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In this podcast, we delve into topics like nutrition, longevity, and more. Today, we address a commonly asked question: who is the right person to support my wellness journey? A nutritionist, a dietitian, or a doctor of clinical nutrition? And what even is the difference between these titles? In this episode I’ll explain the distinctions and highlight the unique expertise of registered dietitians in providing therapeutic care. I also share my personal journey in the field, discussing the limitations of traditional approaches and my pursuit of cutting-edge research to help people achieve lifelong, sustainable change in their health and well-being. If you’re ready for more support in your health and wellness journey, tune in today.

Topics discussed in this episode:

• Who are the experts in nutrition? (0:42)
• Who is a nutritionist? (1:40)
• How nutrition education is impacted by insurance (2:41)
• Dr. Cheryl’s take on health influencers (5:20)
• Why Dr. Cheryl pursued a Doctorate in Clinical Nutrition (6:18)

Transcript

Welcome to The Wellness Table. I'm Dr. Cheryl Bothwell. And on this show we're going to talk about nutrition, longevity and lots of other fun things. But today on the show, we want to talk about one of the questions I'm asked so often is what's the difference between a nutritionist, a dietitian, and what's a doctor of clinical nutrition? So today we want to answer those questions.

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Can be very confusing to people that are searching for care and wondering, how do I get nutrition information and who do I go to and who are the experts of nutrition. And we certainly know that that wouldn't be your physician. So that's not their specialty. And we hear the physicians themselves talk about that. They are not trained in nutrition, but they really are experts of physiology and biochemistry. And so from that sense, when we talk about physicians don't have all the training in nutrition, then I'm going to come to their defense and say, but nutrition, really, when you do a bachelor's degree as a dietitian, it's really chemistry and biochemistry type major is what you have. So that's the similarity in medicine. And so there's a real foundation in how does the body work and what's metabolism like. And the dietician goes deeper into digestion and then we go into therapeutic diets and that's where the physicians don't go as much into Is that therapeutic diet and what's that look like if somebody has this condition or post-surgery, what's that look like?

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The challenge has been who's a nutritionist? So a dietitian has we've just now taken on that. I am now a registered dietitian, nutritionist, and we have moved from R.D. to R.D.N because registered dietitians want to own that word nutritionist because it's been so confusing. But technically, anyone can call themselves a nutritionist, and that's the news that makes it so confusing. So I can call myself a nutritionist. If I took a course, if I went into the naturopathic world, if I went into public health, I had some nutrition classes, I could technically say that I am a nutritionist. So that word is not I would just say branded as I think of a company like I can't call myself a physician if I haven't passed the medical boards. We protect that. But nutritionist is not a protected term. So what I would say to you is the simplest thing is that a dietitian will never call themselves a nutritionist. She's going to say that if you see the word nutritionist, we will always say, I'm a registered dietitian, nutritionist.

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So to have nutrition education paid by your insurance company, what I was finding was like, oh, this patient had 70 pounds of weight to lose, but they needed to have 100 pounds of weight to lose to meet the criteria for insurance reimbursement. So in nutrition counseling for weight loss wasn't covered unless somebody was 100 pounds or more overweight. And then there was still a limited number of visits. That became very frustrating to me because I felt like this person needs more. Okay, I'm past the number of visits, but they still need me in their life. This is a lifelong wellness journey. Eight visits isn't going to be enough to like change your whole life and be like, What am I going to do in two years? And we start to see why are people, 90% of people, when we put them on a behavior change something in their lifestyle or whatever of food that they need to eat, 90 to 95% have gone back and stopped doing that healthy habit. After two years, only 5% continue. So this is a very high fail rate and this was my profession.

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So I'm looking at how am I going to change and change, make life long lasting change in people's lives. And so as I began to see the complexity of asking people to stop eating things because I'm all over, well, we can't eat that. We shouldn't eat that. This is bad. Okay, that's a really bad food. Oh, if you have diabetes, you can't do that. And that was my training and I began to see that these were real people. And I'm asking them to give up foods that they absolutely love, foods that, celebrated family or on my birthday. This would be a big question, what am I going to do if I can't have my birthday cake and I have diabetes? I mean, their quality of life and their mind and their happy factor, I was taking it all away. So either they're a force with a choice of either manage my blood sugar and be good and come in and they'd walk in the door and say, I was really good this month. That's how they'd meet me at my visit. And I feeling like, someone they have to report to. It's like a probation officer, you know? And I did all the things I'm supposed to do, and if they didn't do it, they'd skip the visit. So I began to see this is like a really messed up system where I'm the guilt trip person. And so if I haven't done good, I don't go. So I stopped my visit, and if I did really good, they show up proud and they want to star. And we did so good. And you should have seen what I did. And I lost 10 pounds and all. It's like a celebration. So we're either celebrating or skipping a visit. And I'm like, the people that stopped coming became my challenge. And when we talk about this, this is something I'll say when it comes to what we see on social media or health influencers or these diets that people say are so successful. And I'll often say, but in that in that platform, do you know how many followers stopped doing what you were doing? Are you tracking the quit rate? And so I began to see like how many people stopped attending because those are the people I want to help and yet the people that were doing perfect, was I making them happier or was I just putting them on more of a guilt trip.

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One thing I wanted to add to and we talk about nutritionists is it's not a protected word. And so anybody can call themselves a nutritionist that studied or had a few nutrition classes or taken a certification can be called a nutritionist. So it's one of the reasons why you will not see a registered dietitian just refer to themselves specifically as a nutritionist.

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So with doctor of clinical nutrition, it's clinical and research doctorate, and it was everything I wanted it to be. And that's where I created My Score. And I was able to do the statistical research of The Score.

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But there's lots of good people out there that want to help. And I want us to all come together, not isolate all of us, but whoever cares about real nutrition. If you're a physician, if you're a nurse practitioner, if you're a chiropractor, if you're a D.O., if you're a registered dietitian, if you're a health influencer, let's just get on the same page so that we're not against each other. But let's think about how we can help people and give good, trusted information that's based on science and real life people with clinical experience.