Today (April 15, 2016) I sat for my family practice board exam–for SEVEN hours. That will be the last time I put myself through something as ridiculous as that endeavor! I have been Board-Certified in family practice since I graduated from my residency (with a short period where I missed taking the exam). I last recertified 10 years ago and when my letter came informing me that I would have to sit for another exam, I debated whether to do it. You see, over the last twenty years or so, I no longer practice conventional family practice. Now, I practice holistic medicine. I still use much of what was taught to me in my training, but now, I primarily rely on items that support the body’s physiology and biochemistry and I strive to avoid using items that poison and block the body’s pathways. Unfortunately, nearly all of the drugs currently used in conventional medicine work by disrupting the body’s physiology and biochemistry by poisoning enzymes and blocking receptors. I have written about this extensively in my books, Drugs That Don’t Work and Natural Therapies That Do and The Statin Disaster.
In my SEVEN (miserable) hour board exam today, I found myself getting more and more irritated. Nearly every question was about a drug—how it is used, the side effects associated with it, and how it interacts with other drugs. There were virtually no questions about the importance of diet or the importance of identifying nutritional deficiencies. In fact, I can’t recall one question along those lines. The patient vignettes that I suffered reading through were all the same—the patient was taking multiple drugs and I was asked one obscure question about the drug therapy prescribed to the patient. I actually felt bad for the poor patients in the vignettes as they were having their biochemistry poisoned with multi-drug prescription cocktails. If this is what it takes to be board-certified by the American Academy of Family Practice (AAFP), I say “Fugetaboutit”. I will not suffer through this nonsense again. I am amazed that the AAFP does not even acknowledge the importance of diet and nutritional support in their exam. Yes, there may have been a few token questions (but I can’t recall one), but they were few and far between. I guess the AAFP believes that prescription drugs can cure all that ails. It is too bad that the medical research does not support this idea. Folks, we spend nearly 20% of our GNP on health care.
That is well over twice the average for all the other major Western countries. What do we get for that big expense? We get more disease, increased mortality rates in infants and adults and more chronic illnesses. And, of course, we get lots of prescription drugs that poison enzymes and block receptors. The Big Pharma Cartel couldn’t be happier. The AAFP and the rest of medicine needs to change. I felt sorry for my young conventional colleagues who were taking the exam. They were taught virtually nothing about what health is and how to promote and maintain it. Unfortunately, the only tools in their toolboxes are prescription drugs. SEVEN hours taking a ridiculous exam? That will not happen again.
