Why has modern medicine so utterly failed us when it comes to diet?

Medicine can’t always fix what stupidity broke.

We make our own choices, it isn’t up to medicine to play catch up with self-destructive behavior. And I suggest you do more reading on your ‘epidemics’.

At what point does the responsibility for a healthy lifestyle land on the patient? Why do people work so hard to find a way to blame others for thier poor choices? Let’s not lose our minds, here. It is not medical science’s fault that somebody eats cakes and pies all day. On every box of cereal there is a food pyramid, and on every food label, are listed the nutritional values based on a 2,000 calorie per day diet. Why not blame teachers if somebody can’t read those labels, since we’re passing the buck, anyway? Obesity and diabetes go hand in hand most of the time. Nobody knows the cause of Autism yet, so that one doesn’t belong on your list.

Doctors are not responsible for what we eat.

And I’ve never heard that autism is related to diet.
More plausible is that the autism “epidemic” is an increase in diagnoses – it’s not more prevalent, the label is simply applied to more people.

Because the Industry of Modern Medicine is based upon a History of Ancient Greed.

Utterly failed us? What are you talking about? It sounds like you treat medicine as some sort of wise old man on the mountain that has all the answers. They don’t have all the answers. They admit as much. That’s why they try to figure things out. That’s what makes it science. There is no wise man on the mountain. There’s just you, them, the most advanced information sharing network ever created and your box of a dozen bacon cheese filled donut-ham-hamburgers.

What does medicine have to do with what you shove in your mouth on a daily basis and whether you walk or drive to the convenience store?

Learn more about autism before you put it next to dietary comments.
stepmother to an autistic son

The better question is why do people expect science and technology to solve all the problems that we have created?

There are two ways to solve a problem – eliminate the cause and find a solution. Medicine does the latter. You can do the former.

I think that it is a failure to really name the culprits of bad eating: sugar. There is sugar, often in the form of high fructose corn syrup—which is particularly bad, in almost everything now.

Also, I don’t there have been research done on things like diet and weight loss. Many of the methods out there today are the same ones in use 100 years ago.

Finally, there is a puritanical attitude that says, People should just watch what they eat,” which is stupid, but it gets in the way of things.

The problems with diet aren’t a failure of modern medicine. The problem is our society’s unhealthy relationship with food. Individuals need to take responsibility for themselves. Modern medicine isn’t putting the Big Mac on peoples plates.

@Captain_Fantasy But the prepared foods industry is viciously anti-health.

‘Puritanical attitude’.... ‘watch what they eat’....that sounds ..um… kind of bad. but. I think I know where you are coming from because ‘food’ and abundance of food has been a myth in the US, where I assume you’re writing from. Trying to buy something simple and unprocessed is actually a real challenge for me when I visit. There is literally tonnes of crap on the shelves. I look for food in the stores there and I find garbage.

BUT, no one puts that food in their mouths but them. Like anything…. learn more about it… take responsibility, but for years, consumers have been left in the dark, trusting the powers that be to not put garbage on the shelves, but… cheap manufacture, money making corporations… Americas obesity is big business… on both ends.

And we have the right and ability not to buy food thats bad for us. That industry goes away when we stop giving them money.

“Fried breakfast is healthiest start to day, say scientists…” Right.

According to research sponsored by the bacon, sausage, and egg marketing boards, with cooperation from the butter marketing board.

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. So as long as the beans, mushrooms and tomatoes haven’t gone off, dig in!

Any doctor who actively advises patients on better food choices is not going to be popular with patients or the drug companies who can make a profit on the medications used to treat the disease but not on the foods to prevent it.

It’s a lose/lose scenario for them because they are swimming against the tide. Most patients will not follow the advice or resent it.

Someone like Dean Ornish is successful and highly regarded only because people are on the verge of imminent death from advanced heart disease by the time they are receptive to the dietary changes which he advocates.

Hopefully Mehmet Oz will have more favorable results due to the widespread exposure which having a TV show gives him. Hopefully it will last longer than its initial season.

But, the bottom line is that we can’t pawn off responsibility on the shoulders of medical professionals. As a society, we bear personal responsibility for our food choices.

Movies such as Morgan Spurlock’s “Supersize Me” drive the point home adequately for even the most dimwitted among us who can’t be bothered to crack open (much less read) one of Michael Pollan’s excellent books.

Basically, we are without excuse.

In medicine school, they don’t have a course on diet and its effects on health.

Also, the medical profession counts on poor diet habits to continue the flow of patients into the exam rooms.

I agree with many of the answers here and add that the questioner doesn’t seem to have a grasp on what is meant by modern medicine.

As a doctor, I can say #1 that there are courses on nutrition and diet in medical school and #2 that internists are trained to advise people to follow a healthy diet. Indeed, when I saw patients regularly as an internist, I made it a habit to discuss diet and other lifestyle things (seatbelts, guns in the home, smoking, drinking, etc. at least once per year).

It is a sad reality that – as outlined in Michael Pollan’s books – foods that are worse for you happen to be much cheaper than healthier food. So, it is absurd that fresh fruits and vegetables should be more expensive than processed or prepared foods, but that’s our reality. Most people therefore will be more likely to buy prepared foods (and not look at the labels) rather than eat fresh fruits and vegetables, and high fat/cholesterol foods in moderation.

Even after regularly advising patients on this issue, they often cannot or will not follow my recommendations. What is a doctor to do? Go into each person’s home and cook for them? I think not. Likewise, most doctors would like to see cigarettes outlawed, but doctors don’t control the law, and people have the freedom to make as many bad decisions as they want.

@shilolo

I’m just curious as to what the feedback is from other medical professionals regarding Dr. O’s repeated emphasis on the critical importance of diet and losing excess weight to overall health ?

He devotes a significant portion of every show he does to this topic. Just curious what other medical folk feel about him and his show.

@Buttonstc I don’t even know who he is. I don’t watch too much TV, and abhor the Dr. Phils of the world and their ilk. Therefore, I cannot comment on his show, but I would agree that diet and weight loss are critical for most people. That alone can “cure” adult onset diabetes and hypertension, in addition to other ailments (like arthritis).

Most of the doctors I’ve met would be ecstatic if they were faced with fewer diet related illnesses. It’s not fun to sound like a broken record all day. To say that the doctors WANT people to eat poorly so that they have more work… is like saying, I don’t know.. I can’t think of a metaphor right now… but it’s pretty bloody stupid. Anyone studying human biochemistry learns about the roll of diet, like… pharmacists.

Modern medicine is well aware of what we should and should not eat. It’s up to the patient to actually alter their diet in a way that it is healthy. People are just attracted to the idea of fast, easy, effortless meals (e.g microwave dinners, fast food, prepackaged stuff, etc.), and consume them at high rates, which causes the fat, sodium and cholesterol problems that are prevalent. It’s worse in North America because the culture supports these types of foods as more of the norm than they do in Europe and Asia.

medicine just adds more chemicals in our body we probably do not need. It may fix one thing, but it will harm another no matter what. The fewer the combination of chemicals in the body, the better

@mass_pike4 Really? Are you aware of the fact that your body is entirely made up of “chemicals”, that everything you eat, put on or in your body is a chemical? Taking a medicine or two is a negligible influence compared to the thousands of chemicals you ingest with every meal.

If you seriously believe that there is any overweight person out there who has no clue as to what is required to lose weight – then modern medicine has failed you in ways unrelated to diet. Willpower, self control, personal responsibility, call it what you will – are not the responsibility of medicine.

You can apply the same principle to the thousands across the country who want to misuse the ER. Or the EMS system. Why come to the ER when you have a cold? Or chicken pox? Why go for a fever if you haven’t first tried to bring it down yourself? Why leap to take an antibiotic, then not finish the whole ten day course? Why do people keep them in the medicine cabinet, then offer some to someone who complains of ear pain, or knee pain, or whatever? Why get angry with a doctor who does not prescribe an antibiotic?
A nurse told me a long time ago; ‘They just want something.” I feel that this is the wrong attitude for medical professionals. So what if they just want something? This is the reason we have importunate demands all over the country in the ER for meds that people don’t need and doctors who cave in and give them because the patient will just go elsewhere to get what they want. Oh, I have to stop now or I will wig out.
Giving the patient a pill she does not need is not wellness. If I can’t teach you to take care of yourself first before you come charging to the ER, I’m not doing my job, I’m enabling a hypochondriac or a drain on the system which is already overburdened.

@Trillian You are 100% right. But….

What happens in the real world is this. In the outpatient setting, a doctor that educates a) needs to spend more time than allotted and b) may face the loss of business as the consumer (people aren’t patients anymore, they’re consumers) go elsewhere. You hear it all the time “If you won’t give me what I need (I just KNOW I need antibiotics), I’ll go to another doctor from now on…”

In the ER setting (well, also in big HMOs and Kaiser, but I digress), there is now this whole culture of evaluation of doctors by patients consumers. If you don’t provide the kind of care that someone desires demands, then they give you bad ratings. When you come up for your own evaluations, those bad ratings can have significant and adverse affects on your salary, promotion, rehiring, etc. With those pressures in mind, doctors routinely just acquiesce to patients, even when they know things won’t help. The thinking goes “Well, it won’t help, but it probably won’t hurt either, and it isn’t my job to control the proliferation of antibiotic resistance nationwide…”

Here in America, the farmers that produce staples like corn, soy, and wheat are heavily subsidized. These – especially corn – are what go into junk foods (corn chips, corn syrup, etc.) and what feeds cattle to make them fat. This subsidy is what makes junk food cheaper than nutritious food.

I grew up poor. Yes, we knew that vegetables are better for you than ramen, but we had a choice: spend a couple days’ worth of food money on one head of broccoli and eat one meal, or spend it on cheap noodles and eat for a couple days. This is the choice lots of people face. It’s not that they’re st00pid, it’s that they’re poor. (Remember, you can buy no-brand “Kraft” Dinner with food stamps, but not vitamins.)

End the subsidy for things like HFCS and start subsidizing farmers that grow nutritious food, and a lot of this problem will go away in a generation. Start with school lunches.

@shilolo: I am well aware. That is why for 1 day once a week I consume under 1000 calories and drink plenty of water to give my cells a break :)

And honestly, there is a side effect to every med, and many times more than 1

@shilolo Sigh. I know. I just think that this facet is a far larger negative impact on the health care system than is taken into account. I was an EMT for fifteen years and we had people who we called frequent flyers who actually would want us to drop them off at the mall or a shopping center. I worked the ER as well and saw over and over a prevailing attitude of “I want to be seen NOW for ridiculous things that should never have seen a doctor to begin with. I can remember recording for a crash call a victim of an MVA with multiple broken bones, flail chest, internal injuries, etc, and a woman kept coming to the door (We were in the hall just off the ER) and actually banging on it, demanding to be seen for her stupid fever for which she had not first tried a little Tylenol. I steered clear of the medical profession when I got out of the Navy for this reason. It’s a shame that the system is allowed to run like this because we’re essentially shooting ourselves in the foot. The same is true with the class action suits against McDonald’s or whoever the fast food chains are that obese people are suing. It’s an abdication of personal responsibility and a desire to be financially compensated for being an idiot. If I keep ranting, I’ll lose all the benefits of the salvia.
SERENITY NOW!!
That’s better.

Doctors would almost be out of business if everyone ate sensibly and exercised!! Doctors know fast food chains are punching their ticket!

@Trillian Of course. We’ve entered probably the most narcissistic period in our history. Me, me, me. No sense of personal responsibility, and a quick trigger to blame someone else. That damn doctor doesn’t know what he is doing…I know I need a Z-pack for my runny nose!

@Cruiser And doctors have control over this how? You think we are somehow in cahoots with McDonald’s? Now that’s a conspiracy theory I actually haven’t heard.

In any event, the US is, after all, a capitalist society. Fast food, big tobacco, agribusiness and alcohol producers have far more influence than the medical community. Thus, the pervasive nature of crappy fast food, cigarettes, corn subsidies and beer. We’ve tried prohibition in the past, and it just didn’t work. People like their vices too much, and with vices, come repercussions. As much as we would like to control human nature, that trick has eluded us.

I appreciate what everyone is saying about taking responsibility…

However….

The powers that be constantly and persistently allow food companies and ridiculously large corporations to manufacture and advertise their food stuff in such a way that it infests the population to the point where really you cannot prevent consumption unless you want to completely (and I’m talking about children specifically here…because that is where these companies hit you…) your child would lose all friends and be ostracised from society…. and this is where the rot sets in…not in adult life where we have choices…. they hit children and parents at insidious levels…(and yes I am taking responsibility btw)

the choices in adult life are made that much harder because we’re already hooked…it’s already ingrained in us that we want sugar and no amount of refraining from it can make us feel the same feeling from a kumquat that we have gotten from a chocolate bar…

bring on the disgust

@lynneblundell I think that this is one reason why some societies hold themselves apart from mainstream society. Like the…shoot! i can’t think of those people who build barns and drive horse drawn carriages. They live in the States but don’t pay taxes or take from the SSI funds. They keep themselves apart from all that is bad in our society and I’m beginning to see their point.
I agree, it would be difficult for us as adults, but just think! After the apocalypse, those of us who survive will have to get along without our Starbucks, Godiva chocolates and yummu Mickie D’s french fries. We’ll be too busy just trying to stay alive!

@Trillian exactly… I really do think it’s all or nothing for this kind of thing.. you integrate or you don’t…either way you will pay a price

A brief list of human “vices”, their repercussions, doctor’s roles, and society’s role:
Vice: Repercussion; Doctor’s role; Society’s role

Alcohol: Liver disease, cancers; Encourage moderation; Rejected prohibition.

Smoking: Cancer, heart disease, emphysema; Encourage cessation; Rejected banning, movement to legalize marijuana

Promiscuity:STDs, HIV, unwanted pregnancies; Birth control, safe sex ed; Sex ed, mores

Fast food:Obesity, diabetes, heart disease; Encourage healthy eating; None to date

Sloth:Obesity, diabetes, heart disease, hypertension; Encourage exercise; None to date

Drug use: Heart/lung disease, others; Encourage restraint/abstinence; jail for users/sellers

They live in the States but don’t pay taxes or take from the SSI funds.

They have a unique exemption from Social Security, they don’t pay it and they don’t collect it. All farmers were exempt until the mid 1950s, the Amish successfully kept out.

The Amish DO pay income, real estate & sales taxes, just like everybody else.

By coincidence a friend’s kids were asking about this yesterday and we looked it up.

Amish! That’s it. Thank you, it was driving me crazy. If my knowledge of their SSI status is limited or incorrect it certainly wasn’t meant to be negative.

@Trillian

You did not seem negative.

If you’re dieting, you’re doing it wrong, because if you’re eating wrong, you need a change of mind and lifestyle. I eat healthy and have had to all my life because I’m allergic to corn syrup and preservatives, and I still have autism. The doctors say I was wired differently at birth. Maybe it’s Lamarckian evolution in the fact of a world dependent on modern technology.

And corporate America has done a wonderful job dividing us so we can’t exert collective responsibility, as well as reprogramming us using Hitler’s repetition in advertising strategy: say it long enough and often enough and people will begin to agree with it and want it. It’s hard to resist against a global consumption manipulation campaign centuries old for long.

Also everyone – @shilolo : THIS.

America: From each his gullibility, and to each his Greed. Coming to a culture near you, so watch out. We’ll own you all someday.

@Fenris Your mama is from Georgia. Who are you planning on owning? We gave up owning folks after the Abolitionists set us on the straight and narrow :)

@phillis : Me? no one. America, Inc? Every mind it can afford to divert, compromise or outright rewrite.

@Fenris Lamarck’s theory of evolution (inheritance of acquired characteristics) has been discredited.

@shilolo Most of the talk here is nonsense. I hope that you will hear me out. Iron fortification in food contributes to diabetes. Not all by itself. You add HFC and ban stevia then you add in artificial sweeteners. Artificial sweeteners promote obesity. It is hard to find a processed food that does not contain some kind of dextrose. Then there are all of the fake vitamin fortified drinks starting with the ridiculous amount of vitamin D in milk. Then we get labels with meaningless calorie counts on them. Meaningless because people(as a population) don’t weigh out proportions. The fake amounts of vitamins in foods make the average person less likely to take a large enough amount to satisfy their daily need. Add in the vitamin formulas that are commonly available are way out of proportion to the actual needs of the human body and you get symptoms of chronic nutrition like big belly’s on many people and people who are not diabetic yet but look swollen because they need to have a lower serum sugar level and their bodies in self defense are storing it like crazy.
Then people live in an information environment as I pointed out in my question that leads them to terrible decisions like replacing natural fats with unnatural ones and with whole grains which are worse for them and in no way have sufficient essential proteins or fatty acids in them.
The failure of medicine is to not point this out and to keep babbling nonsense like you can loose weight by exercise. The only real way to loose weight is to get the toxic food out of your body and to get the proper amount of real nutrients into it.
And of course walk several miles a day or do some work that moves the body.
The minerals that are put into processed food also upset the natural balance I just don’t know exactly how. They are very hard to quantify. I did find that I needed a lithium and an iodine supplement. The iodine supplement strangely enough was 100 times what I could buy in a local store and the lithium one was 125 times less than what the FDA has allowed in its medications. That high dose of lithium kills people and is unneeded by the body.
If medicine is not responsible for allowing this kind of meddling in the food to make money then who and why?
A lot of modern sickness has nothing to do with the quantity of food consumed. The last I heard calorie consumption was down.

@lynneblundell Chocolate has positive nutritional value. I have not had any since I found out I was diabetic. If it was not criminal to make it in this country with stevia I would probbaly have some.

It’s NOT medicine. Its a government run by the companies that produce the food and grow the garbage….

@cazzie The Sage was wrong. Any governmental power corrupts absolutely what ever it touches. It is not a matter of degree. It is simply the act of forcing another person. Those companies would be dismantled by the competition if there were no controls and no food pyramid. That food pyramid is created by the political process. It has been created by all of the lobbyists according to their numbers and finances and the number of USA senators that they control.
It has nothing to do with nutrition and everything to do with politics. It is a marketing tool. If you eat that way you are guarantied to have to go to the doctor for nutrition created diseases. When you get there the doctor will give you advice so vague that it is ignored by 99% of the population or they take up the current fad diet.
The doctors are either ignorant or they are guilty of supporting the whole mess. Operations for sucking the fat out or stopping up the stomach. Give me a break???!!!
True you must control what you eat. Every time you look at something to improve your diet there is a sign. Consult a doctor first. Most people give up right there. They know that they will not get a useful answer that way.
In this question I am addressing the general health. There are always exceptions. Our current population is in a health emergency. It is my thesis that it is being caused by food additives and propagandist nonsence being spewed forth by interested parties.
Fortunately there are a few doctors that let out valuable pieces of information. I collect those myself and so should everyone else.
You really are what you eat. Just not exactly. First your body needs to break what you eat down into building blocks. If you have sufficient numbers of all of the building blocks your body will be as healthy as it knows how to make you.
[[You are not made out of chemical medications. Your body does what it can to get rid of those unnatural substances]]
We tend to be in chronic states of malnutrition. Your body makes do as best it can. It can not do a perfect job of it. Fortunately if supplied with the proper nutrition it will absorb the imperfect repairs it has made over the years and fix things.
Our corrupt food supply and the failure of doctors to warn us that it is bad and that we need to start taking the things that we are nutritionally deficient in is a medical failure.
The doctor can look at you and diagnose what is wrong with you and tell you what nutrients that your body is short of. He does not do that on average. What he does do is to give you a chemical medicine to treat the symptoms with a warning handout that says that the chemical is bad for you. Most people think that the problem has been taken care of. Actually you have been given a new problem.

@walterallenhaxton Wow…. diatribe. you didn’t ask this question. You just wanted to say something. Pointing fingers in the wrong direction. It doesn’t work this way in most countries. You need to ask yourself… why is it like this in AMERICA?

@walterallenhaxton So you’re saying that Eisenhower should have warned us about the medical-industrial-complex?

@aprilsimnel I eat around thirty different plants a day and I am adding more. As near as I can tell they are very good for you. They just are not all you need. Also I am going to look into some of them closer and learn how to deal with some of the toxins in them . I understand that seed protect themselves with substances that are not particularly good for animals. I am certain that there are other things that you can eat that have enough positive countering benefits to make up for that though.
For example. Artichoke leaves lower your blood sugar and your blood fat. I was taking nicinamide to do that. It would have been nice if my Doctor had told me I should have been taking nicotinic acid to do that an it would raise my sugar. Oh well. If you survive you can still learn. statin drugs made my muscles hurt and were ban for my very necessary liver.

@walterallenhaxton You’re obviously well-read regarding your particular knowledge on this. I’ve been active in the healthcare industry for years, and have never heard of ANY of this, not even in conspiratorial circles, which I also happen to believe holds more than a grain of truth. This ranks right up there with the allegations that childhood vaccines are what is causing people to die from various cancers. I might believe it, I might not, but I damn sure want to be made aware of it. I deserve access to the knowledge.

Please believe me when I say that I am mystified. I am being totally sincere, not adversarial, when I ask if you would be willing to place links on what lead you to believe that modern medicine creates the illnesses you mentioned in your question detail. If something this big is happening, I want to know about it.

@Dr_Dredd : maybe not genetically, but certainly epigenetically, mentally, and culturally.

@Dr_Dredd ”So you’re saying that Eisenhower should have warned us about the medical-industrial-complex?”
Actually, yes, he should have. My grandpa the doctor warned me about the AMA back in the early 60’s.

@davidbetterman What was it that you were warned about? This seems a direct correlation striking at the heart of Walter’s point, so I have opted not to use the “mice type” feature.

@phillis
No mice…okay. He warned me that the AMA was going to hell in a handbasket, and that the greed in the medical profession would soon cause doctors to administer unnecessary tests and advise unnecessary procedures in the doctors’ quest for more and more financial gains.

@phillis. I would like to post such links for you. I have been putting pieces together from everywhere. How about this one. The CIA did mind control experiments and found out that you can’t control minds with drugs. All you can do is mess them up and befuddle them. So what is the government doing in our schools right now. Are they taking advantage of that knowledge? No they are using all kinds of drugs to mind control the kids and winding up causing all kinds of problems. The health consequences of what they have done have not shown up clearly yet. The kids that they have done it to are not what they would have been. There have to be serious consequences to taking speed for all of those years. When I grew up there was a street saying. Speed kills so we avoided those drugs. When the medical profession got hold of it all of a sudden reality is supposed to have changed. I simply doubt that. I suspect that speed still kills. Just maybe a little later when those doctors can claim that they did not cause the problem.
I think much of this stuff out. It is a vast puzzle for me. You know how they go together. A couple of pieces here and there. A patch or two. I am still working on it.
Do these searches. Supplements for___. Herbs for___. Toxicity of___. Dosages of___. Drug interactions between___. You will find a funny thing with the last one. Almost everything that you take for your health will interact with some Doctor drug. When you think about how little benefit you get from one doctor drug and the thousands of benefits that you get from eating plants and other natural substances that interact with it you start to see that the problem is not with the other substances but with the doctor drug.
[[[[Doctor drugs are necessary in many emergencies and you should use them then. Discard them rapidly as you do any other crutch if you find something to do the job better,safer.]]]]

A small example. You are warned to not take omega 3 fish oils with baby aspirin because they thin the blood too. There are a number of herbs that interact with baby aspirin in the same way. I took horse chestnut and told my doctor I was going to take it for the swelling in my legs. He did not warn me to stop taking the baby aspirin. I wound up with blood so thin that it would not maintain surface tension so that I could do my diabetes test. It also caused a bruise to remain bright red. The positive benefit of reducing the swelling in my legs and making it comfortable for me to walk far outweighed the blood thinning of the baby aspirin and I got the blood thinning too. I could also take the omega 3s for my health. By By baby aspirin.
I am part scientist and so generate some of what I say myself from my observations.

@phillis walterallenhaxton You’re obviously well-read regarding your particular knowledge on this.

Well read? (Comic books maybe – it would explain CIA and mind control experiment conspiracies.)

Iron supplements contributes to diabetes? Nonsense. EXCESS iron might possibly increase diabetes risk.

Calorie counts are meaningless because he doesn’t think that most people weigh portions? More nonsense – many people who are attempting to eat well do use those counts. They give an indication – you don’t need to weigh each portion, the weights and in most cases number of portions per package are on the packaging that he is complaining about.

Whole grains are “worse” for people? They lack essential proteins and fatty acids?

Exercise is not a valid way of losing weight?

Big bellies caused by high “serum sugar” levels?

The guy is posting total nonsense.

@DarkScribe I can’t be a dick to somebody and expect them to keep an open dialog with me. I am pursuing an interest that supercedes my using a person in order to feel good about myself. I can do that quite nicely standing on my own merit. There is no need for public humiliation here, as far as I am concerned, as there have been no personal attacks (until now).

@phillis as there have been no personal attacks (until now).

An attack on his claims is NOT a personal attack. His claims are ludicrous – there is no simple and accurate way to describe them as anything else.

@walterallenhaxton With all due respect, I would ask that you provide at least a minimal number of citations to support your assertions. As it stands, your hypothesis is full of conjecture and anecdote. Anyone can try to assert anything they want, but that doesn’t mean it is true.

@DarkScribe Are you saying that the CIA didn’t conduct all those mind control experiments (which are well documented) in the 50s and 60s?

http://www.wanttoknow.info/mindcontrol
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKULTRA

Perhaps they don’t have this information available in the public libraries in Australia like we have here in the US.

@DarkScribe…...which is precisely why I asked for reading material. I cannot publicly attack the validity of a person’s statements until I am fairly sure I understand what they are thinking. Being as how there is plenty of documented, verifiable evidence that calls into question the motives of government, I need to get to the bottom of this, sans your good manners comic books quips.

@davidbetterman Are you saying that the CIA didn’t conduct all those mind control experiments (which are well documented) in the 50s and 60s?

I am saying that the question and responses relate to “Modern Medicine” – not to widely disputed use of drugs by intelligence agencies sixty odd years ago. Timothy Leary had a lot to say about some of those issues, but that has nothing to do with modern medicine.

He went on to say”So what is the government doing in our schools right now. Are they taking advantage of that knowledge? No they are using all kinds of drugs to mind control the kids and winding up causing all kinds of problems.”

Note the timeline suggested: ”right now” – THAT IS A CONSPIRACY THEORY ON STEROIDS!

@DarkScribe Not exactly. I know some of the kids. I also know that they are not being helped. They are just being made docile so they don’t bother the others. When they are not on the drugs in the summer they don’t have the control of their actions and thoughts that other kids do who have been taught without drugs.
They are being given the drugs to make them learn in particular ways which simply are not their natural ways of learning. That is convenient for the system and destructive of the kids.
Kids are different and it is easy to find that out.
http://www.udel.edu/bateman/acei/multint9.htm
This link was easy to find. I did not have time to look for more but there are many that talk about it.

IMO this whole thread underscores the level of misinformation that exists in our world today and it is at it’s worst when wielded in haphazard fashion. We are each different and what works for one may not work for the other and even be quite bad. A good diet and exercise would seriously cut into a Doctors work load.

Becoming a scout leader allowed me an ugly peek into what our kids are going through. Kids have to turn in their medication on camping trips and as I was shocked, stunned and saddened to see just how medicated so many kids are today. I had no idea.

Diet starts at home…with your family. It is my job as a mother to be aware of what I am feeding my kids. I was raised through the 70s and 80s when there was a large push by the food industry to get people eating pre-packaged foods. We didn’t have a lot of money but my mom made sure we got fruits, vegetables, meat, bread etc. We didn’t eat junk food, period.

I only shop the perimeter of any grocery store (with few exceptions). It is not rocket science to look on the back of a package of food and read through the ingredient list. If I have a hard time pronouncing an ingredient(s) then I don’t buy it.

To summarize, doctors (as a group) at the behest of “governments” and “corporations” are employing mind control and nefarious modification of foods in order to bring in more business.~

Of course, we all happen to live until we’re 80 these days, when just a mere 150 years ago life expectancy was half that. Boy, we (as in, the medical community) are really screwing up, big time! Longevity, decreased maternal and infant mortality, death from infections, survival from cancer and heart disease, etc. etc.~

~ = sarcasm

@shilolo Nice to see this admission that doctors are really screwing up big time from a doctor.

@DarkScribe This thing is eating my answers. About the iron. It is a problem. I thought that you guys could do you own searches. Sorry.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/sardi/sardi65.html
Big bellies are a nutritional problem. Something is missing in the diet of those who posses them. Among other things such people are probably low on the non essential amino acid ornithine. With it brought up to a proper level and proper nutrition the body will start making HGH again and start removing that fat. It healed in combination with other nutrients a nest of varicose veins I got due to an injury in one of Nixon’s gas lines. Of course it would not have worked without the other nutrition.
What we have here is a methodological problem. You always want a lab to tell you what is so. With nutrition that has limited value. Your body is the only lab you have to work with. Yes as a doctor you have patients to work with too. A chemistry lab will not tell you what a hundred different nutrients are doing in combination in your body. What it will tell you is if your numbers fall into the normal range or not. If they don’t it is easy enough to change them and put them back into the normal range. You can do that with drugs as a temporary crutch until the side effects of the drugs need treating too or you can treat them with nutrition and people can take that as long as they live. Of course the nutrition will have to be changed from time to time as their body changes its needs for it.
Everything does not make the kind of sense that you seek.
Another example for you. They have does chemical studies on B 12. They show that it lowers homocysteine levels. The also show that it does not prolong your life or reduce heart attacks.
So do you throw the B 12 out because the study says it does not help with what is being studied or do you take it because you want to normalize the homocysteine because that has been shown to be harmful to other things that were not studied in those particular studies?
Boy Don’t you just love how that bacopa monnieri improves the memory?

@cazzie It looks like a fascinating project to tackle. I have seen autistic children in a school I was working in many years ago.The realized it was nutritional then. The did not have the technology to do much good though. The kids were totally withdrawn and nonfunctional.
I will do more research into it if you bug me enough. Without full knowledge of the kid I am afraid I could do little good. It is for you to do. All I can do is show you how I research such things.
http://www.autismtreatmentprogram.com/program.php
These people seem to know what they are doing. They look expensive to me. But they do lay out enough of a plan for you do do the research for each stage and develop it for yourself.
http://www.talkaboutcuringautism.org/medical/newsupplements.htm
These people give you an idea of what to start supplementing at each level.
You should look to sport medicine to find out what are the best ways to encourage the body to produce HGH for healing and go to vitamin world or some simular store and dig out the nutrients for any particular problems the kid has. When you heal one part of the body with a supplement it does not only go there. It also goes to any other part of the body that might need that particular supplement.
Good luck. I wish you the best.

@DarkScribe They reall don’t have a clue as to what to do to loose weight. Neither does anyone who talks about willpower or exercise. Unless that body has all of the nutrition that it needs it will keep asking for more. As long as it has toxic substances in the food supply that don’t belong there like HFC, artificial and iron there will be problems too. As long as the food supply has propaganda additives like vitamin d in milk and iodine in salt people won’t look at the dosages that they actually need. Vitamin water. Give me a break.
Iron in a mens multi-vite. Lithium prescribed by doctors at 100” of times the RDA. Fancy chemicals that the doctors prescribe that the body is not adapted to cope with.
Prescription drugs change the body. Then that changed body is prescribed another one. Doctors don’t seem to have a clue as to why there is a 5% death rate for prescription drugs and a 0% death rate for supplements. It is because the changes caused by the prescription drugs are so big. You are effectively giving them in combination over time even though you are not supposed to give them in combination.
Supplements are supposed to be given in combination. You are looking for the synergy that is so dangerous with prescription drugs. I am writing to you about an entirely different science than you studied about in medical school. I know that it is a difficult concept. Maybe this will help some.
This guy is after money of course but just reading his ad just bleeds information for somebody who knows something about the subject.
http://diabesity.ultrawellness.com/is/807

I can’t do anything for my step son. I don’t have full custody. He’s with a some-what negligent mother for half of the time. I’ve tried to put certain things in place for him, but it all comes to naught. Not all cases of autism are worsened or helped by dietary changes. It’s a genetic disorder they are born with.

@cazzie You can’t know if diet will help until you have done it. It is fairly certain that it will make him healthier. That in itself would be a positive and sufficient reason for doing it. I don’t blame her for being somewhat negligent. They are very difficult to deal with. I would approach her with supplements to help her with her health problems. If you can get her interested in that she will eventually apply it to him. At least you can try scratching at the itch[problem] a little.

@walterallenhaxton They reall don’t have a clue as to what to do to loose weight. Neither does anyone who talks about willpower or exercise.

They? I have no idea who your concept of “they” is, but many millions of people know exactly what to do in order to lose weight.

As for implying that willpower and exercise is futile – that is simply idiotic and has no basis in fact. Of course willpower and exercise is necessary to lose weight – lose it in a healthy manner. How can you possibly refute that? If it wasn’t, there would be no overweight people.

Why are you going on about nutrition? No one has mentioned a diet that lacks essential nutrition – other than you. I and almost everyone I know eats a very healthy diet, one that lacks nothing in the way of essential nutrition. Not everyone lives out of a MacDonald’s kitchen.

The most outrageously nonsensical claim you have made so far is that iodine in salt is unnecessary. Do you know why it was added in the first place? Apparently not or you wouldn’t make such foolish claims.

”As long as the food supply has propaganda additives like vitamin d in milk and iodine in salt people won’t look at the dosages that they actually need.”

You have absolutely no idea what people who are unknown to you will or will not do in any situation. You have no idea why iodine was added to salt. It was to meet a world-wide deficiency in western populations and table salt was the simplest and most effective way to supply that “essential” salt. You also seem to know very little about multi-vitamin manufacture. One of the biggest differences between men’s and women’s is that men’s drops iron.

Nothing is perfect, but forgoing medicine for a self determined “supplement” based lifestyle is ludicrous. Particularly when you seem unable to understand the function of many supplements.

I am writing to you about an entirely different science than you studied about in medical school.

I have no idea why you believe that I studied medicine. My areas of experience expertise are fitness, diet and nutrition – not medicine. I write about health, lifestyle and IT – and I research before I write. You should try to do the same.

While we’ve disagreed in the past, this time I happen to agree 100% with @DarkScribe. There is a long and rich history of minor changes in the food supply and dramatic improvements in health.

1. Iodine: Goiters from iodine deficiency used to be extremely common. Now they are extremely rare. Thanks to something as simple as table salt. Iodine deficiency during pregnancy can result in cretinism in the fetus.
2. Vitamin D: Rickets used to be extremely common as well, now it is very rare owing to Vitamin D fortified foods.
3. Vitamin A: Vitamin A deficiency is the leading cause of preventable blindness in children, which again, can be prevented by oral supplementation.
4. Folate: A relative deficiency of folate during pregnancy can lead to birth defects. A simple supplement can prevent that.
5. Iron, calcium, magnesium: These salts are required for normal blood, bone and other enzymatic functions. Anemia, osteoporosis, muscle dysfunction and other problems result from their deficiency.

This is just a short list. @walterallenhaxton Perhaps you would do well to research your subjects more thoroughly before making unfounded, ludicrous and downright dangerous claims.

Sorry, she is less than interested in her own health. We found out she had gone out on a bender for several days over Easter… we’re not sure now who was even looking after him when we dropped him off on Sunday. She was hungover then and then we found out she went out and stayed out all night. .... No… she won’t be interested in ‘vitamins’...

@shilolo Putting supplements is the food supply is a toxic practice. Not because the supplements don’t help some people but because their dosage is all wrong. I can’t even find a dosage for elemental chlorine for the human body. Florine is only needed by kids and is useless for adults. Iodine in supplements is at least 100 times less than is needed for human health. It does a very good job of getting rid of cysts in human breasts. I understand that there is an epidemic of them is the USA. People have cut back on their salt intake for health reasons thus reducing their iodine intake. Unless they are educated in what their body needs they pay no attention to it and assume that they are eating healthy.
When you advise a person to reduce their salt intake do you put them on an iodine supplement. No. You forget because the gross problems associated with iodine deficiency don’t come to your attention much. Iodine in salt fools even you into not doing everything you should to educate your customers.
The vitamin D in one pint of milk is probably just the two hundred one.
Less than 50 200
50–70 400
Over 70 600
What it should be for health is entirely different.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC506781/
Putting it in there at all was fine when supplement were not available like they are now. Now it just gives people misinformation which puts them in your office for viral infections and what ever else such a deficiency causes.
People should be properly educated. There are plenty of courses that could be dropped in schools and plenty of doctors who could do the educating after they retire. That is if they know anything about nutrition and the toxic effects of bad information being given them.
My multi vites. Well I guess I was wrong about that particular product. The woman’s version has no warning to stop taking it after menopause. That should not have been left off. It would be even better if doctors told women to cut back on their iron intake after menopause.
The reason that I felt it necessary to accuse the medical profession in this question is that many people worship doctors. They should know about everything that they put into their body’s. Not take the doctors word for it or anyone else’s. Yet we act like robots and take what the doctor gives us without question.
We are not as smart as you. What you take for granted does not even enter our minds. We count on you being right all of the time. I know that you are human and that it is impossible for you do do that in the short time you see someone and that it is impossible tor your customer to give you all of the relevant information in so short a time.
So I am attacking this information problem as best I can. The healing needs to be done by the body. The health care needs to be done by the patient. The doctoring needs to be done by the doctor. Patients need to know their numbers so that they can adjust the numbers in their health program to healthy ones. Doctors need to supply all of the numbers that the patients need. I know that I need more about my body. I just don’t know which particular ones I need. I don’t have the skills of diagnosis that a doctor has and I do not have the information sources he has. So I need him to inform me so I can do my health care job.

One thing I have not seen mentioned here is how Doctors and clinics are paid lots and lots of money to write scripts by Big Parma and Health Plans. I just read this…

“a group of six cancer doctors received $2.7 million from Amgen for prescribing $9 million worth of its drugs last year.” =O

That’s a 30% commission for anemia medicines prescribed at near excess levels! Something seriously not right with that picture!

@Cruiser Wouldn’t it be nice if people got a sufficient variety of anti oxidants in their diets and knew how to chelate the heavy metals and other toxins out of their bodies so that the cancer rate would collapse and those thieves would go broke?

@cazzie Maybe she would like to get drunk faster and you could convince her to take this.
http://www.news-medical.net/news/2005/05/17/10144.aspx
There is also another unmentioned benefit. It helps repair the liver damage caused by the alcohol. Don’t tell her that until later. It could get her interested in other supplements and would save her money on alcohol so she could pay for them.
It makes a pleasant tasting tea too. The tea has diuretic effects. Just so it does not surprise you.

@phillis I read an article about the childhood vaccines and the Amish. The argument was that they had a low Autism rate compared to those who got vaccinated so the vaccine was responsible.
This discussion has given me a new perspective on that. There is also another difference between the Amish and the general population. A lot of their food supply is grown by them using different methods. I don’t know exactly about this but I believe that they are organic farmers. I also doubt that they put all of the preservatives and food additives in their foods that we get.
If I am right that could be an even greater difference than the vaccines and the real cause of that autism. That mercury could be working in combination with the other things in our food supply to cause the autism that way.
Everything we eat even if it is injected works in combination with the other substances in our body.
I will not saying that it is eating but it is certainly ingesting when you breath in complex chemical cleaners and roach spray too.
I wonder if the Amish use those.
I hate powdered laundry detergent. It makes me choke every time. Poison.
I think that the Doctors are going to have to start working smarter if they are going to keep up with all the new business that Obama is supposed to be sending their way.

@walterallenhaxton I happen to know a little about the Amish, so I can respond to a few of those musings. They do not use pest control the way we think of it, but they know pests create disease. They use simple things, such as marigold to deter certain pests (deer, mice, rabbits) both inside the house and in their gardens. Boric acid is used for cockroaches. They’re not above using mouse traps, either. You’re right that they dont use garden pesticides the way we think of them.

I would LOVE to get my hands on any existing medical records regarding the Amish, but that’s like wishing for unicorns. They won’t allow poking and prodding, or even a questionaire, so we basically know jack. How can we compare data without a control group? I think that lack of knowledge has been played into some interested parties favors, quite honestly.

Perhaps the doctors commenting here on fluther are being paid to skew the reality to trick the stupider more naive observers into continuing with the AMA way…

@davidbetterman Perhaps the doctors commenting here on fluther are being paid to skew the reality

Is this “Support your local conspiracy week”, has someone put something in the food (another conspiracy theory…?) or was that meant tongue in cheek but without an emoticon?

Shilolo is the only Doctor here that I am aware of – are you accusing him of taking bribes?

Ah…always nice to see you too DS. What conspiracy theory are you touting now?
Do you have any idea what is in the food you eat? Have you raised cattle, chicken or hogs commercially and read the ingredients in the feed we give them? Or do you just shoot from the hip without really knowing what you are talking about?
Everything we feed those animals becomes part of their cellular make-up, which, when we eat them, becomes part of us (you are what you eat). What conspiracy are you on about again?

@DarkScribe You would do well to do as I do, and ignore the obvious bait. Some people simply want to agitate for the sake of it, but somehow think we’re too dense to see through their tactics.

@davidbetterman What conspiracy are you on about again?

I don’t know of any that I can support – can you suggest one that a person with a functioning intellect might enjoy? I mean they do sound like fun – and I don’t want to feel left out.

Do you have any idea what is in the food you eat?

Yes.

_Or do you just shoot from the hip without really knowing what you are talking about? _

Not unless I am showing off with a pistol.

_Everything we feed those animals becomes part of their cellular make-up, which, when we eat them, becomes part of us _

How is this related to the thread? How many Doctors are farmers?

I don’t eat much in the way red meat, I eat mostly seafood from southern oceans or chickens that I breed myself. I have a permaculture garden and enjoy both maintaining it and eating produce from it. (The chickens are primarily to control insects without pesticides – very effective – the little blighters munch everything that moves.)

I don’t think that my diet can be improved upon with going to ridiculous lengths.

Still, how is any of this related to “modern medicine”? Are you confusing medicine with nutritional research or statutes governing farming and livestock?

@DarkScribe ”How is this related to the thread? How many Doctors are farmers?”

This question is all about health, modern medicine and diet, ”Why has modern medicine so utterly failed us when it comes to diet?”

Shilolo states “As a doctor, I can say #1 that there are courses on nutrition and diet in medical school and #2 that internists are trained to advise people to follow a healthy diet. Indeed, when I saw patients regularly as an internist, I made it a habit to discuss diet and other lifestyle things…at least once per year).”

I guarantee you they don’t teach the young med students about diet in re the feed fed the animals that then is fed to humans.
You don’t even know this, but at least are lucky enough to raise your own chicken so you have a vague idea about what they are fed.

@davidbetterman _I guarantee you they don’t teach the young med students about diet in re the feed fed the animals that then is fed to humans. _

That is a little arrogant – to assume that med students are so insular that they don’t become aware of what is nowadays fodder for Women’s magazines and Sunday supplements.

I don’t think that your guarantee will stand up.

@DarkScribe If it doesn’t you get your money back!

Women’s magazines and Sunday supplements don’t tell you what ingredients are fed our livestock.

I don’t think you quite understand what I am talking about.
I raised chicken commercially for Tyson’s in Arkansas back in the 90’s

20,000 birds per coop on a ten coop ranch. the ingredients in the chicken feed included hormones, growth stimulants, vaccines, dead chicken from prior batches and chemicals I couldn’t even pronounce reading the list that came with the feed deliveries.

The list of ingredients had over 35 different chemical names of which I was clueless as to why they were in the feed until I asked the area manager.

This feed was fed the birds for the first 4 – 5 weeks, and then the last 2 weeks (week 5— 6) the birds were fed pure corn meal so that when they were inspected, the percentage of corn meal in their bodies would comply with FDA regulations.

These chicken were 6 – 7 pound broilers in 6 weeks time. It should take these same birds 8 months to reach that size eating normal food without all those added growth stimulating chemicals.

@DarkScribe Don’t you get it? It’s ALL the doctor’s fault. On the one hand, doctors aren’t going out into the fields, the cattle ranches and the chicken coops and aggressively regulating what pesticides are used, or what the animals eat. Furthermore, doctors are clearly not knowledgeable about nutrition and are giving misguided and bad advice.

ALTERNATIVELY, doctors are SO KNOWLEDGEABLE about nutrition that they are directly controlling said foods (in cahoots with agribusiness) to create more disease.~

@shilolo quit your whining. No one is blaming you or the doctors. I am just pointing out that there is/are serious diet problems in America, and the medical community is either ignorant of them or chooses to say nothing. I hope that it is the former.

@davidbetterman Women’s magazines and Sunday supplements don’t tell you what ingredients are fed our livestock.

Yes they do. Buy a better quality magazine. (We publish them…)

Don’t take life so seriously and stop assuming that what happens in the US happens everywhere. Some countries have laws that protect people with much more “efficaciousnes” than the US can muster.

@ Don’t you get it? It’s ALL the doctor’s fault.

Right! Got it! The very next time a see a bunch of Doctors on tractors I will have serious words with them.

(If they have cute nurses with them I might get bashful – you will have to excuse that.)

@DarkScribe Perhaps you would be good enough to spell out some of those chemicals in the animals’ feed that is published in those women’s mags.

I am not the one who as a doctor has claimed that doctors are taught about food and diet and health in medical school. But since we have a doctor here making this claim, I, for one, am interested in what is taught.

I was a simulated patient in a med school course at OSU in the 90s and they certainly weren’t teaching them jack shit about health and diet back then.

@shilolo says, ”On the one hand, doctors aren’t going out into the fields, the cattle ranches and the chicken coops and aggressively regulating what pesticides are used, or what the animals eat. Furthermore, doctors are clearly not knowledgeable about nutrition and are giving misguided and bad advice.”

I don’t expect doctors to go out into the fields to see what is going on in re feed being fed livestock. I do expect them to have a working understanding of the chemicals given our livestock so they might better understand the effect eating some of our store bought meats might have on an individual.

If, as you say, these chemicals fed our livestock are listed in women’s magazines, then how hard would it be for a medical practitioner to avail him/herself of this knowledge?

@DarkScribe ”The very next time a see a bunch of Doctors on tractors I will have serious words with them.”

You might have to let them play through before you have said words with them.

@davidbetterman Perhaps you would be good enough to spell out some of those chemicals in the animals’ feed that is published in those women’s mags.

And perhaps I wouldn’t. I am not about to trawl back through decades of print published material to please someone who is antagonistic in attitude.

@davidbetterman DarkScribe ”The very next time a see a bunch of Doctors on tractors I will have serious words with them.”

You might have to let them play through before you have said words with them.

Now that was humorous. Kudos.

@DarkScribe I switch from antagonism to humor with the greatest of ease!

@phillis You just told me enough about the Amish for my point. They do not use the complex chemical not found in nature. That is all I needed to know. When you add enough of those into the food supply you have to have consequences. These modern epidemics are food related. Food is the only thing that is getting into all of those bodies. Food is the only thing that is different in populations who have simular genetic structure but different health results and eating customs.
These epidemics are not due to some disease. There is not some virus going around. Now I have a racket to expose.

For all of you conspiracy lovers/haters buy this one. Our entire civilization is built around the rackets. A racket is a government private partnership. The government uses force to drum up business for the private parties and issues them licences which restrict their competition from working in that profession.
The governments interest in the project is solely to make money to feed its political goals and it does not care what happens to the people. It will do anything at all to further it’s goals.
The private parties goal is to work without having to pay much attention to his customers demands and do his job without having to constantly adjust it to reality. Medicine is constantly updating it’s knowledge. In case you haven’t noticed it the doctors here are totally closed to new knowledge if it doesn’t not follow the method that has been taught to them is school.
That method has it’s limits. They can’t step outside it without getting in trouble for betraying the racket. Their part in the racket is to follow the government mandated rules and to follow they government mandated politically correct party line.
I try explaining a new method to them and they can only knock it down. They will not try to understand it. They just insist on the old method. It is pretty obvious that they are following a orthodoxy and will not deviate from it.
I had really hoped to convince one of them to start learning the healing arts. I suppose they won’t/can’t do that.

@walterallenhaxton They do not use the complex chemical not found in nature. That is all I needed to know.

I am beginning to understand you. You need to know less than most people, but are more adamant than most people about what you don’t know. You don’t just jump to conclusions – some of your leaps would set Olympic records.

How do you explain the fact that many people who eat a perfect diet still fall ill with diseases that you relate to poor diet or food additives? Why didn’t people have perfect health in the thousands of years before all these “chemicals” were added to food?

If there is no virus that can cause diseases, if it is all related to food additives, what caused the Black Plague, the Spanish Flu etc., all of which took place in an “additive” free world.

Do you follow your thoughts through to possible conclusions that don’t support your theories or just ignore all logic that offends you?

It’s the food industry not taking lifestyle changes into account. And politics for not putting cigarette-style warning labels on certain food products.

@mattbrowne The cooking is bad. What the food industry does is both permitted and encouraged by the government. I would like to see us get pure food and let us add what we need. I certainly do not need iron in my bread and HFC in everything else. The only reason that stuff is not banned is politics.

@DarkScribe How do you explain the sudden appearance if dietary related epidemics. I am only studying this subject because I am diabetic and my doctors instructions were to start eating differently. I normally study human behavior. Let me reassure you. Thirty years or so back people did not suddenly change their eating habits. If anything they eat less now than they did then.
The chemicals that they made bread with were changed adding one with iron in it. HFC was introduced it to the diet as well as artificial sweeteners.
I do not pretend to be a doctor with detailed knowledge. The food supply is the cause because it is the only common factor.

@walterallenhaxton The food supply is the cause because it is the only common factor.

It is?

Let’s play your game.

Common factors. Water as well as food, the proliferation of electronic devices – even if you don’t own them you are influenced. Air, forget greenhouse gases, there are more pollutants than ever before. Cellphones, Bluetooth earpieces, microwave cellphone towers all through suburbia, A few years back colour television – the high voltage componentry required for colour tubes emits X-rays. Who didn’t have a colour TV? Clothing – many people have allergic reactions to some forms of synthetics and the dyes used. Huge malls with masses of people in them – we have far more contact with other (possibly ill) people – than in the past. With women, all manner of things in makeup, shampoos, conditioners etc. Cars, there has actually been some research into the effects of the gases given off by some plastics when exposed to the temperatures of a closed car in summer. Microwave cookery – again the effect of microwave energy on plastics, not so much the food itself.

They are just a few common factors. You have focused on food to the exclusion of all else, yet some of these other issues are far more likely to be initiating problems.

@DarkScribe So you are saying that we should not clean up our food supply because it might not be the cause of every possible illness?To me that is an odd reason for not doing it.
You say the vitamin D supplementation is good. You insist it must be mandated into the food supply at a level that is 1/ 20 th what is needed for general health.
You make no argument. You just declare it to be so.
I say it would be far better for people to take the correct dosage and that they will not do so unless they recognize that it is important that they do so and they do the research to find out what the dosage is.
Take away your mandate and do the doctoring. You will get far better health benefits. Take the iodine out of the salt and do the doctoring. Get the proper level of iodine into the supplement that you prescribe so that they no long have a deficiency.
I know how hard minerals are. I would say it is impossible to get them right and so you need to keep adjusting.
Allow the cooks in industry to use the natural sweetener stevia and discard the artificial chemicals that are now being used. Ban HFC from the food supply. Put warning labels on bread containing iron.
Recognize that anyone who is swollen up like a balloon has a toxicity problem and any eating problem that they have will not be solved until the toxicity is corrected.

@walterallenhaxton You seem quite split-brained in your reasoning. On the one hand, you are averse to “supplements” in the food supply. On the other hand, you say that the supplements (like Vitamin D) are not enough. Which is it? Should we leave food alone or supplement it according to your extensive research?

Modern medicine has not failed us. It is just a tool, that we either use properly or not.

@walterallenhaxton If there is a racket, I hope you _do_expose it. I know of a few of them, myself, so I’m not going to be doing any tongue wagging at you. FWIW, I do not believe the doctors have any clue what is going on anymore than I believe all congressmen and senators do. In the end, most people don’t matter a hill of beans, regardless of how highly they view themselves. The more people that know, the likelier it is that word will get around. Think about that. These folks are doing what they think is best, just as you are. They don’t think nearly big enough for the scope of this issue. If they did, I imagine it would be quite a sobering experience. That is all I have to say about that.

@phillis I don’t think that they are doctors at all. I think that they are posers. They are incapable of reading what a person says and getting meaning out of it. It is pointless to talk to them when they say that a radio wave can hurt you. They have less energy than infrared light. I can’t believe that anyone that ignorant even went to high school.

@walterallenhaxton I see. Okay then. I can’t follow you down that path regarding doctors, only because I have personal knowledge to the contrary for some of them. But I completely respect your right to voice your opinions, and so you have. I can’t go along with blanket statements, either, because it’s unfair to those to whom it does not apply. I do think you’re onto something, even if it isn’t quite a match with what I’ve researched. I recognize it as a gift that there are people willing to expose fraud and corruption where it exists, so I encourage your efforts. If you find proof of it, I am very interested in seeing it. I hope you’ll share it with me.

@walterallenhaxton This will be my final post. You obviously have settled, in your own mind, about subjects for which you are convinced but lack any real data. That the Amish live a different life than most Westerners is true. That they develop obesity is also true. In fact, there are numerous studies on the Amish and obesity, such as this one associating a specific genetic polymorphism with obesity, and that increased physical exertion blunts development of obesity (surprise!).

You do realize that in Western cultures, most people don’t do any manual labor anymore, and in the US in particular, have become a nation of couch potatoes. 150 years ago, there wasn’t much obesity, but life expectancy was also 35 years old! It has now risen to 80. Humans aren’t perfect machines. Your car breaks, your computer breaks, your house breaks down, and so does your body, which is far more complex than a car. Just the simple act of typing this comment required more molecular and cellular activity than most sophisticated computers. The fact that you (or anyone) develops diabetes, hypertension, heart disease or cancer in middle age (after you’ve outlived your reproductive years) is simply an indicator that you’ve outlived your body’s ability to keep itself “in shape”. One can do things to decrease their odds of these events: eat low fat, low sugar, low salt and exercise, but genetics has a strong influence on outcomes (as strong if not stronger than environment).

In conclusion, if you ever find some real data supporting your claims, please do let me know.

DarkScribe So you are saying that we should not clean up our food supply because it might not be the cause of every possible illness?To me that is an odd reason for not doing it.

No I am not saying that at all. I case you haven’t noticed, I do managed to express myself quite clearly in English, what I say needs no further interpretation – don’t try to put words in my mouth. If you cannot understand what I write – then stop reading it and commenting on it. I pointed out that you have a closed mind. You look for a single source of all of your ills, real and imaginary, and discount all others.

You also apparently seem to have difficulty following a thread. I did not say this – you did.

”vitamin D supplementation is good. You insist it must be mandated into the food supply at a level that is 1/ 20 th what is needed for general health. You make no argument. You just declare it to be so.”

The only thing that you have said that even remotely resembles anything that I agree with is the use of Stevia – I grow my own.

@walterallenhaxton – Education is the best medicine against unhealthy diets.

@mattbrowne Exactly my point.Now how do we teach the doctors to learn? They are killing us with what they are feeding us. I just heard a man on the radio and he was talking about exactly the same things I have discovered and in the same way.

@walterallenhaxton ”Exactly my point.Now how do we teach the doctors to learn?”

Hahahahahaha…Bravo my friend, bravo!

@walterallenhaxton Now how do we teach the doctors to learn? They are killing us with what they are feeding us

You have Doctors feeding you? Are they moonlighting as chefs?

Hell, if they are killing you it is probably because you are miserly tipper.

@shilolo Genetics does not create epidemics. We simply do not mutate that fast. These particular ones are not genetic in their nature. Unless you can point out an organism that is going around and causing Diabetes, autism and obesity all at the same time in the general population then it must be something that is interning their bodies. I don’t want to hear any nonsense about radio wave. They simply do not have the energy to break chemical bonds, Neither do common magnetic fields. Tylenol and other toxins are a serious problem . They kill people. Sodium nitrate is not needed in food. There are safer ways to preserve it. If there are better ways to do a thing why let people put known toxins in? The cost differences are not significant? Most prescription drugs have warnigs about heart attck sand things of a simular serious nature but no warnings that they should only be taken until you put in place the proper nutrition so that the body can heal. Yes I know that some things can’t be healed. But doctors seem the think that taking the additional step and prescribing supplements to give the body what it needs to heal to be unnecessary. Just leave them taking things that could interact with something new that they eat and kill them. Hence the high death rate from prescription drugs.

You asked about bacteria and obesity, here you go, hot off the presses. FYI, Science is the preeminent scientific journal in the world.

I was also talking about education for everyone. There is a strong correlation between the level of education and cases of obesity.

@walterallenhaxton Unless you can point out an organism that is going around and causing Diabetes, autism and obesity all at the same time in the general population then it must be something that is interning their bodies.

Gee – if this gets any funnier we could use it as a script for a Seinfeld episode. Diabetes has been present in the population since the beginning of recorded history – ancient Chinese, Indian and Egyptian texts all mention it. The only things that has changed is the name of the disease. All that is happening now is that we have a population with a huge percentage who insist on “pigging out” on high carb foods.

I am beginning to understand how you think. Can I be you for a moment?

“The only reason that anyone died on the Titanic is because the passengers’ Doctors didn’t seize and burn their tickets.”

How was that? Close?

You are blaming everything but the real culprits – the people who refuse to listen to advice.

@shilolo Now I have to buy three more supplements. I don’t know whether to thank you or not. Tomorrow I will be busy. After more studying I think I will stop at the biotin for now. The complexity grows to infinity.
Still I read in this article that you should avoid other peoples cooking(processed Foods) Which is pretty much what I mean by the inclusion of many non food elements into the food supply. Also I will note that the food supply has changed in another way do to mineral depletion in our soils in the USA. link

@walterallenhaxton Yeah, but that’s because U.S. farmers don’t rotate their crops. Most farmers are in temperate regions, and are easily able to support year-round growth. Minus grove farmers, of course.

@phillis Don’t the minerals have to go somewhere? I would suspect leaching and runoff due to deep plowing. I don’t know if the chemicals that have been used have also reacted with them tying them up so that the plants can’t use them too. It would take a soil chemist and biologist to tell us that.

I’m not sure which chemicals you mean, but it doesn’t require a soil biologist if you pan back enough to see the larger picture. If you mean the chemicals that are taken away by some plants, then replenished with other plants, plows don’t dig deeply enough to affect a change. Farmers don’t plant past a preset gradient (they cannot even procure a bank loan for planting unless the land is within spec) specifically because of run off, so you’re right on that point. If you mean the chemicals used as pesticides, then of course they leach into the soil…..all the way into the aquifers and, hence, the water tables.

This has been a huge problem in Florida, as nearly the entire state is connected underground by the same water table through an incredibly complex aquifer system. Compounding the problem is that the Chattahoochee river flows south through Georgia, passing right through Atlanta. Central and south Georgia are huge farming and cattle ranching communities, It is the primary feed into the Okeefenokee swamp and into the Everglades. So other, smaller rivers, like the Suwanee river, become affected, too.

@phillis The mineral that was mentioned was Chromium. I do not see how 80% of it could be gone from just harvesting crops or even runoff.
The way that soil is made is through weathering of the underlying rock and its. composition will leave different minerals in the soil. Most of its volume is leached away carrying away minerals that do not support plant life. So soils are far more uniform than rocks are.
When a particular mineral comes up missing like that over a large aria of land that has been used for farm land with various chemicals applied to it I suspect that one or several has reacted with it making it non available. Either through binding it into as compound that the plants can’t use or one that is more easily leached out of the soil during rain.
I don’t think that surface erosion would change the soil in that way. More likely it would just make it far younger(Closer to the rock base) and less fertile.
I could be wrong if chromium accumulates in the soil as the rocks break down.
Ott OH. This can be as complicated and a human body.
I just don’t have the information about the chemicals applied or their reactions.
There could be one or a class that should be eliminated.

Okay, for the record: I am a doctor, and I am not being paid by anybody to “continue with the AMA way.” I ripped up my AMA membership in disgust over a decade ago.

I don’t own a farm or a tractor, either.

@walterallenhaxton I didn’t realize that was what you meant. I do not know the answer to the depletion of chromium, but it oughtn’t be that hard to look up. Just a little digging is all it would take, I imagine.

@Dr_Dredd Planting kisses on boo-boos counts, too, you know :)

@phillis I only do that to my puppy or my nieces and nephews… :-)

@phillis @Dr_Dredd Once again I have another confirmation of my argument. Not only are the strange chemicals that adulterate our food part of our health problems but the food itself is also depleted. Our soil has been wrecked by the same process of putting chemicals that do not belong there into it. The farmers have also been landfilling the organic mater, getting rid of even more. Who knows what has been happening to the organic waste that goes to the sewage treatment plants. I suspect that much of it has been corrupted so much with household chemicals it to is being landfilled.
So I better define the problem as being the use of unnatural chemicals in our food supply[soil] and the inclusion of totally inadequate supplements as well as those that should not be given at all to certain subgroups of the population who eat the food and the depletion of nutrition in the food.
HFC for diabetics and Iron supplementation for adult men as two examples. The doctors can name many more that are not recommended for people with particular acute illnesses.
background link

@walterallenhaxton I’ve known about some of those things, but only with regard to the human body, not farming. Some supplements don’t work well, such as the case of calcium for osteoporosis. It’s only absorbed by the body when taken in a specific way. But I’d no idea the mineral depletion was globally consistent or so severe, as this website claims. I’m glad you presented the link. Are the quotes and percentages verifiable? Does crop rotation restore the balance of at least a few minerals, such as potassium?

@thriftymaid Modern medicine as practiced in my doctors offices has made me diabetic. First they don’t tell me to look to supplementation to cure my mental problems. Then they gave me toxic drugs, when I asked them to change them because the side effects are unacceptable they give me one that put 50 pounds on me in two months that I coulden’t get off then they give me one with a diabetic warning. Maybe you don’t get that often if you have not been inflated. But they could see that I had been. So I find myself diabetic and on a mineral supplement that they were giving me. I was having a lot of problems. I was urinating all of the time. It says in the details that it can cause renal failure. I was having so much trouble that I became a zombie (in and out of sleep all of the time) Knowing this they doubled the mineral supplement to 400 times the RDA for my body size. Since it was not doing anything for me and I was having so much trouble I stopped it and noticed no difference. I was taking a diuretic herb to deal with a possible urinary infection. I did not know that it was that diuretic until later. I finally stopped it and I have not had any problems in that department since. It obviously flushed that mineral out of me.
I don’t know about rich peoples doctors. You are right about that but there are far more of them who are just prescribing medication for particular problems without considering how such medications effect the rest of the body.
Such chemical medications are many times more powerful than the body is adapted too. Also the doctors never seem to prescribe other effective healing agents like herbs or the supplements that should be taken with the drugs, when they well know that they are far more effective or as effective at dealing with bacterial, viral and fungal infections than anything that they offer.

@phillis I don’t know. These people probably would. Trade
I suspect that the reduction in need for such chemicals by biotech crops will help. Their total elimination and a return to natural products should allow the soil to rejuvenate itself. That will not happen without crops that are productive enough economically that people can afford to buy them. Current organically grown crops are unaffordable for most people.

I recently heard an interview with author. David Kirby that I found fascinating. Several people commenting in this thread may also find it interesting so I’m going to put in a link to its website.

www.animalfactorybook.com

@Buttonstc That is a horrible way to run a factory. They are wasting valuable biological material on a large scale. The only explanation for that is that for some reason those materials have been made worthless. Urea is a valuable fertilizer when it is applied to the land. Fecal matter makes valuable compost when mixed with waste plants. At the same time all of this is being wasted chemicals that destroy the mineral content of the soil are being used everywhere.
There must be subsidies and other acts of governmental force dictating this behavior. No sane farmer would waste resources like that on his own. It would guarantee poverty and bankruptcy.

Urea is valuable in small amounts. The sheer amount of urine produced by a CAFO would burn vegetation if applied en masse.

Composted poop is excellent fertilizer. Applying it in great quantity, uncomposted, is harmful. And there’s only so much of this matter that a field can take in before it has to stop and digest, just like it’s eating. Otherwise it’s runoff, and nobody wants poop runoff.

You don’t need “subsidies and governmental force” to create poop lagoons at a CAFO. You just need to have enough animals concentrated in one spot producing more waste than a farmer can use, in less time than it takes to use it properly.