When I was a kid, most of my time was spent pretending. Pretending to be
Superman, pretending to be a cowboy, pretending to be a hero and, at times,
pretending to be a doctor. As I grew up I realized that pretend time was
growing to a close and reality time was getting closer and closer at hand.
Little did I realize that, for some, pretend is a way of life. How so,
you ask? The following are some of my perceptions and observations into the
ongoing world of pretend.
The way conventional medicine is practiced today, is pretend medicine. The
doctors and the drug companies pretend to make patients healthier by
giving them drugs. The Fraud and Drug Administration pretends to protect
the safety of the public. Medical journals pretend to print only
peer-reviewed, scientifically sound research papers. Drug companies pretend
to care about the lives and health of patients. Non-profit disease front groups
pretend to be searching for the cure, while, in reality, most of them
are only searching for more ways to recruit patients into conventional medicine
treatments like drugs, surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, and above all,
donations.
How do we know that this is all pretend?
Besides the junk science, corruption, fraud, collusion, conflicts of interest
and outright dishonesty that characterizes modern medicine, there is one more
very salient factor to consider: The results! If modern medicine really
worked and wasn’t just pretend, wouldn’t we be the healthiest population
in the world?
We pay more for health care, per person, than any nation in the world. We
take more drugs, undergo more surgical procedures and have more hospital visits
than anyone else. If the drugs-and-surgery approach to medicine actually
produced healthy human beings, we would be the “master race”.
Instead, we are the most diseased people on the planet. We have more
disease, disorders and illnesses than any population that has ever been
observed in the history of civilization. Why? Pretend medicine, that’s
why!
So, where are we headed with all this make-believe in abundance? For
openers, the U.S. of A still pretends to offer the best health care in
the world, yet we pay the highest drug prices on the planet, have the highest
rates of chronic degenerative disease and have earned top ranking for the most
citizens without health insurance of any industrialized nation. We are also
number 1 in mental disorders.
The politicians pretend to
get serious about health care reform. These health reform proposals pretend
to reduce health care costs through a shell game illusion that simply shifts
the burden of paying for disease management services to whatever group hires
the fewest lobbyists. And, once the reforms are complete, the corrupt
politicians take the spotlight and pretend to have helped the American
people. Remember the recent Medicare drug benefit shibai? That was Washington’s
way of pretending to help senior citizens save money, many of whom were
left out in the cold due to massive failures in a government database that some
highly paid consultant pretended would actually work.
As the plot thickens, mainstream media pretends to offer objective
reporting on the health care crisis, relying on journalists who pretend to
actually know something about health.
Conventional medicine exists in a
pretend dream world. While cancer groups, researchers and drug companies
promise a better quality of life and health, the reality is far different: accelerating
chronic disease, skyrocketing health care costs that are putting U.S. companies
like General Motors out of business and hundreds of thousands of Americans
being killed by medication side effects – an atrocity that the Fraud and Drug
Administration still hasn’t seemed to notice.
So, what do you think? Maybe it’s time we all stopped pretending?
Maybe it’s time that conventional medicine stopped “playing doctor” and started
helping patients heal with diet and lifestyle changes and natural therapies
that are safe and effective and actually work? You see, once someone is killed
by prescription drugs, we cannot pretend to bring them back.
Some time ago, I spotlighted, in general, the pretending that a lot
of people make a lot of money from. Now, it’s time for specifics by looking at
how the biggest pretenders pretend.
Conventional medical schools: They pretend to teach health, but, in
reality, they teach disease diagnosis combined with a drugs-and-surgery
treatment approach while excluding almost all other treatments, including ones
that actually work.
The Fraud and Drug Administration: A highly corrupt agency that pretends to
regulate pharmaceutical companies while protecting the health and safety of the
American public. The reality: protecting the profits of the pharmaceutical
industry at the expense of public safety.
Health insurance companies and HMOs: They pretend to offer coverage for health
costs, but in reality, they are largely in the business of denying coverage,
limiting payouts, and driving health clinics to the brink of bankruptcy due to
late payments.
Non-profit disease groups: They pretend to be raising money to find
“cures”, but in reality they are more interested in the business of promoting a
particular disease as a way to increase disease screening, diagnosis and
treatment with expensive drugs that just happen to be made by the same
companies that help fund these non-profit front groups.
Medical Journals: Theypretend to be the gatekeepers of
scientific truth, but in reality most are for-profit publications that
predominantly print pro-drug articles and which are funded by advertising
dollars from drug companies.
Chemotherapy: This highly toxic cancer treatment that poisons the
patient and compromises all future healing, pretends to treat patients
for cancer. In reality, it destroys the artifacts of cancer while irreversibly
damaging the patient’s internal organs, thereby harming the patient’s ability
to ever heal again.
Drug companies: These devious corporations pretend to be working
for the public good, charging outrageous prices for prescription drugs so they
can fund expensive research to find cures for tomorrow’s diseases, which they
will invent out of thin air in order to sell more drugs. In reality, the drug
companies are in the business of fabricating diseases so more people can be
diagnosed with something so they can buy another pill advertised on tv.
Clinical drug trial researchers: So-called scientists pretending to run
honest, objective, clinical trials knowing that if the results don’t please
their sponsors (usually drug companies), they will be blacklisted from the
industry. Ever wonder why all these drug trials almost always produce results
that support their sponsors?
Mainstream media: The press pretends to write honest, objective,
well researched stories on health issues. In reality, however, the biggest
publications and news outlets simply parrot the same old propaganda pushed by
deep-pocket advertisers (Big Pharma), without bothering with any real critical
thinking or skepticism on most stories. Too many journalists pretend to
be health experts but are, in fact, largely illiterate when it comes to
nutrition, human physiology or the truth about the health care industry. You
don’t believe this? Try writing a letter-to-the-editor condemning drugs or
doctors or the Standard American Diet and see what happens.
Psychiatrists: This bottom-of-the-barrel group of professional sickos, pretends
to help children with their mental health “disorders” by drugging them with
Ritalin and calling it “treatment”. Having sold its soul to the drug companies,
psychiatry is now nothing more than a drug-dealing front group engaged in
chemical atrocities committed against children and adults alike.
Old-school Doctors: Old-school MD’s pretend to treat patients
suffering from chronic disease through a harmful synthetic chemical solution.
The never ending writing of prescriptions to a never ending line of symptomatic
patients is not real medicine. It is just old fashioned drug dealing.
Patients: Yes, patients are often a part of the pretend game. Pretending that eating a salad once a week qualifies as “health food, or walking across the mall parking lot equals “exercise”, or that taking a cheap multivitamin purchased at Long’s or Wal-Mart meets their nutritional needs is utter nonsense. I guess pretending to take care of your health is easier than actually doing so. Oh yeah, the word patient came about because the meds didn’t want to use the word customer anymore.
For me, pretending as a kid was more fun. It was innocent,
creative, non-exploitive and never hurt anyone.
But now? Run for cover!
Aloha!
Sources:
Just to put things in perspective, after I graduated from Weequahic High School and before going to Seton Hall University, I had a part-time job working for a butcher. I was the delivery guy and occasionally had to go to the slaughterhouse to pick up products for the store. Needless to say, I had no consciousness nor awareness, as change never came then despite the horrors I witnessed on an almost daily basis.
After graduating with a degree in accounting from Seton Hall, I eventually got married and moved to a town called Livingston. Livingston was basically a yuppie community where everyone was judged by the neighborhood they lived in and their income. To say it was a “plastic” community would be an understatement.
Livingston and the shallowness finally got to me. I told my wife I was fed up and wanted to move. She made it clear she had to be near her friends and New York City. I finally got my act together and split for Colorado.
I was living with a lady in Aspen at the end of 1974, when one day she said, ” let’s become vegetarians”. I have no idea what possessed me to say it, but I said, “okay”! At that point I went to the freezer and took out about $100 worth of frozen, dead body parts and gave them to a welfare mother who lived behind us. Well, everything was great for about a week or so, and then the chick split with another guy.
So here I was, a vegetarian for a couple weeks, not really knowing what to do, how to cook, or basically how to prepare anything. For about a month, I was getting by on carrot sticks, celery sticks, and yogurt. Fortunately, when I went vegan in 1990, it was a simple and natural progression. Anyway, as I walked around Aspen town, I noticed a little vegetarian restaurant called, “The Little Kitchen”.
Let me back up just a little bit. It was April of 1975, the snow was melting and the runoff of Ajax Mountain filled the streets full of knee-deep mud. Now, Aspen was great to ski in, but was a bummer to walk in when the snow was melting.
I was ready to call it quits and I needed a warmer place. I’ll elaborate on that in a minute.
But right now, back to “The Little Kitchen”. Knowing that I was going to leave Aspen and basically a new vegetarian, I needed help. So, I cruised into the restaurant and told them my plight and asked them if they would teach me how to cook. I told them in return I would wash dishes and empty their trash. They then asked me what I did for a living and I told them I was an accountant.
The owner said to me, “Let’s make a deal. You do our tax return and we’ll feed you as well”. So for the next couple of weeks I was doing their tax return, washing their dishes, emptying the trash, and learning as much as I could.
But, like I said, the mud was getting to me. So I picked up a travel book written by a guy named Foder. The name of the book was, “Hawaii”. Looking through the book I noticed that in Lahaina, on Maui, there was a little vegetarian restaurant called,” Mr. Natural’s”. I decided right then and there that I would go to Lahaina and work at “Mr. Natural’s.” To make a long story short, that’s exactly what happened.
So, I’m working at “Mr. Natural’s” and learning everything I can about my new dietary lifestyle – it was great. Every afternoon we would close for lunch at about 1 PM and go to the Sheraton Hotel in Ka’anapali and play volleyball, while somebody stayed behind to prepare dinner.
Since I was the new guy, and didn’t really know how to cook, I never thought that I would be asked to stay behind to cook dinner. Well, one afternoon, that’s exactly what happened; it was my turn. That posed a problem for me because I was at the point where I finally knew how to boil water.
I was desperate, clueless and basically up the creek without a paddle. Fortunately, there was a friend of mine sitting in the gazebo at the restaurant and I asked him if he knew how to cook. He said the only thing he knew how to cook was enchiladas. He said that his enchiladas were bean-less and dairy-less. I told him that I had no idea what an enchilada was or what he was talking about, but I needed him to show me because it was my turn to do the evening meal.
Well, the guys came back from playing volleyball and I’m asked what was for dinner. I told them enchiladas; the owner wasn’t thrilled. I told him that mine were bean-less and dairy-less. When he tried the enchilada he said it was incredible. Being the humble guy that I was, I smiled and said, “You expected anything less”? It apparently was so good that it was the only item on the menu that we served twice a week. In fact, after about a week, we were selling five dozen every night we had them on the menu and people would walk around Lahaina broadcasting, ‘enchilada’s at “Natural’s” tonight’. I never had to cook anything else.
A year later the restaurant closed, and somehow I gravitated to a little health food store in Wailuku. I never told anyone I was an accountant and basically relegated myself to being the truck driver. The guys who were running the health food store had friends in similar businesses and farms on many of the islands. I told them that if they could organize and form one company they could probably lock in the State. That’s when they found out I was an accountant and “Down to Earth” was born. “Down to Earth” became the largest natural food store chain in the islands, and I was their Chief Financial Officer and co-manager of their biggest store for 13 years.
In 1981, I started to do a weekly radio show to try and expose people to a vegetarian diet and get them away from killing innocent creatures. I still do that show today. I pay for my own airtime and have no sponsors to not compromise my honesty. One bit of a hassle was the fact that I was forced to get a Masters Degree in Nutrition to shut up all the MD’s that would call in asking for my credentials.
My doing this radio show enabled me, through endless research, to see the corruption that existed within the big food industries, the big pharmaceutical companies, the biotech industries and the government agencies. This information, unconscionable as it is, enabled me to realize how broken our health system is. This will be covered more in depth in the Introduction and throughout the book and when you finish the book you will see this clearly and it will hopefully inspire you to make changes.
I left Down to Earth in 1989, got nationally certified as a sports injury massage therapist and started traveling the world with a bunch of guys that were making a martial arts movie. After doing that for about four years I finally made it back to Honolulu and got a job as a massage therapist at the Honolulu Club, one of Hawaii’s premier fitness clubs. It was there I met the love of my life who I have been with since 1998. She made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. She said,” If you want to be with me you’ve got to stop working on naked women”. So, I went back into accounting and was the Chief Financial Officer of a large construction company for many years.
Going back to my Newark days when I was an infant, I had no idea what a “chicken” or “egg” or “fish” or “pig” or “cow” was. My dietary blueprint was thrust upon me by my parents as theirs was thrust upon them by their parents. It was by the grace of God that I was able to put things in their proper perspective and improve my health and elevate my consciousness.
The road that I started walking down in 1975 has finally led me to the point of writing my book, “A Sane Diet For An Insane World”. Hopefully, the information contained herein will be enlightening, motivating, and inspiring to encourage you to make different choices. Doing what we do out of conditioning is not always the best course to follow. I am hoping that by the grace of the many friends and personalities I have encountered along my path, you will have a better perspective of what road is the best road for you to travel on, not only for your health but your consciousness as well.
Last but not least: after being vaccinated as a kid I developed asthma, which plagued me all of my life. In 2007 I got exposed to the organic sulfur crystals, which got rid of my asthma in 3 days and has not come back in over 10 years. That, being the tip of the iceberg, has helped people reverse stage 4 cancers, autism, joint pain, blood pressure problems, migraine headaches, erectile dysfunction, gingivitis, and more. Also, because of the detoxification effects by the release of oxygen that permeates and heals all the cells in the body, it removes parasites, radiation, fluoride, free radicals, and all the other crap that is thrust upon us in the environment by Big Business.
For more, please view www.healthtalkhawaii.com and www.asanediet.com.
Namaste!
