Notes from My Journal:
It’s kind of crazy how dumb smart people can be when it comes to making important decisions about their health. I’m thinking of so many friends and colleagues of mine that are taking medications or have undergone surgeries simply because one person, their doctor, told them they should.
Stupid people do that, too, but they have an excuse. They are stupid. But if one has an above-average IQ, I’ve got to wonder: Where is the doubt? Where is the skepticism?
This is something I began noticing about 40 years ago, when I was publishing books and newsletters on alternative health.
The first book I sold was called something like 365 Natural Cures from Around the World. It was a big book – maybe 12 x 16 inches and more than 200 pages. I was proud of that book because it contained so many natural remedies for so many health problems, both common and rare (e.g., the common cold and Ehlers-Danlos syndrome) and from serious to benign (e.g., prostate cancer and mosquito bites).
It took me and my team of researchers about 18 months to bring it to print. (Back then, research had to be done mostly in university libraries and by interviewing experts.) But it sold well enough to get me interested in publishing more information on natural health.
What I learned from all the research we did was that although drugs can be miraculous in treating all sorts of minor and major health problems, there is almost always a set of adverse side effects that are given very little attention. I also learned that dozens of the most commonly prescribed drugs are no more effective than some natural plant-based products that have no negative side effects.
Since then, I’ve made it a habit to read books and articles that challenge mainstream medicine, looking for remedies that may be as good as or better than the prescribed drugs – remedies that aren’t talked about by mainstream medicine because, being natural, they cannot be patented and, thus, produce profits for Big Pharma.
Occasionally, I will recommend what I believe to be a safe and effective alternative treatment to a friend or colleague, and the response is almost always the same. They look at me like I’m a crackpot and tell me that they prefer to take medical advice from “someone who went to medical school.”
When that happens, I’m at a loss. I don’t want to argue, because… who knows? I could be wrong.
And so it was that when I was first diagnosed with dangerously high blood pressure about a year ago, I was in a quandary. I was uncomfortable with my doctor’s solution, which was to put me on blood-pressure medication, and yet I was a long way away from having a better and safer idea.
