Diet Never Brought Up

Post Reply New Topic

If I posted this before I apologize, but I always wondered how come doctors or even psychiatrist very rarely mentioned to me what is my diet like or how much sugar I consume? when I was growing up I admit my diet was terrible and didn't help my situation, in my early 30's and now I noticed watching my sugar intake keeps my symptoms and nervous system a lot ''calmer'' as well as not eating as many fast food items, all they did when I was growing up was throw pills at the issues

Big Pharma doesn't pay them to keep you healthy. But yes, what you eat has a huge effect on your neurology as well as on every other part of your body and mind.

Most Doctors have a 7-10 minute window of time to meet with patients, so if you aren't coming in with a diet/nutrition related issue, and have a reasonably appropriate height/weight ratio, and reasonable blood pressure, they won't ask about other issues. Health professionals are also subject to negative feedback from Patient reviews and aren't going to risk talking about weight or anything that could be construed as Body Shaming.

That doesn't stop anyone from bringing it up on their own should they choose to.

They can also get s reasonable amout of data on diet from bloodwork (often times Doctors will ask general questions about diet, alcohol consumption, and recreational drug use, smoking etc. and get less that truthful answers anyway, so unless a patient is motivated to tell the truth, there isn't much to be gained by asking).

Yeah. Diet is important. Probably does effect your nervous system in ways that either mitigate or exacerbate your presentation of autism. Doctors get suprisingly little training in nutrition, or so Ive heard.

Had to recently go to the hospital often. Nurses ask you about your diet more often than do doctors.

It's not even that, although it's doubtless a factor, a typical doctor only gets about 6 weeks worth of training on the subject and it's probably better that they don't bother to ask about it since a typical personal trainer is probably more informed. (And still not a great choice)

The real outrage should be that register dieticians are so bad at handing out dietary advice. At least the ones I've been to will give good information in terms of what to look for, but completely fail to hand out any actionable advice. Sure cutting back on sugar and fats is often times a reasonable bit of advice, actually doing so may not be very easy, especially for those that have limited funds or are on assistance and don't get to just choose whatever the healthy option is.

Depending on where you live, A "personal trainer" only needs 2 hours of training. They can have "years of experience" but only 2 hours of actual education. Some states/places are better, but people do need to be aware that just about anyone can be a "personal trainer" here in my neck of the woods. (their job is mainly to get clients to feel like they get some personal attention and to sell the Gym's line of dubious supplements - but it keeps them coming back/paying for membership) There is no single solution or reason for this problem, but yes, a lot of factors do come in to play.

I'm was reluctant to even get in to the part about asking for a referral to a nutritionist or a RD, because like you say - bad advice and it doesn't come cheap.

But at least the OP now as a bunch of possible reasons why the subject of diet doesn't come up at the standard Dr. visit.

It's been quite a few years since I had any dealings with the industry, but my memory was that most of the nutrition advice being handed out by trainers was coming out of a computer program as there isn't typically time to give more specific advice, educated to or not. At least for the ones that are towards the lower range.

The only advice I've ever heard on diet and nutrition that I'd have any confidence in is also pretty vague. Variety of food and moderation of anything that hits your taste buds too hard. There is a ton of stuff that isn't really understood about what the ideal diet is, you've got people who existed and thrived for generations on a 100% meat based diet and people who have done pretty well with absolutely no meat at all.

Even if your diet is complete trash, you're probably not going to get actionable advice beyond swapping out the junk foods for ones that are either less junky or healthier. A complete overhaul on one's diet is hard,spectrum or not, and worse for anybody that has executive functioning challenges and especially if there are textures and tastes that you can't handle.

The NHS never asked me about what I was eating either, but I don't much mind. From what I've seen of their general dietary advice, it's either stuff I already know about or it's oversimplistic propaganda about "have you had your five a day?" or "are you eating too much sugar or salt?"

I never considered talking to my GP when I started wondering about how healthy my diet was. I just followed whatever wisdom was around that seemed sensible to me, albeit with compromises when I felt the advice was too cumbersome, expensive, or uncomfortable. A few decades ago I thought I'd try to calculate my nutrient intakes and compare them with the recommendations of medical science, but that was before computers were common and I abandoned the project because it was clearly going to take a very long time to get it all done.

More recently I realised that technology had advanced enough to make it look feasible to try again, and as my diet is pretty repetitive and restricted, the data collection and number-crunching had at last become practicable, though it took a lot of work. I found several important-looking and large shortfalls in my vitamin and mineral intake, so I figured out the right supplements to set it all straight. The only change in my food has been the addition of 28 grams of carrots per day for alpha-carotene. As for the supplements, all I technically needed was small fractions of various supplement capsules and a bit of calcium, so I worked out a scheme for breaking open the capsules and getting the calculated amounts. I managed to get it all to be pretty easy and inexpensive. For calcium I just add home-brewing grade calcium chloride to my raisin bread recipe.

So that's all fixed, assuming I have no problems with inadequate absorption. Some blood tests would be a good idea, but the NHS has never offered me that and it would be expensive to do it all privately. Still, I'm in fairly good health for my age so I presume I have no particular need to worry.

It does seem a shame that the health service isn't inviting me to a session where they offer a blood test to check my nutrient levels, but I don't really expect health professionals to proactively lead me on anything. I see it as my business to look after my own health and just consult the doctors if and when I've identified a need for them.