Letter to the President

Dear President Obama,

I am concerned that health care reform will be ineffective unless the monopoly of the conventional drug/surgery paradigm is broken. Our present system is too driven by the search for profits which the insurance system just supports. With our present system effective natural therapies, such as natural foods, supplements and detoxification, that restore health and help the body heal, are blacklisted while patentable drugs and expensive surgeries, touted at "science-based," are reimbursed by insurance in spite of their long list of side effects and their poor record correcting the underlying causes of disease. Health care practitioners who use natural therapies are ignored and often condemned by their peers, who are brainwashed by their training into thinking that drugs are the answer, thanks to the excessive influence of the drug industry. Yet these natural therapy advocates often guide patients to successful healing, with therapies that the patient must pay for, when conventional doctors who were unable to help are covered by insurance. This system is broken and must be fixed!

If you would like to know what real health care reform should involved, you should talk to:

• Dr. James Roberts, M.D., in Toledo, Ohio, who reduced the cost of cardiac care and brought health and healing to his patients by using natural therapies rather than drugs and surgery - http://www.heartfixer.com/
• Dr. Julian Whitaker, M.D., in Newport Beach California, who brings health and healing to his patients with diabetes and many other common health problems using natural therapies rather than drugs - http://www.whitakerwellness.com/
• Dr. Joseph Mercola, D.O., in Chicago, who brings health and healing to his patients with natural therapies, and won’t even take insurance because it is of such little benefit to his patients. He hosts a huge popular website, mercola.com, providing valuable guidance in how to stay healthy - http://naturalhealthcenter.mercola.com/
• Dr. David Brownstein, M.D., in West Bloomfield, Michigan, who brings health and healing to patients with puzzling ailments, whose conventional doctors has overloaded them with ineffective drugs, using supplements and natural hormones - http://www.centerforholisticmedicine.com/
• Dr. Bruce West, D.C., Monterey, California, who has brought health and healing to his readers for over 25 years through an informative newsletter, Health Alert, on natural therapies – http://www.healthalert.com/, 831-372-2103
• Dr. Samuel Epstein, M.D., who has documented the misguided and ineffective ‘war on cancer’ in his book "Cancer-Gate: How to Win the Losing Cancer War - http://www.preventcancer.com/
• Dr. Jonathan Wright, M.D., who has been helping his patients heal with nutritional therapies, along with the best of traditional medicine for 27 years. http://www.wrightnewsletter.com/

There are many others! As a dietitian by profession, with a masters in nutrition, now retired and ‘reformed,’ I understand the excessive influence of the drug and food industries on my training and practice, as I promoted the conventional ‘wisdom’ about food, until in retirement I read more widely and realized the benefits of natural whole foods, not Egg Beaters, Heart Smart margarine, and Hamburger Helper. The commercial agriculture/food industry is another piece in the puzzle of our sky-rocketing health care costs, along with our desire for cheap, convenient food, but that’s an issue for another day.

Thank you for your attention to these urgent issues. Let’s develop a system that pays doctors and hospitals to keep patients well, rather than paying more the sicker they become.

Carolyn K. Johnson, MS nutrition
Williston, Ohio

Also sent to Democratic Leadership Team & Pres. Obama 6/5/09

Obesity taking toll on U.S. health care

Obesity continues to make headlines - not surprising, because the very recommendations that contribute to obesity are still being touted by the 'experts'. Looking at Cleveland Clinic's website for their recommendations, I see skim milk (actually good for fattening pigs), various margarines & oils (modern vegetable oil industries don't want you to know that obesity and chronic disease have risen right along with the rise in oil consumption), soy foods (the soy industry doesn't want you to know all the problems that modern soy foods can cause), artificial sweeteners (the industry certainly doesn't want you to know of their links to obesity), low fat this and that - though there is precious little evidence that restricting traditional fats contributes to obesity, but lots of evidence that carbs, with their effects on blood sugars and insulin, are the real culprits. USDA and the food industry don't want us to know that we don't need all the wheat & corn concoctions recommended on the Food Pyramid - bad for business! The pop industry refuses to acknowledge how bad refined sugar is for us. My fellow dietitians don't want to look seriously at the evidence and admit that they've been wrong about butter and saturated fat all these years. Dietitians will scream foul, but they don't realize how brainwashed they are by the system that makes money off all this. FDA threatens anyone claiming nutritional healing, yet they approve all kinds of drugs developed from natural healing substances into patentable forms (read profitable), in spite of their many side effects. Is it any wonder that health care reform is so contentious with all these conflicting interests making money off our ill health!
It might contribute to the recession if we had real health care reform and got truly healthy!

Big Food vs. Big Insurance

Excellent article by Michael Pollan on the potential influence of the health insurance industry on the food and agriculture industries.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/10/opinion/10pollan.html

The Health Care Problem, continued

In spite of all the talk abut health care reform, few are identifying the real reasons why there is so much resistance to changing our system in which we spend enormous amount of money on "health" care while so few of us are genuinely healthy (without reliance on drugs!). A truly well nourished body has remarkable healing abilities, but the food industry makes lots of money supplying us with unhealthy, but profitable, processed foods stripped of essential nutrients and laced with unnatural additives. So the food industry would loose if we supported our health by eating natural, unprocessed nutritious foods to support our health. The drug industry, which makes enormous profits on our drug dependency, would lose if we maintained our health with real food, inexpensive herbs, and nutritional supplements. Hospitals would lose if we were healthy and rarely needed to go to the hospital. Conventional doctors, who have little real knowledge about nutrition, would lose, as we would rarely need medical care, instead visiting our local savvy nutritionist or naturopath for guidance in developing our individual nutritional path to vibrant health. Notice I did not say 'dietitian,' because as a dietitian myself I know that my training was heavily influenced by the food industry and biased against herbs and supplements - I had to learn that on my own after I retired, and I learned that some of the things I had been telling my patients, such as 'use margarine, not butter,' were just plain wrong - heavily influenced by the vegetable oil industry.

Why do most doctors know so little about nutrition? As I said before, our accreditation system was developed by in the early 20th century by Carnegie and Rockefeller, who had large vested interests in pharmaceuticals, so only medical schools teaching a pharmaceutical approach received accreditation.* The numerous schools that taught a nutritional approach had to close. Was this based on sound science? No! It was money speaking, and it still speaks today! What do we need to do? Break the monopoly that conventional medicine has in our illness care system. There is a growing list of doctors who have learned nutritional approaches on their own and are bringing true health and healing to their patients, at much lower cost, yet they are often reprimanded and ostracized for their unconventional ways of practicing. Recognize the value of those who are well trained in nutritional therapies. Pay doctors and nutritional therapist to keep us well without reliance on drugs, which treat symptoms, but rarely correct the underlying causes. Fund the research that demonstrates the efficacy of these therapies - drug companies sure don't want to do it! Give us all some incentives to stay well and develop truly healthy life styles and eating habits.

Likely to happen? Don't hold your breath. Some will complain about contributing to the recession because of all those lost jobs in the illness care industry!

* This information courtesy of THE LIBERATION DIET, by Kevin Brown, CPT, NC & Annette Presley, RD, LD, CPT, another reformed dietitian.

The Health Care Problem

Are you aware that allopathic medicine has been high-jacked by the drug industry. MD's are taught to diagnose disease and prescribe the appropriate drug, which does not address the underlying cause of the illness, and often has side effects requiring yet another drug, more side effects, and more drugs. They are not taught the remarkable healing powers of the body if it is given appropriate nutrition and support. The very health professionals who do have this knowledge, naturopaths, homeopathic physicians, nutrition oriented chiropractors, and a few self-schooled nutrition oriented MD's, are usually not covered by insurance, yet they are the ones who can lead us to true health, avoiding the enormous cost of the present system of unhealthy processed food, and drugs to treat the inevitable health problems.

About one hundred years ago Carnegie and Rockefeller, who had large vested interests in pharmaceuticals, established the accreditation system for medical schools. Only schools teaching a pharmaceutical approach to medicine received accreditation. Before that there was plenty of competition from natural, homeopathic and nutritional approaches. Health reform will not succeed in reducing the present astronomical costs until we break the monopoly that conventional allopathic medicine and the drug industry have on our health care system.

Don't fall for the notion that health care should be based on "science-based research," since an estimated half of what doctors do now has no basis in good research. Good unbiased nutrition research is so expensive and so complicated, and proper controls so difficult, that it is easy to conduct a nutrition research project that shows no benefit of nutrition - important variables were neglected, poor quality supplements used, too short a duration, etc. Unfortunately good research is often ignored, thanks to the bias toward drug therapy. I saw that in my own training.
Excellent health, with minimal reliance on drugs, should be the gold standard for judging excellent of care. Our health care professionals should understand and utilize the value of careful planned, high quality nutritional supplements to support health and healing, or our health care costs will continue to escalate!

Health Care Reform and the Medical Monopoly

Are you aware that allopathic medicine has been high-jacked by the drug industry. MD's are taught to diagnose disease and prescribe the appropriate drug, which does not address the underlying cause of the illness, and often has side effects requiring yet another drug, more side effects, and more drugs. They are not taught the remarkable healing powers of the body if it is given appropriate nutrition and support. The very health professionals who do have this knowledge, naturopaths, homeopathic physicians, nutrition oriented chiropractors, and a few self-schooled nutrition oriented MD's, are usually not covered by insurance, yet they are the ones who can lead us to true health, avoiding the enormous cost of the present system of unhealthy processed food, and drugs to treat the inevitable health problems. About one hundred years ago Carnegie and Rockefeller, who had large vested interests in pharmaceuticals, established the accreditation system for medical schools. Only schools teaching a pharmaceutical approach to medicine received accreditation. Before that there was plenty of competition from natural, homeopathic and nutritional approaches. Health reform will not succeed in reducing the present astronomical costs until we break the monopoly that conventional allopathic medicine and the drug industry have on our health care system.

Don't fall for the notion that health care should be based on "science-based research," since an estimated half of what doctors do now has no basis in good research. Good unbiased nutrition research is so expensive and so complicated, and proper controls so difficult, that it is easy to conduct a nutrition research project that shows no benefit of nutrition - important variables were neglected, poor quality supplements used, too short a duration, etc. Unfortunately good research is often ignored, thanks to the bias toward drug therapy. I saw that in my own training.
Excellent health, with minimal reliance on drugs, should be the gold standard for judging excellent of care. Our health care professionals should understand and utilize the value of careful planned, high quality nutritional supplements to support health and healing, or our health care costs will continue to escalate!

Healthcare Reform and Our Food System

The headlines are discouraging – ‘Obesity rates soar among boomers,’ ‘Serious ailments in our health-care debate.’ Somehow things don’t change.

I wrote this letter to the Blade 3 years ago:
"I am disappointed that the Blade is promoting the misleading recommendation that a low fat diet is still best. True, if you follow a low fat diet, you avoid the troublesome fats, like trans fats and highly refined vegetables oils that are too high in omega-6 fats while short in valuable omega-3’s, and you limit the high calorie feed-lot fattened meat that is lacking in omega-3’s, vitamin E and antioxidants that are found in good pasture raised meat. But you can still fill up on white bread, low fat cookies and ice cream, leaving you short on many vitamins and minerals, while lacking the good fats that leave you satisfied and supply essential fat soluble vitamins. The real secret is to avoid highly processed and refined foods, but watch the sparks fly from the food industry when you say that! If you eat old fashioned whole foods in moderation – fruits, vegetables, meat and dairy from pastured animals, butter, whole grains properly prepared, you’d do well. The notion that saturated fats are not good for you is based on bad science, however much you see that repeated. After all mother’s milk is high in saturated fat! But the company that saturated fat often keeps just makes it seem bad by association."

So what do I see in today’s Blade – a recipe for ‘Creamy Caramelicious Milksicles’ from that "expert" authority, the National Dairy Council. What does it contain? Low fat milk, sugar, cornstarch, and caramel topping – 20% of low fat calories from milk and 80% from highly processed and refined foods of little nutritional value! It works out to about 125 calories each milksicle, containing a measly quarter cup of milk, missing the valuable nutrients in the cream, and leaving you hungry for sure for something more satisfying. The typical dietitian response – ‘kids need the calories.’ My response – those kids need the calories and nutrients in real foods. We have no idea what the long term consequences of such empty calories will be, though the research of Dr. Weston A. Price revealed that when previously healthy isolated groups of people started eating Western refined foods they developed cavities, crooked teeth and a host of other health problems. What a shame that Dr. Price’s research has been ignored (suppressed?) in our modern world of commercial foods.

Why is that? A thumbs-up review of "The Liberation Diet" in the new issue of the Wise Traditions Journal gives a clue: "About one hundred years ago Carnegie and Rockefeller, who had a large vested interest in pharmaceuticals, established the accreditation system for medical schools. Only schools teaching a pharmaceutical approach to medicine received accreditation. Before that there was plenty of competition from natural, homeopathic and nutritional approaches." I can see signs of that same heavy handed influence in the world of dietetics. The milksicles of dubious value are the result. Healthcare reform will never succeed if we don’t also somehow reform the food system.