Health Via Pills

In today's Wall Street Journal, it was reported the Glaxo has just halted a cancer trial using a drug for which Glaxo paid $720M (!) in 2008. This small trial was focused on multiple myeloma using a drug reformulated from resveratrol, a substance found in low quatities in red wine. Turns out that the drug was causing cast nephropathy in some patients, a condition that can cause kidney failure.

This is the latest instance in Big Pharma's "holy grail" quest to try and bottle the health benefits of good nutrition (mind you I'm not necessarily implying that red wine = good nutrition!). Many diabetes drugs have been black labled or pulled from the market lately because they are doing more damage than good.

In my leadership role at Lifestyle Center of America, I can testify to the incredible impact on health and diabetes of great nutrition (lots of fiber-rich whole foods), lots of water, good rest, low stress and moderate activity. In 12-18 days, we saw virtually miraculous health improvements. Really! People came in wheelchairs and walkers and left walking unassisted. About half of people on insulin were able to safely discontinue insulin. Medication use plummeted. We know it works. BUT! Our long-term follow-up showed that epiphany based intensive lifestyle change only lasted for a short while. Old behaviors came back in 6-9 months and by 2 years only 5-10% of people who went through our program had significant lasting change. Let's face it, it's easier to just pop a pill and chow down on that cheese burger. However, more and more people are realizing that not only can you NOT get health in a pill, but the cost of that approach is becoming catastrophic in our nation's health care costs.

70% (get that? 70%!!!) of all health care costs are for diseases that are completly preventable if people adopted a lifestyle approach that was akin to Blue Zone behaviors. Yet only 2-3% of health care dollars are actually spent to encourage such an approach. And that does not change much in the new health care legislation. Yikes! Anyone see anything upside down here?

The good news? There is lots of research out there on how you can easily and permanently change your lifestyle behaviors.

More on that later!

Here's to your well-being,

Pastor Sid
Your eChurch7 Health Pastor