You are what you eat

If you’ve been with me for a while now, I’m sure you’ve noticed I tend to focus the Reality Health Check  and the monthly newsletter on diabetes and obesity. So I received a letter from a reader the other day who thought he couldn’t ask me a question about thyroid disease, because he thought I was a “diet doctor.” So, let me take a minute today to set the record straight.

I can’t deny that I spend a lot of time talking about what we should be eating. I can’t help that because what we eat, how much of it we eat, and the quality of food we eat is of utmost importance in every medical condition.

The nutritional aspect of a patient’s life is where I start with every patient, regardless of what they come to see me for. If they come in because they have cancer or if they have the flu, I am always going to ask them what they ate in the past 24 hours. It’s actually a running joke with my patients. Some of them have gotten really smart about it, in fact…and eat well the 24 hours before they come to see me, because they know I’m going to ask the question.

I wouldn’t consider myself a preventative medical doctor if I didn’t know what you were eating. I hate to repeat my grandmother’s line, but… “you are what you eat.” Period. End of discussion.

The other thing I do with all patients is put them through a medical fitness evaluation.  Even if they don’t start a full exercise regimen right away, it’s important to get a sense of how fit they are. And what we need to do to improve things. Not just on the scale. But in every  aspect of their health. In fact, back in March I announced the opening of a gym in my actual office. This makes it easier than ever to provide my patients with a fully-rounded, fully-integrated approach to all-over health and healing. Every doctor in the world tells you that you need to exercise more…but I’ve found it to be most effective to be able to actually show you what to do.

The gym is called Integrated Medical Fitness. If you’re in the NYC area, I encourage you to check it out. You can also visit the website at www.integratedmedicalfitness.com to view videos of some of the more common conditions that you can treat through medical exercise.

So, although I mention food a lot (what can I say, I’m Italian and I love to eat), I’m a trained internist and treat patients with almost any medical condition. My youngest patient is 8 months and the oldest 101. Heart disease, cancer, thyroid conditions, bio-identical hormone replacement…the list goes on and on.

So, if you stick with me, eventually I’ll cover it all. Don’t hesitate to ask for certain topics. And be sure to subscribe to my monthly Logical Health Alternatives  newsletter, where I cover a greater variety of health topics in much more detail.

You can also follow me on Twitter for fun tips every day and for my comments on things like National Donut Day @drfredpescatore. And I highly recommend you “like” me on Facebook. There are all sorts of things you can find out about me and my take on the world of medicine.