The Healthy Patient

NAVJOT SINGH SIDHU ruffled the medical establishment this week when he put up a social media post about how his wife beat stage 4 cancer through lifestyle modifications like diet and exercise. When doctors pointed out that she had been undergo­ing conventional treatment, he put one more post stating that was true. He also had his own oncologist come up and say the recovery was a result of all aspects going together. You can argue that Sidhu’s initial enthusiasm of promoting practices that doctors look down upon, like intermit­tent fasting or use of herbs and concoc­tions, would have led to others doing dangerous experiments. Indeed, not just in India but in the West, too, alter­native therapies without the rigours of science have a big following. The most famous case is that of Apple founder Steve Jobs who relied on it to fight his cancer until he had to veer back towards medicine and it is still debated whether that cost him his life. But Sidhu’s wife continued her medical treatment and the other elements were supplementa­tion. Even after Sidhu reaffirmed his faith in medicine, the disdain against him has continued and that is probably not warranted. He put up a document of the regimen his wife followed and it had a couple of curiosities like drinking water with ph level of 7. Discount those and it is actually a good recipe for health. Like keeping sugar to a minimum, having a lot of vegetables, not having refined carbohydrates, having fibre in the form of psyllium husk, regular exercise, and so on. These are not things that can hurt the body, especially given doctors were involved in monitoring her. His wife is herself a doctor and she appears in a video too, saying it led to her losing 30kg of excess weight she had been carrying and gave her body a boost in combating the disease.

Did it really, and how much impact would it have had? These are anecdotal experiences and every patient and their family who beat such a disease often have their own stories of what helped. It has no evidence value until tested with large numbers. But is there a point in deriding it simply because doctors imagine themselves as having a mo­nopoly on how patients should behave? Doctors have domain knowledge about their own specialisation, but rarely beyond that. Even within it, except for a few, most don’t read or publish papers to remain updated on the latest develop­ments. The medical profession has tunnel vision about medication. How often have you gone to a doctor in India and had a conversation that lasted more than five minutes, whereas abroad they do extensive interviews and note down the minute details? Point that out and they blame it on workload, which is obviously remunerated. Best practices are compromised at the altar of their own convenience. It is easy to sneer at an over-joyous patient who might have fluked into a cure, but such enthusiasm for public health messaging is usually absent when it comes to someone from the fraternity.

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