Designer Foods and Drugs

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Timothy O’Shea, PharmD says “Each year, an estimated 4.5 million Americans visit a physician’s office or emergency room because of side effects related to their prescription medications.” That’s 12,329 victims per day.

On the Harvard Edmon J. Safra Center for Ethics blog, Donald W. Light wrote that: “Few know that systematic reviews of hospital charts found that even properly prescribed drugs (aside from misprescribing, overdosing, or self-prescribing) cause about 1.9 million hospitalizations a year. Another 840,000 hospitalized patients are given drugs that cause serious adverse reactions for a total of 2.74 million serious adverse drug reactions. About 128,000 people die from drugs prescribed to them. This makes prescription drugs a major health risk, ranking 4th with stroke as a leading cause of death.”

Drugs.com says it has comprehensive side effect and adverse reaction information for over 5,000 drugs and medications. The National Institute on Drug Abuse says “Most drugs could potentially harm an unborn baby.” According to “Consumer Reports” magazine many pills may be unnecessary and might do more harm than good. If you watch television, no doubt you’ve seen hundreds of ads for prescription drugs and over the counter drugs. You can’t help but notice their many warnings about side effects, some so bad they can kill.

Researchers at the Mayo Clinic and Olmsted Medical Center state that nearly 70% of the 327 million Americans are on at least one prescription drug, and more than half take two. So with 229 million people taking drugs, 128,000 deaths is relatively puny. But when 2.74 million people require hospitalization every year for serious adverse drug reactions, that’s 1.2 people out of a 100. Now that’s significant.

I can understand that with a severe injury or a pathogenic disease, taking a drug may be the best option. But chronic diseases are another matter because, unlike injuries or infectious diseases, they are symptoms of body failures caused by corrupted interrelated body functions.

In his September 2014 paper titled Reversal of Cognitive Decline: a Novel Therapeutic Program, Dale E. Bredesen, MD made a significant point. He surmised that the past few decades of genetic and biochemical research revealed that chronic diseases involved an extensive network of molecular interactions which suggested that a network-based treatment, rather than a single target-based approach, “may be feasible and potentially more effective.”

It’s a well established fact that most if not all chronic diseases have an association with the chemistry of one’s diet. This is why I believe the average lifespan will be longer and more fulfilling with a proper diet than if one takes drugs to address chronic diseases. Does my idea hold water? To find out let’s compare drugs with selected foods.

Drugs are designer chemicals crafted to alter very specific body functions in isolation. Obviously, since drugs have side effects, they also impact more than the intended target causing collateral damage. Since drugs are never network-based treatments, they can’t address the many interrelated body functions that may also be associated with a specific chronic disease.

Every individual food choice is composed of many chemicals. And just like taking many drugs at the same time, the combined chemistry of all the foods in the diet impacts every body function. Consequently, as a network-based treatment, food has a huge positive or negative impact on health. Nutritional and biological studies that relate chronic diseases to food show that people require a precise food chemistry contrary to the conventional “balanced diet.” The precise chemistry comes from the foundation food for all animal life which is the green leaf or the meats of animals that had the green leaf at the bottom of their food chain. No other combination works as well.

What is the chemistry of the green leaf? It is a very broad spectrum of low-glycemic nutrients in a dense package with a very specific balance of essential nutrients including Omega-6 and Omega-3 fatty acids. Meats from animals that have the green leaf at the bottom of their food chain provide the same chemical profile.

The foods that do not provide the best chemistry are sugars, grains, nuts, fruit, and meats from grain-fed animals. These are designer foods made abundant only after man invented farming a little over 10,000 years ago. They are also associated with chronic diseases that designer drugs can’t heal. Both designer foods and designer drugs are very damaging because they cause collateral damage to the body’s extensive network of molecular interactions.

To your health.

Ted Slanker

Ted Slanker has been reporting on the fundamentals of nutritional research in publications, television and radio appearances, and at conferences since 1999. He condenses complex studies into the basics required for health and well-being. His eBook, The Real Diet of Man, is available online.

For additional reading:

Reversal of Cognitive Decline: a Novel Therapeutic Program by Dale E. Bredesen, MD

Learning about Side Effects by U.S. Food and Drug Administration

Drug Side Effects at Drugs.com

Find Side Effects and Medical Device Complications at Drugwatch.com

10 Scariest Prescription Drug Side Effects by Timothy O’Shea, PharmD

Commonly Abused Drugs Charts by National Institute on Drug Abuse

New Prescription Drugs: A Major Health Risk With Few Offsetting Advantages by Donald W. Light on the Harvard Edmon J. Safra Center for Ethics website

Americans Taking More Prescription Drugs Than Ever by Robert Preidt at WebMD.com

When Medicine Makes You Sick from AARP

Man Is an Extension of the Leafy, Green Plant

Essential Fatty Acids in Health and Chronic Disease by Dr. Artemis P Simopoulos