You're Too Old Not to Question Your Doctor...Not Doing So Could Kill You

Too Old for This Sh*t: How to Take Your Life Back from an Ageist Society

Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash

It’s getting better. No really…but we’ve got a long way to go, baby

Dear Reader:

Jodi Sh. Doff

is a lot of things; she writes about some of them and is damned brave about admitting some of the dumb stuff she did to her body (me too) and the prices she had to pay.

This is about the power of choices. She’s made good ones, including being her own best advocate. Comment used with permission.

Nothing in this article should be construed as medical advice. Please seek appropriate care if you have health concerns, but choose wisely and question everything.

From Jodi:

I go to doctors for diagnostics and advice. Then I make my own decisions.

1) When I was diagnosed with Hepatitis C almost 25 years ago the top guy in his field told me I had to take Interferon treatment or I'd die. I was ready to die, the Hep C was the consequence of the life I had been living before getting sober. I chose not to do any treatment. Not dead.

2) When a cardiologist insisted I start statins because of high cholesterol, I chose not to and changed my diet. Cholesterol dropped 30 points. Not dead.

3) After a year of steroids (for Ulcerative Colitis, or UC), I had to go on immune suppressants. When I pushed to get off, after a few years, I was told I'd have to be on them for life. I'm not on them. My UC is in complete remission and has been for a decades due to a lifestyle change.

4) My liver completely regenerated after a near-death parasitic infection and decades of alcohol abuse. Now, I have the liver of a 12-year-old Mormon.

I need the information they can give me, I need their experience and knowledge but the decisions are all mine and I'm happy to accept the consequences, good or bad. They're educated humans, but they don't have superpowers. (author bolded)

Photo by Eleonora Patricola on Unsplash

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Those of us who straddled the generation for whom the doctor was God and the Internet, which would include Boomers and Gen X, sometimes battle with standing up for ourselves. If we don’t, Medical Conventional Wisdom, often anything but, can kill.

If you doubt, please consider investing sixteen bucks for this book, newly out by Dr. Robert Lufkin: Lies I Taught in Medical School: How Conventional Medicine is Making You Sicker and What You Can Do to Save Your Own Life.

The timing is great. I bought the book today as I sat down in the United flight to head to the San Francisco VA for a dental appointment. I’ve been inhaling it, and just needed a reason to present it to you.

Get it. Especially if you still believe a calorie is a calorie, or that all the illnesses we have need more meds. Worse, if you actually trust the American Diabetes Association or the American Heart Association.

Fans of Gary Taubes will love this book. They likely already read it. Lufkin himself was diagnosed with three potentially deadly chronic illnesses. What he learned from being part of the establishment and pitching the terrible falsehoods we’ve been sold about diet are fodder for anyone juggling lifestyle-related illnesses.

A good number of journalists and doctors have been coming after the falsehoods we’ve been sold for a long time. That cholesterol is all bad (nope) that sugar isn’t all that bad (yep it is) and so much more that no longer tracks with a terribly obese society that is swiftly sickening…well, you get it.

Clearly too much of what we’ve been told and sold isn’t true. Never was, but paid-off doctors and paid-off institutions like the AHA and ADA, whom we are supposed to trust, have made finding solid, accurate research and information very difficult.

If you are sick and tired of being told by your doctor to just eat less and exercise more, please get this book. Part of the immense relief you might enjoy is being validated that you aren’t the problem if endless dieting and exercise didn’t turn you into a swimsuit model.

Doctors are all too often still grotesquely shy of knowledge about nutrition and instead lean too much into meds, which make more money and make us sicker.

There are so many other issues at play, some of which we have zero control over like microplastics and hormone-changing chemicals in all our bodies. But we can claw back some territory for ourselves and have a better quality of life.

Jodi commented on another story of mine this past week:

As an addict in recovery who has had more than her fair share of bad decisions and bullets barely dodged, I’m very aware that at 67, this is all gravy. The gall bladder attack & surgery, neuropathy, Osteonecrosis, floaters, beginning of hearing loss and the list goes on. If life was fair I’d have died over 40 years ago. Nothing but gratitude for the opportunity to get old and curmudgeonly. (author bolded)

Jodi’s story emphasizes three things: personal agency, changing lifestyle habits, and not just trusting the doctor. There are some good reasons we shouldn’t and they are outlined in the book.

That doesn’t make doctors bad. It makes too many of them uninformed, human, and potentially deadly. We need to be partners, but that means we have work to do.

All of us need to be the best advocates for our health, and there is more research and more information which allow us to do just that. Increasingly there are doctors and health journalists pushing back against all the bigs: Big Government, Big Sugar, Big Food, Big Pharma, Big Medicine. They were pariahs, but they were also prophets. More and better research is proving them right.

It pays to listen, do your research, and above all, listen to your body.

I was wrong about keto. About lots of things. I am happy to have my mind changed and happy to publicly admit it- it leaves room to grow and keep learning more.

We are now dealing with more and more potential illness in the air we breathe, the food we eat, chemicals from our mother’s wombs through no fault of her own which we pass on to our children, and worse as time goes on.

Some of you have shared that your kids are sick for mystery reasons. The above named-book by Lufkin might just help. All I know is that where we can fight back, let’s; where we can affect our health, let’s, where we can call out bad actors and questionable promises by supplements, let’s.

I firmly believe that the greatest miracles are the ones we work hard to produce for ourselves. Doctor comes from the Latin doctore, to teach. In an ideal world, the doctor teaches us how the body works; we teach the doctor how our particular body works, and we come up with a plan together which produces a miracle of better health.

The best plans are usually some kind of lifestyle modification, a deep commitment to our own health if not outright survival, and if at all possible, medication/surgery only as a last resort.

Above all, let’s question and research every single med any doctor suggests. Many of today’s younger doctors are focusing more on nutrition (several write on Substack) which is good news for anyone who wants to start with food and avoid medication as a first step.

I’ve believed the wrong things, ate foods I truly believed were good for me which weren’t, and battled obesity myself for many years. This is personal.

These days it’s about dietary tweaks to deal with the lasting effects of damage I did to myself, like Jodi did, but my drug of choice was donuts.

Thanks to Taubes, Dr. Robert Lustig, the above-named Dr. Lufkin and others like Dr. Cate Shanahan, who has long discussed the evils of seed oils.

You can find Taubes’ work on Substack in Unsettled Science. I swear by

Maria Cross

’s nutritional advice. I’m sure many of you have good sources; feel free to share them in the comments section.

My heartfelt thanks again to Jodi, as well to

Jim the Geek

for introducing me to Dr. Cate’s work, and the extraordinary life stories of readers and fellow writers whose courage moves me deeply.

Let’s play.

Photo by Blake Cheek on Unsplash

Health is learned and earned, and all too often after we’ve made some poor decisions. Sometimes the best stories are from those who pulled themselves back from the brink. If this article was of value to you please consider

If you know someone who is battling similar issues, consider giving any of the above authors a look. I don’t have the answers for you, but have found answers for me in their writing, and it has paid off. To that, please also consider

Thank you.