You’ve heard it many times from many politicians: “We have the greatest health care system in the world.” This may be true if you are wealthy enough, but for most of us it’s a terrifying tightrope between getting, and staying, insured in the hope of avoiding the abyss of crippling debt if, or more likely when, your health takes a bad turn.
The same politician will follow his uplifting statement with a pledge to fix the health care system with a new plan. Each promise is based on controlling the cost of health care by fixing health insurance. So far no sitting president has been able to come up with a plan that works.
Health care costs have risen to the point that even routine physicals are staggeringly expensive. Anything involving hospitalization can result in devastating debt. Coping with the heavy paperwork needed to deal with myriad insurance plans has raised the cost of doing business for doctors, so much so that they cannot honor plans from more than a few companies. This has led to the health insurance industry being controlled by a handful of very large corporations.
The power of these health insurance companies forces doctors and hospitals to join networks that the insured patients have to access for care. Treating a patient who is “in-network” means accepting whatever the insurance company decides is a fair price for a particular procedure or service. Patients who do not have insurance are required to pay a much larger price to cover the losses from the insured patients. This creates pressure on everyone to have health insurance.
Most countries in the civilized world have national health care plans. Citizens have access to the care they need, without the worry of needing to afford it. It’s not a perfect system, since demand can often lead to a long wait for non-urgent care, but it’s better than paying for health insurance. Why is this not available in the US? There are many reasons, but the top one has to be the fact that the health insurance companies are among the largest contributors to lawmaker campaign funds. They also employ legions of lobbyists to make sure that laws are always in their favor.
A second component of our health care system is the doctors. The burden of paperwork and managing a practice as a solo practitioner is very difficult. Doctors today are more likely to be partners in a professional corporation. Some of these corporations are owned in part by insurance companies. The performance of a doctor in such a corporation is judged on things like the number of tests ordered, prescriptions written, and referrals made. A typical visit is usually 15 minutes or less. Those specializing in family practice function mainly as gatekeepers, sending patients to specialists for anything beyond the basics. This boosts patient costs, and reinforces the need for insurance. Even more disturbing is the growing rise of private equity health care corporations. More about that here.
Considering that health care accounts for close to 20% of the economy of the United States, you might expect us to be a nation of amazingly healthy people. Instead each generation is less healthy than the one before. Nearly half the population is obese and life expectancy is actually declining. Metabolic diseases like type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and cancer are so common that they are now to be expected if one survives long enough to retire. These diseases are classified as noncommunicable, meaning that you can’t catch them from exposure to people that have them.
There is a third member of the health care cartel: pharmaceutical companies. With all those unhealthy people, the market for drugs to ease their ailments is immense. Whatever the problem, there is a drug being made for it. These drugs do not actually fix problems, they only make them more bearable so you can keep going. As a group drug companies wield an even bigger influence on the government than the insurance companies. They spend enormous amounts of money advertising treatments for conditions that most people have never heard of. Every TV commercial features lively and healthy-looking people having the time of their lives, all while the announcer lists a lengthy list of terrible side effects, often including death. This is done at high speed, so as to not draw attention to the dangers, ending with “Ask your doctor if (insert drug name) might be right for you.”
All this is why our health care system cannot be fixed by politicians, no matter how sincerely they promise to fix it. It’s a system built to enrich those at the top, including those who would fix it, so there is simply no incentive. But wait! Isn’t there an implied promise to fix it in the title of this article?
I can’t fix the health care system in these United States. What I can do is tell you how to become your own personal health advocate so you don’t have to be dependent on the parasites running the existing system. The first step is understanding why we, as a country, are so sick.
Get out the family photo album and go look at those members of your family that came before you. If you are over 65, as I am, that means grandparents. If you are younger, look at greats or great-greats, assuming you can find photos. How many are obese? How many died younger than 70 from natural causes, i.e. not due to accident or war? In my family most grandparents died in their 90s, with only one in her late 80s. Hospitalization happened only in the final week or two of life. What happened to change this?
It’s time to introduce the fourth villain in this piece: Big Food. Nearly all the edibles in your local supermarket are produced by a handful of gigantic corporations. They have gotten big by buying out smaller producers, while retaining the original brand names to maintain the illusion of competition. Food is an ideal product for a company to sell, because there is always a market. Many of the cigarette corporations discovered that their litigation-damaged tobacco business could be replaced by selling junk food, for even more profit. The only real competition is between the monoliths that make it, and much of that competition is artificial, as the brands that seem to be competing are all owned by the same corporation.
The primary goal of a corporation is profit for the shareholders. One of the favorite ways of increasing profit is by reducing the cost of producing the product. This is easy to do by replacing ingredients with cheaper alternatives. Any alternatives that make the food taste more appealing will be used. All that’s necessary is to get by the regulators, which is easy to do enough with donations and lobbyists.
An additional way of boosting profit is to make products that are addictive. For most of the 20th century food manufacturers worked diligently to make changes that would lead to people eating more, well beyond the amount needed to sustain life. Nutritional content is not a factor. Adding vitamins gives food the illusion of being healthy, as does packaging that proclaims “All Natural”, “Wholesome”, or “Organic”. Farms that raise animals for food, such as cows, pigs, and chickens, use very sophisticated computer programs that create feed formulations which maximize the animal’s growth, while minimizing cost. The food companies use these same methods to maximize the addictive quality of snacks, while keeping the production cost to a minimum.
Our government also plays a part in deciding what we eat. The now infamous “Food Pyramid” evolved from a policy designed to impress a visiting Russian leader back in the 70s. Farmers were strongly encouraged to plant large amount of wheat to bring reality to the “amber waves of grain” we know from the song America the Beautiful. After the dignitary left, farmers were left with a huge surplus of grain, which drove prices down. The Department of Agriculture came to the rescue by redefining a healthy diet as one based on grains. Further damage was done by the flawed research of physiologist Ancel Keys, who theorized that heart disease was caused by fat in the diet. We now know that’s not true, but most doctors still believe it.
From those errors sprang the “low fat” and “fat free” craze, and the food companies got on board. Removing fat from food also removed much of the flavor. This was compensated by adding sugar, which was also cheaper than fat. Discovering that all the added sugar increased addiction made it a win. The result is supermarket shelves awash in unhealthy products made to taste great, while creating addiction.
The human species has survived and evolved for thousands of years eating a diet of plants and animals. Sugar in the diet came only from fruit, and only in specific seasons. A complex system of chemical messengers allowed our ancestors to store fat in times of plenty, and then live off that fat when food was scarce. Indigenous people all over the world adapted to their environment this way, just as most animals in the wild still do.
The arrival of farming, indoor plumbing, and other marvels of the Industrial Revolution changed that. No longer needing to spend all our time searching for food, we used our large brains to create things to make life better. That change came about so quickly that our bodies had no time to adapt. Now we’re paying the price.
A key hormone in human metabolism is insulin. It regulates the metabolism of carbohydrates, fats, and proteins in the body. A diet that consists primarily of carbohydrates will lead to insulin resistance and a disruption of the entire process of metabolism. If you eat a Standard American Diet (SAD) you are probably insulin-resistant. Obesity often results, but even if it doesn’t, the damage is being done. In adults, by age 50 most will have problems with inflammation leading to joint pain, high blood pressure, and pre-diabetes. But with the ubiquity of sugar in almost all food, diabetes is starting to show up even in young children.
“So what?” you say. “Processed food tastes good and saves me time. Where’s the harm?” That’s what Big Food is counting on. All those commercials of good-looking people living it up on the beach, while drinking the soft drink of choice, make it seem completely benign. “Maybe it adds a couple of pounds per year, but I’ll work that off when I start my gym membership again in January.” In 20, 30, or 40 years that couple of pounds becomes 40, 60, or 80 and your doctor is lecturing you about being pre-diabetic. Your blood pressure is too high, and you haven’t been able to find a diet that takes off more than 3 pounds, before putting back 5. Joints ache, and you start to wonder if this is what old age feels like.This was me in my 50s. By retirement I was carrying 60 pounds of excess fat. At the same time my mother was slipping away to Alzheimer’s and dementia. I learned how devastating that disease is to the family, and decided I didn’t want to go down that awful road.
After retiring I used my newfound free time to do research.My wife and I experimented with several diets, some moderately good, and some astoundingly awful. We ultimately settled on the Keto diet, so named because it causes your body to enter a state of ketosis in which fat is burned rather than carbohydrates. We have since made a lot of changes, adapting it to our lifestyle. We also eat one meal a day, with a light snack at night with TV. Now in our mid-70s, we have lost weight (all of my 60 pound excess), have textbook perfect blood pressure, and no prescriptions. I have continued to follow the research of those who are diligently trying to eliminate metabolic diseases like diabetes, Alzheimer’s, cancer and more. These maladies are caused by what’s been put into the body, with the single biggest source of trouble being the food we eat.
Knowing that food is the secret to health is not a new discovery. The Greek Hippocrates, known for the physicians oath “Above all else you must do no harm.” had one about food: “Let food be your medicine and let your medicine be food.” Knowing this secret gives you the tools to take control of your own health and live your best life. I’ve included resources at the end of this article, but you can get started with three simple steps:
Beware of fructose. This is the sugar found naturally in fruit. As Dr. Richard Johnson states (book reference below), this sugar sends a message to our body that winter is coming. Food will be scarce. Eat more now to store fat to survive. Of course in the modern world, that prolonged period without food never comes. The amount of fructose in a piece of fruit is not a huge problem, because the fiber and water of the fruit discourages excess consumption. But in juice it becomes concentrated. One cup of apple juice requires at least 3 apples. You’re not eating the apples, but you are getting three times the fructose from one apple. The sweetness of the juice makes you want more. Giving a child apple juice is perceived as healthy, but it puts stress on the liver, and offers little in the way of nutrition. This is likely why we’re seeing more young children with the same liver damage seen in adult alcoholics. But the fructose in fruits and their juices is not the biggest danger. High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) was developed as a substitute for sugar, and is used almost exclusively in sweet products. This compound is not really food, but it is much sweeter than sugar. When ingested it goes directly to the liver for processing. Drinking a lot of soft drinks can lead to obesity and metabolic health problems. If you see the word “fructose” on a product label, don’t buy it. In the European Union products that use HFCS must contain a warning label, but in the US it falls in the category of items “generally recognized as safe”. That’s government-speak for “It won’t kill you, but we don’t really know what happens over a long time. The lobbyists say it’s probably okay.” One more thing - fructose is the favorite food of the bacteria that cause tooth decay.
Eliminate industrial seed oils. These were originally used to lubricate machinery, but with a lot of chemical processing they can be changed from their natural state of smelly, tar-like goo into the clear, innocent looking stuff in the bottle with the “heart healthy” label. These oils are very unstable when heated, and a lot of heat is used to make them. They are also sold as cooking oils. Over time they will cause chronic inflammation in the body, which leads to all kinds of health problems, including the heart attacks they supposedly prevent. Seed oils also contribute to sugar addiction. Do not buy any product that has one of these in the list of ingredients:
Corn oil, canola oil, cottonseed oil, soybean oil, sunflower oil, safflower oil, grape seed oil, or rice bran oil. These last 2 are more commonly used in restaurants, particularly those offering fast food, and will not normally be ingredients in packaged food. Instead of these oils use coconut oil, olive oil, avocado oil, ghee (grass-fed if possible), butter, or even lard. (Yes! It’s healthier.)Avoid fat-free food items. When they take the fat out of the food, sugar goes in to restore the flavor. Our bodies were made to process fat, which is why we store excess calories as fat, not sugar crystals. Don’t worry that fat will increase cholesterol. In hundreds of studies it has been shown that about half of the people who have had a heart attack have low cholesterol, and half have high cholesterol. Cholesterol is simply not a factor. Sugar is. Fat does not stimulate the release of insulin, and it makes you feel full faster than carbohydrates.
Cutting down on sugar is recommended, and it’s a good thing to do. But it’s hard if you’ve become addicted. Cut down if you can. Don’t worry about harming your health by eliminating HFCS and the seed oils. They are in no way essential, and stopping them will only make you feel better. You may lose a bit of weight, you may not. That’s not the goal at this point. The idea is to start cutting things out of your diet that will harm you. Try it for 30 days and see what happens. If you see an improvement check out the resources below, and enjoy the best health possible.
Resources
If you want to learn more about improving your health, these books and websites are some of my favorite sources for solid information.
Deep Nutrition by Dr. Catherine Shanahan. Dr.Cate explains how we got here and how to get healthy by eating the right foods. This book should be a required text in medical schools.
Metabolical by Dr. Robert Lustig. Another book that your doctor likely never read, but which should be in the medical school curriculum. Dr. Lustig explains what processed food does to the body, and explains why some of the longstanding beliefs in medicine are just plain wrong.
Levels - Unlock Your Metabolic Health. In addition to a complete program to get you metabolically healthy, Dr. Casey Means offers free informative newsletters and podcasts. If you are pressed for time, just listen to some of the podcasts, especially those that feature the other doctors in this list.
Nature Wants Us to Be Fat by Dr. Richard Johnson. His studies related to the effects of sugar on metabolic diseases reveal how an evolutionary adaptation in humans has been hijacked by our modern diet.
Drop Acid by Dr. David Perlmutter. Uric acid is generally associated with gout, but as Dr. Perlmutter explains in this book, it has a much wider range in what it does to your health.
I need to print this out and just carry it around. Or possibly have it tattooed on me so I always have it handy.