Question: You often praise the benefits of natural foods and products. Are there any cases where processed foods or unnatural products are equivalent or better?

In most cases, the health related distinction between natural and processed foods or products lies in the body’s ability to recognize and appropriately respond to the substances they contain. Humans have spent millions of years adapting to the conditions of nature and improving the ability to survive on the resources that it provides. As such, the body typically doesn’t react favorably to any unnatural substance that didn’t exist during this long period of adaptation.

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Television commercials can be downright deceptive and literally bad for your health. Enormous amounts of money are spent on ad campaigns with one purpose in mind – getting you to spend money. Serious effort is put forth to make these ads connect with you emotionally, and in many cases, the connection is harming you.

I rarely watch television, but as a big tennis fan, I’ve been watching the Australian Open. The deceptive marketing power behind the commercials I’ve been seeing is sickening. In just the past week, I’ve seen repeats of three misleading drug commercials for the same product – Bayer Aspirin.

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Barack Obama’s campaign was all about “change you can believe in.” I don’t have much trust in politicians, but I have to admit, Obama had me feeling hopeful. Now that he’s extended an offer to Dr. Sanjay Gupta to be our next Surgeon General, I’m not so sure the “change” is something I can believe in.

Anyone who is well informed about good health knows that our medical system is seriously lacking in it’s focus on prevention. Most doctors are great at alleviating symptoms, but they can’t help you correct the root problem that’s causing them. In most cases, they don’t even try. You can read the article I wrote about chasing symptoms for a deeper explanation.

What is Prevention?

In terms of our health and our medical system, prevention can be interpreted several ways. I consider it to mean the avoidance of disease through a healthy lifestyle. The problem is that most people just don’t know what a healthy lifestyle truly is, even if they think they do. They get their information primarily from the media, but the media is heavily influenced by food and drug manufacturers that don’t always have our best interests at heart.

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Are you letting your health deteriorate as you chase symptoms, or are you improving it by getting to the root cause? A shockingly large percentage of people are taking more than one prescription drug, and the ones who aren’t are frequently relying on over the counter medications. The result is a compromised level of health that slowly but surely gets worse and worse.

Are You Just Hiding the Problem?

Typically, when someone isn’t feeling their best, they identify one or more specific symptoms and do what they can to eliminate them. A common example is taking an over the counter pain reliever such as acetaminophen or ibuprofen. The more serious cases involve medications for blood pressure and cholesterol.

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