“You Don’t Want To Go Through Life Never Eating A Cookie, Do You?”

The title of today’s post is a comment that one of my patients received from her medical doctor when she asked him if there was any kind of diet that might help her fibromyalgia symptoms.  Her doctor replied that there were things she could do diet-wise that would probably help, but then told her that it really wasn’t worth discussing because…

“You don’t want to go through life never eating a cookie, do you?”

Now, of course there are people who have no motivation to change their diet, or try to make their lifestyle any healthier in any way, shape, or form, and those people would no doubt agree with that statement.  But this was an answer to a question from a person who had been suffering for some time with fibromyalgia and who was seeking something she could do to help herself.  It would have been one thing if the doctor really didn’t know anything about nutrition and either didn’t think or didn’t know that dietary changes can have a profound impact on fibromyalgia symptoms for many people.  But this doctor apparently (judging by the first part of his response) KNEW that diet could make a difference and dismissed this woman’s question as if suffering daily was of no more consequence than eating a cookie. 

Fortunately, not all doctors have the attitude that the doctor in this story did and many do encourage their patients to learn and do all they can to live a healthy lifestyle.  But it seems that many more medical doctors, probably the majority from what my patients tell me, consider diet, exercise, and other lifestyle factors to be of minimal importance in their care and advice to their patients.  But let me not pick solely on medical doctors – chiropractors, physical therapists, and any number of other healthcare providers can be dismissive of these issues too. 

Now, as a practicing clinician, I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t volunteer self-care and lifestyle recommendations to every patient I see – there simply isn’t enough time in the day to do that.  There are also many patients who are not receptive to hearing about things they can do to help themselves – or at least are not interested in making any changes, so to lecture to them about diet, exercise, etc. is simply wasted time.  But when a patient asks for help in this area, I believe that all healthcare practitioners have a duty to assist in whatever way they can.