I agree, do our own homework, and that for me includes "medical advice" and I'm not saying Conventional Medicine is all bad, but I do know that many providers are not educated "much" in nutrition for just one thing I would like to see them be trained in.
Yes, I have a rant. The bell ringer in front of the grocery store yelled at me to get my mask on as I entered the store. "Are you trying to kill us all spreading the new variant!!!" I ignored her. She was about 350 lbs, drinking a giant fountain soda, and I could smell the cigarette smoke on her. I wanted to tell her that heart disease, diabetes, pneumonia, and lung cancer will kill her long before some weak variant of covid will, but I just walked on realizing you can't educate those that choose to be ignorant and trying to slap the stupid out of her would land me in jail.
I had a similar experience with one of the bell ringers a few years ago. This person was yelling at some poor lady coming out of the store with her groceries, because he didn’t like the way the toddler was sitting in the cart seat. The mother said something back to the bell ringer, and he yelled at the mother again, and saying that CPS was going to take the baby away from her. I went back inside and reported it to the store manager that the bell ringer was outside screaming at his customers. The lady who was yelled at was already gone by the time the manager and I got back out, but he sent the bell ringer home, and he never came back again, so I am guessing that the manager had a good talk with the Salvation Army people about that guy. Yelling at grocery store shoppers about anything is NOT part of the bell ringers job description !
My rant (maybe) is hoping we finally see a reduction in the Medicare ads on TV and elsewhere. I am so sick of old sports has-beens touting Medicare Advantage plans, along with drug ads, lawyer ads, and the especially repulsive ads for "deodorant for your private parts" that populate the tube these days. I long for the tasteful but unhealthy ads for cigarettes. I don't know how broadcast media existed before the repulsive ads were allowed in the 1990s.
They seem to be year-round now. It's no longer Open Enrollment period...I think they are catching everyone who's turning 65 each and every month. I really notice this stuff because I only have antenna TV, so don't get the commercial-free stuff. Namath needs to go back to selling pantyhose. Regarding those deodorant commercials...I always look to see if the expressions change on the faces of those yoga actresses as they strike that final pose. It's gotta be the most humiliating gig they never imagined they might get. (As I type this, there's a commercial on for Xiaflex, a treatment for Peyronie's disease.) And to think the worse thing we were subjected to as kids were Geritol commercials...
Agree 100%, as I found out this year. Also, quite surprising: I saw a gut surgeon this past summer (it turned out I'm fine) and he didn't know what psyllium powder was ("psyllium" is the plant from which Metamucil is made. Generic versions are just called psyllium powder). A gut doctor, of all people, didn't know that?
The entire healthcare scenario has changed over the years. Doctors are now more numerous, but seem to be not as bright or well trained. They DO however need to keep track of many more drugs, diseases, and imaging techniques than they used to. Medicine is much more a 9 to 5 job instead of a "calling" as it used to be. I would agree, however, that there is no excuse for a GI doc (or ANY doc for that matter) to not know be familiar with psyllium. I must confess that until @Yvonne Smith filled me in, I didn't know where it came from. I had just never looked into it.
Yes, where the hell is the Marlboro Man? Remember those Marlboro hunks in dark-colored jeans and light-colored chaps empathizing certain areas of their manliness? I never noticed the cigarette hanging casually on their lips. Can I turn on my TV these days and see Jack from the Yukon trying to get me drunk? No, I cannot! Where are these real men? Yes, I am sick of the Medicare (dis) advantage ads with those washed-up old buttless wanker has-beens, but the ad that really ranks my rear is the one with guys like Tom Sellack assuring me that the reverse mortgage he is selling isn't buying my place for half value. Why isn't he masked up so we know he is a friggin bandit, a super spreader of auction day bullshit? However 2012 I made an exception to one ad in particular. I didn't even have to see Sam Elliot when he did the voiceover for Dodge pickups and I was like just get over here with your big Dodge Sam, pick me up and take me for a spin baby! I am disgusted and aggravated to no end waiting for Bruce to come out with "her" new line of Katlin bras. How dare her keep us waiting! I can already hear the background ad music, "From a Jack to a Queen" as Brucie sashays out to have a little girl talk with us old vaginally born babes.
They have to go to school for so long, you would think some "hours" of nutrition would be on the schedules. I don't blame the doctors, they have to work their butts off to become a doctor. There are lots of doctors that their focus is nutrition mainly (can't think of what degree they get) but many of those types are disallowed by my medicare and medicaid. I really think Big Pharma would go under if more people started using some alternatives to conventional medicine, and Big Pharma wouldn't like that would they. Just want to mention I love my MD, Dr. Clint Pearson, he has MS and crippled up in a wheelchair and I think he is about 50. He really talks to me about my issues, and doesn't turn his nose up at any alternatives I'm using for my health issues, and maintenance. I wasn't trying to trick him, but I had agreed last January, when first diagnosed with T2 Diabetes, to take metformin, try it I told him. I stopped after 2 days because I found so much on the Keto diet that if I followed it, my blood sugar should come in at safe numbers on my next labs. They did (HbAic labs) and I was so excited to tell him and he said that he was glad the Metformin was working. I then told him I hadn't taken it since the first, two days. I really wasn't thinking about it! But he was pretty proud of me and just said keep doing what you're doing.
There's an ad extolling the smoothness of doing number two after taking a particular drug or whatever it is that they're selling that seems to be coming up often here. My number twos seem to be coming along just fine, thank you, and if they are not, I don't want to listen to someone singing about it.
My previous comment on that was about my GP, who poo-pood the idea that I have some sort of systemic inflammation, or that anything can be done to address THAT, instead of just its symptoms. Call it arthritis, tendonitis, other joint or muscular pain -- throughout most of my body -- all attacking within weeks of each other, all getting better upon taking a script anti-inflammatory (meloxicam). I have reduced or stopped said pills about 4 times in the 8-9 months I've been taking it, and the pains all came back each time. Everything I've read has said it can be from diet but my doc didn't think much of that. I guess a dietician should be my next step. All of the numerous types of docs I've seen this year only treated the symptoms (pain).