This is a bit of a headspin.   To get your head around it,  it is necessary to take on board the idea that the biggest factor in having a chronic illness (or multiple chronic illnesses as many people  have) is the food.  Through a lack of information and deliberate misinformation from the people making money out of chronic illness (the pharmaceutical industry and big food companies),  most people don’t know that it is the  food.  People often put chronic illness down to:

• “it’s my age, what can you expect”
• it’s genetic, other family members have the same problem”
• “what can you do, it (put in appropriate chronic illness) is everywhere these days”
• “it’s bad luck”

On top of that once a person has a diagnosis, very often they handover control of their life to the agreed upon deteriorating course of the illness.   Tragically it also becomes a part of their identity.  “I have fibromyalgia”, “I have atrial fibrillation” almost becomes, “I am fibromyalgia”, “I am atrial fibrillation” .  The insidious beauty of the diagnosis is that the individual is absolved of responsibility, The illness is an unfortunate event that has happened to them.  In addition, the diagnosis is something that is outside of their understanding and something best left to the experts: the doctors and the pharmaceutical companies.

So, why will managing a chronic illness by taking medication lead to developing another one?  Because the medication is not tackling the cause of the disease, it is treating the symptoms.   When a person takes blood pressure medication they are not  changing the course of their heart disease, stroke risk or sexual dysfunction.  They are not stopping or reducing the blockages in their blood vessels or making their blood vessels more flexible from the rigid and  inflexible state that they have gotten into.  These are the reasons why blood pressure goes up.  Taking medication is artificially reducing your blood pressure, without tackling the reasons why blood vessels  become stiff and clogged.  The reason is:  the food! (great and favourite comment of John McDougall)

Our body is continously trying to keep us in an optimal state, but it can only use what we put into it and how we use our body. This includes our brain/mind which is physical and part of our body as well. Mind is hard to define so I won’t even try!

We can injure our body or heal our body with the food we eat.  If we continue to eat injurious foods and take medication for our chronic illness, what will happen?  Our chronic illness will get worse.  Look into any chronic illness, it has a deteriorating trajectory over time.  In addition, we are at a high risk of developing another chronic illness, because we are still injuring or poisoning the body.

This is where genetics come in.  Genetics guide what sort of chronic illness we are likely to get, not so much, if we are going to get one.  It depends where our weak spot is – this comes from our genetics. Some people get skin diseases, some get lung related problems, some heart attacks and strokes,  some diabetes, some arthritis, some digestive tract problems (reflux, ulcers, bowel problems).   It is becoming clear that the mechanism driving these diseases is the same: an inappropriate immune response driven by low level chronic inflammation.  In a sense the same disease manifesting itself differently based on genetics.  (it is important to understand that we can change the way our genes are expressed, that is active or inactive, by what we eat, how much sleep and exercise we get.  The wrong food is the poison or toxin driving the inflammation response and driving the expression of our genetic weaknesses.  The right food is driving our genetic resilience.

It’s a bit like alcohol.  Nobody thinks alcohol is good for you or that it is a  health tonic.  It’s more a question of what level is  harmful.  What is  clear, is that people are affected differently by drinking too much alcohol over time.  Some people get depresssed, some people get liver damage, some people get cancer, some people  get dementia, for example.    It is the same with food: different people will have different responses to the same poisonous food.

Question:  What is the poisonous food?

Answer:     Meat, dairy, processed food and take away.