Doctors often advise sick patients to stay at home and rest, but most physicians do not take their own advice when they get ill.

What surfaced in these discussions was that doctors feel pressure to not get sick, or at least not to look or act sick.

Most doctors believe that nobody wants to go and see a doctor who is sick which reflects the feeling among doctors that patients question the competence of doctors who get sick themselves.

Doctors also said that they felt pressure to continue working no matter how sick they became.

Part of the reason that doctors are reluctant to take it easy during an illness, according to the report, is that they do not want to fall down on their obligations to the partners in their medical practice.

The participants in the study also said that doctors, in addition to being reluctant to admit illness, do a poor job of following the preventive health advice they give to their patients. Physicians in one practice make sure to check their patients' cholesterol levels, said the doctor, but they are much less likely to have their own cholesterol checked.

British Medical Journal 2001;323:728-731

Dr. Mercola's Comments:

I am writing this comment on the last day of a one-week Physician Healing Retreat, where about two dozen of us met on Vashon Island outside of Seattle to work on personal health issues. The retreat was led by Dr. Klinghardt who has been a long time friend and mentor in bioenergy medicine. It was an extraordinary experience for me and really helped fine-tune my own health program. However, most health care practitioners do not take time out of their busy lives to do this. It seems quite clear that one of the characteristics of someone you trust to guide you in your own personal health program should be that they are taking care of themselves. They don't necessarily have to be incredibly healthy, but they should be on a personal health journey themselves to obtain the highest level of health that is possible for them. If they are not on that path, it is not very likely they will be able to assist you on your own health journey.