Undoctored: Pre-order the brand-new book from the author of 'This Is Going To Hurt'

Product Information

The most distressing part of the book is his description of being raped in a sauna in New Zealand. He cut this episode out “about 20 times” before steeling himself to go ahead with it. The clincher, once again, was the hope that including it might help others to seek help. He puts his head briefly in his hands. “I know it will cause me grief in all sorts of ways. I know what social media is like, I know I’m going to have to answer questions about it for ever. But I was writing a book about being honest … Time will tell if it was the right decision.” You will find that by eliminating wheat and grains, by not limiting fat or calories, by avoiding processed foods, and by gravitating to real, whole foods, many of the elaborate rules advocated in dozens of diets become unnecessary. We will not get bogged down with elaborate swaps, point systems, or dietary phases or other complicated rules. Diabetes and much of heart disease are caused by a poor diet, yet we spend the rest of our lives on an expensive medication. I couldn't deny that doors had been opened for me but I'd definitely put in the work once I'd walked through them. The ceaseless studying, the endless after-school classes, the timetable of extra-curricular activities that would give any Olympic athlete a nervo.

With the NHS brought to its knees during the Covid pandemic, could we look to other health systems around the world for inspiration?

Dr. Davis is a practicing cardiologist who has worked for decades within this American health system and, prior to his own enlightenment, preached the "follow a low fat diet and take this statin" form of cardiology and then was happy to perform a very lucrative angioplasty with a couple of stents when it didn't work. He has seen this system from the inside and knows how it works. He's also a Type 2 diabetic himself who has virtually 'cured' himself (and thousands of his patients and online community) by following his dietary and total health plan as outlined. That being said, I really did like this book a lot and think the future of health-care has got to move us away from traditional care by doctors and hospitals. I am convinced that the best way to stay in optimal health is to avoid doctors as much as possible. Every time you see a doctor, you risk an intervention that was not needed that will probably cause more trouble than it fixes. Doctors (and patients) have trouble doing nothing, but time fixes many medical problems. Corn is also a prominent trigger for allergies. As many as 90 percent of people who deal with cornstarch in the pharmaceutical industry (as filler in pills and capsules), food production, or agriculture develop allergic responses to corn over time. 43 It wasn’t censored. More than one channel wanted to show it, and the BBC said to me, if you work with us – who I really wanted to work with anyway because there’s a lot of similarities between the NHS and the BBC, these big, wonderful, but imperfect institutions – we will never once tell you don’t do that. And true enough, no-one never said that. But it is quite a different thing to the book, and that was quite deliberate because it’s quite a difficult book to adapt. I was the same way in school. I will say that a lot of it was self-imposed because I intentionally put my life on hold by saying that I'd find friends in medical school who were like-minded. I came and there wasn't much of a difference in the type of people; worse, because we weren't forced into close proximity for eight hours every single day, it was harder to make friends. I do consider myself relatively proactive and I did make friends (though I often do still feel lonely). However, when hanging out with people, I catch myself falling into the same trap of "oh my Gods, I have work to do and I can't afford to become besties with this person if they expect me to hang out with them every weekend." My first thought is always how little time I will have left to study.

I knew in advance that Adam Kay might seem shy. In the new book, he writes: “Elton John was wrong about sorry being the hardest word – for me, it was ‘hello’. “How are you doing?” he asks hastily, as if wishing to skip the introduction altogether. He is 42 with an intelligent face and toffee-brown eyes with a dogged, anxious expression – he looks like a rather stressed cherub. He is immediately funny but it is not clear to what extent he amuses himself. He wears a T-shirt the colour of raspberry sorbet upon which is flirtatiously written, Not from Paris, Madame. He is from Brighton, born into a Polish Jewish family of medics (original name Strykowski) and grew up in London. And although he returned home on a delayed flight from Edinburgh at 3am (he has been trying out material there for a new touring show to be called: This is Going to Hurt … More), he shows no sign of fatigue. An old hand at sleeplessness, he denies himself coffee (explaining he has just given up caffeine). There are plenty of obvious adjectives one might apply to Adam Kay – clever, entertaining, articulate – but, as I listen, the one that keeps resurfacing is vulnerable. It always surprises me when people readily say they want children. In my head, I'm screaming, "Do you NOT understand how horrible the world is and what your theoretical children would be exposed to???" all whilst maintaining a calm and carefully neutral expression. Foods that trigger insulin the most are therefore the most potent for weight gain, while their absence allows weight loss; the equation is quite simple.Avoid unnecessary antibiotics. There will be times when antibiotics are unavoidable. But steer clear of them for questionable indications, such as for a viral illness “just in case” it converts to a bacterial infection. I wrote This is Going to Hurt with a beginning, middle and end. I wanted it to be about the mental health of healthcare staff. I did what I set out to do and made a taboo subject an unmissable conversation. I have no plans for a second series, I’d hate to do one for the sake of it. But I am in the early stages of a new project which will hopefully become something, and, if it does, will be very different but, hopefully, people will watch it. I work cleaning on hospital wards and see doctors who are so young. Should they go later into the profession after doing different jobs? I feel they’re unapproachable because being a doctor is all they’ve done. It’s difficult not to despair but is there anything in the current situation with the NHS that gives you hope?

Having read his previous book Wheat Belly and decided that route wasn't for me, it was surprising to read Undoctored. Unfortunately, if you are reading the book you are going to get the same pitch which is carbs are the devil. But that wasn't the reason I read the book. Despite being in the same profession, I was traumatised by your description of a young man whose penis was degloved after he slid down a lamp-post. Did you go too far? How do you manage to draw the line between comedy and tragedy in your work? There is an emphasis on wellbeing in hospitals but when you dig into it, it often just amounts to a Zumba class. A recent report published by the GMC intended to improve support for the mental health of doctors but its recommendations were not taken on board by the government. People have a huge problem with seeking help. There is always the feeling that if you speak to someone, word will get out. There needs to be a culture, in medicine, that is less militaristic where people can talk openly. Juniors should be able to tell their bosses when they’re struggling, bosses should actively look out for their juniors. All staff should know where they can turn and trust they can get help that will not compromise their careers (at the moment, you are almost taught that doctors should not struggle). Dr. Davis covers the latest areas of research on diet, sodium intake, the importance of dietary fat, blood sugar management and so much more.Zacznijmy (a właściwie prawie skończmy) od tego, że w ogóle każdy człowiek, ale… „każdy lekarz ma jakieś dziwactwa…”

Comedy is Kay’s forte but, as the first memoir related, he hung up his stethoscope after a tragic event: one of his patients lost her baby because of an unforeseen complication with her pregnancy and had to go into ICU for an emergency hysterectomy – and while it was not his fault, he felt it to be his responsibility and the catastrophic nature of it affected him profoundly. On the strength of talking to him, I’d say it still does. When I ask whether there remain any closed doors within his narrative, he talks about how his comic gift serves him: “I still hide behind humour. It’s my coping mechanism.” At school, he was the class clown: “It was a way of being popular when I wasn’t the most friend-forming child.” In medicine, it became his “shield – effective but not healthy and not enough to deal with the bad stuff that happens”. In “real life”, he uses humour as “an excuse not to answer questions. When you were asking me emotional questions earlier, it was taking everything I could not just to think: what’s the glib line that will make you laugh and shut it down, move it on?” There is no shame in having put in your hours and your years and then going off to something else. Because medicine isn’t your defining characteristic as a as a person, it’s your job and you can’t let it destroy you.’ In This Is Going To Hurt you refer to obs & gynae as “brats and twats”. Isn’t that misogynistic and dismissive?A favourite passage, about going through his stuff in his parents' attic and finding his half-skeleton from medical school: Throw into the mix the exceptional capacity for grain amylopectin A to send blood sugar higher, ounce for ounce, than table sugar, with blood sugar highs inevitably followed by blood sugar lows with shakiness, mental cloudiness, and hunger, a 2-hour cycle that sets the poor grain-consumer in an endless 2-hour hunt for food. The combination provides a perfect formula for weight gain , effects that have caused me to accuse wheat and grains of being “perfect obesogens”—foods that are perfect for causing weight gain and obesity. b) doctors aren't trained in this kind of health information. They are trained to treat symptoms, but not causes. He argues that the health system is an economic one, not nearly as altruistic as it claims. Though practitioners may be in it for the right reasons, their training doesn't allow them to think in terms of eliminating the cause of illness; they are all about managing symptoms. Which do you prefer: people asking you for medical advice at parties, or people recognising you and asking you about Ben Whishaw?