What Doctors Don’t Know About Health and Fitness

The apparent contradiction

I’ll never forget how shocked I was, sitting in the hospital room with a friend of mine who had a mild heart attack, when in walks his cardiovascular surgeon – he was at least 70 pounds overweight. I could barely contain myself from saying something like, how can you possibly be giving people advice about cardiovascular health and be so out of shape physically? 

But the dirty little secret is that medical doctors get very little training in preventative health. That makes sense when you understand the enormous amount of education, they have to have to become proficient at doing their job. And what is their job? Well, here lies the problem. A medical doctor’s job is to treat patients who are sick or injured, not prevent sickness and injury.

Don’t know what they don’t know

Medical doctors are exceptional at what they are trained to do and thank God for them! With that said, however, it is very frustrating – working with people trying to change their diet and exercise – when I have to refute most of what their doctor has told them to do. As you can see from the “What cigarette do you smoke doctor?” video, facts about health and fitness are an evolving science. And, unfortunately, as you will learn here, doctors are not a reliable source for good advice on health and fitness.  

A group of prominent physicians wrote in 2014 that “nutrition receives little attention in medical practice” and “the reason stems, in large part, from the severe deficiency of nutrition education at all levels of medical training.” They note this is particularly shocking since it has been proven that a whole foods, plant-based diet low in animal products and refined carbohydrates can reverse coronary heart disease—our number-one killer—and provide potent protection against other leading causes of death, such as cancer and type 2 diabetes.

So, how has medical education been affected by this knowledge? Medical students are still getting less than 20 hours of nutrition education over 4 years, and even most of that has limited clinical relevance. Thirty years ago, only 37 percent of medical schools had a single course in nutrition. According to the most recent national survey, that number has since dropped to 27 percent. Read the full article here. 

The same holds true pertaining to medical education related to exercise. Fortunately, the trend is changing, but not nearly fast enough!