I think your two points are somewhat conflicting with each other here. Let me elaborate.
Any longevity finding that is proven even to a modest effect translates into trillions of dollars globally in terms of productivity and is directly related to medical economics. Longevity in terms of increased ādisability-adjusted life yearsā makes the most sense as one of the highest priorities in medical economics. Iād say Iām very familiar with medical economics, but not many of my colleagues are - which is partly why ālongevityā is not really high up on priority reading for most of my colleagues.
Some healthy amount of skepticism is good. But it sounds like youāre being a bit too skeptical about physicians based on personal anecdote - when many are just a cog in the wheel. The problem is not a focus on medical economics on the physician end. A lot of physicians genuinely donāt even know how billing works or literally how much youāre being charged. Feel free to ask your own physician or physician friends and test this out. Iām telling you many docs are literally bad at finance and economics, let alone medical economics. The poor financial literacy rate in official statistics is quite telling.
Seeking higher incomes is a common incentive in any field - Iām not saying all doctors arenāt driven by financial incentives, but itās the private equity firms and hospital bean counters that determine income levels and design the financial incentives - thatās what I meant by āfactory medicineā. Academic medicine, on the other hand, translates to much lower incomes but is quite popular as well - clearly, not all physicians are incentivized by income. Let me ask you - do you really want to play into the hands of private equity giants by buying into āfactory medicineā market consolidation run by experts at medical economics in private equity firms like everyone else?
As for ālatest longevity findingsā - itās usually not a priority to read up on literature that is not even up to a āweak recommendationā level of evidence - thatās what the latest āfindingsā are. And there are plenty of reproducibility issues in science generally so thereās no incentive to read through something that might be not real. The reproducibility crisis is so bad that the āgold standardā is the NIH/NIA ITP to date and has shown there are quite a few high-profile duds pushed as the latest longevity findings. And thatās a tiny subsection of the latest findings that were convincing enough to test.
As for those who are keeping up - there are plenty of continuing medical education courses for physicians in āLongevity Medicineā, āPrecision Medicineā, etc. Itās a matter of whether they are open-minded, view it as a priority, and are experienced in research methods enough to figure out whatās actually worth looking at. You wonāt find that in āfactory medicineā where they are looking to check all the boxes.
If you thought Big Pharma had huge profit incentives, you should look at something thatās huge and even more profitable in terms of CAGR:
There are plenty of real quality control problems in the supplement industry as a whole and there are plenty of quacks out there much greedier than Big Pharma with lack of regulation. If I wanted to make tons of money as a physician - selling the equivalent of āpenis enlargement pillsā is one of the best ways to go - instead of opening a concierge clinic with a limited number of patients and not farming out to NPs.
Iāll also point out that most physicians are not up-to-date on nutrition. The main problem I see is the large number of patients swayed by āhealth gurusā on a Google search for unproven or even worse, disproven supplements. So I can see why many physicians become wary of supplements when they see that way too often. As mentioned previously, there is āhigh certaintyā evidence to show certain vitamin supplements can increase cancer in specific but fairly common situations. But Iāve seen way too many folks think vitamin supplements must equal safe.
Try to put yourself in our shoes:
āThe physician has no idea if the patient falls into the category of āI read it on Dr. Google and my headache is related to brain cancerā.ā
How would you know whether a patient is in that category if you only had 5-10 minutes to see them? You donāt! You just focus on what matters the most in āfactory medicineā, as expected. Check all the standard boxes and skip the rest.
