Sohrab Gollogly

Dr. Sohrab Gollogly didn’t go into debt to pay for medical school. Instead, he learned HTML computer code and created the first direct-to-consumer scoliosis website, which he then sold to a billion-dollar company. Trained as an orthopedic spine surgeon, Gollogly, who opened Monterey Spine and Joint with two other doctors in 2006, specializes in a non-fusion technique – or microscopic decompression surgery – that is minimally invasive yet produces long-term results. Excited to share his vast knowledge of nutrition, he treats the doctor-patient relationship as a two-way street, emphasizing each patient’s role in post-operation physical therapy, and making healthier choices in general.

Outside of medicine, Gollogly is something of a renaissance man: His freezer is stocked with local wild boar sausage, made from boars he hunts himself. He designed and built his modernist home in Carmel Highlands, on a hill overlooking the ocean. He flies airplanes. He volunteers and trains doctors in Cambodia.

The Weekly stopped by Gollogly’s office to learn more about his work, his passions and where the two intersect.

Weekly: Why is it important to discuss diet with your patients?

Gollogly: Food and exercise are better medicine than drugs and surgery, hands-down, every time. Now, if your bones are sticking out through the skin, you’d better come see us. But most diseases we treat today in America are socially created by obesity, alcohol use, and peoples’ patterns of the way they live – primarily lack of exercise and excessive eating. So I talk to patients a lot about diet and exercise. That’s the reason my Yelp reviews are terrible. The vast majority of Americans just don’t want to hear it, they want to take a pill. I tell patients to eat like a gorilla – lean meats, nuts, fruits, vegetables – and pretend you’re gluten-free for six weeks. It’s the simplest advice.

Do you have any quirky medical habits?

I notice that I get cranky if I don’t exercise every day. There are really well-designed studies that show that a 30-minute walk in nature once a day is as effective as any form of pharmacologic treatment for mood or anxiety or depression. I totally recognize that. If I’m not exercising on a regular basis, then I start to go down that pathway of irritability and grumpiness.

You go to Cambodia to teach doctors complicated surgical practices. What do the locals there teach you?

It’s really interesting because it’s an entirely different spectrum of disease. The biggest difference is that in the U.S., the first part of the medical interview always begins with: “What brings you to the doctor today?” You never need to ask that question in Cambodia, because it’s always readily apparent. These people come in with the most florid examples of diseases, things that you’ve never seen except in textbooks, and you know just by seeing the person what the problem is. The directness of the doctor-patient relationship in a third-world country is really gratifying, and it gets back to the reasons why you became a physician in the first place.

You’ve spent the last 19 months designing and building a house. How does it affect the way you feel in your home now?

Without a doubt, one of the most gratifying things you can ever do in your lifetime is conceptualize a space to live in, live in it in your head, and then transition from the planning process to the building process. You pour foundation, you stand some walls up, and all of a sudden, one day there’s a shadow, because you finally put up a couple pieces of wood. And after the dust has settled, every time you look into the corner or something, you remember what it was like driving those nails or setting that beam. It was challenging from a bureaucracy standpoint, but it was really enjoyable. It probably ranks up there with things like having kids.

Do you consider yourself an adrenaline junkie?

I’ve done a lot of those sports that are seen as adrenaline junkie sports – I fly a paraglider, I rock-climb, I surf, I raced a motorcycle around a little bit – but I manage my risk pretty well. I’m interested in, how far can you go in that area and keep it safe? I don’t think I live for the adrenaline rush as much as the sense of being in the moment, and I think that those risks do actually really focus your brain. In a really confusing, polluted, noisy world, surfing or flying or jumping out of planes really helps you to be in the moment.