I'll Admit It, I Don't Think My Doctor Knows EVERYTHING

I switched my son’s formula to a non-GMO brand, and wrote a blog post about it.

After I put it out there, someone asked me why. More specifically, Cary, one of our Facebook friends asked me this.

With all due respect, why? Is this your kid's doc's recommendation? Or are you reinventing the wheel? Literally millions of kids have thrived on mommy's milk and ordinary commercial formula--so can your kid, if you'd let him.

So, I asked myself…am I reinventing the wheel? Or, am I just trying to find the best wheel out there?

Or, am I trying to avoid the wheel that is could potentially go flat?

Yeah, that’s what it is, for sure. I think that big corporate corn syrup as the main staple of anyone’s diet could be a problem, a wobbly wheel just waiting to go flat, if you will.

Now, I’m talking about your every day, big product name, huge-corporation corn syrup. It is now called fructose. It is the stuff they use to make a crazy majority of the things you'll find on the shelves of your average grocery store.

I don’t think it’s good for kids or adults to live on this stuff. I know I can find an article on the Internet that will say whatever it is I believe, so I'm not going to post a bunch of links here. My decision is rooted more in common sense than it is science, because there are plenty of scientists on both sides of the coin.

My health initiative of the past five years has been cut down on corn syrup.

And since my son was consuming only formula, and that was the main ingredient in it, I was concerned. I don't eat a lot of it. I don't think he should either.

The question the listener asked concerned my doctor, and if they had recommended the non-GMO based formula.

Indeed he did not. Quite the contrary, he suggested and even gave me free samples of the kind that have the very corn syrup I disdain.

So, why don’t I go with the recommendations of my doctor?

Well, it's because I don't think my doc knows everything. Very simply, because I think doc has this one wrong.

I don’t know when it started, but since I’ve been alive, doctors, those with the distinction of MD, have been elevated to the level of deity. And, for what they can do, the way they save lives, because of the amazing service that they render to society in general, I can see why.

Doctors are awesome. Modern medical science has made our quality of life so much better, it’s almost difficult to overstate the point. They are amazing. Amazing. I have a very high level of trust with my son's doctor.

But they don’t know everything.

I don’t care how much school they’ve attended. They can’t know everything.

Whenever I question any of my health care professionals about anything, they have an answer for me, and are ready to cite a study, relate an experience, or tell me what they know that answers my question.

That’s good. Still no problems for me. They base their decisions on hard evidence. Reputable studies. Learned research. As they should.

The thing is, studies can’t reveal everything. And if there is no study showing harm, many doctors consider it safe. It's the party line on GMO's in America.

It may be impossible to directly link increased allergies, nutrition issues, diabetes, cancer, and other modern problems that are definitely more prevalent than they used to be with the increased intake of corn syrup, meats from animals that had hormones and antibiotics added to their lives, and other modern food options. That direct link may never be found. But something is happening, and it happens often enough for me to want to take a deeper look.

When I take that deeper look, and find that some companies are really messing with the food, it just seems very obvious that that could be a culprit.

Something is wrong with the car. Two things can be amiss—fuel or fire. In this case, in this analogy, I’m double checking the fuel.

Because they can't find harm, many doctors and other well meaning health professionals don't consider it bad. I can't prove that it's bad, but there is one thing I do know. If a big company has to decide whether to turn a great profit or report that one of their very expensive efforts to modify corn has reaped a product that might be really bad for us...well, I just don't trust the big companies to make that call.

Now, I know that we’ve been messing with the way food grows since we started farming. Plowing fields, weeding, irrigating, even just planting food is changes food from the way it first naturally grew on Earth. If we never messed with the way a plant grew, our world wouldn’t look the way it does today.

However, I think that we can mess with it too much. I don’t know where that line is, but I know that some things right in front of my face seem wrong. And, what if there are companies out there who would make a decision that is better for their bottom line than for the good of their consumers, especially if it is really hard to prove it?

What if they would put their profits before our health?

I can see it, I can imagine it, and it wouldn't surprise me.

I think we should be eating as much food as we can that is close to its source as we can get it. Farming requires science and technology, but it also still needs that natural element. So, good old manure is probably better than petroleum fertilizer. Less pesticide is probably better than more. Genetic engineering should be kept to a minimum, and food companies should make an effort to grow things that were created in nature as opposed to a lab.

There are opposing forces to this, and the generations before that bought without thought to any of these concerns should rest assured that today’s advanced connectivity is the only reason we know about anything about this stuff.

And, back to my doctor. I don’t think it’s his job to tell me what to feed my child. I don't think it's his job to be a watchdog of the practices of huge food corporations.

His job is to see if my child is healthy, and take action if he is not. I don't think he is a nutrition expert, and if he is, well, I'm getting a second opinion, because I think the first one is suspect.

I am following my gut, and my gut says the same thing the song says.