To give you the necessary background info, I was visiting my parents today and their neighbors happened to be visiting at the same time. They're both lovely people, but this particularly concerns the husband. He has not practiced medicine for many years now, but in his 80's, he still teaches medical students at a university in my state part-time. If you met this highly educated man, who is fluently tri-lingual, you would notice right away his air of kindness and unpretentiousness and the wonderful way he sets others at ease....and you would understand why his wife so proudly talks of how there are never enough seats in his classes for all of the students who would like to take them.

Anyway, naturally enough, the subject veered around to medicine during the course of the conversation and here is what he had to say:

"If it wasn't for the poor fish, half of U.S. Pharmacopoeia ought to be permanently dumped in the [local] Harbor!"

And on Crohn's Disease, he basically said that while the particulars are different for everyone, it's possible through experimentation for most people to find a diet and lifestyle combination that allows them to manage the disease....and that it's much better to do things that way in the long run than to pump the body full of drugs.

So if people like this are doing the teaching, there's hope yet that we're going to see more and more doctors taking a more holistic approach to their patients' well-being!

I just enjoyed the conversation so much and wanted to share the highlights.

Nicole