Lose Weight, Have More Energy and Be Happier in 10 Days. Peter Glickman

you get to know him.

      And the best news of all? I′m pregnant! So, I′m sure you′ll agree our getting married is the best thing to do.

      Love, Your daughter, Amy

      At the bottom of the page in small letters are the words, “Please turn over.” The dad wonders what could possibly be next and quickly turns the page.

      Dad,

      I’m sorry to have put you through all that. I’m not pregnant and we’re not getting married. I’m certainly not dropping out of school for Bob; I broke off with him a couple days ago. You were right, he was a jerk.

      However, I did get a D in chemistry. I just wanted to put it in perspective.

      This story makes an important point: Perspective is very important.

      Much has been said, published and broadcast about America’s health care system, the medical advances we have made and that it is the best health care system in the world. I would like to give you a different perspective.

Current Health Care Statistics

      Cancer

      According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the cancer rate in America more than doubled from the start of the War on Cancer in 1971 to the year 2001.⁷ This was in spite of the fact that the National Cancer Institute’s annual budget went from $150 million in 1971 to $4.6 billion in 2005, an increase of thirty times.⁸ Now “40.77% of men and women born today will be diagnosed with cancer at some time during their lifetime”!⁹

      Heart Disease

      One person in three suffers from some form of heart or circulatory system disease, including high blood pressure, heart disease and stroke. One out of every three people dies from these conditions. That is more than 2,400 deaths each day, an average of one death every 37 seconds.¹⁰

      Diabetes

      “The United States saw a 136 percent increase in the number of people with diabetes between 1980 and 2007.”¹¹

      Obesity

      The number of adults who are extremely obese and thus likely to have serious health problems increased 600% from 1961 to 2006, according to the CDC.¹² The extremely obese have more than twice the risk of heart disease, high blood pressure and diabetes than normal weight Americans .¹³

      Cost of Health Care

      Although America spent 36 times as much money as Cuba on health care in 1997 according to the World Health Organization ($3724 vs. $109), an American male was only expected to live one month longer than a Cuban male. Worse, a Cuban male could expect to remain healthy for one month longer at the end of his life than an American male. Even worse, the World Health Organization ranked Cuba’s health level 36th in the world, while America’s ranked 72nd out of 144.¹⁴ By the way, who spent more than any other country in the world for health care? America.

      These statistics clearly demonstrate there is something modern medicine does not know about these diseases that is important for their prevention. Why is this?

Ideas in Conflict

      Modern medicine is built on the concept of symptoms and disease. The modern medical doctor is taught to observe the patient’s symptoms, run diagnostic tests and compare that information to symptoms of known diseases. After that process of diagnosis, he prescribes the currently accepted treatment to cure that disease and the patient hopefully gets well—meaning the patient no longer has those symptoms. This method may work well for infections, measles, etc. But heart disease, high blood pressure, obesity, diabetes, Alzheimer′s and cancer are another matter, and a very serious one, because together they were the cause of death for more than half of all Americans who died in 2006, according to the CDC.

      However, the medical disease concept is not the only concept of healing. There are others: chiropractic, acupuncture, traditional Chinese medicine and naturopathy. Naturopathic doctors teach their patients to use diet, exercise, lifestyle changes and natural therapies to enhance their bodies’ ability to prevent and combat disease, according to the American Association of Naturopathic Physicians website. (Note the wording “doctors teach their patients …” above. The word “doctor” actually comes from the Latin word docere, meaning to teach.) These alternative models of healing base their practices on the fact that the human body will heal itself if given the chance and the patient is taught how to do that. For example, when you cut yourself, the wound heals, provided you keep it clean and protected from being reopened again.

      Diagnosis is not as important to these other schools of healing because it is recognized that if you give your body correct nutrition and exercise, detoxify it as needed, and eliminate negative mental influences and stress, the body will heal itself. This was the foundation of modern medicine as developed by Hippocrates, the Father of Medicine, 400 BC. However, medicine has not always stayed true to its roots.

Challenging Established Authority

      Because other healing models accept other causes for lack of vibrant good health and happiness, they are often dismissed or even fought by medical societies. A historical example of this is Sir William A. Lane (1856-1943). He was a distinguished member of the British Royal Society of Surgeons. He is still known for three surgical procedures he invented, including the use of plates and screws for repairing fractures that otherwise wouldn’t heal correctly. During the First World War (1914-18), he opened a branch of Queen Mary’s Hospital, which pioneered plastic surgery to repair facial birth defects.

      “Lane was regarded at his peak as the best abdominal surgeon in England and was called on to operate on Royalty, politicians and many society figures of the Edwardian era.”¹⁵

      His vast experience in surgery led him to realize that long-term, uneliminated waste in the colon putrefied and therefore caused many other diseases. Lane referred to it as autointoxication (literally, self poisoning). The modern word for it is endotoxins (endo = internal, toxins = poisons). For example, such toxins are created when protein is acted on by certain bacteria. In his first misguided attempt to remedy this, Lane, being a surgeon, performed total colectomies (removing the entire colon).

      In 1926, after observing the failure of surgery as a treatment for this condition, Lane “started promoting exercise, fruit and vegetables and bran cereal as the answer to bowel problems. Using his many royal and society connections, he set up the New Health Society [in England in 1925] to promote … health education… [and] … wrote columns in the newspapers, held public lectures and improved the distribution of fruit and vegetables.”¹⁶

      The medical establishment fought his effort to improve health with non-medicinal, non-surgical means. They were so vehement that in 1926, Lane, “in order to promote the New Health Society…, asked to have his name removed from the Medical Register to avoid being disciplined by the [British] General Medical Council.”¹⁷

      Addressing the Johns Hopkins Hospital and Medical College, Sir William A. Lane said:

      “Gentlemen,