Drugging ourselves to health?

Why doesn't orthodox medicine make people well?

In last week's post, Ozempic linked with blinding eye condition, I discussed a recently-published study reporting a link between the use of the antidiabetic/antiobesity medication semaglutide (marketed as Ozempic and Wegovy), and a four-to-almost-eight-fold increase in risk of nonarteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy (NAION), the second most common cause of blindness due to optic nerve damage after glaucoma.

I also summarised four additional cases of serious adverse effects associated with other widely-used drugs, which were only identified after years to decades of use by many millions of people:

1. Prolonged use of certain progesterone-like drugs is linked to increased risk of meningioma, the most common type of brain tumour in adults;

2. Diabetics who take statin drugs have greater deterioration in their diabetic condition than those who don't use statins, with the highest statin doses linked with the worst diabetic control;

3. Long-term use of drugs for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is linked to increased risk of cardiovascular disease, in both young people and adults; and

4. Antibiotic use before the age of two is associated with increased risk of a raft of chronic conditions including atopic dermatitis, allergic rhinitis, food allergy, coeliac disease, asthma, obesity, and ADHD.

I asked my readers what they thought these five cases had in common, and (as I expected, given the high intelligence of my audience), received some thoughtful responses, including these:

Each of these responses touched on a crucial element of the fundamental mismatch between the orthodox Western medical model of disease, and the concepts of human health and ill-health that are common to both ancient healing practices such as Ayurveda and Traditional Chinese Medicine, and to Western schools of non-orthodox healthcare such as the Natural Hygiene movement, naturopathy and osteopathy.

The medical model of disease

The medical model conceptualises the human body as a sack of organs and body fluids that, throughout the course of life, inevitably malfunctions in various ways, either because it is attacked by germs, or deranged by disease-causing genes, or aging, or just bad luck (which is euphemistically dubbed idiopathic, a fancy-schmancy word for 'we don't know what caused your illness and, truth be told, have little interest in finding out').

Medical research on 'causes of disease' is focused on identifying biochemical pathways by which disease processes occur, and genes which code for pathological alterations in these biochemical pathways. The object of this research is to find drug targets that block or alter those pathways, or silence or replace the 'faulty' genes. But the alterations in biochemical pathways that are associated with disease are not the cause/s of that disease; they are the consequence of ill-health. And the vast majority of diseases that afflict human beings are not driven by genetic mutations, with the rare exception of single gene disorders such as Huntington's disease and Duchenne's muscular dystrophy.

In more recent years, the medical model of disease has enlarged somewhat to admit epigenetics - changes to the way that genes operate, caused by environmental and behavioural factors - as a causal factor in disease. But sadly, this recognition that our genes do not spontaneously go awry, but rather, that their expression is altered by the milieu in which they operate, has not catalysed any significant change in the practise of medicine, or in research on developing therapeutic agents.

The non-orthodox model of health and dis-ease

By contrast, traditional healing practices conceptualise health as our normal and natural state, which is engendered by the provision of the requirements of health: clean air, pure water, species-appropriate diet, physical activity, rest and sleep, exposure to sunlight and nature, secure attachments to loved ones and satisfying social interactions, and engagement in productive activity that provides a sense of purpose and meaning. Note that each of these requirements of health has an optimal quantity, which varies depending on the individual's life stage and current vitality level, and that too much of any of these factors (except clean air) can be as bad for our health as too little.

If a person becomes ill, it's safe to assume that one or more of the requirements of health are not being supplied in appropriate quantities and proportions, and/or causes of disease (such as compounds which are foreign to our bodies) have been introduced. It logically follows that a rational approach to treatment of illness would be to remove the cause/s of disease, and to ensure that each requirement of health is being supplied in its currently-appropriate quantity.

To take a specific example, if I develop an upper respiratory tract infection - a cold or flu-like illness - I know that I need to lie down in a warm but well-ventilated room; drink pure water only according to my thirst (which will be reduced if I develop a fever); abstain from food until my appetite returns; avoid all physical exertion, social interaction and work until my energy level is high enough for me to desire to engage in these activities again; and secure brief periods of sun exposure that don't exhaust me.

I also need to abstain from any pharmaceutical that interferes with the biological processes that my body is using to restore health, such as fever-lowering medications and painkillers. (See Amusing COVID-19 patients to death with fever suppressing drugs and The medical insanity of fever suppression in COVID-19 to learn more about how drugs like paracetamol/acetaminophen and ibuprofen make you sicker for longer by thwarting the evolutionarily-conserved fever response.)

That is to say, I recognise that my symptoms and signs - fever, sore throat, lethargy, anorexia (loss of appetite), cough and so forth - are indicators that my body is reacting appropriately to infection by a respiratory pathogen - an infection which could only occur if I've already compromised my health by, for example, eating insufficiently-nutritious food, short-changing myself on sleep, not getting enough sunshine or exhausting myself with overexercising or overwork. Seen in this light, my dis-ease can be framed as a corrective, that nudges me to adjust my behaviour in order to restore homoeostasis, the dynamic state of balance of body systems that engenders health. I don't have to take any specific actions to 'cure' my symptoms, because my symptoms are the cure.

So what do those five cases of delayed recognition of serious drug adverse reactions have in common?

I don't claim to have the only, or the correct, interpretation, but this is how I see it:

In each case, a 'condition' which is either a normal physiological event, or the body's predictable, logical and expected attempt to adapt to environmental and behavioural influences that are inimical to health, is framed as a disease which requires treatment. The treatment, of course, consists of a pharmaceutical agent that interferes with the biological pathway that is responsible for the adaptation.

Obesity is not a disease. It's the entirely predictable consequence of consuming excessive amounts of food, especially food that is inconsistent with the natural history of the species. It's noteworthy that the only creatures that become obese are human beings, our domesticated and captive animals, and wild animals that gain access to our ultraprocessed 'foods' (such as city-dwelling pigeons and trash-scrounging bears).

Pregnancy is not a disease. It's the expected consequence of a woman of reproductive age engaging in sexual intercourse (shocker, I know). Menstrual disorders are also highly influenced by diet and lifestyle factors, so I could make a strong case that dysfunction in a body system that is as crucial to human survival as the female reproductive tract, is not a disease but the expected consequence of unfavourable environmental conditions and behavioural choices.

Type 2 diabetes is not a disease. It's an adaptation to overfull fat depots, which result from chronic energy imbalance (too many calories in, and not enough out). Insulin resistance - the hallmark of type 2 diabetes - is the body's desperate attempt to limit the absorption of glucose, in the context of adipose tissue depots becoming so overburdened with fat that organs not intended to store fat (chiefly the liver and pancreas) are clogging up with it.

Elevated low density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) is not a disease. It's an entirely predictable consequence of eating a diet that is not consistent with our species' natural history. Notably, studies of extant hunter gatherer communities indicate that the normal LDL-C range for human beings is 1.3-1.8 mmol/L (50 to 70 mg/dl). The Tarahumara, a Mexican agricultural people who consume a low-fat, high-fibre diet based on corn and beans, have an average LDL-C of 1.86 mmol/L (72 mg/dl). But after just five weeks of consuming an 'affluent diet' of dairy products, lard, egg yolks, white flour and sugar-rich foods, their LDL-C rose by 39 per cent, to 2.59 mmol/L (100 mg/dl).

ADHD is not a disease. It's an entirely predictable consequence of exposing the developing human brain to neurotoxins such as fluoride and starving it of essential nutrients, and placing children in educational settings that are completely out of step with their developmental needs.

Finally, a large percentage of conditions for which antibiotics are prescribed in children under two are not diseases, but are predictable consequences of inappropriate feeding practices (for example, recurrent middle ear infections from cows' milk allergy).

Evolutionary mismatch

Biologists frame these disorders that arise from an (apparently) dysfunctional response to environmental conditions that are nonoptimal for our species, as evolutionary mismatch. That is, the behaviours which increased the odds of survival in our environment of evolutionary adaptedness - such as being strongly motivated to eat all the sweet and fatty food we can get our little mitts on, and using as little energy as possible to perform our daily tasks - are maladaptive in an environment that is radically different.

(I know that some of my readers reject the theory of evolution, and this isn't the right forum to argue that point. I think it's pretty obvious that all creatures are adapted to their environments, and when they move to different environments, they have to adapt or die. For example, the trait of lactase persistence occurs only in populations that domesticated cows or other milkable animals, for the purpose of using their milk as a food source. People whose ancestors lived in equatorial regions have dark skin, eyes and hair because they produced large amounts of the body's natural sunscreen, melanin, while those whose ancestors hail from temperate regions have pale skin, eyes and hair to facilitate greater synthesis of photoproducts like vitamin D, in conditions of reduced sun exposure. If you dislike the word 'evolution', just swap it for 'adaptation' and I think we'll be OK.)

As Doug Lisle and Alan Goldhamer discussed in their paradigm-shifting book The Pleasure Trap, evolutionary mismatch explains why what's bad for us feels good, and vice versa. No wonder the Western orthodox medical model has been so wildly successful at colonising the minds of the vast majority of people. This model promises you that you can keep doing all the things that made you sick in the first place, and continue to shirk all those pesky health-promoting behaviours. Just take the medicines prescribed by your doctor, and all your biomarkers will look good - the statin will drive your cholesterol down; the GLP-1 receptor agonist will suppress your appetite so you lose weight; the stimulant will make your hyperactive kid sit still in class. Problem solved, right? Right?????

Of course not. None of these chemical fixes address the evolutionary mismatch. They don't correct either the environmental or behavioural factors that led to illness in the first place. And of course, they don't make you well.

To be fair, Western medicine doesn't actually promise to make you well, because it lacks a concept of 'health' except as a negative - the absence of disease. The specialty of Lifestyle Medicine arose to correct this myopic focus on pathogenesis - the process by which a disease or disorder develops - by reorienting toward salutogenesis - the factors contributing to the promotion and maintenance of physical and mental well-being. But Lifestyle Medicine remains a fringe movement, embraced by a tiny sliver of the medical and allied health professions. (I'm pleased to be a Fellow of the Australasian Society of Lifestyle Medicine, which is valiantly working to raise the profile of Lifestyle Medicine in Australia and New Zealand.)

I don't expect your local GP clinic to start embracing the tenets of Lifestyle Medicine any time soon. And sadly, most 'alternative' practitioners are more focused on prescribing supplements, herbal medicines and various other remedies, than they are on addressing the underlying drivers of whatever's ailing you¹.

But one of the silver linings of the COVID cloud, as I discussed in my recent interview with Dean Mackin on TNT Radio, is that a significant proportion of the population became so disenchanted with the medical profession's behaviour throughout, and since, the scamdemic that they have decided to minimise their contact with the entire (ill)health system, and take responsibility for their own health.

Good. I've been preaching this for years. The only danger I see is that these well-motivated people will quit their drugs and start taking supplements instead, rather than removing the causes of disease, and ensuring that they are supplying the requirements for health.

In closing, I have a few questions that I encourage you to ask, whenever your body is manifesting some sign of dis-ease - an ache or pain, elevated blood pressure or glucose, a skin rash, excess body fat...

1. What is my body trying to do? That is, try framing this symptom as an attempt to adapt to unfavourable circumstances, rather than a malfunction. Is there a purpose to this symptom, which can guide your behaviour? (For example, that swelling around your sprained ankle is purposeful, and taking an anti-inflammatory may delay healing).

2. What have I done, or what has been done to me, that has contributed to this dis-ease? Have you introduced causes of disease into your life (e.g. ultraprocessed food, excessive alcohol, cigarette smoking), or been exposed to them (e.g. fluoride in your tap water, occupational exposures, toxic medical treatments)?

3. What requirements for health have I not been obtaining, or have been obtaining in quantities that are currently inappropriate? Have you been undersleeping, overworking or under/overexercising, not getting enough nurturing social connection or engaging in productive and personally meaningful activities, or spending all day indoors under artificial light?

These three questions will shift your thinking away from the Western medical model which frames disease as dysfunction and successful treatment as effective suppression of symptoms, and toward a holistic outlook which frames health as our normal and natural state, which the innate intelligence that infuses us, can maintain and restore as long as we provide it with what it needs.

What do you think?

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1. There are of course many circumstances in which such remedies are entirely appropriate, but they should be thought of as adjuncts to removing the causes of disease and supplying the requirements for health in appropriate amounts.