Think, Eat, Be Healthy

Why Modern Medicine’s Approach To Chronic Disease Treatment Is Wrong

“Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food” – Hippocrates

Raw garden vegetable salad

Eating a healthy whole food diet is the real cure for all of the modern chronic diseases.

What modern medicine gets right

Modern medicine gets many things right and greatly extends our lifespan and quality of life. I do not want anyone to get the idea that doctors and hospitals are unnecessary. Many people would die young and miserably without modern medicine.

One example is the treatment of compound fractures. A bone is broken and dislocated so forcibly that one of the broken ends penetrates the skin. First, a doctor will carefully clean and disinfect the wound to prevent infection by bacteria. Next, the broken ends of the bone are set to allow the bodies own repair mechanisms to mend the break. Then the area is stabilized with a cast to give enough time for this natural healing process to occur. This is necessary, life-saving medicine in action.

Another example where modern medical intervention is indispensable is a serious viral infection, such as influenza, dengue fever, MERS or any of the tropical hemorrhagic fevers. There are no really effective treatments to eliminate viruses from the body; to cure the disease with a drug the way an antibiotic will cure a bacterial infection. The best possible treatment is to support bodily functions until our immune system is able to control and eliminate the viral infection. Viral infections still kill many people each year but the fatality rate has been greatly reduced through modern medical intervention. The victim is kept hydrated by IV drip. Fever is kept under control by chilling of the body and anti-inflammatory drugs, reducing incidence of brain damage and major organ failure. Internal bleeding is mitigated by blood transfusions. Breathing is sustained with a respirator. All of these treatments keep the sufferer alive long enough for the body to heal itself.

So, modern medicine is absolutely necessary. It save countless lives every year. It improves the quality of countless more lives with properly healed broken bones and reduction of other crippling effects of major disease and trauma.

What modern medicine still gets very wrong

What modern medicine still get very wrong is its approach to the treatment of chronic diseases. The key word here is “treatment”. Modern medicine has become so entangled in the concept of using a drug to cure disease or treat symptoms of a disease that it has lost sight of the fact that almost all of the chronic diseases are caused by improper diet. Our medical system keeps trying to cure a disease caused by lifestyle choices with a pill. It insists that a shot should be able to cure the problems caused by eating too many things we shouldn’t and not enough things we should. Medicine today is totally hung up on treating symptoms while ignoring the cause of the symptoms.

The entire world has been caught up in a wave of chronic diseases over the course of the past century. These diseases include high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, metabolic syndrome and fatty liver disease(alcoholic or non-alcoholic). The rise and prevalence of the chronic diseases has very closely followed the rise and prevalence of highly processed foods, artificial additives and colors, sugar in its many forms and the switching of our food animals from a diet of fresh grasses to a diet of grains and sugars. This parallel between chronic disease and diet is not a coincidence. It would be very difficult today to find any doctor or medical researcher who would not admit a direct cause-and-effect connection between what we eat and the chronic diseases we develop.

Why modern medicine developed this unhealthy dichotomy

Why did modern medicine develop this unhealthy dichotomy: the ability to provide almost miraculous cures for life-threatening traumatic injuries and infections but a seeming helplessness against the tidal wave of modern chronic diseases? Medicine seems to have been blinded by its early and spectacular success at treating trauma injuries and, since the discovery of antibiotic drugs, the treatment of bacterial infections. The view that scientific research would eventually be able to come up with effective drugs to treat any health-threatening condition came to dominate. All other views were excluded. Treatment of symptoms became the only course of action taught to doctors during their training.

In the case of the chronic diseases, no serious research was even done to identify the underlying causes until just the past few decades. At first the causes of these diseases were not thoroughly investigated because the cases were very few and limited to the very wealthy. The wealthiest folks were, for quite some time, the only people that could afford to eat enough refined white flour, sugar and other such processed foods to cause symptoms. Speculation at the time that the diseases might be related to the diet fell on deaf ears because the the rich weren’t going to change and the diseases did not usually appear until a relatively advanced age.

As the wealth trickled downward and better technology made highly refined foods cheaper, these foods became a larger part of the common diet. The ability to buy and eat highly processed foods became a status symbol; a way the emerging middle class could say “see, we can eat this stuff just like the wealthy do”. This development led directly to many more cases of chronic disease but still almost entirely in old age. They take a while to develop and most people still started out poor, eating few processed foods.

Now highly processed foods are everywhere and they are very cheap. Almost every packaged, ready-to-eat food product at the grocery store, the convenience store, the gas station and the fast-food restaurant contains wheat, soy, corn, sugar, trans-fats and some combination of chemical additives never seen in food on a farm. These food products are eaten by nearly everyone for breakfast, lunch and dinner, seven days a week, for year after year from the time we are babies. The result has been a surge of the chronic diseases. And they are occurring at much younger ages than ever seen before: high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease showing up in teens and even pre-teens.

And the modern healthcare system still concentrates all of its attention and resources on finding ways to alleviate the symptoms of the chronic diseases. The underlying cause of chronic disease, an unhealthy diet, is sometimes acknowledged but almost always ignored. Pharmaceutical companies, health management organizations and health insurance companies are all becoming quite wealthy, at great cost to everyone else, by treating symptoms and ignoring causes.

What can be done

There is one very obvious solution to the problem of chronic diseases. That solution is both simple and cheap and within everyone’s reach. We all need to commit to eating a diet that will keep us healthy and prevent the development of chronic disease. It really is that easy.

No expensive drugs are needed. No hospital visits are necessary. A doctor’s supervision is not required. We just need to start eating a healthy whole food diet. This cure for the chronic diseases is within our reach, right now.

The whole food diet cure would not be immediate. Not everyone in advanced stages of the diseases would be able to make a full recovery. But the advance of these diseases would be stopped. Most in the early stages of disease would make full recoveries to health and many in more advanced stages would at least improve and need less active treatment.

How a cure for chronic disease can be achieved

The current medical system is just not going to embrace a ” diet cure” for the chronic diseases in the near future. Our government will also not throw its full weight behind such a cure. The reasons are a combination of profits and refusal to to admit wrong and change established policies. A sudden about face by the established system would cause major financial upheaval across the entire economy, require a total restructuring of the training program for doctors and probably result in revolt by the majority of people who don’t want to change just because what they eat is killing them and bankrupting the rest of us.

There are some flickers of light. More doctors are embracing, or at least becoming more open to, the “eliminate the cause instead of treat the symptom” approach, but they are still a tiny minority. The government is being forced to take some baby steps in the right direction as shown by the recent FDA decision to eliminate trans-fats from the food supply over the next three years and impose some limits on BPA and other additives that affect our food supply. But this is change at a glacial rate.

The most effective cure for the chronic diseases is to make them personal, with each individual deciding to no longer promote the diseases in their own body. Stop eating the diet that causes these diseases and start eating a healthy whole food diet that promotes maximum health. Stand up for your right to eat what you need to be healthy. Opt out of the “drug for every disease” and “treat the symptom not the cause” belief system fostered by modern medicine.

Pass these actions along to the government by voting and making these choices known. Pass them along to your doctor by insisting on answers to “What is causing these symptoms and how can we cure that cause?” Vote with your wallet by refusing to buy fast-food, snack food, soda and other junk that makes us sick and support the corner produce stand that sells locally grown fruits and vegetables. Pay for grass-fed beef and dairy and pasture-raised chicken and pork instead of grain-fed feedlot meats.

When your friends ask, tell them how strongly you feel about these issues and why you feel that way. Then invite them to a delicious whole food dinner made from scratch so they can experience how good real food is and how little time it really takes to cook. Grow a little of your own food, even if it is just a few herbs on the windowsill or one tomato plant on the patio; it keeps you aware of how good food can be and where it really comes from.

If we don’t want to reach our twilight years suffering from the debilitating symptoms of diabetes and heart disease, with our entire budget going to a pharmaceutical company and our HMO, we need to take responsibility for our own health. The only way to achieve healthy old age that we can enjoy is to make the commitment to eat a healthy whole food diet now and stick to that commitment. Your taste buds and your wallet will both thank you and you will have the satisfaction of being an example to others of what is possible.

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