How to Stop "Treating" Health Conditions

I know this is the approach used in pharmaceuticals and employed by most doctors . If , for instance , blood glucose is high , drugs like insulin , metformin or a GLP1 agonist like WeGovie or Osempic is introduced to force blood glucose down .

If blood pressure is high , a drug such as a thiazide diuretic , beta-blocker or ACE inhibitor is prescribed to reduce blood pressure . If there is an inflammatory or autoimmune condition , they pick a single inflammatory mediator and block it . But there are major drawbacks to approaching health in this way that I'll discuss in this episode of the Defiant Health Podcast .

Instead , I would like you to consider a completely different approach . Rather than try to improve some health measure with a pharmaceutical or even a medical procedure , I would suggest that we instead address and correct the common factors that allow such health conditions to emerge in the first place . I'll explain what that means .

But it means that this approach cannot just reduce blood glucose or blood pressure or reverse many inflammatory or autoimmune conditions , but can also result in weight loss , loss of abdominal visceral fat , reduced inflammation , improve insulin resistance , restore youthful characteristics , smooth your skin , restore healthy musculature and provide other effects that yield benefits

that go beyond the original issue .

It's not uncommon , for example , to take this approach for , say , weight loss , but find yourself no longer a type 2 diabetic or pre-diabetic , or no longer hypertensive , while enjoying relief from multiple forms of skin rashes , it'll bowel syndrome , fatty liver , anxiety or depression and hundreds of other conditions , despite having introduced no effort at treating these

conditions . So in this episode of Defiant Health , let's discuss this radically different approach to health . I'd like to also tell you about Defiant Health's sponsors , paleo Valley and Biodiquest .

Paleo Valley is our preferred source for many excellent foods , such as fermented beef , pork and chicken sticks sourced from organic pastured animals , bone broth , protein and delicious low-carb superfood bars .

Biodiquest is my preferred source of quality probiotics crafted by academic microbiologist Dr Raul Kenno , probiotics created with attention to collaborative metabolic effects among microbes , the only probiotics available with this built-in feature .

So the pharmaceutical model is the one that is widely practiced in healthcare and practiced by mainstream doctors Identify an abnormal parameter and use a pharmaceutical or procedure to correct it , to address it With its high blood pressure , anti-hypertensive medication is introduced . It could be high cholesterol , for which a statin cholesterol drug is prescribed .

It could be an autoimmune or inflammatory condition , such as rheumatoid arthritis or psoriatic arthritis , for which a costly biologic agent , often injectable , to block some mediator of that process that's administered . It could be a GLP1 agonist , such as wegovia orozempic , or a bariatric procedure to address overweight or obesity .

But there are fundamental and sometimes severe , even life-threatening , problems with this approach . One common problem with the pharmaceutical approach is that all the phenomena that surround a specific condition are not addressed by the treatment introduced , for example , in reducing high blood pressure with anti-hypertensive drugs , regardless of the form .

It could be a thiazide diuretic like chlorothaladone or hydrochlorothiazide . It could be a beta-blocker like metoprol or a tenolol . It could be an ACE inhibitor like lysinepro . Well , all those drugs do indeed reduce blood pressure and thereby reduce risk for heart attack , stroke , kidney disease , aortic disease and other problems .

But here's the problem with that approach Even if normal blood pressure is achieved with any of those drugs , risk for all those conditions persists . Let me say that again , even if normal blood pressure is achieved on those drugs , increased risk for heart disease , stroke , kidney disease , etc . All persists .

Or how about a statin cholesterol drug to reduce total and LDL cholesterol to low levels ? Well , that may be the case and it reduces cardiovascular risk a little teensy-weensy bit , by the way , far less than is often discussed by doctors in the pharmaceutical industry .

But even if you do enjoy a lower total or LDL cholesterol , you're still at significant risk for heart disease Because other causes are not addressed . Other causes for heart disease are not addressed by that statin drug , causes such as insulin resistance that statins actually make worse .

That's why there's more type 2 diabetes and pre-diabetes while taking a statin drug . It does not address inflammation . It doesn't address vitamin D deficiency or lack of omega-3 fatty acids or magnesium deficiency or dysbiosis , colonic dysbiosis , endotoxemia or thyroid dysfunction . In other words , that statin cholesterol drug just helped improve a single marker .

Cholesterol did not address all the other , in fact made some of them worse . So statin drug is not the final answer to heart disease . You know all the phenomena surrounding heart disease risk are not fully addressed by that statin drug .

How about a drug by a lot of very expensive and very toxic drugs such as a tumor necrosis factor blocker that's being introduced , say , for psoriatic arthritis or rheumatoid arthritis . Well , it may be blocked at one mediator , tnf alpha , but it does nothing for the hugely disrupted gastrointestinal microbiome that likely initiate the disease .

In order to address the vitamin D deficiency , the omega-3 fatty S deficiency that allowed inflammation to proceed unchecked , as those diseases so , over and over again , drugs treat one aspect of a condition but fails to address all the other phenomena of the other associated phenomena that surround that condition .

A related problem with the pharmaceutical approach is that the initiating cause is typically not addressed at all and , in fact , almost always ignored .

So if someone has bone thinning that is , osteopenia or the worst situation of osteoporosis and if the cause is included vitamin D deficiency and magnesium deficiency , which are known to cause bone thinning coupled with loss of gastrointestinal microbes that provoke oxytocin release oxytocin being a master control over bone density these causes are simply not addressed by a

prescription for phosomax or boneva . In other words , if the bone thinning was initiated because of those missing factors vitamin D , magnesium , oxytocin the drug does nothing for those causes . It works by a different mechanism and , of course , you're subject to all the nasty side effects of those drugs .

If you have the pain and suffering of fibromyalgia and it's partially suppressed by the awful drug Simbalta or Lyrica . What about the severe small intestal bacterial overgrowth , or SIBO , and the accompanying endotoxemia that initiate the condition ? Well , those are completely not addressed , or even made worse by the drugs .

So once again , the drug does not address the inciting cause . The initiating cause and because the underlying gastrointestinal process that started this condition has been ignored . This sets the person up .

Though they may have less pain from the drug , this person has been set up for weight gain , type 2 diabetes , other autoimmune conditions , cognitive impairment , diverticular disease , colon cancer . So not addressing the original cause , the initiating cause , is a big mistake , but that is commonly done in the world of pharmaceuticals when they try to treat conditions .

Another major fundamental problem with the pharmaceutical model of treatment is that side effects and unanticipated effects commonly developed . Think about the marked increase in potential for developing type 2 diabetes with statin cholesterol drugs . Or how about sudden cardiac death that results from taking a thiazide diuretic because of loss of potassium magnesium in the urine .

Or how about the kidney failure and bleeding stomach ulcers that commonly result from taking the proxen ibuprofen chronically for back pain ? Or the increase in thyroid cancer , bowel obstruction and the dramatic loss of muscle mass with GLP1 agonists that ensure long-term health problems , including , by the way , regain of the weight .

So you likely already know that the pharmaceutical model of treating conditions is a hotbed of potential for unanticipated or adverse events , sometimes dangerous events .

So let's take an entirely different , erratically different , approach and let's , instead of treating conditions , let's address factors that are lacking in modern life , that allow abnormal health conditions to emerge in the first place . Let's talk about that further when we come back after a little discussion about the Diviant Health Sponsors .

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So , rather than treat conditions by blocking some pathway or mediator in a pathway , or blocking some phenomenon like high blood cluster or blood sugar or blood pressure , let's instead address factors that allow all these conditions to emerge in the first place . The first thing we tackle , of course , is diet .

We revert back to the diet that is programmed into the human genetic code . In other words , humans have lived on this planet for several million years in this very specific style of eating that is programmed into your genetics . This is true for all creatures on the planet .

Imagine , for instance , you see a lion tackle a gazelle or a wildebeest , tear its throat open , open the abdomen and chest and eat the heart , liver , kidneys and intestines . You see this and you re disgusted . The lion has fragments of organs on his mouth and blood dripping . So you cage the animal , the lion , and you feed it kale and spinach .

This is going to happen to that lion . What will be dead ? Probably in a few weeks or so , because you have violated the style of eating program into this genetic code that serves its physiologic needs .

Humans are no different , and for the first several million years , the first several thousand generations , humans hunted and gathered . They did not cultivate nor harvest wheat or grains . So wheat and grains are very recent additions to human diet . Even ancestral forms of wheat , such as iron corn wheat from before biblical times , caused problems in humans who consumed .

It caused , for instance , explosion , arthritis , tooth decay and mineral deficiencies . But it got a lot worse with modern agribusiness because they introduced extensive changes into the plant's genetics . It took thousands of experiments to do this , but the end result was a high yield , semi-dwarf strain of wheat that is very harmful to modern humans .

The glyatin protein , for instance . People say gluten , but it's really the glyatin within gluten . The glyatin protein now causes fourfold more celiac disease , more so-called non-celiac gluten sensitivity .

The amylopectin , a carbohydrate , causes extravagant rise in blood sugar and thereby contributes to weight gain , type 2 diabetes and other phenomena that are caused by insulin resistance . There's wheat germaglutinin that is a potent baltoxin and is responsible for intestinal inflammation .

There's phytates that bind minerals in your gut minerals such as magnesium , iron , zinc and calcium and cause you to pass them into the toilet . Even if you're eating a healthy diet , you are mineral deficient . Banishing all wheat and grains .

That is reverting back to the diet that humans have followed for more than 99% of our time in this planet reverses numerous health conditions . It contributes to reversing weight gain and obesity . It reduces blood sugar , reverses type 2 diabetes in many instances reverses pre-diabetes , reduces blood pressure , yields many gastrointestinal benefits .

Just that change in diet provides you with enormous advantage in reclaiming control over health . By the way , you'll end up doing the opposite of what dietary guidelines and what most physicians and dietitians tell you , of course , telling you to cut your fat and saturated fat , eat planet-healthy whole grains A very destructive message that no one should be following .

We also address nutrients that are largely lacking in modern life that , in combination , yield improvement when restored , yield improvements in insulin resistance and inflammation . There's four major ones . There's some others , but there's four major nutrients that are lacking in modern life Vitamin D , magnesium , iodine and omega-3 .

Vitamin D , because we lead our lives indoors , we wear clothes that cover much of the surface air of our skin and you're not exposed to the sun to activate vitamin D in the skin . We get very little vitamin D from diet .

There's a little bit in eggs , there's a little bit in liver and some other organs , but there's essentially very little in diet so we rely on the sun . But most many of us live in a northern climate and work indoors and wear clothing , so we can't rely on getting sun for everybody .

If you live in a tropical climate you could , but most areas of the world you cannot . So we supplement vitamin D . That contributes to reversing all those phenomena insulin resistance and inflammation as well as providing many other benefits like increased bone density that reduce triglyceride , reduce fatty liver , protection from winter blues and many other benefits .

Omega-3 fatty acids were supposed to be obtained by human consumption of brain matter from the animals we killed , as well as fish . Well , no one eats brain anymore . Modern people are so averse because , we've been told , cut your fat and cholesterol , and modern people have become too squeamish about eating brain .

It would be nice if we get plenty of omega-3 fatty acids , epa and DHA by eating as much fish as we'd like , but you can't In a modern world . Modern fish is contaminated by mercury and shellfish by cadmium , both of which can accumulate and have toxic effects as they accumulate in your body . So we resort to omega-3 fatty acids .

That also makes a contribution to reversing inflammation , insulin resistance , and has many other beneficial effects such as reduced risk for cognitive impairment and dementia , as well as reducing endotoxemia , because it activates an enzyme lining your intestines that partially deactivates the endotoxin from bacteria . There's iodine that is lacking in many people .

Most modern people were getting their iodine from iodized salt ever since 1924 when the FDA found that the science showed that lack of iodine , that was a big problem , a major public health problem . Many parts of the country and other parts of the world Was causing goiters or enlarged thyroid glands in the neck .

As many as 60 to 70 percent in some locations of the population had a goiter and go to is were dangerous .

That could compress your airway and you could suffocate or you develop in capacitating hypothyroidism , gain a lot of weight , retain a lot of edema and then finally die of congestive heart failure or go into a coma that's called mexid mixidima coma , and so iodine lack was a big problem solved by iodine .

Of course the FDA was concerned in the 1970s and 80s that their original advice to consume lots of iodized salt was backfiring and people were having problems with the salt .

What they did not right realize was that their other advice to cut fat and cholesterol , eat more healthy whole grains , coupled with the increased proliferation and availability of processed foods caused insulin resistance . That , in turn , causes sodium retention , so they laid the blame on . The wrong thing .

Wasn't the salt that was largely to blame , it was dietary advice that led to insulin resistance and sodium retention .

So when you get rid of foods that cause insulin resistance wheat and grains and sugar and you address factors , nutrients lacking that also address Insulin resistance and thereby sodium retention , we don't limit salt or sodium , but we need to get our iodine from a more secure source .

If you get it from iodized salt , unfortunately you open that canister and the iodine evaporates or volatilizes within about four weeks . So if you're going to use iodized salt , you simply have to buy a new canister every four weeks .

So an easier and very inexpensive thing to do is just buy iodine supplements such as kelp tablets , dried seaweed or potassium iodide drops . And then , lastly , because we have to filter our water and Because modern produce has about 90% less magnesium than it used to , so we're getting almost no magnesium in our diet .

So we need to supplement magnesium and likewise , like the other nutrients , magnesium supplementation contributes to normalization or minimization of insulin resistance and Inflammation , as well as having other beneficial effects such as reduction in blood pressure Reduction at an abnormal heart rhythms and it increases bone density , protecting you from bone thinning .

Put those four nutrients together and you get a wonderful synergistic effect in reversing or minimizing insulin resistance and inflammation . Even better , combine the restoration of those four nutrients with the diet where we remove foods that cause insulin resistance and inflammation wheat , grains and sugars and you have an extremely powerful combination .

Let's take it even further . We have to accept that modern people have massively disrupted their gastrointestal microbiome , that is , the composition of microbes in the GI tract . Our overexposure to antibiotics so most people by age 40 have taken 30 courses on average of antibiotics for every 1,000 children .

There's over 1,300 prescriptions written every year for an antibiotic . We've all been exposed as a society to a massive quantity of antibiotics . Plus , there's other factors food additives like preservatives . Preservatives inhibit growth of microbes in food but also in you . Emulsifying agents that cause mixing of food .

Chemicals such as polysorbate , adi and carboxymethyl cellulose and carrageenan that keep foods like ice cream and salad dressing mixed but also disperse your mucus barrier in your gastrointestinal tract , which changes the microbiome and increases inflammation body-wide .

There's other factors that disrupt your microbiome , such as stomach acid blocking drugs , non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs like ibuprofen and naproxen , glyphosate residues in wheat and other foods , other herbicides , other pesticides . There's a long list of factors that disrupt your intestinal barrier and your gastrointestinal microbiome .

For a full list , see my super gut book or my drdavsinfinthethelthcom , where there's a complete list of all the factors that you need to know about that can disrupt your GI microbiome . We work to restore a normal microbiome . Another problem , though , is that many people by my estimation , easily easily 50% of the US population has allowed fecal microbes .

These are microbial species like E coli and salmonella and citrobacter and campylobacter and pseudomonas . These are typical pathogens , but they also normally live in your colon , the last four to five feet of your gastrointestinal tract .

But about 50% of the population there's been an over-proliferation from all those factors were exposed to , allowed overpopulation of those fecal microbes and then , remarkably , they have been allowed to ascend into the 24 feet of small intestine .

That is called small intestinal bacterial overgrowth , sibo or SIBO we say that afflicts about 150 million Americans now , and if you want to know how I got that number , see my super gut book or my drdavsinfinthethelthcom blog , or see prior episodes of this Define Health podcast , where I talk about SIBO and how , as a society , we've allowed fecal microbes to invade

24 feet of small intestine . Now that's a very important process , this process of SIBO , because the small intestine is by design very permeable , because that's where we absorb nutrients like minerals and vitamins and amino acids and fatty acids . So that small intestine needs to be permeable , but it is poorly suited to housing trillions of fecal microbes .

So trillions of fecal microbes inhabiting the 24 feet of small intestine live and die in a matter of hours . Those microbes don't live very long , they live and die and when they die they shed some of their components .

One important component is called lipopolysaccharide endotoxin or LPS endotoxin , and that endotoxin penetrates the very permeable small intestine and gets into your bloodstream and that's where exports inflammation and insulin resistance to all parts of the body .

Lo and behold , it's now clear that SIBO and endotoxinia are the driving factors in so many health conditions such as atrial fibrillation , coronary disease , stroke , parkinson's disease , alzheimer's , dementia and cognitive impairment , type 2 diabetes and pre-diabetes , hypertension , fatty liver , depression , anger and hatred , autoimmune conditions and other inflammatory conditions .

In other words , any modern condition is incompletely addressed if you do not address at least colonic dysbiosis , that is , disruption , microbial species confined to the colon , or SIBO in the small intestine .

So if your atrial fibrillation , for instance , or your coronary disease , or your hypertension , or your depression or anxiety , hatred or rosacea or psoriasis or rheumatoid arthritis is driven , at least in part , by SIBO and endotoxinia , giving you a drug to block some inflammatory pathway or a drug to reduce blood pressure or a drug to slow your heart rate and hit

fibrillation , you can imagine this does not even come close to addressing the underlying causes and associated phenomena . So the pharmaceutical model of a drug for every condition is deeply flawed and very dangerous and leads to all kinds of unanticipated problems because the underlying cause has not been addressed .

I hope you begin to appreciate that this idea that we address the factors that allow disease to emerge in the first place is a much more powerful way to address health than simply targeting as a limited phenomenon that's associated with some condition like high blood pressure , high blood sugar

. Now there are conditions where this is not possible . This won't help , for instance , if there's been irreversible damage to your pancreatic beta cells . Those are the cells that produce insulin . Because you ate the glycine protein of wheat and your vitamin D deficient two major causes of type 1 diabetes those cells don't grow back .

Pancreatic beta cells don't grow back and you are type 1 diabetic for a lifetime or therefore dependent on the insulin and insulin's life savings . You have no choice because you damaged or lost pancreatic beta cells .

If you ate the glycine protein of wheat or had unrecognized H pylori in your stomach , you'll go back to pylori that caused atrophy of your stomach and killed off the parietal cells in the stomach that produce stomach acid . You don't get that back and you therefore have to follow strategies that acidify the stomach .

The most common is betaine hydrochloride , a supplement called betaine hydrochloride . To acidify the stomach . You'll also have to supplement vitamin B12 , because the lack of stomach natural stomach acid impairs your ability to absorb vitamin B12 .

But you can appreciate that a person who's lost the capacity to produce stomach acid needs to rely on other strategies to compensate . Or let's say , you develop spontaneous claustrodium difficile and or colitis . Spontaneous is really a misnomer , I think .

I believe that the evidence suggests that if you develop so-called spontaneous C diff that is , c diff that occurs without a preceding antibiotic it's likely due to SIBO .

So if somebody gives you lots and lots of antibiotics or even a fecal transplant to treat your C diff and or colitis , they have not addressed the dysbiosis or the SIBO that allowed that condition to occur in the first place .

And if you do not address the SIBO , you're asking for long-term trouble , because uncorrected SIBO and endotoxyma that accompanies it drives insulin resistance , inflammation and thereby a long list of modern health conditions including weight gain , obesity , diabetes , hypertension , atrial fibrillation , depression , etc . All those conditions I've mentioned .

In fact , you could argue that virtually every modern condition not injury , not infection so I'm not saying that malaria and dengue fever are caused by these things and , of course , not breaking your leg by falling out of a tree or chasing an animal but the things that the conditions we're familiar with , the conditions that are all around you , in your family , maybe

in your friends , in your coworkers , the people with type 2 diabetes , obesity , heart disease , depression all those common health conditions are simply not fully addressed and are only corrected in a limited way by the modern pharmaceutical approach .

So addressing the factors that cause these conditions , or at least make them much worse , is a far more effective way to deal with these health conditions .

The great thing about that is , once you get this and you address all those factors diet , those foreign nutrients and the microbiome , by the way we also take a little further by restoring nutrients that are largely lacking in modern life because of the silly advice to cut your fat and cut your cholesterol .

Another thing that people abandon was organ meats and thereby collagen and hyaluronic acid . Collagen is very rich in organ meats . Hyaluronic acid is also rich in organ meats such as brain and skin . Well , most people don't eat those organ meats anymore , so you're very collagen deficient , hyaluronic acid deficient . That has implications also .

They're not quite as powerful as those previous things the nutrients and diet and microbiome but they do have significant effects , and they have effects that are youth restoring and anti-aging . Collagen , for instance , smooths your skin by increasing dermal collagen .

Collagen also rebuilds the cartilage in your joints and restores the collagen in your arteries , making them healthier . The hyaluronic acid is a great lubricant in skin because it holds water , but it also further stimulates collagen deposition .

It also increases the lubricant in your joints , the so-called synovial fluid , and it improves eye health and arterial health also . If all this interests you , this approach to correcting factors that allowed disease to emerge in the first place , interests you , I invite you to take a look at my books the wheat belly books , super Gut .

Look at my blog , my drdavisinfinitehealthcom , with over 2,000 articles on these topics .

Listen to prior episodes of my Defiant Health podcast , where you are right now and I detail all these things how to do the diet , how to bake , how to shop , what foods to avoid , how to make pizza , how to make donuts , how to make muffins and other foods , so you don't feel like you're missing out on anything .

How to replace the nutrients in wet dosage , how to manage your microbiome , your gastro-microbiome we have something called SIBO yogurt . That is a fermentation process we follow that has been extremely and unexpectedly successful in eradicating SIBO . And then how to address collagen and hyaluronic acid , all detailed in all those places I make it very available .

I didn't go through that now for the sake of time , but you can find elsewhere in many of my other media productions

. Now , if you learned something new by listening to this Defiant Health podcast , I invite you to subscribe to your favorite podcast directory . Post a review , post a comment . Help us build this movement of self-empowerment and health that keeps you free of the clutches of the healthcare system . Thanks for listening .