Who Can We Trust? You Have to be the Expert of Your Own Body!
If I had a nickel for every time a client, friend or blog reader asked me, incredulously, “You mean bananas aren’t bad for me?” or “Wait a minute, you’re telling me to eat more fat, after I just told you I’m trying to lose weight on a low-fat diet?”…I’d have a lot of nickels, that’s for sure.
Not only are many of us confused with regard to what we should or shouldn’t be eating, we are also very flummoxed about who and which sources of information are valid.
Got a question about your diet? It would be nice if you could just ask your physician. Oh, but wait, in all likelihood, he or she would not have had much in the way of nutrition classes during medical school. A good friend of mine confided that when he was studying medicine, he could recall a single lecture about nutrition. That’s in his entire schooling. One lecture. Apart from that, the single nutrition lecture was based, of course, upon those guidelines from the food pyramid.
Concerned about potential side effects of a medicine that you or a loved one has been given a prescription for? No need to worry; as long as it has the FDA Stamp of approval. (Right).
See the trend?
Doctors, pharmacists, registered dietitians amongst many other health care professionals as a whole are simply not giving us accurate information, yet we view them as experts who, in the eyes of some, can do or say no wrong.
I’m not placing blame here, as it’s easy to see why one wouldn’t challenge what they themselves are taught during both their schooling as well as practical experience.
Add to that the mass infiltration in the media about what ‘foods’ to eat, what meds to take and numerous odd diet trends, some of which are dangerous and many of which simply are not effective.
To that end, then, we all have to be quite diligent at doing our own research and becoming experts on our own bodies and state of health.
If something doesn’t make sense, start asking questions and don’t stop until you’re satisfied that you’ve received a response that makes sense to you intuitively. Don’t settle, and don’t put yourself at risk by not doing as much investigating as you can.
I recently had a conversation with an elderly lady who told me she was having a bit of difficulty walking after a recent hip surgery. I asked what had happened to make surgery necessary, and what was actually done. She didn’t know. All she could tell me was that she’d fallen, gone to one doctor and been told that she needed surgery to ‘clean everything up’. She didn’t know what her diagnosis was and didn’t seek a second opinion. She felt that the doctor, being a doctor, was the expert and that was enough.
Listen to your body, listen to your gut response and don’t settle for feeling anything less than optimal!
Oh, and go Paleo!
