The ignored pandemic

TWO DECADES THAT CHANGED THE WORLD FOREVER

Between 10 and 11 at the night on December 14, 1799, George Washington, the first President of the United States[1] died. He died of exsanguination. He was literally bled to death by four physicians because he had a sore throat. Bloodletting was the standard proto-medical practice of the day to rid the body organs of some of four fluid bodily humors thought to cause various maladies existing within a human body.[2]

For the next 105 years, medicine managed to make some progress toward health practices: Joseph Lister[3] promoted the antiseptic practice of medicine. Louis Pasteur[4] and Robert Koch[5] studied the effects that microorganisms were having on diseases. However, it is what happened in 1928 that was the seminal pivotal changing point for medical delivery that we know today as modern healthcare.

A young man was researching a bacteria strain using smears on Petri dishes. On leaving for a short holiday, he left his Petri dishes stacked in a rather untidy corner of his laboratory. When he returned, on September 3, 1928, he noticed mold on one of the dishes that the bacteria (Staphylococci) surrounding that mold had died. Had he not been concerned and/or interested in why those bacterial died, the world of medicine and health care may never have changed in the way that it has over the past 90 years. That man’s name was Flemming,[6] and in 1945, he received the Nobel Prize in Medicine for discovering Penicillin.

During that 15–20 years’ period of Flemming’s research, the treatment protocol for medicine practices changed from basically an archaic hospice oriented profession to a new profession that had at its core the principle of target drug.

Target Drug to a Target Disease

Life-threatening diseases were being cured and eliminated from society at astounding rates, and medicine and pharmacy had taken on a leading and more profitable role in its new approach toward health care for the masses.

THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM

During that same time, something else was happening to our society. Sugar (sucrose) which had formerly been only a wealthy person’s condiment, due to its scarcity, was becoming less expensive to manufacture and thus emerged as a primary ingredient within most foods. Due to sugar’s favorable taste, and some say, addictive qualities,[7] sugar consumption was spiraling out of control. According to the Journal of Clinical Nutrition, in 1700 the average person consumed about 4 pounds of sugar per year. In 1800, it had increased to about 20 pounds of sugar per year, and by 1900, sugar consumption per individual had risen to 90 pounds of sugar per year. Unfortunately, by 2000, more than 120 pounds of sugar per year were entering the bloodstreams and livers of western civilization.[8]

So what!

No statistic means anything unless it can be applied to real-life situations. So here is where the elephant in the room becomes considerably more visible.

Any cooking manual will state that 1 teaspoon = 4 g. According to the American Heart Association and the World Health Organization, the average human male body can only tolerate nine extra-added teaspoons of sugar per day.

A female’s body = 6 tsps.[9], and children depending on activity can only tolerate 0–6 tsps and should have no juices before 1 year of age.[10]

The average 12 oz soda contains 40 g of sugar. Simple math shows that it contains 10 teaspoons (1/4 cup) of sugar, and studies show that the average person consumes 22 teaspoons of sugar a day (½ cup). More than 2.5–4 times the amount recommended.[11]

If we pull our automobiles up to a gas station, remove the pump nozzle, place it into the gas tank opening, then squeeze and click the trigger to make the gasoline flow, what is the assumption? It will click off when the tank is full, right?

CAPITALISM – FOOD INDUSTRY FRIEND OR FOE

“Don’t talk to me about nutrition…talk to me about taste, and if this stuff tastes better, don’t run around trying to sell stuff that doesn’t taste good.” This is an actual quote of a CEO of one of the major food companies from a meeting held on April 8, 1999, at the Minneapolis headquarters of Pillsbury. This meeting hosted eleven CEOs of the major food companies and was held to discuss the emerging obesity epidemic.[14] However, lets go back to the beginning. All the way back to 1965, when the food industry paid the equivalent of 50 thousand dollars (in today’s money) to downplay sugar’s role in heart disease.[15] The majority of the research data on cardiovascular accidents was showing that it was sugar, and not fat, that was the leading progenitor of heart disease. Thus, over the past 50 years, people have become sicker and sicker and sicker from the metabolic syndrome generated NCDs.[16]

THE RISE OF THE OBESOGENIC ENVIRONMENT

As I mentioned before, by 1945 Flemming had discovered penicillin and medicine had changed its protocol to a Target Drug to a Target Disease. Also mentioned was that, by 1965, most people in the western civilization had become literally addicted to sugar. Food company management was not willing to take the steps to decrease sugar within their products, and that the NCD associated with metabolic syndrome, which was not a drug curable disease (only a drug-manageable disease), had become the most prevalent diseases in the world.

Therefore, it certainly has become scientifically obvious within the past 50 years that the protocol of target drug to a target disease was no longer an efficient way of treating these diseases and has led to an obesogenic environment.[17] These diseases can only be treated by a concerted effort made at all levels of society, business, and government to attack the real cause of these diseases, which is unhealthy lifestyle choices and eating habits.

However, vast sums of money are being made by the food industry, medical industry, and pharmaceutical industry, and there is much media talk, research, treatments, and pills provided on the subject. Nevertheless, the NCD pandemic is continuing to increase worldwide, spurred on by decisions made from a purely capitalistic view.[18]

COULD IT BE THAT SIMPLE??

In theory it could be… if all people are willing to change, and take a more Integrative/Functional Medicine approach to change the protocol that medicine now uses, to understand that they need to eat more healthy, eat less, be inconvenienced by the fact that there are some ways of life they must give up, and be willing to change their consumptive, pill-for-everything, sedentary way of life. It could really be that simple.

DRASTIC STEPS BY ALL INDUSTRIES ARE NEEDED

REALITY