Wednesday, July 3, 2013

What's missing from modern Health Sciences & Medicine?




I've been a practicing Dietitian for the last 9 years.  I got my Masters of Science (Thesis) in Human Nutritional Biochemistry from McGill University and am currently preparing my PhD Thesis Research proposal for submission & eventual defense!

One thing that has become painfully clear over my years submerged in health and medical sciences and practice in North America...that something is sorely missing from Health, Medical and Nutritional practice & research.  For years, I knew it/could feel it instinctively, but could not quite put it into words.  Of course, when you are in the environment surrounded by other health professional colleagues and research personnel who are all justifying their existences and towing the party lines, it's not a topic that you can easily bring up.

However, now I believe that I know what it is and I owe this new level of understanding to my recent immersion in the Paleo/Primal lifestyle and nutrition protocols.  I have been studying these for the last 6 months or so and implementing them in my personal life (as an n=1) trial for the last 2 months or so.  I will discuss these specifics and update my results later, although you can get all the basics that I got by checking out Robb Wolf's and Mark Sisson's websites and check out their introduction/beginner section and free tools.  I have purchased and read all their books, which are excellently written, easy to understand and full of practical implementation strategies.

Anyway, during my regular listening to the Paleo Solution Podcast by Robb Wollf and Greg Everett (formerly Andy Deas).  Robb often goes off on (entertaining) rants against Dietitians and conventional nutrition research, which I initially was offended by but then very quickly realized that I actually feel exactly the same way, I'm often frustrated with the routine practice of my discipline, but I lacked the words to describe it. 
Anyway, during one of his rants, he paralleled the physical sciences and the unifying theory.  An armchair Quantum Theory follower, this resonated with me and all at once, at the same moment as he described what he thought was lacking from nutritional research and practice, I had my Eureka moment!

Conventional health, medical and nutritional research and practice is currently lacking a unifying theory!  It's so obvious when you examine quantum theory and research in various aspects of physics that they are asking their research questions guided by the unifying theory.  This makes for so many more productive research findings.  Contrarily, when I skim the literature in health, medical and nutrition sciences all I see are disparate, vaguely related questions being asked & answered (often by horrible methodologies) that are thrown together into somewhat related theme-based journals.  This is the extent of our science.  It seems to me that in this age of information overload, we need, now more than ever a unifying theory of biological sciences, including human health, medicine and nutrition in order to stop us from wasting time and resources on dead ends.

I think that the unifying theory for biological sciences is obvious.  Evolutionary biology. This is an extremely logical backbone that unifies biology, genetics, biochemistry and medicine.  So, for the study of human health, medicine and nutrition, we can't ignore this priniciple!  Don't you agree?

Anyway, this is something that I am personally now attempting to better understand so that I can implement it into my daily practice as well as my research.

So, if you are a Dietitian, Health professional, Personal Trainer, Physical educator, Coach, Research Scientist, Medical practitioner, or Professor of any of the fore mentioned biological sciences, then I believe you should seriously consider implementing evolutionary biology as an integral guiding principal to your practice and research.  This will insure that the questions we ask, and the things we do for our clients are in line with what is right for our bodies, vs. what a governing body or a decision tree tells us to do based on probabilities that were generated by randomly asked research questions.

Please share this link if you agree!  If not, feel free to submit your comments for discussion.  Everyone love a good debate.

Image Citations:

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http://www.marksdailyapple.com/about-2/who-is-grok/#axzz2XzESBY46
http://www.particleadventure.org/images/page-elements/ein.gif

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