As you know–I believe in moderation in all things. But in addition to all the prescriptions for drugs and vaccines they hand out, government health “experts” and many doctors tend to give lots of medical proscriptions. In other words, they tell you what you should not take and what you should not do. The problem is that much of the mainstream’s proscription playbook for what not to take is as flawed as most of their prescription drugs.
In a way, the need for medical proscription recognizes the fact that most prescription drugs don’t actually work well to restore health. Indeed, it’s better to prevent diseases by controlling risk factors.
The idea of proscription goes back to the ancient Romans when they decided who had to be proscribed, or eliminated, as Julius Caesar practiced on his “enemies list.” (Until he made the top of the list himself–as brilliantly described by Shakespeare in his play of the same name.)
I often wonder about the puritanical proclivities behind wagging fingers in a patient’s face, forbidding foods and other behaviors. Don’t drink. Don’t eat saturated fat. Don’t eat salt. Don’t smoke. Don’t drink coffee.
Unfortunately, most of these puritanical health edicts have very little to do with science.
For years, mainstream medicine told us not to consume dietary cholesterol and saturated fats, eliminating healthy foods like butter, eggs, meat, and shellfish. Well, the government has finally admitted it was all wrong, all along, about these foods.
But their misbegotten guidelines caused people to substitute these healthy foods with unhealthy foods full of sugars and carbs. This proscription certainly contributed to today’s raging deficiencies of protein, B vitamins, and fat-soluble vitamins like A, D, and E.
And research links deficiencies of these key vitamins and nutrients with cancer, cardiovascular diseases, dementia, Type II diabetes, obesity, and neurological diseases. In other words–all the major chronic diseases and causes of death in the modern world relate in some way to these serious, but all too common nutritional deficiencies.
Well, it certainly keeps those drug prescription pads busy.
Unfortunately, the government has yet to admit its long-standing advice to restrict salt to absurdly low levels is all wrong.
Salt intake is not a problem for blood pressure and heart disease (unless you have kidney disease). Moreover, recent research studies reveal low salt may be a major problem for heart health and other conditions. In addition, other studies show almost nobody can follow the government’s ridiculously low guidelines for salt intake anyway.
In reality, the government’s low salt campaign itself has been a bust. It’s kind of reassuring, actually. We can almost always count on the government to take the wrong approach and set misguided standards. But we can also always count on its incompetence and inability to accomplish those flawed standards. They just waste a lot of taxpayer money and keep bureaucrats in jobs doing jobs that shouldn’t be done in the first place.
The puritanical proscribers also turn their ire against drinking alcohol. But as I explained earlier this month they base their argument on flimsy evidence. Still, one “expert” wrote a recent editorial insisting we should start restricting alcohol below current guidelines right away, without awaiting further research.
But he ignored all the prior evidence that moderate alcohol consumption confers heart health benefits, as well as other health benefits. It seems some of these big ego researchers can’t resist the temptation to act like puritanical preachers when they are supposed to be scientists.
However, we have a reversal of fortune when it comes to coffee.
For years, this same puritanical crowd threw every kind of study in the book against coffee–with zero success. They wasted decades and millions of dollars trying to study the supposed health risks of coffee. So they never set up their studies to actually detect health benefits.
But some researchers recently righted the ship before it hit the iceberg. In fact, in light of this new research, the 2015 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee issued the first dietary recommendations on caffeine. And doctors are now asking patients if they are consuming enough caffeine. But the evidence has been “brewing” for a long time.
I will tell you all about it tomorrow…