“This is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician before…"

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I’m sure you’ve seen these medical disclaimers on workout blogs, prenatal vitamins, sleep trackers, mindfulness courses, even online recipes.

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Tell me, do you have an in-depth discussion with your doctor about the content you read before starting said workout/supplement/daily regimen?

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I sure don’t.

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For most of us, our relationship with food, exercise, sleep, stress, and purpose are the most important contributors to our health. This content is critical to get right.

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I get why the disclaimers are there - choices around these topics are complex, not one-size-fits-all, and doing the wrong thing can absolutely cause harm to your body.

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But OF COURSE we’re reading these sources of information as “substitutes for professional medical advice.” What alternative do we have?

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It’s not these authors who are letting us down. It’s the medical system.

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Doctors are largely unavailable to help us interpret what we read in our own medical context. That’s the reality.

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Doctors shy away from important discussions in favor of obvious ones we’re confident in. There is no specialty of doctors that sees it as its job to leverage our massive corpus of medical knowledge to answer (maybe imperfectly) what patients find most important. How absurd is that?

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Carte Clinics doctors are trustworthy, thoughtful humans you can reach by phone, text, or email 24/7. We’ve changed the business model around our doctors’ time to align with patients and the topics that matter most for their health outcomes.