Fwd: Star McDougaller - Peter Rogers, MD, Heals Self

[Guest guest]

Read this Star McDougaller online: http://www.drmcdougall.com/misc/2007star/aug/starpeter.html

 

 

Star Peter Rogers, MD

Interventional Radiologist/Neuroradiologist, Heals Self

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Dr. McDougall's Comments

 

Doctors, as revealed by their personal appearances, many times do not

exemplify good health. Obese cardiologists are common. You are

surprised? You would think that with all the information doctors have

at hand, and as smart as most are, they would be making better choices

than the general public—my observations say that’s not the case.

They suffer with the same bad health as everyone else, and are just as

overweight. Some, like Dr. Rogers, have come to the conclusion

they must learn and change, or they die.

 

Doctors know next to nothing about the proper feeding of the

human being and there are few learning opportunities. Most are

wealthy enough to eat all the lobsters, porterhouse steaks, and cheese

soufflés money can buy. A plate of roast beef, with a side of

butter-topped mashed potatoes, and vegetables dripping with

Hollandaise sauce; all finished off by cheesecake, is a typical dinner

served at medical meetings. The ongoing medical education for

almost all doctors is provided by a provocatively dressed drug sales

rep, arriving daily with pizza and donuts for the office staff.

 

Your doctors’ diets of rich foods have consequences that affect

your health. Their personal diets make teaching you the

importance of good nutrition and practicing diet-therapy next to

impossible. Medications and surgeries are the methods they know.

Unfortunately, these therapies, when used to treat diseases caused by

diet, are largely ineffective. They do not cure obesity,

diabetes, hypertension, arthritis, indigestion, constipation, pain,

etc., and oft times the patients are left worse off with serious side

effects and financial burdens. Your doctor feels like a

failure—and rightly so.

I tell everyone I meet that I am the luckiest doctor in the

world, because my patients get their health back, by correcting the

cause. I use low-tech medicine. I tell people to eat good

food. But, anyone can do this. You don’t have to go through

four years of medical school to say, “don’t eat meat, it’ll clog

your arteries.” Traditional medical education not only ignores

the subject of human nutrition; the teachings actually sabotage

diet-therapy. Students learn “colon cancer prevention,”

means colonoscopy—and the importance of the contents of the colon is

ignored. They are captivated by the high-tech angioplasty

surgeries and never learn about the fundamental role of plant-foods in

coronary artery disease. Young doctors are taught, “Patients will

not follow dietary advice, don’t waste your time.”

Dr. Rogers has made a personal discovery that has caused him to

look at the practice of medicine from an effective viewpoint. He

now tells people, “For those who want to learn and improve their

health, there is a way. The true secret is that one should change what

one eats, from a high-fat Western diet to a plant-based diet full of

whole grains, vegetables and fruits.” Someday soon, more

doctors will come to these simple conclusions and the patients will

benefit. In the meantime, you—medical doctor or not—will

have to share this message with the ones you love.

 

 

 

 

 

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process.

I am a medical doctor. I came straight down the pike of

conventional medicine, graduating first in my medical school class,

followed by surgical internship, radiology residency at Northwestern

and then fellowship at Harvard in 1996. My goal was to become an

interventional radiologist because the idea of being an “imaging

guided surgeon” seemed exciting and the likely site of big advances

in medicine.

I had been

healthy up until my mid 30’s. Then I got married and had four kids,

and my responsibilities at work increased. I also did a second

fellowship in which I tried to combine two training years into one and

was working very long hours. My health deteriorated. I felt bloated,

tired and muddled, and needed seven cups of coffee to get through the

day. I was fat, fearful and tired. I was fearful of being fat for the

rest of my life, and fearful of dying from a heart attack at a young

age and leaving my children without a father.

I relied on caffeine to keep me alert during the day. I had

frequent episodes of rebound hypoglycemia, which I did not understand

at first. I would think to myself, “What is wrong with me? I am too

young to be having problems like this.” My weight had ballooned up

from 155 to 210 pounds, and the caffeine led to erratic sleep

patterns. A person begins to wonder if they are feeling tired due to

rebound hypoglycemia or a lack of sleep. It’s a negative feedback

cycle that perpetuates itself.

My wife, who is a family practice physician, told me that I

looked like I was headed towards a heart attack at a young age. No

matter how hard I tried, though, I could not win this game. For three

years, I asked myself the same question: “Why can’t I lose

weight?” I would reduce my food intake and exercise three times a

week and would lose about 5 or 10 pounds. Then work or life would go

through a stressful phase, and soon I would gain all the weight back

(and possibly an additional 5 or 10 pounds).

My brother and his wife, who are both in great shape and quite

knowledgeable about nutrition, tried to give me nutrition advice, but

I didn’t listen. I was arrogant. I thought that because I was a

doctor I knew more about nutrition than they did. I thought

vegetarians were misguided and unhealthy. Then they said to me,

“Well, if you know so much about nutrition, Mr. Doctor, then why are

you so fat?” Now, I knew that they were right. I knew that I had to

learn a lot more about nutrition. My life and the future of my family

depended on it.

I decided to set aside all my other priorities and focus on this

problem. I read all the diet books I could find. I plowed through

article after article on nutrition research. I read nutrition

textbooks. I experimented with different diets and eating strategies.

I had made some progress, but was still overweight, and having

all-too-frequent relapses of pizza pig-outs and burger binges. But

what cured me, and turned the physiology clock back a decade, was

switching to a plant-based diet. Reading Dr. McDougall’s books and

watching his DVDs was a turning point, and it became easier to fend

off the urgings by friends and family that I needed to eat more meat,

etc.

My weight came down to the ideal range over the next six

months and, more importantly, I now feel good all day. I lost 57

pounds and have kept it off for over three years. My blood

pressure is 100/60 mmHg, total cholesterol is 111 mg/dl and

LDL cholesterol is 60 mg/dl—and I do not take any medicines.

Although statin medications are effective for reducing cholesterol

levels, some people have significant side effects. I prefer to control

my cholesterol level by following a healthy diet rather than taking

medications.

One big surprise—now that I have escaped from the world of

obesity and poor health, and am ready and willing to help others—is

that so few people want to learn how to do the same for themselves.

Most people, including doctors, feign interest briefly and then go

back to their old ways. Many seem to think that dietary guidance is a

big joke or that it is almost impossible to change a person's eating

habits.

I have had a few friends and patients that have lost a lot a

weight, kept it off and decreased their meds. However, there is

tremendous peer pressure to eat the Western diet for people living in

the U.S. By understanding the general idea of how the hunger system

works and knowing that a plant-based diet has adequate amounts of

protein and calcium, as well as the problems with eating meat, etc.,

it becomes a lot easier to not succumb to relapses at pizza parties

and burger barbeques.

In terms of medical advances and perspectives on nutrition, I

have come full circle. While I enjoy high tech interventional and

imaging, and they are essential for diagnosis and treatment, I now

know that the key to obtaining good health is prevention through diet.

There is a lot of truth to the Humpty Dumpty rhyme, whereby all the

king’s horses and all the king’s men could not put him back

together again.

The greatest life-saving medical discovery of the last 50 years

is the verification that a plant based diet optimizes health and

diminishes the risk of heart attack and stroke. This also lowers the

risk of diabetes, multi-infarct dementia, impotence and some cancers.

In other words, there is a way to be as healthy as possible. It took

me 25 years to learn this the hard way.

You are in control, and there is good reason to be hopeful.

Doctors want to help their patients; that is why they go into

medicine. The problem is that they are often under tight control from

hospital administrators to see as many patients as possible each day.

They are seldom allowed the time to go into detail about the benefits

of nutrition. Compounding the problem is that many patients are not

interested in changing their eating habits, and many doctors do not

know very much about nutrition.

Now, in my mid 40’s, I am grateful that I’ve got my health

back. I am energetic, fit and feel mentally sharp all day. Now instead

of feeling sick all the time, I have more energy for work and for