Ask Your Real Doctor Part I
March 3, 2016
If you live in America like me, you are probably used to being bombarded every evening by TV advertisements in between the major Network news program sections, and most of these adverts are for the latest pharmaceutical drugs to control symptoms such as high blood pressure, atrial fibrillation, high cholesterol, diabetes, muscle pain, eczema, asthma, recurring eye infections, muscle pain, frequent urination ("the urge to go"), indigestion, insomnia, constipation and the ever popular erectile dysfunction. The situation in the UK is rather different because pharmaceutical advertising is not allowed on TV, but adverts for these products can easily be found in popular magazines and of course the internet. What is common to both countries is that these advertisements, which, lest we forget, are portrayed by actors, are always suffixed with the phrase "Ask Your Doctor"... if this drug is right for you.
In the US this has produced a nation of pharmaceutical drug addicts, dependent on medications which address symptoms only, not causes, including those who have become dependent on opioid pain killers, sometimes turning to easily available street drugs when their prescriptions are in-affordable, run out or don't work anymore.
What I would like to do in this article is to question why we need to ask professionals these questions, when the normal K-12 education system on both sides of the Atlantic should enable us to understand how our bodies work with enough insight to see this drug peddling for what it is - plus the fact that it is, in fact, bad science. I have no political ulterior motive and am not affiliated with any political party in the US or UK.
For the record, I am not a doctor, but I do have a year of pre-med physiology and science A-levels (UK). I am not trying to give medical advice or discourage anyone from seeking professional help if their illness is beyond healing with holistic methods like nutrition, but hopefully this will be helpful. Thankfully, my science education was not sabotaged by educators with a religious agenda, as it sometimes is in the US, where medical degrees often do not require an understanding of evolution. I do not wish to offend any religious readers, but even The Bible admonishes us that we should not give in to false ideas ... "For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind." Timothy 1:7, King James Version.
We see the results of this incomplete medical knowledge in our current epidemic of MRSA in hospitals, and often lurking in sports locker rooms, or anywhere where antibiotics or anti-bacterial products have been overused. Natural Selection enables the growth and multiplication of any bacteria which are not wiped out by this approach, forming colonies of Super-Bacteria which are immune to most treatments. What once were life-savers when Alexander Flemming and Jonas Salk discovered them in the 20th century, have now become the ticket to decreased immunity and increased susceptibility to disease, if not used with the utmost caution.
So, for example, when you see the advertisement for Restasis, which is an antibiotic for the eyes pushed on people who have been diagnosed with "Chronic Dry Eye Syndrome", I hope that readers will firstly ask, what exactly is a "Syndrome" and why does it need something which will actually make me worse, rather than better?
To answer the first question, in medical terms, a syndrome is a catch-all word to describe a symptom, not a cause. If we want to understand the cause of any illness, the best that Western Medicine can do is go back a few stages in symptoms; for example the explanation of why someone has high blood pressure might be because they have narrow arteries. But what caused the narrow arteries? After going back and back to several symptoms we might conclude that a person was either born with a congenital condition, or has a genetic predisposition to that condition, or most commonly that it has been caused by lifestyle choices such as diet, lack of exercise and stress. But who wants to admit that they did anything wrong?
I am not health foods eccentric, nor am I an alternative, homeopathic anti-vaxer woo woo enthusiast, but I strongly believe that the medicine of the future will be Holistic and that we will be our own doctors if we are lucky enough not to catch an infectious disease or become injured by accident. I think that people are becoming fed up with the lie that we need pharmaceuticals to correct the damage of our own lifestyle choices, when wiser choices can usually undo the damage caused and prolong our lives. But in order to fully appreciate this statement I think we need to understand another important principle about how our bodies work, besides the principle of evolution.
This principle is Homeostasis, or the body's innate ability to balance the processes in various systems, like the circulatory system, the respiratory system, the digestive system or the nervous system. This process is automatic, part of our subconscious processes and has evolved over millions of years, so that we don't have to think about it, freeing our brains to get on with what humans like to do. Just think about it - do we have to think about breathing, or digesting our food, or repairing a wound if we are injured? In the case of the latter, we do our best to keep an injury clean or reset a bone, but the body does the rest. This is the miracle of healing THAT WE ALL HAVE WITHIN US. Below is a video which cites this principle in action with reference to one type of pharmaceutical medication known as Calcium Channel Blockers, and their affect on the symptoms of High Blood Pressure, but there are many other examples of the principle and how it works with reference to other pharmaceuticals and other symptoms, presented by qualified MDs, which the viewer can find themselves on YouTube.
But that healing power will only work if we stop doing what made us sick in the first place. Instead of doing that, what most Americans and Brits do is carry on with their bad habits and then go running to doctors (not healers) to patch up their symptoms. An alternative of course is to understand how the subconscious part of the body works, and then simply get out of its way. Understanding how the body works also removes a lot of the fear from real healing, as it empowers us to be our own doctors and not depend on professionals who practice mere symptom-patching.
The other advantage of an holistic approach is that it avoids the side effects of man-made pharmaceuticals. What usually happens - and I have seen this in several now-deceased family members, friends and acquaintances, is that the first pharmaceutical causes side effects, for which a second pharmaceutical is prescribed, which causes more side-effects, for which a third pharmaceutical is prescribed and so on, eventually leading the patient down what author Patrick Holford illustrates as a ladder to death. In comparison, a holistic approach including whole foods, herbs, sensible exorcise and counseling for stress such as CBT, leads the person upward on that same ladder, to life rather than death.
If an illness has developed beyond where nutrition and lifestyle changes will heal it, such as the growth of a tumor, it is often necessary to remove it for the patient's recovery and there is nothing unholistic about this, in my opinion. The problem comes when surgery involves the, transplanting of tissues from another person, or from an animal, such as heart or other organ transplants; because these organs have a different genetic identity, they are not accepted by the recipient, anti-rejection drugs are given. These severely suppress the patient's natural immune system, opening them up to infection from other sources than their original illness. This principle is opposite to the principle active in vaccines - which would also be considered holistic, because vaccines work with the patient's natural immune system, stimulating it to fight off infection.
Nutrition is both a science AND a holistic study. It is the perfect bridge towards universal independence from a system of medicine which is rapidly becoming defunct. Modern Medicine/Pharmaceutical drug dealing is in fact one of the leading causes of death in our society:
So next time you see and hear one of those TV advertisements telling you to ask your doctor about the latest pharmaceutical concoction, tell the television to take it itself, and instead listen to your real doctor, which is the wisdom inside of you gathered from common sense and scientific research into nutrition, exercise and meditation. Ask yourself, "does this grow in nature, on a tree or in the ground?" If it doesn't, DON'T PUT IT IN YOUR BODY.
Part II of this blog focuses on a holistic approach to mental illness.
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