Let’s talk about doctors and physicians for a minute. Did you know that the word “doctor” never meant healer, surgeon, or medical authority? It’s true! Its root is the Latin docēre, which means “to teach.” This is to say that a doctor, in the original sense, was someone whose primary role was to explain, clarify, and illuminate what others could not yet understand. The title was not granted for holding instruments. It was earned through the ability to transfer understanding.

That’s just ironic! Today, almost everyone hears “doctor” and pictures a physician. Yet when someone with a PhD, EdD, or other research doctorate introduces themselves as “doctor,” the usual response is, “Yes, but not a real doctor.” The teacher, not the prescriber, carries the original meaning. The distinction is actually extremely important. However, this confusion is nowhere more visible than in the domain of nutrition and chronic disease.

Look at how far we’ve drifted. Hippocrates insisted that food, movement, and lifestyle were foundational to health. His method was rooted in instruction. He taught patients how to live so they would rarely need intervention. The modern medical system inverted this approach. Despite swearing an oath modeled on Hippocrates, the system replaced teaching the nuance and importance of nutrition and activity with prescribing drugs. Fifteen-minute appointments, insurance constraints, and productivity metrics reward the fastest intervention, not the clearest explanation.

It is so bad that medical schools rarely bother with such foundations. Today, medical schools allocate fewer than twenty hours, across four years, to nutrition and lifestyle medicine. This is a terrible, documented, decades-long pattern. In many ways, it’s similar to a soldier or law-enforcement officer swearing an oath to defend a Constitution they have never read. This is to say that the profession with a state-protected monopoly on health advice has been systematically under-trained in the actual foundations of health, and few either notice or care.

That’s a problem for anyone who knows anything about nutrition and activity, because when the group that controls the majority of healthcare spending receives almost no formal education in the factors that drive most chronic disease, the outcome is predictable. But it also makes sense. After all, iatrogenic harm is now the third leading cause of mortality in the United States, and most ignore that as well, despite conservative estimates placing the number of preventable deaths between 250,000 and 440,000 every year. Frankly, the level of misplaced confidence required to prescribe medication for diet-driven conditions while dismissing dietary reversal as “unproven” or “alternative“ would be comical if it weren’t so costly and preventable.

Let’s just be clear: One cannot know, let alone teach, what one has never truly learned. When a patient leaves with a prescription but no understanding of root causes or how to care for themselves, the original meaning of “doctor” has completely evaporated from the room. When advice is rooted in broad overviews instead of nuanced understanding, things like inflammatory antinutrients get overlooked, and patients’ conditions worsen. When the patient reports feeling more confused after the visit than before, especially when their stress was high enough to trigger white-coat syndrome and prevent them from asking questions in the first place, then something fundamental has failed in that encounter.

Look, this is not an attack on physicians. I get that the system is set up to fail. At the same time, allopathic medicine is indispensable for trauma, acute illness, diagnostics, and complex interventions. The title “physician” is honorable and exact. It describes what most MDs and DOs do exceptionally well. But “physician” does not automatically mean “doctor” (in the classical sense), nor should it. A physician tries to diagnose a problem and applies physical remedies. Great!

A doctor ensures that the patient understands the remedies and the underlying biology well enough to participate in their own recovery. A doctor helps a patient understand root causes to avoid relapse. A doctor seeks solutions where none are currently available. A doctor shares that knowledge with others to ensure that others do not suffer needlessly. All this is to say that if physicians don’t want to learn about or teach such things, then why not simply include doctors (PhDs and EdDs trained in health science, nutrition, and behavior) in patient education more often?

Friends, language shapes authority. When we reflexively refer to every physician as “doctor,” we extend not only medical authority, which some have earned, but pedagogical authority, which many have never been trained or incentivized to exercise. In other words, we proactively create a culture where a prescription pad is mistaken for wisdom and discovery. That’s insane and ineffective; it needs to stop.

Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing but respect for skilled physicians, just as I have for skilled lawyers. Professional degrees are tough to achieve. However, I reserve the word “doctor” for those who fulfill its ancient mandate, whoever they are and whatever their degree. If a clinician is unwilling to explore, learn, teach, and empower the patient with understanding, they may diagnose and prescribe skillfully, but they are not functioning as doctors, and it really is that simple.

Now, I’d like you to consider something. It should not be controversial to suggest that one cannot teach what they do not know. Well, diet- and behavior-related diseases remain the number-one cause of death in the United States, yet many physicians graduate with little to no meaningful nutrition or activity training. It raises an uncomfortable question about how medical authority is either achieved or maintained in a system that withholds the foundational knowledge required to prevent the very conditions driving such high mortality. If the current recommendations were correct, then why are things getting worse? Something is clearly wrong, but the point is that the structural gap makes it easy to see why conflating “physician” with “doctor” erodes public health literacy and undermines outcomes.

Outcome failures are the single most legitimate reason to question and change the entire paradigm. Something has to change. If the current system were right, things wouldn’t be so wrong. And since this necessary change seems to be a massive undertaking that everyone claims to want but few know how to execute, let’s start with something simple: language. Accurate language precedes accurate thinking. Restoring precision to titles might very well be the first step toward restoring precision to health itself. If a physician truly wants to be addressed as “doctor,” then perhaps we hold them accountable by reserving that title for those who embody it. If we do, we might find that patients actually start receiving better care, not because the word itself heals, but because expectations shape behavior, which in turn shapes outcomes.

Check out more of my health articles by clicking here.

Dr. Robertson is a health researcher and educator, not a physician. The information provided here is not medical advice, a professional diagnosis, opinion, treatment, or service to you or any other individual. The information provided is for educational and anecdotal purposes only and is not a substitute for medical or professional care. You should not use this information as a substitute for a visit, call, consultation, or the advice of your physician or other healthcare providers. Dr. Robertson is not liable or responsible for any advice, course of treatment, diagnosis, or additional information, services, or products you obtain or utilize. IF YOU BELIEVE YOU HAVE A MEDICAL EMERGENCY, YOU SHOULD IMMEDIATELY CALL 911 OR YOUR PHYSICIAN.

[1] https://www.dmrpublications.com/the-need-for-more-health-science-in-health-care/
[2] https://blogs.und.edu/cnpd/2024/09/diet-related-diseases-are-the-no-1-cause-of-death-in-the-us-yet-many-doctors-receive-little-to-no-nutrition-education-in-med-school/
[3] https://www.dmrpublications.com/the-dunning-kruger-danger/
[4] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27143499/
[5] https://www.bmj.com/content/353/bmj.i2139
[6] Johns Hopkins study claims