8 Ways Modern Medicine Is Making You Sick
You may know that Jon Herring, ETR’s health editor, has been working on a report about the curative effects of sunlight. He’s uncovered a ton of solid evidence that sun exposure has a strong inverse correlation to the deadly internal cancers – like breast cancer, prostate cancer, and colon cancer. Yes, there is a connection between sun exposure and skin cancer. But we are primarily talking about two skin cancers that are easily treated and rarely fatal.
We also know that the development of these cancers has a lot to do with diet and the consumption of too many omega-6 fatty acids compared to omega-3s. The sun is only a co-factor. In other words, get a little bit of sun a few days a week and you might have to get a mole removed later in life – but your risk of dying of cancer goes down significantly. A number of major epidemiological studies prove this. Not only is sunlight good for you, Jon tells me, but using sunscreen can actually increase your chance of getting cancer.
There are a number of reasons for this:
Sunscreen blocks the body’s production of melanin, the pigment that protects your skin against damage. Without sunscreen, your body throws up a red flag when you start to get burned. But sunscreen prevents that burning sensation. So you stay out in the sun even longer, getting cooked by the radiation that sunscreen does not protect against.
As many as five common chemicals found in sunscreen are known carcinogens. And guess what circumstances cause these chemicals to become particularly cancer-causing? You guessed it: when they are exposed to sunlight! Ever since modern medicine got behind sunscreens, the industry has soared. Billions of dollars in business has been transacted. Hundreds of millions of people are using it. And yet skin cancer rates have gone up, not down.
Jon’s new report will explain why sunlight may be the single most powerful health “supplement” you can take. It will also tell you: A little-known antioxidant that is 500 times stronger than vitamin E and will allow you to spend more time in the sun without damaging your skin. Why nutrition has a great deal to do with the rise in skin cancer, and what you need to eat to significantly lower your risk. How moderate sun exposure has been linked to a decreased risk of heart attack and stroke, lower cholesterol levels, lower blood pressure, a significantly lower incidence of deadly cancers, improved immunity, and a lower incidence of auto-immune illnesses and Type-2 diabetes. (The list of health benefits goes on and on.)
Reading an early draft of Jon’s report, I couldn’t help thinking what a complete sham modern medicine really is. Most of the recommendations it’s been making concerning maintaining good health have turned out to be entirely wrong. Warning you to stay out of the sun and convincing you that sunscreen will protect you from cancer are just two examples of the kind of bad advice I’m talking about.
Here are six more:
1. Eating dietary cholesterol is bad for your heart. How long have we been hearing this? It turns out that cholesterol doesn’t cause heart disease and eating foods rich in cholesterol doesn’t necessarily boost your body’s production of cholesterol. If you want to clean out the plaque in your arteries, there are plenty of safe and natural ways you can do it. And most of those ways will also raise your HDLs (good cholesterol levels) – which means you can quickly, easily, and naturally slash your risk of heart attack by more than half. But they’re not telling you about that. Why not?
2. Taking an aspirin a day will prevent heart attack. Even in small doses, aspirin can cause all sorts of serious medical problems, including gastric bleeding. (When I learned this surprising fact, I’d been taking a small dose of aspirin every day – based on my doctor’s advice – for many years.) A major research study conducted in Canada found that daily doses of aspirin actually increased the risk of heart attack by more than 40% in the people who took it.
3. Obesity is caused by eating fat. As I have written before, fat is an important part of a healthy diet. The idea is to eliminate bad fats (such as hydrogenated oils and vegetable oils) and replace them with good fats. In fact, studies show that eating foods such as meat and cheese can help control weight. There is even a “slimming” fat, called conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), which as been shown to reduce bodyfat and increase lean muscle mass.
4. Butter is bad for you. Butter isn’t bad for you. It’s healthy. On the other hand, margarine, the so-called “healthy alternative,” is chock-full of trans-fatty acids that damage your arteries and increase your chances of getting sick.
5. Nuts are fattening. Nuts are actually an effective weight-loss food. Plus, two large studies have shown that eating nuts can reduce your risk of heart attack by 65%.
6. Eggs are one of the worst foods you can eat. The truth: Eggs are perhaps the world’s healthiest food. So-called medical experts have claimed that the yolks raise your blood cholesterol level, but they don’t. And they are loaded with lutein, a natural antioxidant that is particularly important for the health of your eyes and skin.
Yes, it’s frustrating how many medical myths are out there. And it’s downright scary when you consider that some of them are making it more likely that you will contract a serious disease and less likely that you will beat it. Medical misinformation is rampant. And it’s not going to go away anytime soon. So long as big medicine is hooked up with big drugs, we are going to be kept in the dark about anything except surgical and chemical solutions to our most critical health problems. There is something you can do about it.
For a start, you can do what I do: To keep ahead of the curve, Read Jon’s Health article every day, right here in ETR. For cutting-edge information on how to stay young and avoid sickness, subscribe to Dr. Sears’ new e-zine, Health Confidential. To deal with specific health problems that you may encounter, keep your eye out for special reports and natural products that we’ll be recommending from time to time.
Early to Rise is primarily about becoming wealthier and wiser, but you can’t achieve your goals in those areas unless you’re healthy. Relying on conventional medicine and the major media for information is foolish. Health, like wealth, is a goal that is best achieved by educating yourself and taking action, not by relying on the self-serving advice of others.
[Ed. Note. Mark Morgan Ford was the creator of Early To Rise. In 2011, Mark retired from ETR and now writes the Palm Beach Letter. His advice, in our opinion, continues to get better and better with every essay, particularly in the controversial ones we have shared today. We encourage you to read everything you can that has been written by Mark.]