Check out this article about how cancer is being shown to help cancer survivors. Then, if you care, come back to read my ranting. http://www.telegram.com/article/20120426/NEWS/120429637/-1/NEWS04
What blows my mind is not that diet and exercise is being shown to help prevent the recurrence of cancer. I’m not surprised that people use exercise to improve their moods and overcome the depression that can so easily follow such a devastating diagnosis. I’m not even shocked that the American Cancer Society issued new guidelines (finally).
What I find staggering, astonishing and even distressing is the comment that “usually the last thing on (a doctor’s) mind is to talk about diet and exercise”. Really?! Is that really the case? Has our medical system really strayed so far from helping people actually overcome disease? Has it simply become a system where we try to alleviate symptoms rather than alter root causes?
I am not a doctor. I have no interest in going to medical school. I did, however, study exercise science and was able to take many of the classes required for pre-med. I sat in the same room as many people in my area who are now studying to become or are practicing as medical professionals. I cannot fathom that those people studied what I did, listened to the same lectures, read the same books, prepared presentations on the same topics (on top of everything else they later went through in medical school) and would still have the mentality of diet and exercise being the “last thing on their mind…to talk about” with their patients.
I understand that “there hadn’t been much [statistical] evidence on the effects of diet and exercise for people who had had cancer” but, seriously, how can you work with patient after patient dying from a disease that has long been shown to be tied to obesity and lack of activity and not promote a healthy diet and exercise?
Could you please enlighten me? Is it really true that doctors don’t help patients with improving their diets and fitness levels? Has this been your experience or have your doctors talked about diet and exercise? I am having such a hard time imagining this to really be the case. What have you experienced?
Remember, the choices you make determine the life you live
Dee's Cereal 