I've been spending a lot of time with a doctor friend (great guy, very intelligent, in general very curious) because we were on a vacation with a group of friends.
I'm carnivore, and while I don't talk to everyone I meet about it, still, if I'm spending over a week with someone, it's going to come up.
I don't advocate carnivore per se, but I did talk quite a bit about my path towards carnivore, which basically started with reading the book The Big Fat Surprise (my post on this book here This book is blowing my mind - The Big Fat Surprise by Nina Teicholtz)
And the book is NOT specifically advocating carnivore at all. It's more about these facts:
- the hypothesis that saturated fats cause heart disease is very flawed, and came about mostly via funding from the sugar industry and the vegetable oil industry
- any evidence against the hypothesis was covered up
- any scientists that were vocal against the "saturated fat causes heart disease" hypothesis were aggressively cancelled
And it surprised me that this friend - in general alert, intelligent, a little bit skeptical about things (doesn't believe in the covid vaxx for most people) - was COMPLETELY uninterested in any of this. Any mention I made of studies that indicate that the accepted state of medicine was wrong in regards to saturated fat causing heart disease, was flatly rejected. The response was along the lines of "you can get studies that say anything".
And no further curiosity.
I think the reason for this is the famous Upton Sinclair quote:
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it"
And his salary doesn't even depend on it anymore, he's retired. But he still identifies very much with the profession. And in regards to Covid, he doesn't blame the medical industry at all, just the pharma industry.
My impression was that this wasn’t even particularly controversial anymore.
That's why his stance surprised me a little. I think for people who are more diligent and open-minded in research, more skeptical in general, and younger - it's easier for them to accept this.
But for someone who's achieved a lot in the field of medicine, who was trained decades ago, who prides themselves on being a doctor and doesn't accept that the medical industry has a very mixed history - this kind of info doesn't even make a dent in their worldview.
Still, honestly, I think it's still fairly controversial. Most people still believe that you should strictly limit beef, and if you eat meat at all you should eat low-fat.
Also just about everybody that's over 40, when I mention that I'm carnivore, says something like "how's your cholesterol?"
I don't keep up with this but your story does not at all surprise me.
You should ask him, "Why are you so convinced that saturated fats caused heart disease?" Ask him for the direct line of evidence that he thinks he believes in. If he knows, then you get educated. (Even if he's wrong, at least you know why he believes what he believes.) If he doesn't know, which is also quite likely, then (hopefully) he realizes that his belief is entirely grounded on what others have told him, and not on any direct evidence that he's seen himself.
I did try to go in that direction. But his was basically an argument from authority ("this is what the AMA says, this is what the studies right now say") and I didn't really try to wrangle him down.
I’ve noticed that doctors tend to be more like skilled craftsmen than scientists in their mentality.
They feel they’ve mastered their craft and aren’t very open minded to revisions but they love new technical developments.
yeh, not surprising.
at some point you just have to accept that you can't change peoples' minds
I love that approach in general, because then you can't know shit and should be very humble about every odd thing, including the very thing you're aggressively trying to debunk. Also, what's your source of knowledge/wisdom/basic standing ground if all studies are intrinisically wacky/crap/unbelievable
docs rarely have time to review new literature and what they learn in med school is engraved into their brains. PLus Ancel Keys did a hell of a job pushing his ideas.
I think also when a layperson starts telling docs about some hypothesis they read a book on, most docs will immidatly shutdown, i mean, this doc would have been giving the same advice for decades, and cognitively, i doubt they would want to think they were wrong all those years.
I've spent countless hours down this rabbit hole myself and read many books on it. i think mainstream med literature is now catching up to the idea that the lipid hypothesis was flawed and wrong all along.
From what i have read, the most dangerous cholesterol subparticle is lp(a) and statins apparantly dont touch it