An Introduction

So you're a patient, and you've been diagnosed with prostate cancer. Or maybe hypertension and/or hypercholesterolemia. Or maybe you're chronically fatigued. You've been hearing things on the news lately that green tea is just about the greatest thing ever to be put on the planet, as well as broccoli and turmeric and...

So you call your doctor and ask, "What's all this I've been hearing about green tea and radishes and turmeric and...?" And you expect her to have an answer, or have scientific reasons for or against drinking a gallon of green tea a day. Or at least to have a clue. Right?

Interestingly, med school curriculla usually do not include courses that teach, or even expose, their students the various properties that food--which we put into our bodies 3+ times a day--has on our health, on our bodies, on our ability to prevent or battle disease. Sure, we know that obesity is bad, that trans fats are bad, that eating too much fatty and processed food is bad. We know all about Type 2 Diabetes and Heart Disease and Hypertension. But what about the flip side? What about using food to our benefit, using food to detoxify, to help prevent disease, to help battle disease? What is the real deal with Omega-3's--are they in all fish? What exactly is the difference between "red meat" and "white meat", if both come from the muscle of animals? What foods are really good at decreasing LDL and VLDL, the "bad" cholesterols?

Unfortunately, allopathic medical schools are notoriously focused on the treatment of symptoms, on curing diseased systems once they've gone awry. They stress pathology and the drugs to reverse the pathology. They push prevention in the form of "eat right, exercise, don't smoke." And don't get me wrong, all of this is very important. But what they don't do is teach their students about holistic patient care, of prevention via lifestyle changes and maintenance of healthy habits. And if allopathic medical schools don't do this, that means most MD's out there don't know this, and that probably means your doctor has very little clue what the science is behind what you heard about green tea and radishes and turmeric (and...). Most of this information--and the beliefs and research about it--falls under the category of Complimentary and Alternative Medicine, or CAM, like signs of "pre-diabetes" and the healing power of acupuncture--now medically recognized as legitimate phenomena--once were. Like progress in politics, progress in medically acceptable beliefs is slow to catch on. And, like in politics, there needs to be a public force to accelerate change. So I'm hoping to do my very small part by blogging about the things that I learn in my Nutrition & Medicine course. It's only 6 weeks long, of which I've already completed 2. But there has been a lot learned, and so there should be a lot to write. I'll add a little Intro to N&M below, but stay tuned. And if you have questions you want me to relay to my course instructors, please let me know!

OK, so here's my sad attempt at:
Introduction to Nutrition & Medicine

• Ever wonder if that Centrum is actually doing you good? At a recent NIH conference solely devoted to the topic of daily multivitamins, the consensus was: They're probably not helping you. In fact, they might actually be harming you.
  If you're supplementing a weak diet with a daily multivitamin, consider taking individual supplements (Vitamin D if you're not getting enough sunlight, Calcium for almost everyone, with an emphasis on woman over 20) to patch the holes in your lifestyle/diet, instead. But better yet: start eating more foods with those nutrients that you're missing. This brings me to an important point: NOTHING can replace good, fresh, whole foods. When you eat fresh whole foods, the nutrients in them have maximal bioavailability, because they are in the form that your body is able to recognize and absorb. A multivitamin is clearly not a natural or whole substance, and some of the "vitamins" in them are in a different chemical form than the true vitamin has in whole food. The chart at the bottom this site has a good chart of dietary sources of vitamins & minerals.
• Do you know if you're getting enough Vitamin D? Do you know how much sodium you eat each day? If you're interested in getting a breakdown of the strengths & weaknesses of your daily nutritional intake, you can input your food intake an analysis at this site.
  You'll have to set up a profile, and it's fairly laborious and annoying to do the actual input, but it's a good resource to "get an idea" of just how good you're being. I personally had no clue what my actual cholesterol intake was, and was surprised to see how low some of my vitamin levels were... and I'm kind of a health food nut! So I recommend it for anyone who has a little time to spare to sate some curiosity. Alternatively, there are a lot of pay-for-service sites that are much better, if you're less economically challenged and really want to get into it.