forgot to mention he was 80. Most people sign off on our older people including doctors and this is absolutely the wrong thing to do! I HAD to prove to my dad that even at 80 years old he could get better just as fast as I could. This would be a hard sell considering he'd been under some of his doctors care(like his cardiologist) for at least a decade and here I come with no college education to speak of and tell him his doctors are WRONG!
It took some convincing but he finally agreed to be my guinea pig and I put him on a similar diet as I had been on with one exception: the prescription coumadin(warfarin).
This is one of the most evil drugs I have ever encountered. Doctors prescribe it like candy and almost always for atrial fibrillation or "A-fib" to prevent clotting and strokes. With my dad's history of blood clots, the a-fib and his leaky heart valve he was terrified(based on his doctors[yes plural] information) to get off of it. What my dad was never told was that his skin would become so thin from long term use that it would peel up with the bandages he was taking off and that he was more susceptible to hemorrhaging for something as simple as knocking his arm into a wall, and both of those did happen. They just told him about easier bruising and that the risks of not taking it were worse than if he didn't. Essentially they scared him into taking it and he did for 17 years.
Anyway, I found the most practical and common sense advice out there. Since A-fib is a stand alone issue and no one knows it's causes I ignored it as far as trying to come up with something to deal with it and instead attacked the coumadin in the best way I knew how; I fed my dad salads. They say don't do that because of the issues with vitamin K but in my opinion if my dad was going in to the clinic weekly for blood draws so they could adjust it then they could adjust it for his salad eating too. A month later he's in the emergency room for non-stop nose bleeding. Ironically they claimed his blood was TOO THIN, cut his coumadin in half and told him to eat MORE salad! I happily obliged.
About this time the light switched on for my dad as well. He was breathing better and felt more energetic. There were also some surprising and annoying "side effects" of his healing as well. His almost lifelong battle with constipation was now entirely the opposite and not always at the most convenient of times so we cut his laxative usage in half. After decades of stress and abuse his intestines and colon were starting to work again without the "help" of medications. He wasn't too sure he was happy about this one until he was constipated again.
Now, please don't even assume for a second this was some kind of "miracle" cure or quackery. It's neither. I simply prepared the most nutritionally dense meals possible which provided the most helpful nutrients possible for my dad's body to use for healing and repair. That's it. It's not miracle science or anything of the kind. It's just super smart nutrition. Also during this, my dad was on Taxotere which is IV chemo. While the rest of my dad's body was getting better his hair still fell out and while the cancer wasn't going away, the rate at which the cells were doubling had slowed down. We also noticed something else; the indicators for kidney disease were changing and going down.
After 4 months of the diet and 3 months of chemo he got a kidney screening and his kidneys were working better! She reduced him to stage 2 and he was removed from the dialysis "watch list" they had. His regular doctor pulled him off all nutritional supplements, the blood pressure meds and and cut some others in half. Again, ironically I was feeding him a vegan diet and he was no longer anemic so no more iron pills.
Then came the cardiologist, someone he had been seeing for 10 years but this time my dad had a new confidence when he went in. After the exam I was called in because my dad wanted me to hear him tell the doctor that after the tests came back he expected to be seeing a reduction in medications. He briefly described the diet I had him on which got the stink eye from the doctor. Two weeks later I showed the doctor the books I had been using. This was after he told my dad there were NO SIGNS of a leaky heart valve anymore and it was working at a proper pressure. The cardiologist said, "Oh yeah, I've heard of them." I just looked at him in shock and my dad said "Heard of them? Why aren't you telling your patients about them?" My dad no longer had to take statins and other heart medications and the doctor notated on his exit documentation "Congrats on the diet". I kept that one. We were going to frame it.
So, after 5 months of optimum nutritional intake and with the exceptions of the cancer and a-fib, and what was left of the kidney disease, everything else was either gone or was so trivial it wasn't considered an issue anymore. All because of a plant based diet. No pills, no medications, no medical procedures. Just the right kind of nutritional intake so my dad's body could repair itself and function properly.
Everyone's body has different nutritional needs to function well. Yeah, I've heard it all the time and said it myself, "But I feel FINE!". Most people do until they get sick and you aren't any different. I've learned the hard way that PREVENTION does a hell of a lot more good than going to a doctor.
Who knows your body better, you who's lived with it all your life or someone you see occasionally? Unless you are next door neighbors that doctor has the unfortunate task of deciding what's wrong with you based on what YOU tell them or not and his limited information regarding your diet and his lack of nutritional education.
Optimal nutrition will ALWAYS be your first line of defense. Almost every disease and illness we get is food borne in nature because we eat to satisfy urges and addictions(flavors and chemicals like sugar), not to supply our bodies with the nutrients they need for repair and to thrive.
Anyone going to be around me this winter will see me struggling with sugar addiction and I have a lot of weight to lose so I'll be walking with my dog a lot. I'm kind of a loner but I don't turn down company.
You are your own best friend and worst enemy when it comes to food intake. There is not one prescription out there that cures your illnesses. They maintain them so they don't get worse and maybe alleviate some of the symptoms. Who wants that? I want to get better!
So what can you do to improve your lot with your doctor? Get busy with learning about nutrition and defend yourself! Most often they don't have a clue how badly poor nutrition affects us and almost everything you get sick from could have been prevented!
Gramma always told me you are what you eat. Yes she really did. Too bad I had to wait until I was threatened with getting appendages cut off and watching myself die a long, lonely miserable death before I believed her.
Sorry for the novel but this is something I'm incredibly passionate and now knowledgeable about. It's also why I need a fridge and freezer. I'm leaving behind life in a stick house so I can afford to take care of my "house". Without it nothing else matters!
