sure does and I was pleasantly surprised that my pain specialist knows quite a bit about it.

issue and have appropriate referral sources when the need is identified?

Nutrition education is low on the list of things taught in medical school, but a good physician knows when to refer to a nutritionist. Teaching more nutrition in medical school is not the answer, imo.

and refer me if I'm overweight, diabetic or pre-diabetic.

In an ideal world, they would be experts, since diet and exercise are keys to health.

But in the Real World, where doctor appointments are 10 minutes, a lifestyle consultation just isn't going to happen, even if you're diagnosed with diabetes.

One other complication to this issue is physician frustration. Even when doctors DO understand nutrition and exercise, patients want to eat what they want.

Do you know how many treatment plans start with: "change diet and exercise, and if there's no improvement, then prescribe X"? Doctors DO recommend changes all the time, and send patients home with material about diets and exercise regimens to help with high cholesterol or blood pressure or pre-diabetes. But the percentage of people who follow them? Doctors guess <10%.

One doctor told me that she paints a graphic portrait of erectile dysfunction for her male diabetics in an effort to get them to eat better and exercise more, but a huge percent still want to eat what they want and not exercise.

Seeing that someone has the need for guidance on nutrition and excercise is not that hard. Convincing them to do it is much, much harder.

Part of the issue may be the lack of reimbursement for providing such lifestyle counseling services. If no one is going to pay for it, primary care physicians are going to have difficulty finding a way to fund it.

and really watch what I eat and read everything I can on nutrition-for 20 years now.

I know for a fact I know way more than most doctors regarding nutrition and being healthy in general-what works and what does not.

We associate with 3 doctors and they are not that knowledegable on the subject...I'm trying not to say this in a bragging way and not faulting their smarts(they are way smarter than me) but they just don't have the time to keep up with the subject and most don't discuss this with their patients in detail..easier to just write a pill r/x.

Too much money to be made off of sick people. Hopefully it is improving due to the diabetes II epidemic and pressure from the people who value health over easy profit.

Health is: "A state of optimal physical, mental and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease and infirmity."

MDs are needed to handle the disease and infirmity part of the health definition. But most 'health' problems are really related to NON-optimal physical, mental or social well-being. MDs are not needed for this and so they are not even trained for this.

The solution to our 'health' crisis is not to train more MDs in nutrition, they are better left to the disease end of care.

Anybody who wants to help in people's health should not plan on doing it as an MD.