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Surprise—There is No Health-Care Crisis - modern medicine needs to give more attention to the part nutrition plays in good health

Nutrition Health Review, Wntr, 2001 by Emanuel Cheraskin

We hear endless talk about a health-care crisis. But the facts are clear--there really isn't one. The crisis is in medical care, medical insurance, medical procedures, and medical costs. All these come from the underlying problem of sharply rising costs for medical treatment of the sick.

For co-payers and uninsured alike, health care today is fast becoming a pay-more-for-less service system. Spending on doctors, hospitals, and drugs broke the $1 trillion mark in 1996, averaging $3,750 a person, and continues to climb. But we can solve all this and save billions of dollars and thousands of lives, keep people healthy and out of the managed care medical mill, and give the truly ill the best in modern medicine. The following true story illustrates the problem and what we can do to ease it.

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Cherries to the Rescue:

An elderly woman in rural England suffered from debilitating gout. Her hands were so painfully swollen that the skin broke to let the infection drain. To make matters worse, the woman was allergic to the drugs that normally control gout. Her doctor had no idea what else to try. But a sympathetic relative consulted a natural healing reference book that advocated eating 15 cherries a day to arrest gout. In just two weeks of this seemingly odd treatment, all symptoms disappeared and the patient regained full use of her hands.

There is a scientific reason why the cherry cure worked. Cherries are rich in anthocyamins, natural chemicals that significantly lower inflammation by inhibiting the enzymes that cause it. Imagine alleviating a crippling disease with a tasty dessert.

This story shows the medical value of nutrition. It also exposes the dirty little secret of medical education. Students typically receive little more than a semester at best and a lecture at worst in nutrition, diet, and vitamins and their place in health. In my view as a health researcher, the medical profession today stands woefully ignorant of dietary knowledge.

Medicine is overly dependent on expensive, "high-tech" equipment such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and powerful drugs that often produce side effects as distressing as the diseases they are meant to stop.

As a physician and dentist, I recognize that new technology has its place. But relatively few conditions require it. A more sensible, cost-effective approach is to strengthen the immune system with diet and nutritional supplements so that the body can fight off disease and to rid the environment of toxic substances.

A strong immune system is the key to health--and it is not hard to achieve. As one example, a study was made of healthy elderly people who do 30 minutes of gentle T'ai Chi exercises a day. There was a marked improvement in immunocompetence (T-lymphocytes). This is a superb demonstration of uncomplicated, inexpensive health care in action.

King of the Vitamins

Although a sensible daily regimen of supplements (vitamin A, vitamin D, folic acid, beta-carotene, and selenium) is necessary to maintain a strong immune system, the king of nutrients is ascorbic acid (vitamin C).

Every cell, tissue, and organ and every medical condition and disease are, to some degree, related to ascorbate. The human body is actually a bag of electrical charges. Vitamin C is an electron donor. It helps make the cells behave in an orderly fashion, which is vital for health.

A connection has been established between nutritional status and school performance. The media report that, by all standards of measurement, American schools are in deep trouble. We have long been promised that more schools, more teachers, more books, more computers, and other exotic gadgets will solve the problem. So far, they have not.

Very little attention has been directed to the possibility that learning ability in children may be directly related to their health. In 1990, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimated that about 3 million children had blood lead levels high enough to affect intelligence, attendance, behavior, and development. The nation might benefit from less attention to the social implications of low student performance and more attention to stronger lead abatement programs and adequate nutrient intake.

With virtually endless studies showing the efficacy of diet, vitamins and minerals, exercise, and a healthy lifestyle, we may wonder why a U.S. Department of Agriculture (U.S.D.A.) survey reported that only 1 per cent of Americans meet the minimum standards for dietary adequacy. This statistic shows clearly where we should be putting out attention and money.

Doctors, company health-care managers, government health agencies, and the public should look at enhancing and maintaining health as a win-win situation. Patients obviously would benefit, and so would companies and governments contending with ever-spiraling medical costs. Physicians would be freer of cost-reduction pressures from managed care and could tend to the truly ill.

Elements of Good Health

Specifically, what are the elements of a general health program? Here is an outline to get started:

Health Care Industry

Surprise—There is No Health-Care Crisis - modern medicine needs to give more attention to the part nutrition plays in good health

Nutrition Health Review, Wntr, 2001 by Emanuel Cheraskin

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