We have been training and coaching many amazing women at Inspire Exercise Medicine and I wanted to highlight one who has fought her way through breast cancer treatment. Prior to her breast cancer diagnosis, she had a heart attack at one point and also is plagued by vascular disease. As a result, she continues to see her cardiologist often. At one of our nutrition question and answer sessions, she came armed with several pages of questions. She came to the next session with more questions. She came to her workout sessions with even more questions. Finally, she just brought in a large document from her cardiologist titled “Cardiac Prudent Mediterranean Diet” and asked me to look through it and mark it up. And mark it up I did.
It was a though I entered a Delorean with Marty McFly and traveled back to the dark ages of dietary recommendations—those times that brought us the sacred cows whose ghosts we still see floating around the hospital. Low fat dairy, including skim milk and low fat cheese was recommended (sidestepping of course the fact that many, if not most, of the benefits of dairy are found in the fat, especially when made from grass-fed milk. But no, flush that vitamin A, K2, and D, and conjugated linoleic acid and essential fatty acids down the drain and replace them with lactose and protein. Meat and sweets are in the same category according to this list, though one is a nutrient-dense food that backs a hefty amount of protein for a population that desperately needs it, while the other provides a hefty amount of sugar and no nutrition at all. Don’t worry about breads, rice and pasta—you can eat them every meal, just don’t go overboard. Also, make sure to dump some vegetable oil on top!
You don’t need a flux capacitor to go back in time, just head to your local doctor’s office and ask for dietary advice.
In fairness, I did agree with the vegetable recommendations and fish. Though the anti-fat rhetoric throughout would confuse most readers as they would likely avoid the healthiest fish, i.e., fatty fish.
I went to town and wrote all over it. I mean everywhere. Exclamation points and capital letters and lots of “NO!.” To my horror, she brought it back to her cardiologist. I figured a fight was coming. I was wrong. The heart doc agreed with everything. She agreed with every last comment and she had her sweet patient pass that message along to me.
I was a bit shocked, but also relieved. However, this feeling was quickly replaced with confusion. Why would she have this handout in her office? If, like me, she vehemently disagreed with these recommendations, why was she handing them out for own patients to follow, potentially leading them to disastrous outcomes (which is exactly what was happening)?
She was parroting. Steeped in part mental laziness, part mental disassociation from reality, and a strong desire to avoid that difficult process of critical thinking, parroting is omnipresent in our society, from those bird-like creatures around us that regurgitate whatever information they hear from their local news source regardless of how incredibly inconsistent, to criticizing those of us that actually question the often inconsistent message we receive from our media and “experts”… And yes, physicians, researchers, and other eggheads whom we would deem too intelligent to parrot often parrot worse than the rest of society. The issues with this type of parroting are compounded by the fact that patients and others may be thinking they are on the way to better health by following this misguided parroting advice. In fact, these thought leaders are often so dedicated to their research and indoctrinated by those around them they rarely pump the breaks, ask questions, or risk push back from the higher ups in their fields or organizations, that they may do some of the worst parroting. And unlike your annoying neighbor, aunt, or uncle that regurgitates whatever nonsense they hear on CNN/Fox News/whatever major “news” source, this zombie-like avian passing along of information by physicians comes out as recommendations. Much like the antiquated dietary recommendations that were making it impossible for my nice patient to ever feel full, satiated, or lose weight, this parroting can have a serious impact and negative downstream effects.
What can we do about this bird-like phenomena spreading throughout society? Well, we can educate our friends, family, and neighbors to think. Maybe even suggest that even though the news is bashing some insignificant celebrity or politician from half way around the world, maybe it’s better to ignore that negative message than pass judgment and join into the bash-fest. When health recommendations seem to make little sense, and sends us into spirals of contradiction), maybe it is better to just ignore them. And of course, critically thinking about information that comes our way before we even let it inside our brains—and certainly before we pass it along—may help us stay intelligent, sane, and very human.
And for my information, I’ll take human over parrot any day.
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