This may come as a surprise if you’re one of my patients 🙂
But in today’s world, your physician is no longer the main person responsible for your health and fitness.
It has got to be you.
Not really, but kind of really
The law recognizes that doctors can be held legally responsible for certain bad outcomes. Doctors play a big part in treating a person’s medical conditions, after all.
But outside of situations where the doctor should have known better, the main driver of health and fitness outcomes stopped being doctors long ago.
Doctors may not be aiming where you’re looking
The medical profession as we know it is at least a few thousand years old and is rooted in a paternalistic model:
- I’m the authority with vast medical knowledge
- I know better than you
- Do what I say
I can remember growing up in the 1970s, and this was the norm. Doctors made pronouncements, and patients were grateful and deferential.
No one bows to doctors anymore.
If you’re smart, you realize that doctors DO have a ton of experience guiding people through blood, guts, illness, screaming, and death, and therefore have recommendations for your survival that are probably worth, you know, hearing out.
But even the most up-to-date doctors can’t know it all.
And medical education has been pointing doctors away from the direction that the population has been heading for decades: towards surgical and medicinal cures for people under 50, instead of today’s chronic conditions and mental health problems as the population ages. The infrastructure of American healthcare is based on “fixing patients” in hospitals with inpatient specialist care.
But unresolved childhood traumas can’t be surgically removed, and there’s no 1-week course of antibiotics for a lifetime of decreased brain circulation and worsening dementia. Not to mention some very real questions about the reproducibility and impartiality of medical research.
And many, many people realize this.
People have turned elsewhere
The COVID-19 pandemic was the cherry on the hot fudge sundae of kicking the medical field to the gutter of public opinion.
Many front-line healthcare personnel were thanked for their tireless and selfless service. But Pharma became a dirty word, conspiracies abounded (“I took ivermectin and got better in a week, doc, they’re not telling you the whole story”), and distrust of the medical establishment grew to an all-time high.
Even before COVID, many patients had been turning to nontraditional wellness options out of frustration at the lack of answers or at not being taken seriously by their physicians. Some have said they would never see a doctor for their general health, preferring to do their own research and work with their own network of practitioners on nutritional support, supplements, and expert bodywork.
If you or your family don’t get help when you desperately need it, you go elsewhere.
In doing so, a fundamental shift occurs.
Doctors become consultants
When people pivot to health resources other than doctors, they put themselves in charge of their medical destinies—because they have to.
They’re no longer waiting for goodness and mercy to fall upon their upturned faces from their benevolent and ever-attentive doctors and employers.
Good doctors can be great, and nurses are amazing. But there’s a universe of alternative health options if their care isn’t enough.
Doctors are increasingly being considered consultants. They have expertise, and you’d be stupid to ignore them when you need them.
But they are no longer the only source of reliable information on health and fitness, and often, they are not even close to being the best. If you’re training for the Olympics, I’ll refer you to a team of expert trainers, probably none of whom is an MD.
Doctors are still the highly skilled personnel you call when you’ve got some real medical decisions to make.
Nevertheless, you are the decision maker. You may be getting opinions from other advisors.
You are the CEO of your life
If you were the CEO of your company, you might call a consultant to help you with a tough problem.
The consultant would give you clarity and a plan, based on experience, to move past the sticking point. They want you to succeed.
You may or may not take their advice.
But the ultimate decision about what to do—and the actual doing of it—would be up to you.
Action Item
Recognize that while doctors are on your side, all biology winds down. You must take care of yourself to counteract the worst of it—no one else can do it for you.
Leave a Reply