It's unfortunate that medical care has become almost adversarial. Our system is set up to treat acute conditions, but most people are being seen for chronic problems and our understanding of causes and training for treatments of chronic problems is woeful at best. Worse, both patients and doctors want a pill to make everything better.

After dealing with poor health for 30 years; I finally took my health into my own hands. After a series of self-experiments and a lot of journal reading, I now feel like I'm finally reaching health, but every time I see a doctor, it's the same battle ("OMG, your cholesterol is 239; you are a dead man walking!" Yeah, I don't think so).

There is a lot of good information out there, but there is also a lot of complete crap, and doctors have to deal with truly informed people as well as people who only think they are informed. Worse, much of their continuing education is not much more than paid infomercials, making it hard to trust they are getting truly balanced information.

Add to all of this the fact that you have seven minutes with your doctor to work it all out, and it is failing.

There are a few things that can be done, IMO, to help:

1. The AHA, ADA, AMA, AND and other medical organizations need to stop taking so much money from corporate sponsors.

2. Education about and treatment of chronic conditions need to be treated very differently than acute conditions. The treatment for Type 2 diabetes should not default to Metformin.

3. We need more time with doctors to work on treatment plans that can be carried out.

4. Medical school and continuing education needs far more, unbiased education about the value/dangers of nutrition, environmental contaminants, etc, in chronic disease. Alzheimer's prevention starts in a person's 30's[1].

Unfortunately, we see the same kind of care given for stiches as for metabolic syndrome. And it's not working.

1. Based on a current hypothesis that it is the effect of "Type 3" diabetes.