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I will spend every waking moment of my career dedicated to taking down pseudoscience and misinformation. When a “plant-based” physician tells my patient with MVD to stop their statin and aspirin, and chew spinach instead of nitro for unstable angina - I have reached my limit.
I am thankful to have caught this before something terrible happened to my patient. I sent for a cath & re initiated guideline directed medical therapy. But I’ve had enough of vegan doctors telling patients they can reverse their CAD w diet & they can go OFF THEIR MEDS. Hard stop
I am vegan. I advocate for plant-based & plant predominant nutrition. Our multidisciplinary practice is called the Institute of Plant-Based Medicine. But our practice spends A LOT OF TIME trying to fix the damage done by other plant-based doctors, chiropractors and naturopaths
One of my partners who is a gastroenterologist is constantly diagnosing late stage colon cancers in patients who have been seeking alternative health providers or vegan MDs who believe plant based diets fix everything and ignore ALL SCREENING guidelines
Everyone at our practice is fighting to convince patients that YES while nutrition is important - it’s not a panacea & we have guideline directed medical and procedural therapy FOR THIS REASON.This doesn’t need to be a binary decision. Optimal health can & OFTEN MUST include both
I’m thankful for my partners at my group - who are just as dedicated as I am to stopping dangerous misinformation & helping our patients live their best lives, w/ a combination of lifestyle + guideline directed medical & procedural therapy when indicated. Patients FIRST
And to those of you out there-that are pushing pseudoscience against medical guidelines-just know there are REAL consequences to your actions. I see the downstream effects of your misinformation. & it’s heartbreaking. You’re putting lives at risk to sell a book or make $. ENOUGH
& just to be clear: patients are the victims here. Every patient just wants to do what’s best for their health & trust their doctor will lead in this direction. Heart disease is scary. Patients are frightened & sadly many are taken advantage of by alt health & lifestyle med gurus
PS - btw... the problematic ideology that statins are useless, and GDMT is unnecessary, is just as bad in the keto community as it is in plant-based. It’s unreal how much misinformation is being perpetuated by physicians who claim to be nutrition experts.
