I tell ya: if nothing else, the State of Colorado’s latest shenanigans have finally beat the correct spelling of dietitian into my thick skull. I had been spelling it wrong all this time. Thank you, State of Colorado! Nuthin’ but love for ya! *mwah*
wait a minute… What am I saying???
Along with pushing batshit crazy unhealthy diets and looking like they could stand to take their own damn advice–or maybe they do and, in that case, they serve as a warning to us all to do no business with them–dietitians have apparently gotten onto this trip that they cannot possibly practice their profession unless Big Daddy Guvmint* steps in and beats up everyone who looks at them cross-eyed. I heard the beginning rumbles of this diarrhea puddle all the way from California a while back and now, apparently, it is spreading to points east.
In short: the State of Colorado is ruminating over a bill that would require licensing for practicing dietitians within the state. And anyone performing dietitian-type tasks would be fined for practicing without a license.
Understandably, given my interests and therefore some of the friends I’ve met online, I saw much brouhaha about this yesterday on my Facebook feed. Finally, late last night, I went digging on Google to see what I could come up with.
First off, it’s a bit difficult to find info about this on Google outside the blogosphere. I didn’t even bother looking up the blogs on Google. I wanted a news story, and there really aren’t any. That’s kind of odd. So I did the logical thing next and looked up the Colorado Dietetic Association. Here is their position paper, and you will need a PDF reader to load it.
Next I looked up the bill number and had a bit better luck; there’s always some government site with bill texts and summaries available. Here’s the text of Colorado bill HB 12-1060, also in PDF form.
Now, inasmuch as dietitians ever need to be licensed, and we could argue about this all day long and probably still hit an impasse–most of the bill seems reasonable-ish. I guess**. What concerns me, at least on a first half-assed glance-through, is this language right here, starting at page 13 and line 22 of the document, paragraph (e). This is one of the classes of people exempted from the dietitian licensing requirements–in other words, they’re not required to get licensed:
A person or retailer that does not purport to be a licensed dietitian from furnishing oral or written general nonmedical nutrition information related to food, food materials, or dietary supplements, if the person is not engaged in the practice of dietetics, including medical nutrition therapy and the nutrition care process[.]
Oh yay! I bet you’re thinking. So we can still blog about nutrition and that’s OK!
But wait a minute. Here’s the central problem: DEFINE “NONMEDICAL NUTRITION INFORMATION.”
Oh shit! I hope you’re thinking now. THERE AIN’T NO SUCH THANG AS NONMEDICAL NUTRITION INFORMATION! Because–right. Nutrition affects how the body works! Therefore, anything it does to the body is… drumroll… MEDICAL! That’s the ENTIRE BASIS of dietetic practice, right?
NOW you get it.
Honestly, I am not sure how this would work with blogs. No one can say I am practicing dietetics in the state of Colorado even if I keep on with the blog the way it is, because I’m based in Ohio. I get on the Internet from Ohio, and my hosting service is based in Utah. But there are health bloggers based in Colorado; this fairly well-known low-carb blogger is one of them. What will this bill mean for Jamie if it becomes law?
And this is personal to me in another way.
See, according to the United States government, hysterectomy is the second-most common surgery performed on women in the U.S. One of the stated reasons for hysterectomy being performed is abnormal menstrual bleeding.
The women in my family have seemingly been plagued by all manner of female pathologies resulting in removal of the uterus. My mom’s had one, her mom had one, and I don’t think either of my maternal aunts are still intact. Never heard about the “uterine status” of my grandmother’s sisters but I’d be surprised if they didn’t meet the same fate.
When my cycle returned after the birth of my second child, it looked for a while as if I would be carrying on this dubious family tradition of my female line. And really, at first, I’d had so much social and health trouble during my pregnancy with her, and was so sure I’d never want to have another kid that I’d contemplated tubal ligation after she was born. Never went through with it, and now I’m more open to possibilities depending on how my life goes. I probably still won’t have another baby, but I want the choice.
And for a while it looked as if I wouldn’t have that choice. I would bleed so heavily the first day to three days of my period that often I’d have to break out my rag bag (literally, a bunch of old washcloths that I used for general cleaning around the house–and I laundered them too) and stay home for fear of accidents. I had let my Medicaid coverage lapse and after the way my doctors had behaved about my thirty-pounds-in-six-weeks postpartum weight gain and my questions about my thyroid, I wouldn’t have trusted them anyway. I could have gone to Planned Parenthood but I was scared to death they’d find something wrong (yes, I know that was irrational, thank you). And I went on like that for something like three years.
It was thanks to the Weston A. Price Foundation that I was finally pointed in the right direction. Something they said about vitamin A being important for reproductive health prompted me to take a critical look at my prenatal and postpartum diet and to realize that even with my liking for carrots and sweet potatoes, perhaps that was not enough for me to get sufficient vitamin A. Within a few months of my supplementing A from fish liver oil, my periods normalized.
I have since heard from another low-carber friend (not Jamie) that she has had the same experience with improvement of her menstrual cycle since she heard my story and tried the supplementation herself. And I have recently learned that the link between low vitamin A levels in women and heavy menstrual bleeding has been known since at least 1977, and I also read that vitamin A is now given in developing countries to women with heavy bleeding, though I can’t find that reference just now. (If you search “vitamin A menorrhagia” on Google, you’ll dig up some stuff.)
If laws like Colorado’s were in place all over the country–or worse, if there were a federal version–there wouldn’t have been a WAPF website for me to find. I wouldn’t have known about vitamin A being important in reproductive health; up to that point all I’d ever heard was vitamin A is good for your eyes and might help with immune function. And I probably would have gotten up the guts to get back on Medicaid and try to find out what was wrong, only to have them yank out my uterus because what’s a stupid scumbag welfare bitch going to do with another baby anyway***.
Would have really sucked had Mister Right ever come along and had I ever gotten my act together, huh?
You have to wonder how many women didn’t get lucky like me and had major surgery to remove a major organ (the uterus puts out hormones just like the ovaries do, and cutting it out interferes with circulation too, not to mention a woman’s sex life) when all they had to do was pop a vitamin capsule once a day and they would have been fine.
Even if dietitians gave out this specific type of advice about vitamin A, which I am having a hard time believing? I would have needed insurance to go see one. How many dietitians take Medicaid? Fuck if I know. I certainly didn’t have the money to go paying a private insurer. I would have been stuck anyway.
And that, boys and girls, is what we’re in for if bloggers are not allowed to talk about how health is affected by nutrition anymore. Weight loss is nice, but you don’t want your future health and fate to rest entirely on the whims of a profession which is funded by these assholes. Dietitians need to spend less time harassing diet bloggers and more time losing their own damn weight. All I’m saying.
Colorado folks can register their displeasure at this attempt at dietitian monopoly here.
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*I don’t like the phrase “nanny government.” I am tired of every damn bad thing that happens in this country being blamed on a female figure of some type or another. Also, the nanny is there taking care of you because your fucking parents can’t be bothered to raise their own damn kid. If we have a nanny government it’s because the people who are supposed to be taking care of this country are not pulling their weight. If you don’t like us having a nanny government then maybe you should take a good hard look at your own life and the bad anti-civic behavior that you and people you know are guilty of, and start thinking about making some changes. Besides, any authority figure backed with really big guns and nuclear bombs doesn’t scream “nanny” to me. It screams “Daddy is home from work and heard about you shitting in the dog’s supper dish. Here comes the belt!”
**If you want to fork out all sorts of money just so you can have permission to work for a living, knock yourself out, dietitians. We already know most of you are stupid and obstinate–yeah, you can regurgitate textbooks and you can yell “HOW HIGH?” when the USDA says “JUMP.” Impressive. When I grow up I wanna be JUST LIKE YOU. But none of that seems to have translated into optimal health for you or your patients. So of course you’d go for some stupid scheme unnecessarily yanking money out of your bank accounts. Good luck with that.
***Oh, you only think society doesn’t see us that way. Keep dreaming, Sunshine. (I wasn’t actually on TANF, but as far as most Americans are concerned, any anti-poverty program is welfare.)
