Why Good Health Is So Elusive

Ever wonder why good health is so elusive?

By Charlie Barnard

Ever wonder why good health is so elusive? Me too. I exercise. I try to eat right. I’m fairly active. So why at 55 years old do I have arthritis and high cholesterol and why did I have a heart attack at age 44 after eating a low fat diet for 7 years? Do you remember the line in the movie, "I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore"? Well this is my drawing a line in the dirt and making a stand. I’m fed up and now I’m going to do something about it!

Recently while doing some research, I came across multiple sources that made reference to corruption in the government and about how they and big corporations are in bed together to the detriment of the health of the American people. There’s no surprise there! I’ll bet this is common knowledge to most Americans. Now here’s the surprise. Most Americans still believe the food that they buy at the grocery store is safe because of government regulations. After all, the government is looking out for the people, right? You might want to read the first two sentences of this paragraph again. People’s lives are being put at risk for the almighty dollar and no one wants to look behind the curtain and see what’s really going on. Well I want to tell you, I looked and it made me furious!

I’m not one to buy into conspiracy theories and I’m not some crazy radical who wants to shut down corporations or clean up the government. That would be nice, but truthfully I don’t think either could actually be done. I’m just a concerned Baby Boomer who is trying to live a healthy lifestyle. I say trying to live healthy because, anymore I’m not really sure its possible, not at any price. Our food supplies, albeit plentiful in the United States, are basically contaminated. By contaminated I mean it is no longer natural. It is either genetically modified, treated with some chemical, injected with some hormone, or just plain depleted of nutrition. Factory farms do not allow animals to grow in natural habitats, which for lack of a better term, is simply inhumane and they are not healthy because of it. They live in overcrowded conditions and are force fed unnatural foods to make them bigger or to produce more. Then the animals are injected with things to keep them alive until they are slaughtered for our consumption. If you really paid attention to how these animals are treated you might want to consider being a vegetarian. However, the vegan lifestyle even with an organic supply of veggies might still leave you starved for nutrition. The soils are depleted of nutrients and the rain douses the plants with pollution. I know most of you are thinking that I’m just an alarmist or crazy radical and it simply can’t be true. If people were getting sick because of contaminated food the government would put a stop to it, right? After all, you eat food from the grocery store and you are in good health. Right? Well aren’t you? Are you sure? There’s nothing wrong? No aches? No pains? Very many colds? Allergies? Blood pressure is ok? Cholesterol ok? Diabetic? How about the rest of your family? If it hasn’t affected you yet, you probably don’t have to go far up or down the family tree to find some chronic condition.

But don’t you worry because the doctors will make you well again. You believe that don’t you? That the doctors can make you well again? So now you’re thinking, "Ok here we go, now he’s going tell us that the doctors are corrupt". Surprise! I’m not going after the doctors. Actually I believe most doctors are very conscientious and caring. So the doctors are off the hook but I know you’ve heard this before, and I’ll bet you agree; the problem lies with the health care system. We could debate what to do to correct "the system" until eternity passes away, but instead I’d rather just open your eyes to a little piece of the problem that you might not be aware of yet.

This is 2008, an election year, and the candidates are all offering a different solution to the health care problem. The one thing they have in common is they know the system sucks. I have heard it said that "what we have is not a health care system, but a sick care system". Meaning that we treat the sick but don’t do anything to make Americans healthy in the first place. Doctors just treat the symptoms and do nothing to cure the illness. Let me give you the standard example. If you have been diagnosed with high blood pressure, the doctor will prescribe some drug to lower it. He/she has not treated the cause only the symptom. There is a reason, (a cause), that you have high blood pressure in the first place but the "system" has the doctor give you medicine and then monitor you for the rest of your life. With this method you will never get off of the medicine. You will be on it for - the - rest - of - your - life! Now think for a minute, who is really benefiting by this? You? The doctor? The insurance company? The pharmaceutical company? Do you see where I’m going with this?

The pharmaceutical company has it in their best interest to keep you on the medicines as long as they possibly can. The – rest – of – your – life is a pretty long time. How much money will they make off of you and the insurance company before you die? The depth of this problem is way too involved to cover in this article so I just want to give you one more example. Statin drugs, (cholesterol lowering medications) are the most widely prescribed medication on the planet. In his new eBook, CHOLESTEROL & THE FRENCH PARADOX, Frank A. Cooper, CN, states, [The pharmaceutical industry controls a $30,000,000,000 cholesterol-lowering drug business.] That’s 30 Billion dollars that you and the insurance companies are paying to the pharmaceutical companies! You might be thinking, "So what’s wrong with that, after all, we need the medicine, don’t we?" Let’s find out. Frank’s book also presented evidence from his research that, [ In 1974 the US National Institute of Health via its sub-unit called the U.S. National Heart, Blood and Lung Institute, presented a table in their Handbook for Physicians and Dieticians. This was a table of cholesterol levels by age group, which if exceeded, indicated that your cholesterol was too high for your age group, and you should do something to get it down. One thing that you see in the table is that cholesterol levels increase with age. This is quite normal,]. Let me clarify this statement so you can better understand the problem. Cholesterol levels naturally elevate with age. Or to put it another way, this is not a chronic problem or a disease. Your body naturally produces more cholesterol as you age for many important reasons. Do you see where I’m going with this Baby Boomers? Now here’s my point. You’re getting older and you want to do the right thing so you get regular annual physical exams. The doctor orders blood work and your cholesterol tests come back. Guess what? It’s a little high, no surprise, you’re getting older. The doctor however, puts you on a drug to lower your serum cholesterol because he/she has guidelines to follow. Do you have a chronic problem? Are you really at risk? Now here’s the $100,000.00 question. Who determines what level is high cholesterol? How high is too high? What level is safe? Ok that was three questions. You do not want to know the answer. Trust me you don’t, but I’m going to tell you anyway. Frank’s research led him to this finding, [The US Department of Health has a Unit called the National Institute of Health (NIH) which provides leadership for national programs in diseases, that has a subgroup called the ‘Expert Panel for High Blood Cholesterol’ that provides cholesterol guidelines published in a 300-page report.] (So far it sounds like the right approach, except for one thing). [Eight of the nine doctors on the expert panel also had affiliations with the pharmaceutical companies at the time.] So what do you suppose the findings of the "Expert Panel" were? You won’t be surprised. [Basically, the Report encourages a relentless drive by doctors, health care workers and pharmacists to promote the benefits of lowering cholesterol at all costs to their patients. The real problem with this Report, is that it does not explain how the new cholesterol guideline of 200mg/dl is determined. Yet this is the Report that is the Reference Guide for doctors.] The poor doctors who don’t have the time or the resources to do their own research or read volumes of documents by other researchers are left with only one source of information, the pharmaceutical companies who make office calls. This is disgusting! Let me repeat what the 1974 findings were about the levels of serum cholesterol again. [Cholesterol levels increase with age. This is quite normal,]. I’m fed up and I’m going to do something about it.

What can I do? I’m not going to write my congressman, that won’t help. I’m not going to stage a protest. I’m not going to become a vegetarian, I like meat too much. Instead, here’s what I’m going to do. I am going to quit buying packaged food at the grocery store that the government says is safe. Instead I am going to buy grass fed beef, free-range chickens and eggs, wild caught salmon, hormone free milk, organic fruits and veggies, and sprouted grain bread. I am going to find a holistic physician who will treat the cause of disease instead of the symptoms. I am going to continue to read and research to find better healthier products. And I am going to encourage all of you to do the same. Individually I can’t do much and nobody really cares what one person is doing, but together we can change the direction of food production and health care.

Baby Boomers have been the driving force behind every industry since we were born and I think collectively we can straighten out this mess by spending our food and health care dollars on what is good, proper, and right. And don’t even get me started on TV programming.

Special thanks to Frank A. Cooper, CN, Author of the new eBook CHOLESTEROL & THE FRENCH PARADOX for showing me what was behind the curtain.

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