Medical schools are infamously bad at teaching epidemiology. Utterly absent or completely rudimentary teaching of epidemiology. It’s a miracle if medical doctors learn any biostatistics (very different from college “coin flip” statistics). Just beware when reading #COVID stats.
https://twitter.com/mahad_minhas/status/1449867465052364810
2) Many medical schools have zero courses in epidemiology and zero courses in population biostatistics. I had attended medical school myself years ago (before I withdrew) and examined school curriculums—it’s very lacking. Some doctors are smart and self learn, but most don’t.
3) This is a not criticism of MD/DO doctors - they have to learn so much with a firehose volume of information to memorize already. But it is a reality of medical schools in prioritizing some topics over more useful ones like epidemiology which they need to know to read research.
4) Also medical schools teach little to no formal education of human nutrition either in med schools, as most med school deans will acknowledge. Nutrition is mostly learned in residency later if one specializes in gastroenterology or in endocrinology (for obesity/diabetes)…
5) The classic fallacy many doctors make is confusing high triglycerides (fat in the blood) for eating too much fat—wrong. High triglycerides are from eating too much carbs. Common mistake that many primary care doctors not familiar with nutrition make.
6) Other fallacy in nutrition - that “eating fat increases bad LDL cholesterol”—actually only sometimes. Bad fats like saturated fat & trans fat increases LDL, but good fats like polyunsaturated fats mostly lower LDL cholesterol—if substituted in place of generic (average) carbs.
7) Also, many doctors are over fixated with LDL or good HDL. The best index of heart disease risk is actually “HDL:TOTAL CHOLESTEROL RATIO” - the ratio of HDL to the total cholesterol—which has performed the best for heart disease prediction over the years, better than LDL alone.
8) If you all want me to do more nutrition topics in the future,
9) to clear up my background: I first attended Harvard for my EPIDEMIOLOGY doctorate. Then I concurrently did my second doctoral program in NUTRITION. Then I attended BU medical school while also postdoc. Then I was promoted to faculty at Harvard Med—thus withdrew from med school
10) People have asked why I decided to do all that, especially do my dual doctorates by age 23. Well… there was a reason from my childhood… well.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/08/a-w…
11) Regarding carbs - not all carbs alike. There’s good carbs and bad carbs. Eat whole grain bread and brown rice and steel-cut oatmeal, not instant oatmeal or white bread. Whole grains are good. Popcorn 🍿 is actually a whole grain—but hold the salt and butter.
https://twitter.com/drericding/status/1449967727024685061
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