What’s Wrong with US Healthcare - Summed Up In One Document

We often have people move in with a lot of medical problems. They usually come from a hospital or rehab. You’d think that being in a hospital or rehab would ‘fix’ a lot of their medical problems. But no. They just come with instructions on how to ‘manage’ the conditions. Let’s go through an example.

This particular person also weighed 300lbs.

I really felt sorry for her. And we work really hard to help people like this. In this email I want to focus on what came with her.

The medical documentation from the hospital.

Here is her medication list:

BUT WAIT! There’s more..

Do you think there’s been extensive testing on the interactions of all these medications? Me neither. She also had a lot of wounds on her body when she came to us.

Scrolling further down in the documents, I came across a section on recommended nutrition. As a big fan of low-carb eating, I was pretty grossed out.

6-7 servings per day of bread, cereal, pasta, rice and other grains? Did I mention she was also heavily diabetic? You may have noticed that from her drug list. Diabetics often have a lot of wounds.

How about what fruit she should have?

32 grapes a day? Grapes have a glycemic index of 54. Sugar is 65. The glycemic index is a number that tells you how much a food will spike your blood sugar. The higher the number, the larger the spike.

Oh and from above, a typical bagel or bread is around 70. White bread can be 90-100.

Surely the nutrition section of the document recommends some protein to help her?

1 ounce of meat? I often trim an ounce off the meat I’m cooking on the grill to taste it and see if it’s cooked enough. Just a teaser before the main course.

In the “Diabetes: Meal Planning” section of the document, it actually says to minimize meat, while saying protein is important.

On the plus side it does say to minimize sweets and sugary drinks as well. But I’m thinking you don’t need a degree in nutrition to understand that - especially for diabetics.

On to fats.

Again, we’re in the ‘Diabetes: Meal Planning’ section of the document. No mention of how fats spike your blood sugar the least. At least it tells you to eat some healthy fat. And it is true that if you are overweight eating a lot of extra fat will not help you lose it. But you do need some fat each day regardless. No fat from meat mentioned of course.

Lastly the timing of your meals.

“Don’t skip breakfast”. “Eat several meals spaced throughout the day to keep your blood sugar in a target range”.

Basically they are saying use medication to lower blood sugar, not food. It is the total opposite of fasting which we use with residents to lower blood sugar.

I don’t give medical advice. But sometimes I am really appalled at the medical and nutritional advice my residents receive. My apologies for being sarcastic. This stuff just really ticks me off.