Here’s some shocking news – as a result of these rapidly spreading epidemics, the U.S. is fast becoming the sickest country in the world!

Today we’re experiencing not only Alzheimer’s and diabetes epidemics but epidemics of several dozen or so other chronic degenerative diseases.

This list of diseases includes but is by no means limited to: osteoporosis, multiple sclerosis, asthma, autism, stroke, obesity, high blood pressure, depression and several of the most deadly kinds of cancer including breast and colon cancer.
 

“Diseases of Civilization”

Scientists have long known that these particular diseases aren’t global in scope. Not every nation is involved. Instead these diseases tend to occur primarily in advanced industrialized nations where people consume a “modern” diet that includes far too many highly processed foods.

Because these diseases occur mainly in the advanced, industrialized countries, medical researchers have labeled this particular group of illnesses “diseases of civilization”. 

Why are we suffering so terribly from these diseases while people who live in far off lands and consume simpler, less refined foods seem virtually immune to them? Though researchers have long recognized this disparity, until recently the precise cause for this difference has eluded them.

Two decades ago we had only a few million American diabetics. According to the best sources available today over 26 million Americans are now under medical treatment for diabetes. In addition, most experts now agree that a similar number of diabetics are walking our streets as yet undiagnosed.  

But here’s the really shocking number. According to the National Institutes of Health we now have in the neighborhood of 55 million other Americans who are in a “pre-diabetic” state. This condition is called Metabolic Syndrome or Syndrome X meaning that their blood sugar levels are abnormally high and rising but have not yet reached the level required for a formal diagnosis of the disease. 

Though Syndrome X isn’t classified as a disease itself, studies have shown that it elevates your blood pressure, increases your cholesterol level and also boosts the level of fats in your blood known as triglycerides. These changes substantially increase your risk of dying from the number one killer of Americans heart disease, along with many other major diseases.

Syndrome X if left untreated will inevitably develop into full-blown diabetes. Diabetes is a very expensive disease to treat. Diabetes treatment is costly because of the many complications it causes such as blindness, limb amputations, kidney failure (which requires kidney dialysis) and accelerated heart disease.  

The math is sobering. Within a decade the total number of American diabetics could exceed 100 million! And here’s some more math for you. The cost of treating all those diabetics could explode from $200 billion today to over one trillion dollars!

 
Why is This Happening to Us?

Though researchers have long noted the health disparity between those of us who live in the modern world and those who continue to consume a more primitive, more natural diet they’ve been unable to isolate and identify the precise factor that accounts for this difference. What is it in our diet that’s so promotes disease?

For several decades the pieces of this puzzle have been slowly but steadily falling into place. A long series of studies have been published and books written each casting a light on a different aspect of the Alzheimer’s puzzle.

Though we don’t have all the pieces of the puzzle, for the very first time the big picture is finally coming into view. The cloud of confusion that has for so long surrounded the subject of age-related memory loss is now clearing. The main culprit behind this terrible epidemic has at long last been identified.
 

Will Modern Medicine Save Us?

But surely modern medicine with all its high-tech wizardry and wonder drugs will come to our rescue – right? Today doctors can perform operations on a tiny fetus while still in the womb, can transplant a human heart and can even knit the tiny cells of a damaged kidney back together as good as new. Certainly our doctors will soon come up with cures that will rid us of all of these modern plagues.

While we should certainly remain hopeful, modern medicine’s track record when it comes to cures is a rather dismal one. When you stop and think about it, your doctor can’t cure anything. In fact, your doctor can’t even cure a common cold!

The sad fact is, modern medicine doesn’t deal in cures. When was the last time your doctor even used the word? Instead our medical system seems content to crank out a never-ending series of new “helper” drugs. These medications provide what we most desperately desire – immediate temporary relief from our suffering.

Why does our health care delivery system ignore cures? Simple - these helper drugs are much more profitable than any cure for the obvious reason that patients have to keep taking them in order to keep their symptoms at bay. There’s very little profit in cures. You can’t make money that way.

When a doctor puts you on high blood pressure medication, what he neglects to mention is that you’re probably going to have to take the drug for the rest of your life. Though drug companies could certainly charge a huge fee for a cure - if they had one, over the long haul it’s far more profitable to get patients hooked on symptom-alleviating medications they’ll have to take for years or even decades. That’s how you make the really big money. 

For example, take a widely used medication like Plavix. A month’s pills will on average set you back somewhere around $99. That’s a yearly cost of $1,188. Over a decade the cost accumulates to around $11,880. And if you take it for a full three decades you’ll end up spending a whopping $35,640!

Now you can see why doctors who prescribe these highly-profitable helper drugs are often lavishly rewarded by the drug companies with free big screen TVs, cash payments and all-expenses paid vacations to Hawaii for writing a few hundred such prescriptions. ■