The alternatives to stenting and surgery that this scientist recommends, in her own words, are:<p>"Major improvements can simply be made by medical – as opposed to procedural – interventions, such as the adoption of healthier lifestyles, anti-cholesterol drugs, taking blood pressure [drugs] and cutting out smoking.”<p>How are these "surgery alternatives" if the underlying cause is usually years of lifestyle choices? Is the doctor expected to tell patients to lose weight and quit smoking, and send them home? So much of medicine has this conundrum. Patients don't simply change as expected and they will also seek out treatment if none is offered otherwise.
I was listening to a podcast with Shawn baker (I believe that was his name) who is an advocate for the carnivore diet. Besides describing all the strange and unusual remissions of autoimmune problems that people experience after switching to a carnivore diet, he gave an account of his journey leading up to becoming a diet luminary.<p>He tells some really interesting stories about being a surgeon in iraq and then his surgical practice in the United States. Being a man who values results, he began to recommend lifestyle and diet changes to his Patients, finding that sometimes it even made surgery unnecessary. And according to him this upset the hospital. He went on to explain the surgeries are very profitable for hospitals and that because of this they are over-prescribed. People are having unnecessary surgery all the time.<p>Ever since then I have been keeping my eye out for further evidence if this is true or not. It strikes me as plausible.