The Illusion of Disease

by Mike Adams

There is a curious tendency in conventional medicine to label a set of symptoms as a disease. For example, I recently spotted a poster touting a new drug for osteoporosis. It was written by a drug company and it said this: "Osteoporosis is a disease that causes weak and fragile bones." The poster went on to say that you need a particular drug to counteract this "disease."

Yet the language is all backward. Osteoporosis is not a disease that causes weak bones. Osteoporosis is the name given to a diagnosis of weak bones. In other words, the weak bones happened first, and then the diagnosis followed.

Another drug company defines osteoporosis as "the disease that causes bones to become thinner." Again, the cause and effect are reversed. And that's how drug companies want people to think about diseases and symptoms: First you "get" the disease, then you are "diagnosed" just in time to take an expensive new drug for the rest of your life.

But it's all hogwash. There is no such disease as osteoporosis. It's just a name for a pattern of symptoms that indicate you've let your bones get fragile. And to treat it, western doctors will give you prescriptions for drugs that claim to make your bones less brittle.

We should really call it Brittle Bones Disease, and describe the treatment in plain language - exercise, vitamin D, mineral supplements with calcium and strontium, natural sunlight, and the avoidance of substances like soft drinks, white flour, and added sugars, which strip away bone mass.

Diabetes is another condition given a complex name that puts its solution out of reach of the average patient. Type 2 diabetes isn't technically a disease. It's just a natural metabolic side effect of consuming refined carbohydrates and added sugars in large quantities without engaging in regular physical exercise.

The name "diabetes" is meaningless to the average person. It should be called Excessive Sugar Disease. If it were called Excessive Sugar Disease, the solution to it would be rather apparent.

Cancer is another disease named after its symptom. To this day, most doctors and patients still believe that cancer is a physical thing: a tumor. In reality, a tumor is only a side effect of cancer, not its cause. A tumor is simply a physical manifestation of a cancer pattern that is expressed by the body.

When a person "has cancer," what they really have is a sluggish or suppressed immune system. And that would be a far better name for the disease: Suppressed Immune System Disorder.

If cancer were actually called that, it would seem ridiculous to try to cure it by cutting out tumors and destroying the immune system with chemotherapy. These are the two most popular treatments for cancer, and they do nothing to support the patient's immune system or prevent future occurrences. That's exactly why most people who undergo chemotherapy or the removal of tumors end up with yet more cancer down the road.

The cure for cancer already exists, and it's found in every human body. Your body kills cancer cells as a routine daily task, and it has done it thousands of times in your lifetime.

All we have to do is stop poisoning our bodies with cancer-causing chemicals and start feeding ourselves the materials our bodies need to beat chronic disease. Instead of searching for new technological cures, our money and time would be better spent making people aware of the existing cures and prevention strategies available right now.

Here's another example: high cholesterol. Conventional medicine says that high cholesterol is caused by a chemical imbalance in the liver, the organ that produces cholesterol. Thus the treatment is drugs (statin drugs) that inhibit the liver's production of cholesterol. Upon taking these drugs, the high cholesterol (the "disease") is regulated.

But the fatal flaw in this approach is once again evident: The symptom is not the cause of the disease. There is another cause, one that is routinely ignored by conventional medicine, doctors, drug companies, and even patients. The root cause of high cholesterol is primarily dietary. A person who eats foods that are high in saturated fats and hydrogenated oils will inevitably produce more bad cholesterol. It's simple cause and effect, not some bizarre behavior by the liver.

If the disease were accurately named, it would be called Fatty Food Choice Disease. That would make more sense to people. And the obvious solution to the disease would be to choose foods that aren't so fatty. Of course, that may be a bit of an oversimplification, since you have to distinguish between healthy fats and unhealthy fats. But at least the name would give patients a better idea of what's actually going on.

Outside the United States, the names of diseases in other languages (such as Chinese) more accurately describe their actual causes. In western medicine, however, the name of the disease obscures the root cause. That makes all diseases sound far more complex and mysterious than they really are.

That's a shame, because the treatments and cures for virtually all chronic diseases are actually quite simple and can be described in plain language. Preventing and reversing these diseases only requires language that describes things like making different food choices, getting more natural sunlight, drinking more water, engaging in regular physical exercise, avoiding specific toxins, supplementing your diet, and so on.

There is a degree of arrogance in the language of western medicine, and this arrogance propagates the separation between doctors and their patients. Separation never results in healing. In order to create healing, we must bring together healers and patients by using plain language that real people understand and that real people can act upon.

There's a great deal of ego invested in the medical community, and they sure don't want to make health sound attainable to the average person. Making the language of disease complicated keeps it out of reach of the public.

But health is attainable by every single person. It isn't rocket science. It's not complex. And it doesn't require a prescription. Health is easy, it is straightforward, and it is direct. And, for the most part, it is available free of charge if you invoke the healing power of sunlight, pure water, stress reduction, exercise, and healthy food choices.

(Ed. Note: Mike Adams is a holistic nutritionist and author of more than 1,500 articles on disease prevention, conventional medicine, and more. He posts new articles daily at http://www.NewsTarget.com. His downloadable e-books (many are free) are published at http://www.truthpublishing.com.)

The Illusion of Disease

Thersa Sharp

2005-03-09