Active Low-Carber Forums - View Single Post - From the Palliative Care Ward to an MD-PhD

I follow a lot of different LC folks on Twitter, ranging from the "Celeb" docs and authors down to ordinary people like myself. A good problem to have is that I often forget why I followed them in the first place - there are just so many doctors, clinicians, authors and other positive folks that I get them mixed up.

I don't remember why I followed Nick Norwitz in the first place, he probably just made a witty comment or something - but check out his story. This is amazing.

From the Palliative Care Ward to an MD-PhD

Quote:

I was raised in a medical family. Both my parents are M.D. Ph.D.s and health was always the topic of discussion around the dinner table. Logically, you might think that I ate a healthy diet growing up. At the time, both my parents thought I ate reasonably too. But what was reasonable? When I was in middle school, a typical day of eating for me looked like this: (...) Finally, I’d wind my day down with a pre-bed snack of fruit. I kept a nightstand filled with Ocean Spray orange-flavored Craisins, and would have one whole four-serving package to put me to sleep. (Net carb counter = 1 kilogram)

Bold mine. A KILOGRAM. That's 1000 grams!!! How many of us here even eat more than 80 g on a generous maintenance day?! That would be a pretty bad day for me!

Quote:

I excelled at school and sports. I was always at the top of my class and kicked butt at just about every athletic endeavor at which I directed my body and mind. Winning my division in half marathons and marathons was no problem for me. By seventeen I could cruise a half marathon in seventy-five minutes. By twenty-two I was an Ivy League valedictorian.

My body and brain were firing on all cylinders, fueled by a “well-balanced” diet. By this point, you’d probably guess I was an arrogant, privileged youth who could use a dose of humility, especially because I had my eyes set on becoming a doctor curing the world’s ills with my knowledge. Don’t worry, I got what was coming to me when my health inevitably crumbled.

It's sad that this young man had to go through a harrowing health crisis to "get it." I wish him all the best in his medical career, and I hope he can carry the torch, so to speak, and help prevent other people from having to experience what he did.