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Interventional Radiologist/Neuroradiologist
I am a medical doctor. I came straight down the
pike of conventional medicine, graduating first in my medical
school class, followed by surgical internship, radiology
residency at Northwestern and then fellowship at Harvard in
1996. My goal was to become an interventional radiologist
because the idea of being an "imaging guided surgeon" seemed
exciting and the likely site of big advances in medicine.
 I
had been healthy up until my mid 30's. Then I got married and
had four kids, and my responsibilities at work increased. I also
did a second fellowship in which I tried to combine two training
years into one and was working very long hours. My health
deteriorated. I felt bloated, tired and muddled, and needed
seven cups of coffee to get through the day. I was fat, fearful
and tired. I was fearful of being fat for the rest of my life,
and fearful of dying from a heart attack at a young age and
leaving my children without a father.
I relied on caffeine to keep me alert during the
day. I had frequent episodes of rebound hypoglycemia, which I
did not understand at first. I would think to myself, "What is
wrong with me? I am too young to be having problems like this."
My weight had ballooned up from 155 to 210 pounds, and the
caffeine led to erratic sleep patterns. A person begins to
wonder if they are feeling tired due to rebound hypoglycemia or
a lack of sleep. It's a negative feedback cycle that perpetuates
itself.
My wife, who is a family practice physician,
told me that I looked like I was headed towards a heart attack
at a young age. No matter how hard I tried, though, I could not
win this game. For three years, I asked myself the same
question: "Why can't I lose weight?" I would reduce my food
intake and exercise three times a week and would lose about 5 or
10 pounds. Then work or life would go through a stressful phase,
and soon I would gain all the weight back (and possibly an
additional 5 or 10 pounds).
My brother and his wife, who are both in great
shape and quite knowledgeable about nutrition, tried to give me
nutrition advice, but I didn't listen. I was arrogant. I thought
that because I was a doctor I knew more about nutrition than
they did. I thought vegetarians were misguided and unhealthy.
Then they said to me, "Well, if you know so much about
nutrition, Mr. Doctor, then why are you so fat?" Now, I knew
that they were right. I knew that I had to learn a lot more
about nutrition. My life and the future of my family depended on
it.
I decided to set aside all my other priorities
and focus on this problem. I read all the diet books I could
find. I plowed through article after article on nutrition
research. I read nutrition textbooks. I experimented with
different diets and eating strategies. I had made some progress,
but was still overweight, and having all-too-frequent relapses
of pizza pig-outs and burger binges. But what cured me, and
turned the physiology clock back a decade, was switching to a
plant-based diet. Reading Dr. McDougall's books and watching his
DVDs was a turning point, and it became easier to fend off the
urgings by friends and family that I needed to eat more meat,
etc.
 My
weight came down to the ideal range over the next six months
and, more importantly, I now feel good all day. I lost 57 pounds
and have kept it off for over three years. My blood pressure is
100/60 mmHg, total cholesterol is 111 mg/dl and LDL cholesterol
is 60 mg/dl—and I do not take any medicines. Although statin
medications are effective for reducing cholesterol levels, some
people have significant side effects. I prefer to control my
cholesterol level by following a healthy diet rather than taking
medications.
One big surprise—now that I have escaped from
the world of obesity and poor health, and am ready and willing
to help others—is that so few people want to learn how to do the
same for themselves. Most people, including doctors, feign
interest briefly and then go back to their old ways. Many seem
to think that dietary guidance is a big joke or that it is
almost impossible to change a person's eating habits.
I have had a few friends and patients that have
lost a lot a weight, kept it off and decreased their meds.
However, there is tremendous peer pressure to eat the Western
diet for people living in the U.S. By understanding the general
idea of how the hunger system works and knowing that a
plant-based diet has adequate amounts of protein and calcium, as
well as the problems with eating meat, etc., it becomes a lot
easier to not succumb to relapses at pizza parties and burger
barbeques.
In terms of medical advances and perspectives on
nutrition, I have come full circle. While I enjoy high tech
interventional and imaging, and they are essential for diagnosis
and treatment, I now know that the key to obtaining good health
is prevention through diet. There is a lot of truth to the
Humpty Dumpty rhyme, whereby all the king's horses and all the
king's men could not put him back together again.
The greatest life-saving medical discovery of
the last 50 years is the verification that a plant based diet
optimizes health and diminishes the risk of heart attack and
stroke. This also lowers the risk of diabetes, multi-infarct
dementia, impotence and some cancers. In other words, there is a
way to be as healthy as possible. It took me 25 years to learn
this the hard way.
You are in control, and there is good reason to
be hopeful. Doctors want to help their patients; that is why
they go into medicine. The problem is that they are often under
tight control from hospital administrators to see as many
patients as possible each day. They are seldom allowed the time
to go into detail about the benefits of nutrition. Compounding
the problem is that many patients are not interested in changing
their eating habits, and many doctors do not know very much
about nutrition.
Now, in my mid 40's, I am grateful that I've got
my health back. I am energetic, fit and feel mentally sharp all
day. Now instead of feeling sick all the time, I have more
energy for work and for family. The future seems brighter. I
hope this essay helps other people to learn about nutrition so
that they can improve their health. Dr. McDougall's Comments
Doctors, as revealed by their personal
appearances, many times do not exemplify good health. Obese
cardiologists are common. You are surprised? You would think
that with all the information doctors have at hand, and as smart
as most are, they would be making better choices than the
general public—my observations say that's not the case. They
suffer with the same bad health as everyone else, and are just
as overweight. Some, like Dr. Rogers, have come to the
conclusion they must learn and change, or they die.
Doctors know next to nothing about the proper
feeding of the human being and there are few learning opportunities.
Most are wealthy enough to eat all the lobsters, porterhouse steaks,
and cheese soufflés money can buy. A plate of roast beef, with a
side of butter-topped mashed potatoes, and vegetables dripping with
Hollandaise sauce; all finished off by cheesecake, is a typical
dinner served at medical meetings. The ongoing medical education for
almost all doctors is provided by a provocatively dressed drug sales
rep, arriving daily with pizza and donuts for the office staff.
Your doctors' diets of rich foods have consequences
that affect your health. Their personal diets make teaching you the
importance of good nutrition and practicing diet-therapy next to
impossible. Medications and surgeries are the methods they know.
Unfortunately, these therapies, when used to treat diseases caused
by diet, are largely ineffective. They do not cure obesity,
diabetes, hypertension, arthritis, indigestion, constipation, pain,
etc., and oft times the patients are left worse off with serious
side effects and financial burdens. Your doctor feels like a failure
and rightly so.
I tell everyone I meet that I am the luckiest doctor
in the world, because my patients get their health back, by
correcting the cause. I use low-tech medicine. I tell people to eat
good food. But, anyone can do this. You don't have to go through
four years of medical school to say, "don't eat meat, it'll clog
your arteries." Traditional medical education not only ignores the
subject of human nutrition; the teachings actually sabotage
diet-therapy. Students learn "colon cancer prevention," means
colonoscopy and the importance of the contents of the colon is
ignored. They are captivated by the high-tech angioplasty surgeries
and never learn about the fundamental role of plant-foods in
coronary artery disease. Young doctors are taught, "Patients will
not follow dietary advice, don't waste your time."
Dr. Rogers has made a personal discovery that has
caused him to look at the practice of medicine from an effective
viewpoint. He now tells people, "For those who want to learn and
improve their health, there is a way. The true secret is that one
should change what one eats, from a high-fat Western diet to a
plant-based diet full of whole grains, vegetables and fruits."
Someday soon, more doctors will come to these simple conclusions and
the patients will benefit. In the meantime, you—medical doctor or
not—will have to share this message with the ones you love.
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