Check It Out: Millions of people listened to this doctor’s story

By Joan Janzen

The cartoon depicted a doctor saying to his patient, “You have a rare condition called ‘good health.’ Frankly, I’m not sure how to treat it.”

This past week, messages from two doctors caught my attention.

Dr. Suneel Dhand observed: “When people are feeling good about themselves, one of the first things they want to do is take great care about what they eat and to look good. Right now, across the Western world, we have millions of adolescents who simply don’t care.”

The second message - a doctor’s lengthy but sincere video explaining why he quit being a neurosurgeon after 20 years, has been viewed 16 million times in less than a year. Dr. Gooby, a 39-year-old, had learned how to perform both brain and spine surgeries and mentioned working in Toronto.

He said he worked in good hospitals, had good partners, was well-paid and respected, and had good support. “But I was the most unhappy that I’ve ever been, and I couldn’t figure it out for a long time,” he recalled.

“At the beginning of medical school, we were told our job is to relieve suffering. That stuck with me,” the doctor said. “I became a doctor to help people.”

He had learned all the latest technology and techniques and did it well. “I helped a lot of people, but there were way more people that I couldn’t help,” he said. Surgery is all about removing things, he explained. The only thing he could add was electrodes to block pain signals.

“I could do a perfect surgery. Some people would get better, some people would stay the same and some people would get worse. And I did exactly the same perfect surgery,” he observed. “Some people would get better before I could operate on them even with gigantic bulging discs. That was confusing to me.”

He found that people who did certain things would get better. They generally had a low salt diet of mostly vegetables, whole grains and not much meat. They would exercise, get outdoors, didn’t smoke, didn’t drink too much, and had good social support and a way to socialize. They would sleep eight hours every day, and if they had a stressful job they found a way to meditate or release the stress.

“The people who did that would heal so quickly I couldn’t operate on them. Yet patients that wouldn’t do those things would get worse,” he said. “I could do a really good surgery, but six months later, they would have a recurring or similar problem.”

Dr. Gooby said when your body heals, it doesn’t just heal worn-out joints; it heals everything - digestion, skin problems and more. He said the problem is if you figure out a way to help patients heal that doesn’t include a pill or a surgery, something you can’t charge them for, “you just worked yourself out of a job.”

“I still did surgeries because not everybody can do all those things I talked about, just practically speaking. But I really felt like the focus of medicine wasn’t in healing; it was in making money on surgeries and pills. The whole medical system isn’t right: It’s not about prevention; it’s about therapies,” he said.

After he walked away from being a surgeon, he took his own advice. He ate healthy, spent time outdoors hiking, lost the weight he had gained, and slept well. “Neurosurgeons don’t sleep well,” he said, “Because they’re constantly on call.”

After listening to his story, someone wrote, “It’s insane how this video is blowing up. People must be in need of this message.”

A doctor commented: “I am a surgeon who quit working endless hours after 15 years. I was burnt out. I became a general practitioner and am a very happy doctor. I listened to every word you said and had tears in my eyes. I know the system makes you sick and you become disillusioned if you really care for your patients.”

Dr. Dhand said, “We have a deep spiritual crisis that has taken hold over the Western world. Modern mainstream culture has gone so wrong; something extraordinary has happened. Cultural rot has set in. People across the Western world simply don’t care anymore. They’re hooked on their phones and eating too much. Unless we address why people don’t care anymore, this is going to get worse.”

Dr. Gooby and Dr. Dhand both have valid points. The medical system is focused on therapies much more than prevention, and people are stressed and more prone to lead sedentary, unhealthy lives.

A comment after Dr. Gooby’s video said: “I”m a nurse who went through my own stage four cancer diagnosis. There are sweeping changes that need to happen in how we live, how we process our lives and emotions and our core values as a society at large.”

Practitioners like these two doctors may very well be part of the sweeping changes. As one listener commented on Dr. Gooby’s story: “You didn’t quit; you’re just getting started.”

They will be the doctors who will be happy to hear their patients have a rare condition called ‘good health.’