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Transforming the System of Medical Care with David Donohue, MD: PYP 255

David Donohue is a primary care physician in Wilmington, Delaware, and one of only 280 board-certified lifestyle medicine specialists in the United States. As David points out in our conversation, that's fewer than one for every million Americans.

I wanted to talk with David about the successful and innovative Cure Diabetes program that he's run over the past year, but we quickly started egging each other on (is there a vegan egg-replacer metaphor for that phrase?) to describe our pet peeves about the current medical system.

David is not only a doctor, but a computer coder/developer, and this means that he sees the world in terms of systems that can be optimized. And the medical system, in his view (and mine as well), is one giant system optimized to produce pretty much the opposite of health and value for consumers. As he points out (and people have been saying for three decades now), it's bloated, ineffective, and unsustainable – and must be reformed or replaced.

David's got strong opinions about medical education – and regular K-12 and college education – that had me nodding Yes so hard that my headphones nearly fell off a few times.

If you are a doctor, or know a doctor, or go see a doctor, or studiously avoid doctors, this is a must-listen podcast. David is funny, smart, compassionate, and driven to make the world a better place.

We covered:

  • “studying the classics while Rome is burning”
  • when have I ever needed to calculate the area under a curve?
  • we make 200 food decisions each day
  • medical education has it backwards: you can't learn about kidney disease until you learn about nephrons
  • lip service to Motivational Interviewing, but not part of what doctors “are supposed to do”
  • the internal medicine boards questions – all about drug protocols, nothing about lifestyle change
  • the Cure Diabetes program
  • the power of group dynamics
  • lifestyle medicine isn't radical – recommended by United States Preventive Task Force for coronary patients as first line treatment
  • the danger of a non-supportive partner
  • adding the Power of Purpose to the intervention
  • adding Moral Support to the intervention
  • the importance of easy recipes and cooking demos: “this is easier/tastier than I thought”
  • we often adopt self-defeating narratives when we get medicalized
  • the department of internal medicine holiday party food spread: two tables of sausages and a table with chocolate dipped bacon
  • electronic medical records are largely for billing and regulatory compliance, not patient care
  • the biomarkers that do and don't work for showing disease reversal
  • creating a crowdsourced wiki of effective behavior change strategies and techniques
  • and much more…

Enjoy, add your voice to the conversation via the comment box below, and please share – that's how we spread our message and spread our roots.

Links

David's medical practice

Want to work with David? Email him here:

dr*******@gm***.com











Overdiagnosed, by Gilbert Welch, Lisa Schwartz, and Steven Woloshin, MDs

The Citizen Patient, by Norman Hadler, MD

NutritionFacts.org

Gregory Walton's Wise Interventions

the Dominion documentary trailer

the Direct Trial on reversing diabetes through dietary caloric restriction

Iora health

Bactrim (not azithromycin) leads to death in 3 of 1000 patients taking certain ACE inhibitors

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Music

The Plant Yourself Podcast theme music, “Dance of Peace (Sabali Don),” is generously provided by Will Ridenour, a kora player from North Carolina who has trained with top Senegalese musicians.

It can be found on his first CD, titled Will Ridenour.

You can learn about Will, listen to more tracks, and buy music on his website, WillRidenour.com.

Disclosure

This post may contain amazon affiliate links. I may receive amazon gift certificates from your actions on such links.

Dr Howie Jacobson

This podcast is a labor of love and a way to give back to the world that has given me so much. That's why there aren't any sponsors (except me :).

My day job is helping leaders and their teams master their mindsets to remove all obstacles to heart-centered high performance.

Here are three gigs that I do:

1. Executive and Senior Leadership Mentoring and Facilitation

I work with high performing executive teams in organizations — and executive teams that need to become high  performing. My focus is mindset mastery, because it’s our mindsets that either support high performance or get in the way.

At this level, everyone’s got the skills and experience to excel and contribute at the highest level. What holds people back is mindset stuff: specifically the triggers that get them out of creative engagement and into fight-or-flight defensiveness.

My practice is all about teaching people to respond differently to those triggers by updating old maps — essentially removing the glitches that the triggers grab onto.

2. Executive Coaching: Quick Wins for High Performance

I work with individual executives and leaders, one on one. The program is called Quick Wins for High Performance, and what we do is, we work strategically on one or two areas that are holding you back and keeping you from performing at your best.

We reverse engineer the presenting problems — too much work and not enough time, underperforming employees and teams, maddening organizational inefficiencies, etc — and identify and rewire the suboptimal mindsets that are behind those problems.

The work is all about updating your mental maps so your actions and responses are always appropriate, proportionate, and strategic.

3. High Stakes Conversations for Fast Growing Small Business Teams

I help small business teams have high stakes conversations with skill, humor, and grace. When people feel safe, they can do their best, most creative, most collaborative work.

So that's what I do. If you'd like any of those results, drop me a line and tell me about yourself.

You CAN Change Other People!

Well, that's what Peter Bregman and I claim in our provocative book of that title.

What we really mean is, you can bring out the best in the people around you. If you think you're powerless to help people change, it's because you've been going about it the wrong way.

Discover our straightforward, replicable process here: You Can Change Other People.

 

Music

The Plant Yourself Podcast theme music, “Dance of Peace (Sabali Don),” is generously provided by Will Ridenour, a kora player from North Carolina who has trained with top Senegalese musicians.

It can be found on his first CD, titled Will Ridenour.

You can learn about Will, listen to more tracks, and buy music on his website, WillRidenour.com.

Gratitudes

Thanks to Plant Yourself podcast patrons – Kim Harrison – Lynn McLellan – Brittany Porter – Dominic Marro – Barbara Whitney – Tammy Black – Amy Good – Amanda Hatherly – Mary Jane Wheeler – Ellen Kennelly – Melissa Cobb – Rachel Behrens – Tina Scharf – Tina Ahern – Jen Vilkinofsky – David Byczek – Michele X – Elspeth Feldman – Leah Stolar – Allan Kristensen – Colleen Peck – Michele Landry – Jozina – Sara Durkacs – Kelly Cameron – Janet Selby – Claire Adams – Tom Fronczak – Jeannette Benham – Gila Lacerte – David Donohue – Blair Seibert – Doron Avizov – Gio and Carolyn Argentati – Jodi Friesner – Mischa Rosen – Michael Worobiec – AvIvA Lael – Alicia Lemus – Val Linnemann – Nick Harper – Bandana Chawla – Molly Levine – The Inscrutable Harry R – Susan Laverty the Panda Vegan – Craig Covic – Adam Scharf – Karen Bury – Heather Morgan – Nigel Davies – Marian Blum – Teresa Kopel – Julian Watkins – Brid O'Connell – Shannon Herschman – Linda Ayotte – Holm Hedegaard – Isa Tousignant – Connie Haneline – Erin Greer – Alicia Davis – Heather O'Connor – Carollynne Jensen – Sheri Orlekoski of Plant Powered for Health – Karen Smith – Scott Mirani – Karen and Joe Crabtree – Kirby Burton – Theresa Carrell – Kevin Macaulay – Elizabeth Rothschild – Ann Jesse – Sheryl Dwyer – Jenny Hazelton – Peter W Evans – Dennis Bird – Darby Kelly – Lori Fanney – Linnea Lundquist – Emily Iaconelli – Levi Wallach – Rosamonde McAtee – Dan Pokorney – Stephen Leinin – Patty DeMartino – Mike and Donna Kartz – Deanne Bishop – Bilberry Elf – Marjorie Lewis – Tricia Adams – Nancy Sheldon – Lindsey Bashore – Gunn Marit Hagen – Tracey Gulledge – Lara Hedin – Meg from Mamasezz – Stacey Stokes – Ben Savage – Michael K – David Hughes -Coni Rodgers – Claire England – Sally Robertson – Parham Ganchi – Amy Dailey – Brian Tourville – Mark Jeffrey Johnson – Josie Dempsey – Caryn Schmitt – Pamela Hayden – Emily Perryman – Allison Corbett – Richard Stone – Lauren Vaught of Edible Musings – Erin Hastey – Sean Owens – Sagar Naik – Erika Piedra – Danielle Roberts – Michael Leuchten – Sarah Johnson – Katharine Floyd – Meryl Fury – for your generous support of the podcast.

Disclosure

This post may contain amazon affiliate links. I may receive compensation from your actions on such links. It don't cost you a dime, tho.

2 comments on “Transforming the System of Medical Care with David Donohue, MD: PYP 255

  1. Kip Baumann says:

    Your spam filter seems to be overly sensitive and incorrectly blocking my attempted messages to you. Dr. Greger has a video on how to find out if your doctor took drug company money.

    Keep up the great work!

    Thanks,
    Kip

    1. Howard says:

      Thanks, Kip! I apologize for my itchy spam filter – it tries its best, but definitely can get over-eager.

      Do you have the link for that Dr Greger video? I know of the Pro Publica database: https://projects.propublica.org/docdollars/ Is there another source that I should know about?

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