Think, Eat, Be Healthy

How To Stop Making Pharmaceutical Companies Rich

prescription drugs, pills

Eating a healthy whole food diet means not supporting pharmaceutical companies by needing multiple prescription drugs every day.

I have come to the conclusion that only individuals are going to be able to put the brakes on large pharmaceutical company profits. And health insurance company profits. And medical professional profits. And fast-food company and snack-food company and candy company profits. And advertising company profits(someone has to convince us all these things are good for us, right?). These segments of the economy, which not so long ago accounted for a small fraction of the money spent in America, now accounts for a large fraction of the average person’s annual spending.

Why are pharmaceutical companies, health insurance companies and medical professionals getting such a large share of the spending pie? It is because there are so many more sick people. And so many more people getting sick at younger and younger ages, therefore staying sick for longer and longer before they die. More diabetes, more obesity, more high blood pressure, more high cholesterol, more Alzheimer’s disease, more fatty liver disease, and more of all of the other “chronic” or “modern” diseases. More of all of the diseases related to metabolism and lifestyle.

Pharmaceutical companies, health insurance companies and medical professionals make their profits by treating the symptoms  of chronic diseases without seriously addressing the causes of the diseases. If they addressed the actual(and known) causes of these diseases, and demanded action, we would need fewer of them and we would not be willing to pay them as much as we currently do. Under the current system, we are kept alive but not made well and healthy. Under the current system, children are not taught how to eat healthy diets because their parents do not know how to eat healthy diets.

We know without doubt the causes of these diseases: eating an overabundance of highly refined foods, especially sugar and white wheat flour. Large amounts of these refined foods in any diet cause many large insulin fluctuations and systemic inflammation. Maintaining such a diet for months or years leads to the many “modern” chronic diseases.

The government is obviously not going to help. Free enterprise and all that. Can’t interfere with personal or corporate freedoms in the land of the free, can we? It is impossible for me to believe our government would ever consider regulating the amount of white wheat flour or sugar that a restaurant can serve. It is never going to happen, no matter how many people get chronic diseases at how young an age and no matter how much of the country’s GDP gets sucked in by health care expenses or produced by fast food.

Braised oxtail, vegetables

Eating a healthy whole food diet is much cheaper and less time consuming that developing a “modern” chronic disease that needs constant treatment.

The only way to stop this mass slide towards chronic metabolic diseases is as individuals. We have to take responsibility for our own health and our own diet. We must make a commitment to ourselves and those we love to resist the advertising and eat a healthy whole food diet. Thumb our noses at those health professionals who think we are weird if we reach our fifties and sixties without being on fifteen different prescription medications and needing multiple diagnostic tests every year.

It is well known that a whole food diet, even if it contains bacon and cream, lard and butter, leads to much better health than fast-food burgers and fries with a cola. Bread for a whole food diet has at least some whole grains, no refined sugar, no trans-fats and no “dough conditioners” or “anti-fungal agents”. Burgers for a healthy whole food diet are made with grass-fed beef or pasture-raised chicken having a natural omega-3/omega-6 fatty acid ratio. Fries for a whole food diet are made from real potatoes without special surface coatings and not fried in unhealthy vegetable oils with high omega-6 ratios. Water, lemon water, carbonated water or tea are all much healthier choices than cola for a drink.

Please join me in taking a stand on these issues. I don’t like giving my money to the state, so I usually drive the speed limit, obey other traffic laws and refuse to buy lottery tickets. I don’t like to reward companies and individuals that make people unhealthy, so I eat a healthy whole food diet and live a healthy lifestyle. Please join me in taking a stand on these issues.

The free-market economy can only make this country healthy again if enough of us put our money into staying healthy instead of into maintaining unhealthy lifestyles and diets. When fast food and unhealthy snacks cease being profitable there will be a lot less of it and a lot less advertising for it. That will lead to a shrinking of the pharmaceutical, healthcare and insurance industries as the need for their services decreases.

Lets make this happen. Lets make and keep ourselves healthy instead of maintaining in a state of chronic disease. Lets enjoy our lives instead of living around our health problems.