Modern medicine, conventional medicine, allopathic medicine has many names, but little science. What should it be called? Bureaucratic Medicine???
Conventional medicine is best understood as a complex set of bureaucracies. What is a bureaucracy? Eric Fromm in To Have or To Be, “The bureaucratic method can be defined as one that:
a) administers human beings as if they were things and
b) administers things in a quantitative rather than qualitative terms …
governed by statistical data…. Base their decisions on fixed rules arrived from statistical data, rather than on response to the living beings who stand before them… at the risk of hurting the 5 or 10 percent of those who do not fit into that pattern.
Bureaucrats fear responsibility and seek refuge behind their rules; their security and pride lie in their loyalty to the rules, not in their loyalty to the laws of the human heart.”
Our medical bureaucracies are wide and deep, often consisting of groups of corporate and government officials at the top, giving direction to lesser organizations, and ultimately to individuals. Let’s look at a few of the top bureaucratic organizations and issues in modern medicine.
The Official Medical Bureaucracies
The World Health Organization (WHO) is the world’s top-level bureaucracy with regards to illness and disease. The word “health” in their name is an Orwellian twist. Although they hold the officially recognized definition of health, written in 79 years ago and not updated since then. The WHO definition of health is simplistic and useless with regards to measuring health. WHO studies disease, and death exclusively. The primary output of the World Health Organization is disease statistics. The words healthicine and healthiness are not in their dictionary. They have no techniques for evaluation or measurement of healthiness without reference to disease.
ICD10 – ICD11 – The International Classification of Diseases: The World Health Organization maintains the ICD10, the International Classification of Diseases and Associated Disorders and is currently working to release the next version, the ICD11. The ICD10 contains over 70,000 disease codes – but no definition of disease. In fact, their introductory pages clearly state “A critical point in engaging with the ICD is that inclusion or exclusion is not a judgment on the validity of a condition or the efficacy of treatment. ” The ICD bureaucracy documents codes for diseases from around the world, in perfect bureaucratic style, making no claim to validate any one of them as actual diseases or medical conditions.
US/FDA: The FDA is the official approval bureaucratic agency that approves drugs in the USA. According to the US/FDA bureaucracy, only a drug can “claim to” prevent, treat, or cure any disease. It’s perfect bureaucratic nonsense – extended to the extreme. Even more than the extreme. The FDA does not limit the bureaucratic definition of a drug to a medical pill – any treatment that claims to prevent, treat, or cure a disease, is officially a “drug”. It’s obvious to anyone that malnutrition, in its many variations – beri-beri, scurvy, obesity, and more, cannot be prevented or cured by a drug, they are cured by nutrition. Any poisoning disease, from carbon monoxide poisoning to zinc toxicity, cannot be prevented by a drug, it can only be prevented by avoiding the poison. But, if a treatment is not approved by the FDA, then it’s not an “official medicine“. Approval by the FDA usually has nothing to do with the curative properties of any treatment – but without approval, you cannot make a “sales claim” that the treatment is effective.
Medical Reference Books: Merck, Harrison’s, Langes’ and DSM-5
No medical reference book contains a definition of cure. Although some use the word cure – there is no consistency in the meanings applied to cures. Medical reference books document “diseases” and “treatments” without any indication of whether they move the patient towards, or away from a state of being cured. Non-infectious diseases might all considered incurable, by lack of a scientific definition of cured.
Mental Disorders: Mental disorders are incurable by “lack of definition“. The DSM, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders offers hope of “eventual cures for these conditions“, but at present, not a single disease listed in the DSM can be cured. But it’s more than just bureaucratic logic (or illogic) Here’s how it works:
If a mental disorder can be cured, it will be cured by addressing the cause. BUT:
If the cause was nutrition – cured with diet, it wasn’t a mental disease, it was malnutrition.
If the cause was poison – cured by removing the poison, then it wasn’t a mental disease, it was a poison. If the cause was physical or mental abuse or isolation, and it is cured by addressing the cause, then it wasn’t a mental disorder, it was caused by the cause. If the cause was a stress of any kind, and it is cured by addressing the cause – then it’s not a mental illness, it’s caused by the stress.
In conclusion, if it can be cured then it isn’t a mental disorder. It is an illness caused by whatever the cure addressed.
The latest edition of the DSM, the DSM-5, actually removed some cases of depression from the list of mental disorders. Why? Because they are naturally cured by health.
The Players
Drug Manufacturers and Marketers: in US/FDA speak all treatments are drugs. Drugs are not defined by their benefits, they are defined by claims. Drug manufacturers are in the business of selling drugs. More sales = more profit. Drug companies want products that produce high sales and high profits. In general, this leads to “new” drugs, which are then marketed as (but not proven) to be more effective. It also leads to monopoly drugs, which block honest attempts to improve the healthiness of patients. If a drug cannot be patented, it does not make enough money to undertake the FDA approval process – so it is ignored, or shamed, because its success will take profits away from the “bureaucracy approved” drugs. Most drugs, and the best selling drugs, make no claim and no attempt to cure.
Researchers: Today’s clinical researchers, for all their pseudo-scientific rigour, are bureaucratic agencies working to attain approval from bureaucratic organizations like the FDA. Almost all current research studies are designed, written, approved and executed without a definition of “cured”. As a result, if a patient is cured within the study, the cure cannot be documented, cannot be officially noticed. Research studies today study “treatments” in preparation for market, but rarely attempt to study cures. Cures, except for infectious diseases – cannot pass bureaucratic muster.
Medical Journals: Medical journals publish research by the bureaucracy. Research must reference disease and must present statistical data about a treatment. In the past, many medical journals published “case studies” to share information found by doctors in the course of their work. But today, most journals refuse to publish case studies, because they contain “anecdotal evidence“. Of course, every case of a cure is a single case, an anecdote, so no medical journal will accept for review any research about a cure.
Fund-Raisers: Millions of dollars are raised every year to “find a cure” for many different diseases. But none of these fundraisers has a definition of CURED for the disease they are supposedly fighting. They are raising funds for bureaucratic research that searches for non-curative treatments to be approved by bureaucrats like the US/FDA. Not one disease funding agency is working to define “cured” for their disease. There is no need, and no interest in defining cured – the bureaucracy that employs them functions perfectly well without a definition. Fundraisers might be out of a job if cured is defined. If cures are found – the fundraising bureaucracy might be out of business. They are busy raising funds and spending funds under the guise of a “cure” with no intentions of curing anything.
Self-Appointed Skeptics: In Webster’s dictionary, a skeptic is “a person disposed to skepticism especially regarding religion or religious principles“. However, with regards to the bureaucracies of medicine, a skeptic is akin to a religious zealot, who believes entirely in the treatments approved by the bureaucracy, and refuses religiously to believe in the effectiveness of any other treatments. There are many individuals and groups that support the medical bureaucracy under the guise of “skepticism.” Their skepticism is limited to any preventative, treatment, or cure that is NOT approved by the bureaucracy.
The Most Bureaucratic Medicines
Symptomicines: a symptomicine is a medicine designed, tested, and approved to treat the signs and symptoms of a disease – with no attempt to cure. Check your medicine cabinet, walk over to your local drugstore, or search the databases of the FDA. Try to find a medicine that claims to “cure” any non-infectious disease. Don’t hold your breath. Most of today’s medicines are symptomicines. Do symptomicines move the patient closer to a cure, or farther away? We only know that symptomicines do not address the cause, and therefore allow the illness to progress and cause more damage. Can any of them cure, or aid a cure process? We don’t know because the medical bureaucracy does not study cures.
Preventatives: In the bureaucracy, preventatives are big business. No-one can make money curing diseases — cured is not defined by the bureaucracy. But there’s tons of money to be made preventing disease, and there’s no requirement for proof.
Fluoride: Who can tell if a case dental disease has been prevented by fluoride? No-one. It’s sell, sell, sell, with no accounting. Every toothpaste produced by the major companies contains fluoride. Fluoride has been approved by the bureaucracy. There would be a huge cost and only negative incentives to find something better. Research would raise questions, and that would be bad for sales. The sale of dental prevention products has become a huge bureaucracy – and nobody is going to challenge it, much less shift it. If a better product exists, nobody cares.
Vaccines: Vaccines have not only been approved, they’ve been given the absolute bureaucratic protection. In the USA, vaccines are above the courts of law, above the Supreme Court. It is not possible, legally, to take legal action for any damage done by a vaccine. The bureaucracy is so strong that in the USA it is not possible to PROVE any damage has been done by a vaccine, even if compensation is paid for the damage. The law clearly states that payment for damage is not proof of cause. And it’s against the law to use the courts of law to make a claim of cause. It’s double bureaucracy.
Sunscreen: is marketed as a cancer preventative. Recent evidence has shown that avoiding the sun leads to general unhealthinesses more dangerous than the danger of cancers caused by exposure to the sun. But that has not slowed the sunscreen marketing bureaucrats.
Alternative Medicine?
What about alternative medical practices – are they just as bureaucratic? Actually, no. The phrase “alternative medicine” is not recognized by the FDA. There are only bureaucratic medicines (approved by the FDA) and treatments that are not recognized. There is no bureaucratic approval process for an alternative medicine. If it is approved by the bureaucracy – it’s no longer an alternative medicine.
However, that’s not to say that all alternative medicines are better, just that they are outside of the prevailing bureaucracy. Clearly, some are better, some are not. In most cases – its official – we don’t know. The bureaucracy is not interested in researching alternative treatments – it’s up to the vendor to apply for approval. But approval is expensive, and the benefits of approval – for most alternative treatments – are very low.
However, if you want a cure for your illness and your bureaucratic diagnosis is one of:
– a non-infectious disease (arthritis, Alzheimers, depression, diabetes, gout, hypertension, obesity, etc)
– a mental disorder (depression, schizophrenia, etc)
– a chronic disease (asthma, COPD, cystic fibrosis, etc)
You cannot find a cure in conventional medicine – cured being not defined by the bureaucracy. If you are seeking a cure, then by definition, you must seek a treatment outside of the conventional medical system. You must seek an alternative treatment.
If you successfully cure your disease, the medical bureaucracy will simply ignore your claim. Even if you cure hundreds of people, all claims will be ignored. There are many examples, but perhaps the most egregious at present is Type 2 Diabetes. There are thousands of people who claim to have cured their diabetes. At least one scientific research agency has reported “reversal” of diabetes – cured being not defined in the bureaucracy. No-one in the bureaucracy cares.
More Medical Bureaucratic Nonsense
Anecdotal Evidence: If you find a cure for your disease, it will be dismissed by the bureaucracy as “anecdotal evidence“. Of course, every cure is a single case of an illness in a single patient. Every cure is an anecdote. But the bureaucracy hates anecdotal evidence – it upsets the statistical bureaucratic applecart. If you cure your disease with an alternative medical treatment, the cure will be ignored. Your doctor might acknowledge it, but cures are not counted. Cured is not defined. If you cure any non-infectious disease, any mental disorder, any chronic disease, the bureaucracy calls it remission. The bureaucracy is not interested in cures, not interested in proving nor disproving them.
Diseases Cured By Health: If you have a disease that is generally, or naturally cured by health, the bureaucratic medical practitioners claim “there is no cure for the common cold” (measles, influenza, mumps, etc.). Why? Because in bureaucratic medical theory, if it is not cured by a medicine, then “there is no cure for….”
Placebo Effect: When the medical bureaucracy encounters something they cannot explain, something they don’t want to explain, they invoke the “placebo effect” clause. It’s a magical incantation, roughly equivalent to “nothing to be seen here, look away”.
What is a placebo effect? You can look it up in Webster’s: “improvement in the condition of a patient that occurs in response to treatment but cannot be considered due to the specific treatment used“. It’s bureaucratic nonsense: “an improvement” “in response to a treatment” “not caused by the treatment”. It’s a paradox. But the true definition of a placebo effect, although a bit longer, is not a paradox:
- an improvement in the condition of the patient (observed by the medical bureaucracy)
- following (but not necessarily in response to) a treatment (administered or observed by the medical bureaucracy
- which cannot be understood (or it would be a real effect)
- which cannot be considered to be due to the treatment (in the opinion of the medical bureaucracy)
There is no paradox in the placebo effect discussions, just negligence. Every improvement in the condition of the patient has a cause. When the medical bureaucracy invokes “placebo effect” they are clearly saying that it is “not worth investigating, not worthwhile to attempt to understand the real cause, because the real cause is not approved by the medical bureaucracy”.
Remission: When a cure cannot be proven, the medical bureaucracy calls it remission. What’s the difference between remission and cure? A cure is present when the cause has been addressed – unless you are a medical bureaucrat.
Anyone can claim remission when signs and symptoms abate. No one cares if you call it remission – even if it’s a cure, no harm done. Cures (except for infectious diseases) are impossible to diagnose, so every cure of a non-infectious disease is called a remission by the medical bureaucracy. Whether it seems the remission was brought about by a bureaucratic medical treatment, an alternative treatment, or even a placebo, it makes no difference. If the medical bureaucracy does not know what caused the remission, it becomes a “spontaneous remission“. Of course, every illness, every disease, every improvement, and every cure has a cause. When we study and find the cause, spontaneous remissions do not exist. The term spontaneous remission is like placebo effect, translation: “nothing to see here“.
Cures Defy the Bureaucracy
The bureaucracy runs on statistics. Every medicine approved by the bureaucracy is approved based on the statistical results of a clinical study.
But every cure is a single case, not a group of statistics. Every cure is an anecdote. Cures defy the bureaucracy. Cures terrify the bureaucracy.
How might we find our way out of the current bureaucratic medical paradigm? I believe the only way is to study cures, curing, and cured.
The medical bureaucracies have made cures disappear. Many cures are lost. We used to be able to cure depression. But today, depression is incurable. We used to know how to cure scurvy, but the top three medical reference texts: Merck, Lange’s, and Harrison’s, recommend treatments for scurvy – avoiding the word cure. Every one adult has had a cold, and cured it, but the medical bureaucracy advises “there is no cure for the common cold“. Warts used to be cured, or not, but today – cured is not defined for warts. Can cancer be cured? The Radical Remission Project tracks patients who have cured their cancers, but they are ignored by the medical bureaucracy. If cancers are cured, when cancers are cured, the cures are lost.
Perfect Cures?
According to the medical bureaucracy, a cure must be perfect, as pure as the driven snow, absolutely permanent, zipless. Of course, no cure is perfect. Pretending, or believing that to be a cure it must be perfect, is a refusal to notice any cure, a refusal to study cures, resulting in a failure to cure. The Medical Bureaucracy in action.
Originally published on www.healthicine.org
The Hoax of Modern Medicine: Important Facts You Need to Know
Fact #1: 90 percent of all diseases (cancer, diabetes, depression, heart disease, etc.) are easily preventable through diet, nutrition, sunlight and exercise. None of these solutions are ever promoted because they make no money.
Fact #2: Nearly all the consumption of pharmaceuticals today is a direct result of marketing to the public and covertly bribing physicians to write more prescriptions. There is very little drug consumption based on scientific merit.
Fact #3: No pharmaceuticals actually cure or resolve the underlying causes of disease. Even “successful” drugs only manage symptoms, usually at the cost of interfering with other physiological functions that will cause side effects down the road. There is no such thing as a drug without a side effect.
Fact #4: There is no financial incentive for anyone in today’s system of medicine (drug companies, hospitals, doctors, etc.) to actually make patients well. Profits are found in continued sickness, not wellness or prevention.
Fact #5: Virtually all the “prevention” programs you see today (such as free mammograms or other screening programs) are little more than cleverly disguised patient recruitment schemes. They use free screenings to scare people into agreeing to expensive and often unnecessary treatments that enrich drug companies. Breast cancer mammography is a complete scam: The machines actually cause cancer!
Fact #6: Doctors know virtually nothing about nutrition and are still not taught nutrition in medical schools. Expecting a doctor to teach you about how to prevent disease is sort of like expecting a car mechanic to show you how to perform brain surgery. Although there are some exceptions (doctors who have taught themselves nutrition), most doctors remain so nutritionally illiterate that they have no familiarity with the natural plant-based medicines found in everyday fruits and vegetables.
Fact #7: Nobody has any interest in your health except you. No corporation, no doctor, and no government has any desire to actually make you well. Keeping you sick makes it easier for them to control and financially exploit you. Healthy, aware individuals are perceived as a threat to the tyrannical institutions now running this country, and they’ve figured out that the best way to keep a nation controlled and subdued is to drug ’em all and keep the people in a constant state of brain fog from medications and fluoride. The only healthy, aware, critically thinking individuals I know are all 100% free of pharmaceuticals and processed foods (and watch no television, either).
Why Conventional Medicine Will Never Solve Chronic Disease?
#1: The wrong medical paradigm
Conventional medicine evolved during a time when acute, infectious diseases were the leading causes of death. Most other problems that brought people to the doctor were also acute, like appendicitis or gall bladder attack.
Treatment in these cases was relatively simple: the patient developed pneumonia, went to see the doctor, received an antibiotic (once they were invented), and either got well or died. One problem, one doctor, one treatment.
Today things aren’t quite so simple. The average patient sees the doctor not for an acute problem, but for a chronic one (or in many cases, more than one chronic issue). Chronic diseases are difficult to manage, expensive to treat, require more than one doctor, and typically last a lifetime. They don’t lend themselves to the “one problem, one doctor, one treatment” approach of the past.
Unfortunately, the application of the conventional medical paradigm to the modern problem of chronic disease has led to a system that emphasizes suppressing symptoms with drugs (and sometimes surgery), rather than addressing the underlying cause of the problem.
For example, if you go to the doctor and find out you have high cholesterol and/or high blood pressure, you’ll be given a drug to lower them—and expected to take that drug for the rest of your life. There is rarely any serious investigation into why your cholesterol or blood pressure is high in the first place.
If we consider health and disease on a spectrum, where perfect health is on the left and death is on the right, conventional medicine is focused on intervening at the far right of the spectrum.
If I get hit by a bus, I definitely want to go to the hospital! Conventional medicine is also embracing new technologies to do some amazing things, like restoring sight to the blind, re-attaching limbs, and potentially fighting cancer with nanorobots.
However, these approaches are not the best way to prevent and reverse chronic disease. Recent statistics suggest that more than 85 percent of chronic disease is caused by environmental factors like diet, behavior, environmental toxins, and lifestyle. (7)
More specifically, chronic disease is the direct result of a mismatch between our genes and biology on the one hand and the modern environment on the other. I summarized the research supporting this argument in my first book, The Paleo Cure, and there are numerous examples everywhere we look.
For instance, in 1980 only 1 percent of the Chinese population had diabetes. In just one generation, the incidence of diabetes rose by an astounding 1,160 percent! (8) What happened? Was there some kind of massive gene mutation in Chinese people over the past 30 years that caused an outbreak of diabetes?
Of course not. Genetic changes take a lot longer than that to occur. Instead, during this period the Chinese shifted from a more traditional diet to a more industrialized, processed diet.
The takeaway is clear: if we want to prevent and reverse chronic disease, we need a medical paradigm that:
Recognizes the mismatch between our genes and our behavior and environment as the primary driver of chronic disease; and
Focuses on preventing and reversing the underlying causes of disease, rather than just suppressing symptoms
#2 The wrong delivery model
It’s not just our approach to chronic disease that is inadequate; our model for how care is delivered is also a huge problem.
Why? For several reasons.
First, it’s not structured to support the most important interventions. As I mentioned above, the primary causes of the chronic disease epidemic are not genetic, but behavioral. It boils down to people making the wrong choices about diet, physical activity, sleep, stress management, etc.—over and over again, throughout a lifetime.
This makes it clear that one of the most important roles healthcare providers should play is supporting our patients in making positive behavior changes.
Unfortunately, the conventional medical system makes this extremely difficult. The average patient visit with a primary care provider (PCP) lasts about 10 to 12 minutes, and the average PCP has about 2,500 patients on his roster. If a patient has multiple chronic conditions, is taking several medications, and presents with new symptoms, it is nearly impossible to provide quality care during that 10-minute visit.
Once the initial intake and review of medications has taken place, there’s just barely enough time to prescribe a new drug for the new symptoms—and no time at all for a detailed discussion of diet and lifestyle factors that might be contributing. And since the PCP has 2,499 other patients and is already overworked, there’s no other time or place for that kind of discussion.
Even if the provider does happen to make a diet or lifestyle suggestion as the patient is on her way out, will it be successful? It’s now widely accepted that knowledge is not enough to change behavior; we’ve all encountered crazy shrinks and divorced marriage counselors, right? The expectation is that if the PCP tells the patient to change her diet, she’ll just do it. But in reality, we know that rarely happens. Patients need a lot of additional support in order to make those changes successful and long-lasting.
What’s more, if 95 percent of the appointment is spent talking about symptoms and medications and only the last 5 percent on potential diet and lifestyle causes and solutions—what do you think the patient will take more seriously?
To truly address chronic disease, we need a different model of delivering care. Among other things, this model should:
Make possible and encourage longer visits with with patients, with more detailed intake and history and time for discussion and support. Ten- to 12-minute visits may be fine for prescribing drugs for symptoms, but they fall hopelessly short for actually addressing the cause of those symptoms.
Emphasize collaborative care, where the doctor works with the patient as a partner, rather than in the “expert” model that characterizes our current system. The patient also has access to a care team that includes nurse practitioners/physician assistants, nutritionists, health coaches, and other allied providers to provide another layer of care and more support between appointments.
Be both high-tech and high-touch, utilizing current technology and practices to streamline and automate cumbersome administrative processes and reduce overhead, both of which free up more time for practitioners to provide quality care to patients.
Why modern medicine is a major threat to public health?
Rather than address the root cause of these conditions through lifestyle changes, we prioritise drugs that give – at best – only a marginal chance of long-term benefit for individuals, most of whom will derive no health outcome improvement.
Peter Gøtzsche, co–founder of the reputed Cochrane Collaboration, estimates that prescribed medication is the third most common cause of death globally after heart disease and cancer.
Why conventional health care is not working, but is killing us too?
1. SYMPTOMS ONLY
Conventional medicine treats symptoms only, mostly with Big Pharma pills and procedures. Conventional medicine is not designed to address the cause of the problem.
Think I am wrong?
Then ask yourself, “Are blood pressure medications actually helping your heart, or just lowering the markers we measure?” (Hint, they just lower what we measure, they don’t strengthen the heart).
How about medicines for arthritis? Are they fixing the problem, or just managing the pain? (Hint, they manage the pain).
And how about hormone replacement drugs? Do they address what is causing the hormone imbalance in the first place so you don’t need drugs? (Of course, they don’t).
Conventional medicine in the United States does not cure health problems or disease. It only treats symptoms.
What to do: Have a doctor of chiropractic or an integrative holistic doctor help you with your health care. These professionals focus on finding and treating the cause of health issues, not just the symptoms.
2. APPOINTMENT TIMES
A patient from Texas was in my office yesterday. They told me about a sign they saw on the door of the examination room of their previous doctor.
The sign said that all appointments were limited to 15 minutes. If the patient’s issues needed more than 15 minutes of the doctor’s time, then the patient must schedule additional appointments.
The reason this happens is that conventional medicine, and conventional doctors, rely on insurance for the bulk of their income. And since insurance companies, in the form of their reimbursements, dictate what doctors can earn for appointments and services, conventional doctors are forced to cram as many patients into an hour as possible.
They simply must see more patients to avoid a drop in income.
This lack of time spent with patients is not good for their care. Doctors know this. Read what USA Today and Kaiser Health News wrote about the problems with15-minute doctor visits. Here’s more on the problem from Forbes.
What to do: There are doctors that allow ample time (45 minutes or more) for appointments with patients. Work with one of these type doctors. Many of them are doctors of chiropractic, holistic natural medicine doctors or physicians with a concierge medicine practice. These are usually direct pay practices. They don’t accept insurance, but will provide you with the forms you need for reimbursement to you by your insurance carrier per your coverage.
3. DOCTOR EDUCATION
As a board-certified cardiologist, I spent 10 years getting my advanced medical training. I was tops in my class. I attended three different institutions of higher education. I worked in four different hospitals.
I was EDUCATED.
Less than 5% of all that education and all that experience was spent on learning how to prevent disease, cure the causes of disease and achieve optimal health.
See, what they teach in medical schools is how to identify symptoms, how to treat symptoms and how to perform procedures, like surgeries. There is little to no training about the causes of disease, and how to eliminate those causes.
Here’s how medical schools teach physicians to treat symptoms: you either give the patient a Big Pharma medication or perform a procedure.
I was required to take one class in my entire career about nutrition, yet nutritional deficiencies and food contamination are two of the prime causes of disease.
There were no classes about the effects of toxins on the body, yet medical study after study shows toxins to be a big driver of poor health and disease.
There was one class about how lifestyle impacts health. Just one. Yet lack of exercise, lack of sleep, stress, electronics and more are major causes of disease.
Conventional medicine does not train doctors to cure the causes of disease, or to even prevent them. It only trains physicians to identify and treat symptoms. That’s why people are always sick and why our health care system is failing us and future generations.
What to do: Follow my 15 simple habits that will change your health. Self-care is the best way to achieve optimal health. Get your blood tested by a holistic physician that uses advanced blood testing protocols. Work with this physician on natural methods of disease treatment and prevention. Prevention and treatment include organic Paleo foods, nutritional supplements, toxin-free living, and good lifestyle practices.
4. IT’S ABOUT THE BENJAMINS
No one makes money when people are healthy.
Not Big Pharma.
Not politicians who line their pockets with Big Pharma contributions.
Not large scale medical centers.
Not insurance companies.
Not chemical companies that poison our food or genetically modify it.
There’s lots of money being made by lots of people when you are sick. When you are healthy, no one profits but YOU.
The conventional medical system is designed to keep you on pills, very expensive pills. The economy needs you to be sick, to stay on these pills.
There are millions of jobs that rely on the medical industry in its current model here in the United States. Nearly every part of the U.S. economy is intertwined with health care. And pharmaceutical companies and their shareholders need you to stay on these pills so Big Pharma execs can get filthy rich.
There is too much money in the system as it stands for you to be healthy. The system and the economy need you to be sick, and thus the system is structured to promote disease.
What to do: Don’t get sick! Make good food choices. Make good lifestyle choices. Choose toxin-free personal care and household products. If you need a doctor, follow my recommendations as previously outlined in this post.
5. PILLS KILL
Do you ever watch TV in America? If you do, you’ll notice two things.
The first is the huge volume of medical related ads on TV. Healthcare is one of the largest advertising industries in the world.
I wonder why we as a society think it is acceptable to advertise prescription medicines? America and New Zealand are the only countries that allow direct to consumer medical ads. Television has become the biggest drug pusher in history.
TV wants you to tell your doctor how to treat your symptoms. Here’s a link to an excellent article that explains the problems of drug commercials.
I’m going to set aside the ethical issues surrounding drug ads to focus on another issue instead.
Pills kill.
Misuse of prescription drugs is one of the largest medical issues in America. Some have called it an epidemic.
And let’s go back to those commercials for a minute. This is the second thing you will notice. They’re loaded with disclaimers and lists of potential side effects longer than my arm. More time is spent in most of these commercials talking about side effects than what the drug is actually supposed to do.
Why do we allow this?
Any time we put a foreign (i.e. man-made) substance into our body we face the distinct risk of compromising our immune system and jeopardizing our health. Our bodies were not engineered to work with foreign substances (i.e. pills).
We should only take man-made pills in dire emergency situations, like extreme trauma situations.
What to do: At the risk of sounding elementary, live your life in such a way that you do not get sick with disease. Read my philosophy about what to do for good health. If you are sick or faced with disease, look for natural remedies first.
6. LEGISLATIVE REQUIREMENTS
Think about this for a minute…
Our federal government requires you to have insurance.
Insurance companies, which are out to make a profit, dictate your care in the form of their coverage plans. This insurance is designed to maximize shareholder profits while proving the most basic (their definition) level of patient care.
It’s obviously not an adequate level of care, as life expectancy is decreasing and medical errors are increasing.
Federal, state and local governments mandate vaccines for you and your children, even though there is overwhelming evidence these vaccines do more harm than good.
Freedom of choice has been sacrificed, all behind the veil of common good, and yet people are sicker than they have ever been before.
Governments allow pollutants to cover our food in an effort to grow more and increase food producer profits. They allow genetic mutations into our food supplies, even though many countries have banned the practice because it’s detrimental to our overall health.
In America, we legislate for profit, not health. This is conventional medicine in a legislative form and it’s making us sick.
What to do: Exercise your rights and refuse vaccines. Boost your immune system, not tear it down. Buy the minimum amount of insurance necessary to handle catastrophic events, and plow your premium savings into good food, toxin-free living and chiropractic care.
7. PHYSICIAN BURNOUT
A recent report of more than 14,000 physicians in the U.S. showed that more than half were suffering from burnout. I practiced for more than 10 years in a large practice and saw the burn out on a daily basis.
It’s no surprise that a leading physician-burnout researcher from the Mayo clinic says burnout adversely impacts patient care.
The big causes of this burnout? Too many bureaucratic tasks. Too many hours at work. Feeling like just a cog in the wheel. Increased computerization of practice. The feeling of being a glorified pharmacist.
Can you blame doctors for being burnt out?
And we’re seeing the results of the burnout. More medical errors. Lower life spans. More Big Pharma drugs. More sickness.
What to do: Be a good patient. Be friendly and respectful. I recommend you ask questions and be assertive, but don’t be obnoxious or threatening. Don’t waste time complaining to caregivers about things over which they have no control, like insurance and the cost of medicine. If you can, find a physician that does not work per the insurance model, one that will spend quality time with you in an unhurried environment. Although you may pay a little more for this level of care, your health is worth it.
8. NO TRANSPARENCY
There’s more information online to compare and select a new phone than there is to select physicians and health care options.
Conventional medicine surrounds itself in a veil of secrecy. This veil of secrecy compromises patient care.
It’s been my experience in life that things get better with prudent scrutiny.
Try finding published pricing on a hospital or physician’s website. Try finding performance reviews as to how they compare against others. That information is available for cars, phones, restaurants, hotels, vacations and a huge variety of other things. Why isn’t it available concerning health care options?
Transparency brings change. When consumers can see and understand how a physician or a health care center operates and charges when compared to others, better care should result. The competitive pressures of a free market economy come to fruition with transparent practices.
How conventional medicine gets autoimmune disease wrong?
1. Your environment has nothing to do with it–it’s all in your genes
Conventional medicine would have you believe that autoimmunity is all in your genes, and you are essentially a victim of the genetic lottery. And, yes, there is a genetic component–accounting for roughly 25% of your risk of developing an autoimmune condition. However, that means 75% of your risk is environmental, whether due to leaky gut, food sensitivities, toxins, infections, stress, or a combination of factors. I find that an incredibly empowering statistic! It means YOU have the ability to manage the majority of your risk by addressing the external triggers of your autoimmunity.
2. Once you’re diagnosed, your symptoms will only get worse
Joint pain, weakness, GI distress, skin rashes, fatigue–these are all symptoms of autoimmunity that your doctor may tell you will be with you for the rest of your life; you can only expect them to worsen over time, and you will be prescribed ever-larger doses of medications that may or may not help. The fact is, autoimmunity is not a black-or-white issue. Instead, there is what I call the autoimmune spectrum, and depending on how much inflammation your body has at any given time, you can move up or down on that spectrum.
autoimmune spectrum
On one end you have full-blown autoimmune disease and all its accompanying symptoms. On the other end you have zero inflammation and no symptoms–although this is rare, even in the healthiest of people, because of the toxic modern world we live in. As you reduce your inflammation, you can reverse your symptoms and even see them disappear!
3. Autoimmunity is a disease of a single organ
The conventional medicine approach to autoimmune disease is one of specialization. If you have a thyroid condition, you see an endocrinologist; if you have IBS, you visit your gastroenterologist, and so on. All of these “specialists” treat autoimmune disease as if it only affected the symptomatic organ. This type of treatment is fundamentally flawed.
Autoimmunity is not a disease of a single organ. Rather, it is a disease of the immune system as a whole. Without addressing what it is that caused your immune system to go awry in the first place, you are simply masking the symptoms of a deeper issue. It is functional medicine’s approach of taking a holistic view of the body as the complex, interconnected system that it is, that makes it possible to reverse autoimmune conditions so we can properly address the epidemic we are facing today.
4. Medications are the only way to relieve your symptoms
The first line of defense in conventional medicine is not prevention. It’s medication. Now, medications aren’t all bad and can sometimes be necessary for treating acute conditions and infections. However, the problem with conventional treatment is that you are given no other option. You have to wait until you get sick for doctors to do their job, which they see as prescribing harsh medications that could have been avoided with “an ounce of prevention.” These medications often come with a long list of side effects that can make you feel worse than you did before, including weight gain, depression, increased infection rates, and even cancer! What’s more, the type of medications given to patients with autoimmunity typically work by suppressing the immune system, when what you really want is to support it.
5. Diet plays no role in autoimmune disorders
Did you know that only 30% of U.S. medical schools require students to take a course in nutrition? And only 40 schools meet the minimum 25 hours of nutrition training recommended by the National Academy of Sciences, with a national average of 23.9 hours.2 So it’s no wonder that conventional doctors do not believe in the power of diet to both trigger and reverse autoimmune disease.
If you think about it though, with nearly 80% of your immune system housed in your gut, food has an enormous influence on your immune health. Gluten is the number one culprit in causing leaky gut, which is proven by the research of Dr. Alessio Fasano to be a necessary precursor to autoimmunity. There are a number of other foods that contribute to inflammation, including dairy, corn, soy, grains, and legumes, not to mention the toxic substances we invite into our bodies every day such as sugar, alcohol, caffeine, pesticides, GMOs, and artificial ingredients found in packaged goods.
The good news is that because diet plays such a HUGE role in autoimmunity, it’s also one of the easiest ways you can take control of your health by making smart choices about what you put on your plate.
6. Autoimmune disease can’t be reversed
This is one of the biggest myths of conventional medicine, and why I went into functional medicine after my own battle with autoimmune disease. In reality, autoimmune disease CAN be reversed by repairing your gut, ditching inflammatory foods (gluten and dairy in particular), taming your toxic burden, healing your infections, and relieving your stress. By uncovering the root cause of your condition, you can address the factors that are contributing to your autoimmunity and work your way back down the autoimmune spectrum. With some simple changes to your diet and lifestyle, you can watch your symptoms vanish and start feeling your best again.