unpopular opinion: your health experts know nothing
What we know as the classical “healthcare” system has devolved into little more than disease management, where the suppression of symptoms leads to the best health outcomes, but nothing could be further from the truth. If anyone actually took the time to “follow the science” instead of blindly repeating it, they would realize recommendations from the trusted mainstream sources have not made us any healthier over the last 50 years.
Don’t believe me? Look at the skyrocket rates of obesity, diabetes, coronary issues, cancer, etc. — all of which are comorbidities associated with the increased severity of complications with covid. The surprising part is that “healthcare” system isn’t broken, it’s a very successful and effective venue for disease management, generating billions of dollars, and that’s the problem.
Healthy people don’t need medications, surgery, or hospital care. Allowing people to fuckabout, making lifestyle decisions that are in complete contradiction to our evolutionary biology has failed to serve us, but has served the bottom line of those who enable our poor lifestyle choices, that lead to our poor health outcomes, that lead to us seeking assistance from the “experts” whose only advice comes by way of offering this or that medication to mask the fact that we aren’t living in accordance to our natural way of life.
I work with a lot of people who have issues — like high blood sugar, high cholesterol, poor sleep, obesity — that their “healthcare” practitioner could very easily have helped with if they could simple step out of the false paradigm that allopathic medicine is the best way to solve a health issue. Instead of complex pathways and medications, we need to start thinking about simple recommendations revolving around eating better, going outside to get some sun, getting enough sleep. These things are rarely addressed, yet are the very foundations of health.
Don’t believe me? Did you ever hear anyone on the News over the last 2 years recommend any of these very simple, free, and effective things? Likely not. What is recommended, are medications or pharmaceutical interventions, which — as any student of history can see — has proven to be a very poor path to achieving or recapturing any semblance of real health.
Personally, I think the future of health, both how to recapture and how to optimize it, lies not with the recommendations of those who are deeply entrenched within the “healthcare” industry, but those who understand the natural world and how we evolved from it. Not one time in human history have we ever been deficient in a pharmaceutical drug, yet just about everyone in the Western world is deficient in something because they lack a natural connection to their environment — real food, natural sunlight, restful sleep, and meaningful relationships are the way to health. None of these foundational things are espoused by the establish “healthcare” experts, so when do we start listening to someone else? In my opinion, the future of achieving health and optimizing longevity lies literally outside the walls of modern medicine and within the natural environment we can all stand to benefit from returning to.
Be careful who you listen to. Sick people make great customers.
health = freedom
We generally don’t take action without good reason, but if the current climate isn’t enough to call yourself into action what is? It is hard to think that it’s almost been “years” of this nonsense without any tangible methods being implemented to positively change the status quo.
Regardless of your beliefs about why the world is in a state of panic, the unfolding events have presented us with an opportunity to see things differently. Hopefully, it has allowed us to recognize that the way we’ve been persuaded to think, the way we’ve been told to see each other, and the way we’ve been informed to take care of our bodies, has come from a place of fear. We’re scared into lesser versions of ourselves, and therefore our communities, because it has been the most consistent and loudest message.
None of us enjoy this constant state of inequity, poor health, strife, yet we continue to sit back and wait for things to change for the better without the realization that ultimately it all starts with you and I. Everything starts with the collective Us. We need to come together to redefine what it means to live a life of our choosing built upon a foundation of health that provides us the freedom to pass through this life with relative ease.
We have to envision a society where true health is a fundamental part of society. Despite what we are seeing right now. Despite what we are hearing right now. It is possible.
Taking personal responsibility for our health needs to be the rule, not the exception. This isn’t a call for mask wearing and vaccinations, it is far more fundamental than that. This is a call to take personal responsibility for the health of your body and the inputs you provide it. What you put in, is what you get out. And as a society we are failing miserably. In the US, about 90% of our citizens are metabolically unhealthy, which means there’s around 10% of our population that has enough knowledge, or luck, to provide their body with the correct inputs to achieve a level of health that allows them to approach the current state of the world with confidence. Imagine if it were all different. Imagine if the majority weren’t beholden to the consistent need of refilling medications, scheduling treatments for their ailing bodies, or settling into a lives of dis-comfort as if it were somehow preordained. Do you think the world would be more free?
It doesn’t make sense. And this acquiescence to the status quo of suboptimal health is the driving force behind the crisis we’re all in. It is firstly an epidemic of poor health that has provided the necessary fuel to ignite a pandemic of the immunocompromised.
Collectively, we need to take responsibility to elevate our potential, not succumb to the idea that the majority of this country — and the industrialized world, for that matter — had it correct when it came to the best way to live our life. Achieving real health is no longer a fundamental part. Somewhere along the line it was drowned out by the voices selling us on the idea that it was best to do whatever it takes to get rich, gain more followers, and enjoy a hedonistic lifestyle without the thought of consequences. But none of us can realistically trade our health for wealth because if we do, we end up having to trade back our wealth for a chance to recoup whatever health we have left.
In a recent presentation, I asked those in attendance — mostly wealthy executive types — to define health. Most of them simply came up with “the absence of disease.” That’s sad. People think that health is simply not being sick. While that does play a part, it is unfortunate to think that this is the best that they could come up with because the absence of disease doesn’t mean you are able to live your best life. Not that I am a fan, but the World Health Organization (WHO) presents a more holistic view as it defines health as the state of “complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease.” This is definitely a step in the right direction but still doesn’t fully encapsulate everything we should strive for.
In my opinion, health is best defined as an optimal state of bodily movement and function, as well as emotional and physiological well-being, which inspires confidence to pursue a life of our choosing, free from limitations of dis-ease and dis-comfort, that ultimately provides us with the freedom to live the life we want. When we are faced with a choice of what to do, we need to keep this definition in mind. We need to ask, are my choices in line with the fundamental pursuit of achieving optimal health? If not, then we’re ultimately resigning our health over to companies, and governments, that are more than happy to take advantage of our lack of foundational health, who stand to profit off the false promise that by taking this pill or completing that procedure we will be able to live a life free from the responsibility of our poor choices. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work like that. Our actions have consequences.
It is very difficult to achieve health within the same paradigm that made you unwell to begin with. It’s time to think different. It’s time to be different. It’s time to throw off the anxiety we have about the changes we need to make and simply do it. Get healthy. Be free.
Health care should be preventative, not reactionary
The purveyor’s of health continue to promise one cure after another, yet they don’t even understand the disease. The real reason no progress has been or will ever be made in health care on a governmental or institutional level is because they have no awareness to the actually manifestations of disease (or perhaps they just don’t bother because there’s no money in it). Type 2 diabetes is not a disease of Metformin deficiency. Heart Disease doesn’t develop due to lack of statin drugs. Your poor sleep is not due to a Lunesta deficiency. Your adiposity didn’t advance because you waited too long to sign up for CoolSculpting… (you have to see the video)
This line of thinking completely misses the point of what primary health care should be.
Think of human physiological dysfunction as trying to repair a broken vase. You start with the big pieces and, finally, all that’s left are the tiny shards of the impact point. Those tiny shards will go together in the end, but you would never have started there.
The big pieces are akin to the different pieces of your lifestyle — how you eat, how you sleep, how much you move, how you think and ultimately the environment you find yourself in. All these play a role in constructing that vase so that it doesn’t break easily, and can possibly become antifragile.
You always see headlines with “cutting-edge discoveries” that ostensibly have the power to change the world, but in reality, never provide a single cure because they completely miss the point.
Health care should be preventative, not reactionary. Primary health care should be eating well, moving well, sleeping well, and spending time in the sun with people you enjoy. Secondary health care can be when you go to see your doctor because you had too much fun with your friends, decided to climb a tree, fell and broke your arm!
It all comes down to taking responsibility for your health. As I said yesterday, we have been taught that the system has our best interests in mind, however I think the epidemic rates of poor health should be considered cause for continuing to believe in a system that failed you long ago.