Monday, March 23, 2009

Iatrogeny: Medical Genocide?

SST-The ‘Unpatriotic’ Cost of Sickness
3-23-09

Does the food you serve to loved ones feed or deplete family health equity? Are you a true American who’s stopped seeking emergency medical attention because it has become too pricey? Have you stopped taking critical meds due to exaggerated, aberrant costs?
Red, White and Blue to-the-bones citizens of this great country are fed up with the situation which they’re refereeing to as down-right unpatriotic. Global terrorism has been labeled the greatest threat to the American way of life, although conventional medical practices kill more Americans than terrorists. Is it time to embrace a healthier diet? You bet your bippy.
A generation ago, an implicit doctor-patient personal bond of trust prevailed. Because of their failure to prevent disease, this ‘trust’ has been diminished. More than ever, we must embrace a proactive-prevention mentality to endure the onslaught of chronic disease and obesity caused by the toxic ‘Western’ diet of foods which prevent the holy temple from healing in the fashion the cosmos designed. There is simply too much irrefutable information indicting our insane, convenience-driven American diet. We deserve better. I’d do anything to stay out of a hospital.
Ever heard of Iatrogeny? Iatrogeny, defined by Mosby’s Medical Dictionary, calls it ‘a condition caused by medical personnel or procedures or through exposure to the environment of a healthcare facility.’ Twice, I dodged the bullet after a physician dropped the ball. They are, after all, human.
If you’re fiercely rationalizing your Constitutional right to chomp down unctuous cow burgers, pork ribs, fried bits and Twinkies and still need motivation to stop; chomp down these no-so-tasty ‘medical’ facts from The Journal of The American Medical Association, (2000;284:94)
12,000 deaths / year from unnecessary surgery
7,000 deaths / year from medication errors in hospitals
20,000 deaths / year other errors in hospitals
80,000 deaths / year from nosocomial infarctions in hospitals
106,000 deaths / year from adverse effects of medication
That’s 225,000 deaths per year are caused from iatrogenic causes; the third leading cause of death in the US, second only to heart disease and cancer. Are whole, unprocessed foods beginning to make you salivate? I earnestly hope so.
Sad but true, a simple visit to the ER, family physician or pharmacist has become a budget-busting, most often unexpected capital expenditure. Don’t expect a floral bouquet from Big Pharma. If they had their way, all vitamins, whole foods and Holistic medicines would be abolished. They prosper when citizens suffer from chronic disease. It’s a lucrative business.
When I speak around the state, I listen to people who just discovered they have cancer or heart disease admit they at last, have an open mind to food as preventive medicine. From the conclusive science, corporate America is killing us slowly with their fries. The Non-homoeopathic species of medicine we’ve blindly trusted does little or nothing to prevent disease. That would make too much sense. Instead, they wait till the horse is out of the barn before closing the door. Therefore, solutions are written in blood.
Protecting your health equity becomes a financial imperative. Many families live one paycheck from poverty or homelessness. Chronic disease and prescription costs could spell instant disaster.
Perhaps now is the ideal time to open your mouth and mind to the delicious, healing and preventive world of plant food as medicine; the way God and Hippocrates designed. If we lovingly embrace this concept, chefs / home cooks are indeed, the doctors of the future. Just like grandma and grandpa. If it was good enough for them, then it’s good enough for my family, too.
Let’s go back to pre-industrial Revolution tactics; cooking from scratch, canning, setting up victory gardens and storing fruits and veggies in the root cellar. People in other countries scratch their heads and consider Americans imprudent to consume such vast amounts dead, processed foods. They’re befuddled why we eat ‘machine cuisine’, instead of fresh, sun blest plant foods. We suffer needlessly.
If we know certain foods cause disease and damage our precious holy temple, then stop consuming them. It really could not be simpler. Make one change at a time; get used to it, then go on and make another.
Food is love.
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