How many times have you gone to a doctor because you were sick and came back with a prescription for a bunch of medicines that you’re supposed to take according to the doctor’s orders? We’re going to go on a limb here and say that’s what it’s like each time you visit the doctor’s clinic because that’s what doctors do, right? If you’re on our page then we’ll assume that you’re tired of it being like this. To become a doctor, you have to study medicine and the way the human body works in great detail but in the end, if all you do is hand out prescriptions to drugs, then wouldn’t that make you more of a pharmaceutical sales agent than an actual doctor? Well, there’s evidence that some doctors are beginning to think so.
Prescribing medicines to counter the symptoms of a disease is the easier way to go about keeping patients healthy. This fixes the problem in the short run but doesn’t boost the patient’s immunity to ailments in the long run. This is why some doctors are starting to prescribe food to their patients instead. Think about it, the food we eat is our natural intake of minerals, nutrients, and even vitamins. Let’s suppose you have a pet that you love a lot. Your primary means of ensuring that your pet stays healthy is to make sure that they’re eating right. You’ll invest in the right food sources and have your pet eat them, even if they’re fussy about it. It’s because you know that by doing so you’ll be keeping your pet safe from diseases and energetic around the clock. We, humans, are biological machines fuelled by food, the same way.
Now you know why your mom insisted that you eat your vegetables when you were young but you probably thought they were icky. Even now when you’re an adult, you’d still think certain foods are icky, even if your doctor told you that they’re good for you. After all, why would you want to switch to a boringly specific diet of certain foods when food is so pleasurable? Yes, one of the biggest challenges that doctors are facing in getting their patients to eat right is that they’re so engrossed by eating food for pleasure, that they don’t even think twice before putting something in their mouths anymore. Think about how many times you hit a fast food joint to have that big greasy burger with your friends and chase it down with a bunch of beers? Of course, food is pleasurable – it’s one of the main comforts in everyone’s lives but if you keep eating like this, it won’t do you any good in the long run. Which is why if the doctors are going to get people to start eating right, they’re going to have to make them really understand why they’re not going to be eating junk any longer.
You could walk out of the doctor’s clinic with a whole prescription for foods that you ought to be eating but unless you follow through with your doctor’s orders, your treatment plan is just going out of the window, along with that doctor’s consultation fee. Even the doctors that are currently moving towards prescribing food all agree that prescribing a bunch of drugs to take care of the problem is a much easier solution and has short term results too. Now, you have to understand that you can’t reverse every disease with proper foods right away, which is why there are two steps to making food prescriptions happen.
Step 1: Countering The Symptoms
When a patient comes to a doctor’s clinic, they’ve already waited a long time to get better but since that isn’t happening, they have no other choice but to go to the doctor. They’re usually in a lot of pain because of their symptoms and the fastest way to treat those symptoms is to prescribe the right medicines. This is why step one is to prescribe a treatment plan for the symptoms. Once those are out of the way, the doctor can move to the long term treatment plan, that will keep the ailment away in the future.
Step 2: Keeping The Symptoms Away
After the patient reports relief from their symptoms, the doctor can prescribe them food to keep the ailment away. This is the tricky part because once the patient feels better, they’ll go back to their unhealthy life as soon as they can. To make a patient follow through with the long term treatment plan though food, the doctor has to convince them to change their diet. This is more effort on the doctor’s part. If the doctor can educate the patient about what they ought to be eating and get them to appreciate all the benefits like this, the patient might actually listen.
From the above two steps, it becomes clear that to make food prescriptions actually happen, the doctor will have to put in as much dedicated effort as the patient will. Most doctors rather not spend this much time and energy on a patient, which is another really big challenge for food prescriptions. However, the doctors that do believe in bringing this change to make peoples will be willing to put in this effort. They can increase their fee, as a recompense for their efforts and they may have to check in with the patient again and again.
For the patient, the long term benefits of changing their diet according to what the doctor orders are really hard to ignore. Not only will they build immunity from the ailment that they went to the doctor for in the first place, but, like this, they’ll also feel more able-bodied and healthy in the long run. A sense of well-being can really carry a person a long way and you can’t get that by eating your medicines alone. You have to think beyond just relieving symptoms in order to really enjoy a long and healthy life. Of course, you can fit in a cheat meal every then and now – even your cheat meals will have more novelty to them this way.
