to think people that just believe unquestionably what doctors say are naïve

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So my sisters ds age 2 has very bad eczema, i used to have the same but changed my diet and it cleared up in months despite taking prescription stuff for decades that only made it a bit better.

So ds go said to my sister eczema is nothing to do with diet. She just beleives him and is ignoring me.

Medical advice is changing all the time, it wasn't that long ago doctors were advertising cigarettes.

Aibu to think she is very naive?

I have eczema and the number of people who suggest that if you don't eat nice things then you will get better gets very frustrating. I have explained to them repeatedly the reasons behind the fact that my GP, my consultant, my derm nurse and to a degree the medical establishment treat it differently but there is an odd, I know better attitude that is never changed no matter how many rational reasons I give them.

Numerous tests and treatments have shown I react badly to staph that naturally occurs on the skin and treating that helps enormously, to the point of having it almost completely cleared up most of the time. With drugs. And yes to a degree generally being healthy, but eating and exercise has not proved a cure all for me.

We are what we eat. I eat paleo.I am never ill. It is just what you expect and most doctors agree - what we eat and what we drink has a huge impact on health. Most people seem to eat loads of junk. It's dreadful. Not surprisingly lots are ill a lot of the time.

However it is for the sister to do what she thinks is best. It damages no child ever to move to a healthy diet of course. There is very little to lose.

I agree with you. I think people need to take more responsibility for their own health rather than expecting doctors to miraculously fix everything with pills or potions.

A friend of mine is a perfect example of this, he suffers a lot with back pain. He has had scans and two rounds of physiotherapy on the NHS, both of which helped, but then when he doesn't do the exercises he's been prescribed, he's surprised when the pain comes back. Despite knowing that when he does them, they work. I had to stop myself from slapping him last him we spoke about it and he said he was going to go back to the GP and demand another scan and an operation.

I eat paleo.I am never ill.

^^ But that is you. I'm not denying that a good diet is key. Honestly, caffeine really affects my skin and I suspect alcohol does a bit too. But you have to admit there is a degree of morality in people who go on and on and on about how all illness is caused by a diet different to yours, surely?

And people who think they must know more than the doctors, despite their many years of training and more years of experience, are arrogant fools.

I have eczema. It has nothing at all to do with my diet. So you'd piss me off (like many have) insisting that it can be cured by my diet. It can't.

Your sister is free to accept or reject the GPs advice. She's chosen to accept it. End of.

To the pp who feels her grandfather was wrongly diagnosed-the word 'anorexia' on it's own means 'loss of appetite.' When used in this way it is describing a symptom of an illness, anything from a stomach bug to (as in your grandad's case) something more complex. 'Anorexia nervosa' is the correct term for the eating disorder.

Listening to a trained professional who will have seen thousands of cases of eczema over a an untrained person with experience of one person's eczema doesn't sound naïve to me.

You need to leave your sister alone. She is doing the best for her children and taking expert advice and it really isn't any of your business.

Some people don't want the responsibility. They want simple instructions from the expert, rather than confusing things to understand or too many choices. Decision-making does not equal good health care for many.

So, questioning is great, if it makes you happy. Other people are entitled to feel satisfied with something else.

When's the last time someone called you naive because you didn't grill a mechanic about what your car needed doing, or the structural engineer about what kind of beam to hold up your house up with.

(I am so desperate to know if OP's sister generally regards OP as 'pushy' ).

@Grockle And people who think they must know more than the doctors, despite their many years of training and more years of experience, are arrogant fools.

I don't think that's necessarily true. I have a very rare medical condition that most medical professionals will undertake very little training on. The arrogance of A and E doctors and their refusal to listen to me nearly cost me my life twice as they dismissed my concerns and sent me home saying there was nothing wrong with me only for me to be blue lighted back a few hours later as I was having a significant episode.

I think that people should always push for a second opinion or a third or a forth if they are genuinely in severe pain etc. It took me 6 years, 7 gps and repeatedly being told there was nothing wrong with me before I was diagnosed with crohns and my life dramatically improved (before anyone says anything crohns is not the illness mentioned above). I do however think that the example the OP has given is poor.

Have you told her not to feed him chopped tomatoes from a tin?

Stop nagging her, perhaps she doesn't value your opinion, have you thought about that.?

I don't trust GPs unquestioningly- I have had both good and bad ones, and have adjusted my trust in them to my knowledge of their abilities (and yes, I am equally qualified, so yes, actually I am 'entitled' to make that judgement more than most). However, I trust random individuals who may happen to be related to me even less than I would trust a bad GP, if they start making grand pronouncements based on a study size of 1.

Why you believe yourself unquestioningly, despite your clear lack of understanding of the scientific method or standard clinical trial procedures, would be a better question.

When's the last time someone called you naive because you didn't grill a mechanic about what your car needed doing, or the structural engineer about what kind of beam to hold up your house up with.

Tbh I always get a 2nd or 3rd opinion on car stuff if its expensive. And a house is a lot simpler than the human body.

GPS spend just 6 weeks on nutrition on their training from some sources (China study) and I believe diet can help so many illnesses bfrom depression to eczema.

While it is true that health professionals in this country have inadequate training on nutrition, simply understanding nutrition is not the same as having an understanding of food intolerance in inflammatory disease. That is immunology. They are two different disciplines.

I wouldn't use the China Study as your basis for any claim you want to make about medicine or diet

www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-china-study-revisited/

You wouldn't tell a mechanic that you'd rather change the plugs when he says your timing belt is gone, you change the timing belt. You wouldn't tell the engineer that instead if the RSJ she recommends you'd rather use a lace curtain.
Because you aren't a mechanic or an engineer. You listen to experts, because they know more than you. Of course they can get it wrong, especially medicine, its by no means an exact science and they are only human. That doesn't change the fact they know more than you do, and their advice is based on logic and science. Your advice is based on anecdotes and biased opinion.

I have had moderately severe eczema all my life.

While I do agree that having a healthy diet definitely helps my skin, because it helps my overall health, there are other factors which effect it more, and no specific foods cause it to improve or worsen. A lifetime of experimentation has proved this.

If it was my child then yes I would be willing to listen to advice from several sources, not just the GP. But just because something worked for you does not mean that it will work for your DN!

GPs do more than six weeks of nutrition. They also study from scientific, peer reviewed papers. They also have ongoing training in all areas.
I have had psoriasis for fifty three years, diet has done bugger all to change it.

If you eat paleo and you are what you eat, does that mean you're old?

.

i think its unwise to swallow everything a dr tells you as the only answer, they are human and very much as fallible as the next person.

However, everyone has their own point at which they will start looking outside of the 'dr knows best' box.

dawndonnaagain I have also had psoriasis for 53 years - stinks eh!

and diet makes no difference at all!!

We are what we eat. I eat paleo.I am never ill.

So can I drive in to you at 30mph? Do you think your bones will break?

How about you volunteer to go to Africa to help in the Ebola hospitals, obviously you wouldn't need the protective gear everyone else needs. Or you could star experimenting with small pox, it's still available in labs.

OP
Eczema has many causes, I only get it when my psoriasis is bad, and that's fun to treat I can tell you.

You do not know what your dsis and dr have discussed, they may well have tried diet, but what needs treating or eliminating is the cause. If that is not food then no diet won't help.

I realise I am lucky, my GP treats me as an equal and we deal with my various medical conditions as a team. He will openly say if he doesn't know something and refer me on, when I said something about one of my meds he didn't know he got out the BNF and then put it on his CPD plan (OK he is also a little eccentric).

i agree with you 100% Doctors know next to nothing about diet (45 minutes in med school, I have been told, not sure if that is still true). In my experience, most doctors can't admit to themselves how important subtle changes in diet can be, in spite of all the evidence that diet makes an enormous difference.

Doctors like clear answers: take antibiotics, have an operation, stop smoking, take ADs, nothing we can do about a virus, etc, because that is how they are trained. If you have a complex, chronic, non life threatening condition, most NHS GPs are pretty useless. The answers to chronic problems are often complicated and subtle and hard to prove. Doctors don't have the training, funding, or time to deal with these sorts of issues.

Instead of admitting their helplessness and recommending that you try other things, they often tell you that there is nothing to be done.

Ask anyone who has suffered with something like ME /Chronic Fatigue Syndrome-

Sorry, I was wrong with the 45 minutes. I can't find info on NHS training, but in the US, the average seems to be 23 hours, though many medical schools spend less than 10 hours on nutrition, and a significant minority don't require any nutrition training at all.

Also, importantly, this time is spent in the first 2 years, in a general science class NOT in the later stages of training when doctors learn about clinical practice.

Another thing to consider: many of the doctors we see had their training years ago, and are not necessariiy interested in sifting through all the latest information on nutritions, as it is confusing and contradictory.