When I returned from a recent trip to New Zealand, I had to set my watch back 17hours.
When it comes to the latest medical news in newspapers of record, you need to set your watch back by months . . . or even years. By the time you read about it in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, or the Washington Post, you’re likely to have heard about it long before right here.
Many of the “breaking” health stories that they feature are on topics that we’ve long since shared with our audience on Intelligent Medicine.
What is it about legacy media? Do they find these topics so exotic that it takes a long time for information to reach their ivory towers? Are medical and health reporters so steeped in conventional medicine narratives that they know little more than the general public about popular new trends?
Or is that the very constraints of mainstream journalism—the lengthy process by which reporters “pitch” their editors on potential stories and then must await the protracted and exhaustive process by which they’re eventually given a go-ahead—that makes them so tardy? Once approved, there are revisions, fact-checks, and competition for publication priority that can take weeks or months.
In 2017, the New York Times wrote of its editing policy:
“Except for breaking news, most stories are reviewed by three editors, with up to six or more if the article is headed for home page predominance or A1.”
There’s also a culture of risk aversion that leads reporters to hew to conventional narratives: “vitamins are seldom necessary”; “the supplement industry is an unregulated Wild West”; “herbal medicines can land you in the ER”; “research on natural therapies is scant”; and “only orthodox medical practitioners and organizations are authoritative”, etc.
Not to mention that a considerable proportion of legacy media’s advertising revenue comes from ads for drugs and hospitals.
No such limitations apply to independent journalists like me. I can turn on a dime on stories that impact Intelligent Medicine listeners and readers. Plus, I’m steeped in the culture of integrative medicine—it’s not terra incognito for me. It’s literally been home turf for decades.
Here are some instances:
- Dead Butt Syndrome: The NY Times just headlined: “Sitting All Day Can Cause Dead Butt Syndrome”. But wait—we did that story last year! Moreover, we followed up with an article on the importance of strong glutes: “Curious About Diabetes Risk? It’s All About That Bass!” The Times didn’t include the important perspective that the shape and size of the glutes are important determinants of insulin resistance, and hence diabetes susceptibility.
- Everybody’s Taking Supplements: Like an explorer in a pith helmet venturing into a remote jungle habitat, an intrepid NY Times reporter breathlessly reveals that “People of all ages and backgrounds are seeking a D.I.Y. route to wellness. And one of their chief pathways is food.” What a disclosure! Even 1950s Beatniks ate wheat germ and yeast extract. After the usual incantation about the perils of supplements (“Dietary supplements don’t require the approval of safety that medications need from the Food and Drug Administration”) the author then quotes a skeptical medical school professor: “Many of the elements that we as a society considered fringe, this administration has flipped that on its head.” Don’t expect an honest review of the pros and cons of popular diets like the Whole30, Paleo, or Keto here; as for supplements, according to the unconvinced reporter, their accessibility “can be more confusing than helpful.” After reading this, I felt like chucking my dietary rectitude and downloading a sugary dessert recipe from the adjacent Times cooking section.
- Nutrition for Doctors-in-Training: I’ve long decried the dearth of nutrition education for medical students and fledgling doctors. Last year I wrote “Why don’t medical schools teach doctors about nutrition?” But a recent NY Times article took a different tack: “Nutrition Is In and D.E.I. Is Out as Medical Schools Bow to Kennedy”. Regardless of how you feel about prioritizing diversity in medical schools, wouldn’t it be a net plus if doctors were to finally learn basic concepts of nutrition? But, no, The Times unhelpfully turns it into a contest of wills with the Trump Administration. The Times sniffs that the new standards don’t specify “what exactly, schools should teach about nutrition, beyond covering its role in maintaining and preventing and managing disease.” But, hey, that sounds like a pretty promising start to me!
- Fermented Foods for the Microbiome: The Wall Street Journal recently reported on the “new” trendiness of fermented foods. They write: “When researchers at Stanford put people on a diet high in fermented foods like yogurt, kefir and kimchi, their microbiomes became more diverse and levels of certain inflammatory markers decreased.” For this to be news, you’d have to set your watch back some 120 years, to the era of Nobel Prize winning Elie Metchnikoff, who advanced the theory of “intestinal autointoxication” and who proposed live yogurt cultures to repopulate the gut with healthy bacteria. Restoring the integrity of the microbiome has long been a theme of Intelligent Medicine. What’s old is new again.
- Exercise vs. Depression: A Science Daily article recently proclaimed: “Exercise may be one of the most powerful treatments for depression”. But we’ve known that since the 90s, when I reported on an enterprising psychologist who devised a way to get in his workouts while billing his clients for therapy. Eschewing the traditional therapist’s couch, he would charge them for sessions jogging together in Central Park.
- Diet for Inflammatory Bowel Disease: Science Daily reports that diet may ease the symptoms of ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s Disease. IBD “has not been studied extensively when it comes to diet,” they write. Not true. Thousands of IBD sufferers, including many of my patients, have experienced the benefits of tailored diets. We’ve covered this issue extensively—including a series of interviews in the 90s with the originator of the Specific Carbohydrate Diet for IBD, Elaine Gottschall.
- Auto-Brewery Syndrome: The NY Times highlights a bizarre, newly-recognized condition: “They Get Drunk Without Drinking”. But medical reports of “auto-brewery syndrome” emerged in the 90s, with confirmed teetotalers failing breathalyzer tests. This is akin to the “Yeast Connection” that integrative physicians have been familiar with since Dr. Orian Truss introduced it in the 70s. It’s not so rare. Many Candida sufferers feel “loopy” because their high carbohydrate diets turn their guts into alcohol and aldehyde distilleries, via the fermenting action of yeast and bacterial overgrowth.
- Meat Allergy: The big reveal, according to The NY Times, is that it “could afflict hundreds of thousands of people.” Yes, we know, especially since Intelligent Medicine has long interviewed experts on alpha-gal syndrome, an intolerance to mammalian meat that can be transmitted by a bite of the lone star tick. We even recently shared that a medical ethicist weighed the feasibility of a fix for planetary health and sustainability—by infecting the world’s population with alpha-gal syndrome to reduce the environmental burden of meat production!
Small wonder then, that subscriptions to legacy media outlets are in free fall, as readers turn increasingly to ubiquitous alternatives. We hope that, with its unique perspective, you continue to leverage Intelligent Medicine as one of your key resources for authoritative and timely health updates, and share it with your friends and family.
