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Top 5 Health Misconceptions I Fix In My Practice · Doctor Turned Health Coach

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  Today, we're going to maybe break down some myths, the five most common health
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  misconceptions, and I sort of want to break this down from a perspective of
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  modern clinical medicine.
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  So the first one is going to be that you need to be skinny to be healthy.
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  This is very far from the truth. What really matters is your body composition.
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  Now, while we have been using the Body Mass Index since the 70s or 80s,
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  it's no longer an effective tool. In fact, it's quite outdated. it.
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  What matters a lot more now is the visceral fat that people have.
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  And I'm sure in about 10 years, it's not even going to be the visceral fat.
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  It's going to be some other biomarker or marker that we're going to use.
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  The most important thing is for you to have a good ratio of muscle mass to bone
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  mass to some healthy fatty tissue.
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  But the one thing that we don't want too much of is visceral fat.
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  The next one is that vaccines are the best way to keep you healthy and free
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  of that particular disease.
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  Now, I know this is contentious, but unfortunately it's not.
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  The vaccine is never going to be the best way for you to prevent catching a
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  certain communicable disease like COVID or flu or pneumonia.
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  The best way is always to improve your immune system, your immune health.
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  That is always upstream of a vaccine.
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  After that, yes, it seems to be that most vaccines are incredibly effective
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  when used for the right individuals. We would never use yellow fever for somebody
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  who lives in Los Angeles because the chance of you developing yellow fever is really low.
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  It's the same thing with a COVID vaccine. If you're at high risk for COVID,
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  then getting a COVID vaccine is incredibly effective.
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  But if you're low risk getting the vaccine, you might experience more harm than.
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  The next one is going to be that medications are going to save you.
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  The medications are going to fix everything. If you are diagnosed with a certain
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  medical condition, all you have to do is go to the doctor.
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  Maybe if it's cancer, you're just going to get some chemotherapy,
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  surgery, and radiation.
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  Or if you have high blood pressure, all that's needed is some blood pressure
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  medications, and you're going to be okay.
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  This is unfortunately also not true. Blood pressure medications and chemo and
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  diabetes medications all of these can be a really good tool in an overall toolbox
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  where there is lifestyle changes,
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  dietary changes, exercise, etc.
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  But by themselves, they only are going to help people who are at an extremely high risk.
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  For most of the people, when we give them a cholesterol-lowering medication
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  or a diabetes medication, the effect, the overall health effect,
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  is actually negligible.
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  But again, if you are in an extreme category, yes, oh my gosh,
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  these medications are amazing.
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  The next one is going to be the fitness industry trend that you need to do,
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  I don't know, 150 minutes of exercise and 10,000 steps and all of these hardcore
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  strength exercises to be healthy, to have the benefit from exercise.
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  Right now, as I'm recording this, I'm walking in a park next to my house.
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  And this walking is pretty good. That's really the only thing of exercise that
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  I would probably need, assuming that I lead an otherwise active lifestyle.
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  But if you are somebody who doesn't do anything around the house,
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  you have a very sedentary job, don't cook for yourself, all of your heavy lifting
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  or moving is done by somebody else, then a structured program is necessary.
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  How do you know how much to get? Well, you can do testing.
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  You can do a DEXA scan to see how much muscle mass you have,
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  and you can see how much visceral fat you have, and then based on that,
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  you can titrate up your activity level from walking to running to swimming to whatever you like.
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  But there is no one-size-fits-all approach, and if you follow that paradigm,
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  unfortunately, you're just going to feel a lot of frustration,
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  a lot of burnout, and maybe even a lot of injuries.
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  And the next one, or the last one, is going to be that in order to lose weight,
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  you must take prescription medications.
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  I have had so many patients over the years who have been able to lose their
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  weight slowly, steadily, without any prescription medications,
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  without any interventions. And I'm not saying that it's easy.
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  I think, overall, weight loss is one of the most complicated conditions because
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  it has many different factors to it. But there's always some approach that is right for everyone.
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  I would maybe classify there are 7 to 10 different weight loss approaches.
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  And if you find the right one for yourself that works for you,
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  you can always make it fit your particular needs.
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  It takes a little bit of experimenting and trial and error. But there's always
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  one approach that's going to eventually work for you.
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  Medications have their place, but they are not without side effects.
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  And for the right person, they can be an incredible tool.
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  And as I said before, just like vaccines for the average person or like medications
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  for the average person, it just may not be that effective.
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  So these are the five most common health myths that I see online and my patients share with me.
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  I hope it's of value to you. And thank you for listening.