Food Over Medicine - Book Review

I recently had the pleasure of reading the book Food Over Medicine: The Conversation That Could Save Your Life. Authors Dr. Pamela Popper, PhD, ND and Glen Merzer take on the subjects of health, nutrition, and the practice of modern medicine as we know it today. They do an excellent job in doing so and in a very unusual fashion might I add.

Food Over Medicine is literally a conversation between Glen and Pam on some of the most pressing health issues that face our current system today. Both authors maintain a high degree of credibility and professionalism that you would expect when covering these serious topics, yet their style is fun, casual, and entertaining to say the least.

About The Authors

Dr. Pamela Popper, PhD, ND is the Executive Director of The Wellness Forum located in Colombus, OH. She is a naturopathic doctor who uses lifestyle medicine, and more specifically plant-based nutrition, to prevent and reverse many of the chronic diseases ailing her patients. She has appeared in the blockbuster documentary Forks Over Knives and is an internationally recognized speaker and expert in the field of nutrition, medicine, and health.

Glen Merzer is coauthor of Mad Cowboy with Howard Lyman, as well as No More Bull! with Howard Lyman and Joanna Samorow-Merzer. Glen is a playwright and screenwriter residing in California. He has been a vegetarian for forty years and vegan for almost twenty.

Whole: Rethinking the Science of Nutrition by Dr. T. Colin Campbell - Book Review

This summer spawned the publication of Dr. T. Colin Campbell's latest book Whole: Rethinking the Science of Nutrition. This was a follow up to his bestseller The China Study  which took the nutrition world by storm back in 2005 and continues to be a leading seller today. Today I provide a book review on Whole.

Both The China Study and Whole paint a picture (and very intriguing one at that) of the health and nutrition world as it's come to exist today. While The China Study gives more of the intricate details of the individual studies relating to health and nutrition, Whole focuses on the bigger picture of how it all fits together within our current "system". Dr. Campbell lays out how a reductionist approach to nutrition, health, and medicine functions within our current system, and, more importantly, why the system operates the way it does.

Whole is comprised of three main parts followed by Dr. Campbell's engaging thoughts in Part IV on how we should move forward if we wish to turn around the current disease-care system we've come to know today.

Whole - Part I - Enslaved by The System

Dr. T. Colin Campbell, Ph.D.

Part I of Whole plants a seed in readers to think differently. It reveals a wholistic approach towards our healthcare system as we move forward. The present-day strategies of using pills, procedures, and/or surgeries to combat the epidemic of chronic disease is, for all intensive purposes, not working. Instead, Dr. Campbell enlightens us on the benefits of a whole foods, plant-based (WFPB) diet in our quest to end the epidemic of sickness and suffering.

Part I goes on to detail Dr. Campbell's background of how he grew up on a dairy farm and then made his subsequent entrance into the scientific world as a leading nutritional biochemist looking to rid the world of hunger and malnourishment. The details of his upbringing provide a very telling story with a surprising twist of fate.

Chapter 1 - The Modern-Day Health-Care Myth
Chapter 2 - The Whole Truth
Chapter 3 - My Heretical Path

3 Proven Employer Sponsored Health and Wellness Programs

Healthcare costs are second only to energy costs when it comes the financial worries of Chief Financial Officers (CFO's) throughout corporate America today. A recent survey of 275 CFO's ranked healthcare expenditures a major concern (8 or above on a scale of 10) when it came to the financial viability of their company.

These concerns have rightfully earned their place at the top of the competing business world because an enormous amount of money is at stake here. Providing healthcare coverage to employees is big business and it doesn't take long for these costs to add up. Take the costs of insurance premiums for example. The average annual premium in 2012 for single coverage was $5,615 and for family coverage this rose to $15,745 [1]. While employees are taking on more of the burden with these costs, the fact remains that employers are still paying for the majority of it. On average, employers pay for roughly 77% of healthcare insurance premiums, while employees pay the remaining 23%.

The False Hope Of Prescription Medications - A Pharmacist Tells All

For every ailment in today's world there is a pill. A solution in the form of a capsule or tablet or liquid with a concoction of chemicals inside designed to "cure" our misfortunes. Big Pharma has made their mark. As a pharmacist who's been in the medical field for over 10 years, I actually find this quite concerning given the pharmaceutical companys' primary motives for financial growth with little to no regard for patient safety and outcomes. The television commercials say it all. Drug companies are here to market, profit, and prosper off of sick people. You're of no value to them if you're in good health. This might be all well and good if the end goal was truly a nation, or a world, full of vibrant, healthy people who occasionally needed the help of Big Pharma to get back on their feet. But it's not. We live in an era where pill popping is the norm and weight issues and chronic diseases reign supreme. A quick look at the numbers confirms what we already know.

In 2011, a total of 4.02 billion prescriptions were dispensed at a grand total of $319.9 billion [1,2]. In case you were wondering, this amounts to approximately 12.9 prescriptions for every man, women, and child living in the U.S. at a cost of roughly $1,026.68 per year per person. Most of this isn't hitting our pocket books, not directly anyway. Insurance companies pay for the majority of the costs. In 2011, the average copay for 75% of all prescriptions dispensed in the U.S. was $10 or less thanks to the increasing availability of generic medications and prescription drug coverage [1]. I could write an entire book on the statistics behind the legalized drug world, but I'll stop for now. If you care to look into the subject any further you can read the IMS Institute for Health Informatics report here.

Main Street Vegan Radio - The Plant-Based Pharmacist w/host Victoria Moran - "2013 - A Healthy Start To A New Year"

I had the wonderful opportunity a couple weeks ago to kick of the New Year with radio host Victoria Moran on her radio show Main Street Vegan! Victoria Moran is the bestselling author of 11 books and hosts a weekly radio show on Unity.FM geared towards improving the health and lives of others and the planet by promoting a vegan lifestyle. She has appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show and was voted Vegan Of The Year in 2012! To learn more about Victoria's work check out her book Main Street Vegan: Everything You Need to Know to Eat Healthfully and Live Compassionately in The Real World.

In this segment, Victoria and I talk about a number of interesting health-related topics including:

• My childhood years and dream of pursuing a pharmacy career
• How America got itself stuck in the current healthcare crisis
• Big Pharma's role and influence in the healthcare system
• The best available treatment options (both conventional and alternative) used in treating some of the most common chronic diseases
• Which vitamins and supplements are truly necessary
• How to make a healthy lifestyle a permanent fixture in one's life

Lessons From A Pharmacist - I Get A Big, Fat Paycheck While You Stay Sick

Hi. My name is Dustin Rudolph. I've been a practicing pharmacist for over 10 years now, and I'm here to tell you something you may not like hearing. I get a BIG, FAT paycheck every two weeks while YOU (or at least the vast majority of you) stay sick. To put it bluntly, I get rich off of your misery.

Why does this happen? It happens because I, along with the rest of my colleagues in the medical field, practice profit-based medicine. We put profits before patients.

If this makes you angry then good. If this disappoints you then good. If you're a fellow colleague of mine and me calling it like it is pisses you off then good. Quite frankly, I don't give a damn how it makes you feel as long as it makes you feel something. That way I know I've fulfilled my purpose in writing this article because maybe, just maybe, you'll do something about those feelings which will positively influence how you live your life from this point forward.

The Missing Piece Of The American Health Care Conversation

It's an all to often occurrence in my line of work as a hospital pharmacist to hear other healthcare professionals talking to patients about how they can treat their ailments. This almost always involves a reference to the latest procedure or newly released blockbuster drug. While some rare occasions may indeed call for such action, many do not. We have a pill for everything in this country and a high tech procedure for everything else. 

Many of the conversations I hear go a little something like this:

Patient: "How'd my cholesterol test come back?"

Nurse: "It's higher than we'd like it to be, but the doctor just ordered this drug called Lipitor for you..."

Patient: "The chest pain was almost unbearable at times doc."

Doctor: "You're going to be ok. You're actually a really good candidate for a procedure called a cardiac cath. What happens is we'll insert a stent into your coronary artery..."

Patient: "This indigestion is killing me. It's been going on for days. I can't sleep at night it's so bad."

Doctor: "I'm sorry. It has to be difficult to get any rest when your chest feels like it's on fire. There's this medication called Nexium we can try on you. It's the purple pill. You may have heard of it before. Also, I can give you a sleeping pill called Ambien..."

Patient: "So what's the verdict from my fall? Is anything broken? I'm really in a lot of pain."

Doctor: "Unfortunately, you broke your hip. You have osteoporosis which is a major contributor to this. We need to consult an orthopedic specialist to see if surgery is necessary for you. Also, there's this drug called Fosamax I'd like to start you on once you leave the hospital..."

Functional Medicine - The Future Is Now In 21st Century Medicine

Dr. Mark Hyman isn't one of those doctors who's eager to pass out pills and procedures like candy when patients come to see him for their medical problems. He doesn't care about "labeling" a set of symptoms just so people can finally put a name to whatever they're suffering from. He wants to do more than just this.

He wants to get to the root cause of his patient's problems. Instead of taking a backwards approach to treating diseases by throwing more drugs at them he takes a forward thinking approach of finding the underlying cause of these diseases and then targets those issues to better the lives of his patients. He practices what is known as Functional Medicine and hopes to help both patients and doctors view health and disease from a different perspective. This perspective focuses on long term solutions instead of short term relief from a medicine cabinet full of prescriptions.

He shares his personal story of discovering this new vision of what healthcare should look like in his speech at TEDMED 2010. His insights into the management of the emotional, mental, and physical wellbeing of a human being gives hope that one day our current medical system may finally realize that our conventional ways of compartmentalized thinking are outdated and in need of a major overhaul. The body is a whole system of interconnected parts that all affect one another. More pills are not the answer. More understanding and knowledge about this systemic approach is.

Photo credit: Editorjp (Wikimedia Commons)

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by Dustin Rudolph, PharmD
Clinical Pharmacist

Check out Dustin Rudolph's book The Empty Medicine Cabinet to start your journey towards better health. This step-by-step guide leads you through many of today's common chronic diseases (heart disease, obesity, diabetes, cancer, and more), giving you the facts on foods versus medications in treating these medical conditions. The book also contains an easy-to-follow guide on how to adopt a whole foods, plant-based diet as a part of an overall lifestyle change, producing the best possible health outcomes for you and your family. Hurry and get your copy today!

We'd love for you to join us in spreading the good word about plant-based nutrition and lifestyle medicine by telling your family and friends about our website at www.PlantBasedPharmacist.com. 

Share and rate this post below or tell us what you think by posting a comment. Thank you again for stopping by and until next time... be happy, be healthy, and live the life you've always dreamed of!

Dr. Don & The Plant-Based Pharmacist - Food Subsidies, Lobbying, and the American Healthcare Crisis

Did you ever think about why our healthcare system is setup the way it is?  Or how our agriculture system is organized in a way that promotes the healthcare system by making it easy for people to buy and eat inexpensive foods which make us sick?

Dr. Don Wagner and myself went to the public airwaves with these topics to help others understand what goes on behind the scenes of government, politics, and the agriculture and healthcare industries.  We expose the food subsidy programs which act to further fuel the American healthcare crisis as well as talk about the money being exchanged between pharmaceutical companies and doctors and politicians.  There's a reason why you're bombarded with endless commercials and advertisements for disease promoting foods and medications that don't work to deal with these food choices.  You deserve better.  You deserve to know how to take back control of your life, your health, and your future and that's what Dr. Don and I aim to do by working together to inform you of topics like this.

I've included the links to the two articles I wrote that Dr. Don references throughout the program at the end of this article.  I hope you enjoy them and this show.  Remember, your best way to beat the agriculture and pharmaceutical companies at their own game is to adopt a healthy lifestyle so you can avoid becoming dependent on their products or services. By doing so, you benefit individually and act to end the current healthcare crisis by using less medical resources.  You'll be happier, healthier, and will look forward to the years to come instead of dreading the typical downhill slide that ends in disease and suffering that so many others experience in life.

Dr. Don radio show archive from 12/21/11

My articles on food subsidies, lobbying, and special interests:

Our Taxes - Are They Making Us Sick?

Big Money, Special Interests, and the American Healthcare Crisis

If you like what you see here then you'll LOVE our daily Facebook and Twitter posts!  Also, don't forget to sign up for  Our Free Online Mailing List  to get all the latest updates from the Plant-Based Pharmacist!

by Dustin Rudolph, PharmD
Clinical Pharmacist

Check out Dustin Rudolph's book The Empty Medicine Cabinet to start your journey towards better health. This step-by-step guide leads you through many of today's common chronic diseases (heart disease, obesity, diabetes, cancer, and more), giving you the facts on foods versus medications in treating these medical conditions. The book also contains an easy-to-follow guide on how to adopt a whole foods, plant-based diet as a part of an overall lifestyle change, producing the best possible health outcomes for you and your family. Hurry and get your copy today!

We'd love for you to join us in spreading the good word about plant-based nutrition and lifestyle medicine by telling your family and friends about our website at www.PlantBasedPharmacist.com. 

Share and rate this post below or tell us what you think by posting a comment. Thank you again for stopping by and until next time... be happy, be healthy, and live the life you've always dreamed of!

Movie Marathon - 20 Extraordinary Documentaries For Your Health, Our Planet, And Our Four-Legged Friends

There's nothing better than having one of those lazy, rainy days come along to fulfill your desire of becoming the world's greatest couch potato for a day.  While I wouldn't advocate doing this too often we could all benefit from kicking back and having a movie marathon once in a while.

I could think of no better way to spend this day than to enjoy some feature films that are not only entertaining and inspiring but also have the potential to be life changing.  So I present to you 20 sensational movies below that could literally save your life and/or make the world a better place all in one combo.  So sit back, relax, and check out these trailers/movies and don't forget to leave your comments or reviews at the bottom for any of your favorite flicks. Enjoy!

Our Taxes - Are They Making Us Sick?

When it comes to spending money, you're making a conscious decision on whether or not the goods and services you're purchasing are worth your hard earned dollars.  You want to feel like you've made a smart decision that contains some sort of value.

I'm sure you would find this same concept true when it comes to your overall health.  In essence, you want to make good decisions and investments which help you feel better, live longer, and avoid the chronic diseases that plague most of our society.  And the most important investment you can make, when it comes to determining how healthy you are, is in the form of the foods that you purchase and consume on a regular basis.  So how are the prices of various foods determined?

You may or may not realize that this is largely determined by how our tax dollars are spent with respect to the different subsidies paid to the food and agriculture industries.  Common sense would tell us that we would want our government to subsidize the foods that increase and promote overall health the most.  However, in reality the exact opposite is true.  In fact, the rise in obesity and decline in public health is directly correlated to the increasing availability of low-nutrient, inexpensive food that is high in fat, sugar, and refined grains [1].  On the contrary, foods found to have the highest amount of nutrients per calorie (fruits and vegetables) cost much more per calorie than their lower nutrient counterparts [2] even though they play a vital role in promoting health and wellness.

So how exactly does this all fit together?  And what does the breakdown look like when it comes to our tax dollars being divvied up to their respective recipients in the food and ag industries?  Let's find out as we take a deeper look into these very issues.