Medical Lies that Undermine Senior Health

It’s not easy being an aging senior if you want to stay healthy and fit. Even more difficult is when your doctor tells medical lies about what’s healthy to eat. That’s right. Your doctor may be perpetuating any number of medical myths about nutrition that undermine your health.

No, they aren’t evil or intentionally doing this. They are following protocols and accepted knowledge from research studies. Yet data are often out-dated, skewed or based on faulty conclusions. A lot of studies are funded by parties that have an interest in outcomes that favor profits (Big Food, Big Pharma).

Although I’m educated in statistics, don’t take my word for it. I’m certainly not a medical doctor. I am simply a well-read psychologist. However, I make it my job to read recent health discoveries. I’ve read several books that describe the problems with nutrition studies going back as far as 50 years that have led to faulty conclusions and distortions of truth based on biased opinions.

Medical Lies: 3 Books Every Senior Should Read

Here are just three must-read books about health seniors should read.

1. Lies My Doctor Told Me: Medical Myths That Can Harm Your Health, by Dr. Ken Berry, MD.
   

2. Undoctored: Why Health Care Has Failed You and How You Can Become Smarter Than Your Doctor, by William Davis, MD.
   

3. Eat Rich, Live Long: Mastering the Low-Carb & Keto Spectrum for Weight Loss and Longevity, by Ivor Cummins and Jeffry Gerber.
   

Pay attention to the advice your doctor is recommending, especially regarding nutrition. See if it follows updated research on what you should be eating (and what you should be avoiding). Of course, only do this if you want to avoid illness and stay healthy longer as you age.

The Truth About Diet and Health Risks

I’ve been trying to understand why there is so much conflicting nutritional advice from doctors. It turns out that we’ve been misled for the past 50 years about which diets lead to increased risk for heart disease, obesity, diabetes, stroke and cancer.

It all started with skewed data published by Dr. Ancel Keys called The Seven Countries Study. His research, which has since been shown to have serious flaws, led to recommendations to eat a low-fat diet. Along with a reduction in fats, food companies substituted sugar. Americans were led to believe that a high-carbohydrate diet along with low-fat intake would result in lower weight and less risk for heart disease.

In the years since, however, Americans have seen a huge increase in weight, heart disease, obesity, diabetes and strokes.

Some doctors and nutritionists have been critical of Keys’ implications. His famous seven countries study, which led to the medical opinion regarding the dangers of cholesterol, fat and substances containing fat, has been criticized as ignoring the cases of Denmark, France and Norway (countries where the diet is rich in fat, but occurrence of heart disease is low) and Chile (where diet is low in fat, yet occurrence of heart disease is high).

Heart disease remains a killer despite medical technology and medicines that help. Our diets are making us sick, overweight and obese. If the advice to eat low-fat, plenty of carbohydrates, refined grains and wheat was good for us, why are we not showing progress on health indicators?

The Worst Advice for Healthy Aging

Here is a list of common medical lies. I’ve heard various versions of these over the last decades.

1. To lose weight, eat a low-fat diet with plenty of whole wheat and grains
2. Eating fat will make you fat and worse—clog your arteries
3. Eat lots of dairy for bone strength and calcium
4. Keep LDL cholesterol levels under 100; use a statin if needed
5. Avoid red meat because it causes cancer
6. Avoid saturated fats and use vegetable oils
7. Don’t use salt.

The list could go on. The advice about avoiding saturated fats (bacon, butter, full-fat dairy) in particular is unreasonable, given that it has never been proven to cause atherosclerosis and heart disease.

Here’s what authors Ivor Cummins and Jeffry Gerber say in their book Eat Rich, Live Long:

For decades, the American Heart Association (AHA) pushed the low-fat message. But today, the AHA is saying something quite different. In their massive 2015 report Heart Disease and Stroke Statistics, they buried a bombshell in the text. It says that five huge randomized controlled trials have demonstrated that total fat consumption does not affect rates of coronary heart disease or stroke.

Wow, that is a huge shift in public health advice. And that was in 2015! This year, 2019, I heard a cardiologist recommend a low-fat diet with no saturated fat.

Risk for Heart Disease Increases with High Consumption of Carbohydrates

The authors continue:

They (the AHA) state that each 5 percent of saturated fat in your diet that you replace with carbohydrate is associated with a 7 percent higher risk of coronary heart disease.

What? Many cardiologists aren’t following the latest AHA guidelines, and might not even know they’ve changed. Some are expert at saving peoples’ lives surgically. Stents and other interventions are a God-send for anyone who has a heart attack. But recovery and living with heart disease involves diet and exercise. You’d think that one could depend on their doctor for sound diet advice. Proper nutrition is essential for keeping people with heart disease from needing more surgery for more plaque.

If you’re a senior and you don’t have heart problems, you might get to that point if you’re following faulty diet advice (high carbohydrates, low-fat) that risks unhealthy arteries. You might want to check with your doctor about heart-healthy nutrition. (Hint: good nutritional advice isn’t found on the front of cereal boxes.)

Or go to the American Heart Association website. And read these books.