To me, your view of a treatment plan is too narrow. When a patient enters a clinic for help with an existing problem, they want that problem to go away. An effective treatment plan, for that patient, has to address both the underlying cause of the symptoms and the symptoms themselves. While there may be a long term benefit from alterations in lifestyle, including diet, if those recommendations do not provide near term relief of the symptoms, the patient will decide that the provider has not helped them. And they will decide to not follow the long term treatment plan, no matter how much the provider extolls the benefits.
I agree that a treatment plan that addresses only the symptoms without consideration of the underlying cause(s) is incomplete. But surely you realize that there are diseases for which nutrition/diet offer no relief and for which there is no real treatment that will eliminate the disease. COPD comes to mind. Symptomatic relief is about all that can be done. The opportunity to employ lifestyle changes is past.
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