Ideally, there should be no doctors in the world. It’s one of those careers we should be working on putting out of business.
While there will always be a need to heal the wounded, we have witnessed an explosive growth in something much different: disease. There has been a continued growth in the occurrence of cardiovascular disease, as well as diabetes, and food borne illnesses. Naturally, we turn to these doctors for guidance.
But, at some point, we must also ask, does this type of ‘reactive ‘medicine always offer us the best solution?
The Problem with Medicine
Although medicine provides us with a number innovative solutions, it is the position of this writer that a proper diet is optimal in preventing and combating disease. It’s long been determined: cardiovascular disease, obesity, and other diseases that stem from them are primarily influenced by lifestyle. Unhealthy eating habits, inability to deal with stress, and a lack of sleep all contribute to severe health problems.
Unfortunately, more often than not, medicine does not address this as a lifestyle issue. Instead, we spend billions a year on bypass surgeries. Even more is spent on pharmaceuticals.
It seems modern medicine follows the principle of “one drug, one disease.” When it comes down to it, doctors will often offer a drug to combat one specific disease. As argued by Dr. Dan Rogers, M.D, NMD, conventional medicine “misses the boat… with the chronic problems…They do nothing to change the reason why the patient got the disease in the first place. Basically, they treat symptoms.”
And it seems most people are satisfied.
Roughly 25 percent of all commercials in the nation are drug commercials, and for good reason. American culture accepts the above notion of a pill for every ill. In fact, we haven’t made that much progress in the ways of prevention or cures. For example, even after Nixon declared “war on cancer,” some 40 years later we’re still seeing a steady increase in rate of cancer per 100,000.
Clearly, the pharmaceutical status quo isn’t working. But as some have raised, that may be half-intentional. While companies certainly don’t want people dying, keeping them on medication as long as possible is ideal for profits and shareholders. Avoiding prevention and providing temporary remedies is more profitable than ensuring healthy people.
Perhaps there’s just no business in healthy people.
The Benefits of Food
Moving against the grain, we need to make nutrition the primary form of prevention in the United States for chronic and degenerative diseases – not drugs. Fresh, organic foods provide our bodies with the nutrients they need to prevent and combat diseases.
Going Green, Organic, and Raw
Not only does organic food protect us from GMOs, pesticides, and artificial fertilizers, but they also provide us with accessible, living nutrients. Eating a piece of toast in the morning with cup of tea, maybe having a nice roll or meat and cheese sandwich for lunch, and closing the day off with steak and potatoes means you’re going to be extremely deficient in nutrients.
Instead, we should aim at eating raw foods as over half of our meals. We should likewise aim at eating more vegetables and fruits that meats and cheeses.
Why the emphasis on green?
When we cook foods, we lose the nutrients and beneficial enzymes they naturally contain – sometimes by about 40 percent. Further, when we start with foods like steak – which take an incredible amount of energy to digest – we are putting our body through stress. Consider the difference in bodily work when you get protein through spirulina (which can be consumed in water) to an 8 oz steak.
Not only do vegetables and fruits contain more nutrients, then, but they also contain more bio-accessible nutrients.
So, No Drugs?
While there are many superior benefits in having a rich diet laden with raw foods, that’s not to say drugs and medicine are totally useless. Medicine provides great services for such things as trauma care and infant survivability; however, when it comes to disease, the primary formalized approach is care – not prevention.
That being said, don’t discount Western medicine as a hoax. It’s a simple question of “treatment vs. prevention,” and in some cases, you can really only treat the disease. Nevertheless, while you’re young and conscious, start making choices the promote the prevention of lifestyle diseases like obesity! Eat green!
Dr. Berka’s Comment
“Let thy food be thy medicine” – Hippocrates.
And as it is said, it is so.
Food is the fuel and life force that sustains and maintains the structure and function of our body. If we are eating well, drinking well, thinking well, sleeping well, and eliminating well, we will be well. But let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water. Modern medicine is vital in for acute care. But falls short (time and time again) in a chronic care scenario. Chronic illness must be addressed by treating the “root cause” not by suppressing symptoms. And to end with a quote by Thomas Edison in 1903:
Nineteen hundred and three will bring great advances in surgery, in the study of bacteria, in the knowledge of the cause and prevention of disease. Medicine is played out. Every new discovery of bacteria shows us all the more convincingly that we have been wrong and that the million tons of stuff we have taken was all useless.
The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will instruct his patient in the care of the human frame, in diet and in the cause and prevention of disease. They may even discover the germ of old age. I don’t predict it, but it might be by the sacrifice of animal life human life could be prolonged.
Surgery, diet, antiseptics — these three are the vital things of the future in preserving the health of humanity. There were never so many able, active minds at work on the problems of diseases as now, and all their discoveries are tending to the simple truth — that you can’t improve on nature.”
Originally posted July 05, 2011
June 2, 2011 at 4:08 pm
My very most favorite resource is GreenMedInfo.com – an evidence-based natural medicine database which has combed PubMed for the research demonstrating the superiority of food as medicine. Currently, there are 17,000+ medical studies indexed and searchable by ailment, natural substance or therapeutic action.
GreenMedInfo is free to access the biomedical research on the therapeutic value of natural substances and modalities in disease prevention and treatment.
Pat
July 6, 2011 at 1:44 pm
Thanks for this editorial!
As an acupuncturist, I firmly believe in food as medicine and educating my patients on better ways to prevent disease and stay well. It is our responsibility as health care providers to put power back in the hands of our patients by helping them to better understand their bodies and their conditions.
I think if doctors were to spend more time educating and less time prescribing, we’d have a lot more healthy people in this country.
July 19, 2011 at 7:31 pm
I’ve spent the past 8 months finding a bridge between nutrition and medicine. I broke my knee a year ago, and surgeons “fixed” it, however no doctor recommended any vitamins to help healing and bone growth. It was thanks to my naturopath and advice from various family members who’ve gone thru serious illness that I knew what to do. Then I caught golden staph– one that is resistant to some (thankfully, not all!) antibiotics– you can make your guess where it came from. Strong antibiotics: IV for 6 weeks, pills for 3 months. Again, no advice on diet and nutrition from doctors. I believe if it wasn’t because of my focus on alternative therapies– looking at maintaining as healthy a body as I can despite the invasive medicine thru nutrition and massage / energy healing– I’d now be looking at kidney and liver issues. And probably emotional issues too. And that’s probably when the doctors take out their prescription pads, for both the physical and emotional issues!
The only real good modern medicine did was get rid of the staph infection (let’s not go into what gave me it in the first place). A 2nd surgery removed the metal bits they put in in the 1st surgery, the bacteria ate up the new bone cells from the bone graft. I have a slightly wonky knee but it is NATURAL. A few scars a guy-friend told me “guys dig”. Complementary medicine helped me come out of this with my health and sanity intact. So IMHO, pro-active natural health over reactive medicine anytime!
August 27, 2011 at 6:50 am
Thank you for an excellent, well-presented argument in favor of “Prevention” as the cure for disease! Hippocrates, in his wisdom, wanted us to be healthy, by using food as our medicine. Great advice that has stood the test of time. Real food is not our enemy. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of Fake food and artificial substances that attempt to masquerade as food – such as artificial sweeteners. No matter what anyone says, the body is not fooled by them and does, indeed, recognize them as different from the amino acids, etc. found in real food. Thank you again. Keep up the great work you do to make others more aware of the solutions, like those presented in this article.
Respectfully,
Mary Nash Stoddard, Founder
Aspartame Consumer Safety Network and Pilot Hotline (since 1987)
November 19, 2011 at 2:31 pm
Just wrote a huge essay on my midterm regarding this very issue!!!! ♥ nutrition far better than slamming some pill for the rest of my life….health care should be called sick care, our medical/health care system should be about preventative care but instead it is about Pharmaceuticals not about health, nutrition and preventative measures…”just find me the next magical pill that will cost $400 and my insurance will cover only $100 please”…that is our society that is our health care system!
December 19, 2011 at 6:21 am
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September 6, 2012 at 1:20 pm
Very interesting post!
I agree, we need to be thinking more proactive rather than reactive when it comes to healthcare.
A whole food, plant-based diet is definitely at the core of healthy living!