Ashok Dhillon
Mar 12, 20199 min
Recently, the World was shocked by the death of actor Luke Perry at the age of 52 years of a massive stroke. His premature death shocked and saddened the World as he was much loved as an actor, and by those who knew him, as a human being. His death, because of its unexpectedness, triggered the questioning of the possibilities of strokes in younger people, as till now fatal strokes or even just strokes, were considered ‘an old people’s disease’, and not a danger to younger people who from all appearances seemed to be in good health, with no obvious signs of ill health, as he certainly seemed to be.
To a large degree, the response of the medical community to Luke Perry’s death was predictable - the general stating of the obvious - that strokes were a danger to people of all ages and not just confined to much older people, as it had seemed to be in the past. The sign-off also seemed to be predictable; more research was required to find out why younger and younger people were having strokes, and other ‘older people’ diseases - and more and more frequently.
For those willing to examine the growing problem with just a smidgen of common sense, the answers seem pretty obvious – the growing threat of here-to-now ‘older generation’ diseases for younger people seem to be primarily due to the modern life style, in particular the excess ingestion of calories and ultimately toxic foods.
As compared to the past generations, the recent generations are increasingly sedentary, comfortable, safe, and consuming a lot more calories in a day, and a lot of those calories are coming from over processed foods with little in way of real nutrition, too much sugar, salt and potentially toxic bad fats. And, with advances in, and most importantly, access to modern medicine, people have become dependent on the powers of medicine, primarily drugs based, to keep them functioning, alive and kicking, with little modification in their daily destructive behaviours of too much food with little to no physical activity. The result is, generally, humans all over the World are living longer, but not necessarily healthier lives.
In the ‘good news’ of longer lives is the ‘bad news’ of the rising threat of chronic diseases that are afflicting younger and younger people every day, while crippling older people and relegating them to long term care facilities where they require 24 hour looking-after by professional care-takers, along with daily doses of drugs.
In spite of the advances in hygiene, medicine and professional medical care, there is the steady and unmistakable rise in heart disease, strokes, diabetes, cancer, arthritis, dementia/Alzheimer’s, and all the other ailments common and not so common to humans - a lot of them also stress related - which is another growing affliction of the modern times affecting really young people.
For the vast and growing global medical community and the medical industry, the longer lives of a rapidly growing human population means a growing business model with practically unlimited potential. Not only is the global population increasing at an alarming rate, its living longer, and living sicker, hence - the need for trained medical personnel - and for ever more drugs - is practically unlimited.
The problems feeding this growing epidemic are many-fold. As mentioned earlier, not only are we living longer, but we are moving a lot less while consuming a lot more calories. So for many, most days are spent sitting and working, or sleeping, resulting in an almost immobile lifestyle. And as technology and machines take over and do most of our work, at home, in the offices, factories and farms, humans mainly sit to do what once required great physical effort to accomplish.
And because of the ready availability of an abundance of food (for most people, generally, in developed countries), while sitting, we are all consuming excess calories that are accumulating on, and inside of us. Not only are we getting fatter on the outside, especially in the West, but we are also accumulating visceral fat on our internal organs which contribute greatly to inflammation and potentially lethal diseases.
The rise in the storage of excess energy is resulting in accumulated fat on the outside and the inside, which is resulting in the state of constant elevated levels of insulin and blood sugar, which damage and inflame internal organs, including the inner walls of the arteries, and literally poison our bodies, while manifesting as the current epidemics of diabetes, arterial and heart disease, strokes, cancers, etc.
The lay person leading this ‘normal’ lifestyle of sitting and eating the ‘normal’ diet, comprised mainly of grain based carbohydrates, with some proteins and some fat, has no idea of how damaging this normal lifestyle really is. And the medical community has not only - not - warned the average person about it, but has in fact encouraged it, by promoting the so called ‘balanced diet’ of mainly carbs, some protein and a little fat. This diet is still being promoted as the ‘healthy’ way to eat, and for the past many decades the medical community encouraged everyone to eat grains (recently whole grains) especially from the 1970’s on-wards, with some protein, and very limited amounts of saturated fat.
Then came the war on fat, especially ‘saturated fats’ which were labelled as the primary cause of arterial and heart diseases, and which in turn unleashed the drive to manufacture and promote ‘unsaturated’, ‘hydrogenated’ fats and oils (remember the ubiquitous ads for margarine that were almost ‘like butter’ without the butter’s harm) and were touted as the answer to all heart related problems. People believed the promotions and ate the non-fat-fats, and got even sicker. It took decades of stubborn denials of the food and drug industry, and the equally stubborn medical community, to finally admit that they were horribly wrong and were selling the wrong solutions for far too long.
Shockingly, the right solution turned out to be the eating of less carbohydrates, more healthy saturated fats, like natural butter(!), among others, and the biggest bogey, cholesterol, turned out to be the least of the problems, which ultimately was excessive sugars, internal body fat, and the resultant inflammation.
The ‘food’ item that was promoted heavily and is still consumed to dangerous levels is sugar in all its forms. The amount of sugar that is consumed in the modern World is simply outrageous. And though in the quantities that it is consumed currently sugar is one of the leading causes of ill health, one is hard pressed to find any medical practitioner, food agency, or government (till very recently), seriously preventing its citizens from the ill effects of mass consumption of sugar, which is readily consumed in giant soft drinks and overloaded confectionery.
The amount of sugar that young people have been consuming in almost all the popular colas, slurpees, smoothies and other specialty drinks, is simply criminal for the amount of damage it does over the long term; and that is over and above the sugar in most foods that are popular on a daily basis, like processed foods, breads, muffins, donuts, cakes, pastries, chocolates, candies, etc. and, in all refined carbohydrates – breads (all kinds), pastas and rice - which form the staple food in most cultures; and let’s not to forget alcohol in all its popular forms.
As the modern humans get overloaded with tons of sugar, and bad manufactured fats and oils - diabetes, heart and arterial disease, strokes, cancers, along with a host of related problems and afflictions to the brain and body, manifest themselves at an ever younger and younger age with lethal consequences.
Ironically, it was the persistent warnings from the ‘alternative’ health industry, over decades, that finally raised the awareness of the general public enough to put pressure on governments, and the food and drink industry, to force some recent cutback in the sugar content in the colas and other drinks, and also in some foods. But by this time the damage had been done. Diabetes, heart disease, blood pressure and cancers became rising epidemics in the modern World.
It was not from goodness of the heart of the food and drink industry, nor from suddenly enlightened governments, nor from a deeply concerned medical industry that these changes were initiated, but from the steady pressure of a better informed public, informed by the much maligned and perennially persecuted alternative and natural health industry, which still is not recognized. But the mainstream food and health industry has been quietly adopting a lot of their age old recommendations now, without giving them any credit or legitimacy.
The medical community, generally, by and large were happy to deal with the growing sicknesses and symptoms of a toxin laden populace, and did not urge drastic changes in the lifestyle of its growing client base until very recently, and that only in a relatively minor way, considering the size of the growing problem. The overriding reason for the extreme reluctance of the food and drink industry, governments, medical community, including (especially) the pharmaceutical industry, to strongly encourage the change in the content of what people put in their mouths and to change their lifestyle dramatically to stay healthy, is simply big MONEY. [The Trump administration’s ‘business friendly’ rolling back of the Obama administration’s recommendations of healthier foods in schools, and the return of sugar and salt laden junk foods, is a case in point.]
Food, drinks, sickness, physical and mental health problems, and all the myriad ‘cures’ and drugs, and all the industry attached to all of those ‘businesses’ - is HUGE business. All combined, possibly the biggest business in the World.
Conversely, there is not a fraction of the money to be made from a person who watches their food and drink intake, is active, well informed, and generally healthy. The big money is in sick people who do not die but remain on medications for life. Dead people are very poor prospects for making a lot of money. So the pharmaceutical industry and the medical community have specialized in keeping people alive as long as possible, but not really healthy, mostly sick, and seldom cured. People, young and old, if unhealthy and sick, treated with modern medicines and procedures are potential lifetime clients. Or to put it more specifically in business terms – each chronically diseased person, needing medicines, is a lifelong cash flow.
So diseases that threaten mass extinctions like the plagues, scourges, and diseases of the Middle Ages, were practically eliminated in modern times. And potential epidemics of the modern era, like AIDS, SARS, etc., were quickly brought under control, and worked on with a singular intensity until they were no longer a mass threat; because there is no money in dead people.
But less immediately lethal yet serious diseases like diabetes, heart and arterial disease, chronic blood pressure, most cancers and arthritis etc. are manageable to a large degree, where, with enough medicines and regular care, and progressive procedures like arterial stents, open heart surgeries, amputations in diabetics, joint replacements etc. even people with advanced damage from such diseases can be kept alive for years, if not decades – resulting in a great business model - a life time of living cash-flows.
Drugs such as the famous statins, for cholesterol suppression and arterial disease, and other drugs for diabetes, arthritis, chronic blood pressure, all kinds of aches and pains, colds and coughs and endless other nonlethal but much too common ailments, are multi-hundreds of billions of dollars ‘annual’ industry, which cures nothing but just contains the symptoms enough to allow people to keep living and taking the drugs, for their lifetime. There is money in reduction of symptoms - but there is no money in absolute cures.
So now, seldom any drug actually fully cures a disease.
So after decades of Trillions of dollars spent on research and development, and the manufacture of ‘miracle’ drugs, people can be saved from dying, only to be held hostage to lifelong requirement of drugs and a lifetime of medical care. After all the time and money spent on research and development in the medical industry, there are still no real cures for cancers, which are increasing, nor are there cures for the most common of the major chronic diseases like diabetes, heart disease and strokes, which are also increasing, or for the other myriad ailments that people suffer from commonly, and the younger people are contracting at an ever early age now. Nor is there any meaningful, systematic education of the populations of the World as to the deadly dangers of their uninformed intake of dangerously caloric-ly overloaded foods and drinks, nor any education on the dangers of developing the chronic diseases through this common modern lifestyle they lead.
Countries where Western food and drinks were not known and some chronic diseases were at a minimum, are now some of the leading populations with chronic diseases like diabetes, and heart disease, from the sugar laden colas and calorie laden fast foods that are now all the rage.
For the international medical community, the pharmaceutical industry, and the politicians dependent on their support, educating people on the causes and lethal consequences of chronic diseases is simply bad for their collective business. An educated public starts demanding changes, and results that favor them, rather than the collective industry, as is the case now. There is also no money in focusing the public on early prevention and drastic lifestyle changes, or in developing medicines that actually cure the diseases rather than barely contain them - as there is simply no money in permanent cures - but there is almost endless money in the current model of the health business, which keeps people just sick enough, unless they are lost unexpectedly, like Luke Perry.