Physician, educate thyself

Muscle & Fitness/Hers, March, 2004

It's only been recently that medical schools have begun teaching physicians the particulars of how nutrition affects health, but apparently some docs still aren't up to speed. In a survey of 639 doctors, most of them internists and cardiologists, researchers at Brown University found that many of the physicians were surprisingly uninformed about the effects of diet on cholesterol and other blood lipids.

Half of the physicians, for instance, didn't know that canola oil is a good source of healthy monounsaturated fat; 26 percent didn't know that olive oil is. Thirty percent mistakenly thought that safflower oil is high in monounsaturated fat (it's high in polyunsaturated fat). Three quarters of the doctors didn't know that a low-fat diet decreases HDL--good cholesterol--levels and 93 percent didn't know that it increases triglycerides. Fortunately, cardiologists, the docs in charge of keeping us heart healthy, scored better on the survey than the internists, but the study just goes to show how important it is to keep up on nutrition news yourself. Not all doctors, apparently, are willing to do it for you.