Telling me you are a doctor and know a little something about nutrition and health doesn’t mean much to me. The more you research and take your health into your own hands… the further you go down that rabbit hole, the more you realize that most doctors and physicians are just products of a failed system and flawed science. Vaccination is a perfect example. We are told over and over again that vaccines are safe and that they keep us safe. Get those shots! It is only when a parent comes home from a well check or a hospital with a severely damaged child that they decide to kick over some rocks and find the truth. It is the same with many other aspects of health, disease, and nutrition. We have all been indoctrinated and it takes a great bit of courage and strength to take the red pill (ala The Matrix) and wake up from the fog. When you do, you start to realize that many doctors and physicians took the blue pill and they cannot help you on your journey to true wisdom and knowledge.
From there you have to find the physicians, researchers, scientists, and otherwise motivated individuals who have been brave enough to forge their own path and challenge current ideas about health and diet. I am going to list some resources that I feel fit the bill here. This is not to say that I agree 100% with everything contained therein but they have a lot of great info that challenges conventional wisdom. Read through and see what you think. Also shout out your own resources in the comments. Enjoy!
Wheat Belly – You may be sick of hearing about this book by now since I mention it quite often. It really is a life changing book that manages to take random bits and pieces you already knew and arrange them in a completed puzzle. You close the book wondering how you never saw it before. You also wonder if mainstream medicine is really that stupid or if they are covering this up to protect other interests.
The New Evolution Diet – This book shows our paleolithic ancestors did not suffer from heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, or obesity. It also exposes a good deal of what we view as normal aging as a modern condition that is more akin to disease than any natural state of growing older. While it does confirm that we have made many wonderful advances in medicine it also shares why our modern ideas on nutrition and diet have been devastating for human health.
Nourishing Traditions – This is one of those books I don’t completely agree with but it still has lots of great info. Most importantly it shares how saturated fats and cholesterol are not villains but vital factors for health. While it doesn’t encourage us to go back as far as our paleolithic ancestors for dietary ideas it definitely encourages us to stay away from modern processed foods.
Eat Fat Lose Fat – Flouts conventional wisdom by revealing that so-called healthy vegetable oils (such as corn and soybean) are in large part responsible for our national obesity and health crisis, while the saturated fats traditionally considered “harmful” are essential to weight loss and health.
The No Grain Diet – The main point is that refined grains of any type are basically deadly and eating them should be viewed as an unhealthy addiction.
Good Calories, Bad Calories: Fats, Carbs, and the Controversial Science of Diet and Health – This book could use a Cliff Notes companion. It is REALLY in depth and at times a tough read but WOW. It is jam packed with wonderful information. The author shows us that almost everything we have been taught about the nature of a healthy diet is wrong.
The Whole Soy Story: The Dark Side of America’s Favorite Health Food – An expose about the information the soy industry has tried to suppress. Soy is not a health food, does not prevent disease and has not even been proven safe. Epidemiological, clinical and laboratory studies link soy to malnutrition, digestive problems, thyroid dysfunction, cognitive decline, reproductive disorders, even heart disease and cancer.
Fat Head – This is a movie and you can actually get it on Netflix. When I sat down to watch it for the first time I thought it was going to be a crock of you know what because it takes aim at another documentary, Super Size Me. I have no love for McDonalds so even though I have never seen Super Size Me I WANT to believe that every incriminating thing in the movie is true. Fat Head shows us how that other documentary was more fiction than fact. Tim Naughton does a high fat, fast food diet himself for 30 days and loses weight. And no the movie is not actually an endorsement for fast food. You have to watch. The latter half is actually the most informative. Naughton discusses how we came to accept current nutrition ideas, why they are wrong, and how politics and the food industry is keeping that from us. It is also VERY funny.
Earthing – Demonstrates how our loss of physical contact with the earth is harming our health and provides a solution that does not include sleeping in a grass hut.
Lights Out: Sleep, Sugar, and Survival – This book attacks agriculture and grains as the most devastating thing to happen to human health and the invention of the light bulb and artificial light as the second worst. Lots of wonderful information on why we need more sleep and how we can help reduce stress in our bodies caused by artificial light.
There are probably numerous other resources I could mention but those are the ones on the front burner for me lately. How about you?
Added to Real Food Wednesday
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they decide to kick over some rocks and find the truth.”
And what is the “truth”? I really don’t want to go on a tirade here, but a few anecdotes about a statistically insignificant amount of children adversely affected by vaccines is not enough to prove that vaccines should be done away with. It does more damage to the population as a whole when children don’t get their vaccines. We are seeing more outbreaks of whopping cough and other diseases that were on the same road as polio, all because of the perceived link of autism to vaccines. There is a vast difference between causal and correlated relationship.
The only statistically significant relationship to autism so far discovered by scientists is the link to agricultural pesticide use and rural populations of children. To think that the scientific and medical community is somehow out to get or thwart parents’ attempts to protect their children is naive and damaging. The fact that your blog is read by people trying to raise their children in the greenest/smartest manner they can, means that you have an obligation to provide proof of your claims, cite your sources.
Scientists and researchers are generally out to help society and people. The scientific method means that true scientists can and do abandon bad hypotheses in the face of new observations.
The “truth” I am referring to is the fact that vaccines can and do cause damage, something we are not warned about before we sign off on them. I am for INFORMED consent. All sides of the issue need to be put out there and parents need to now there are risks. Most physicians will tell you there is zero risk. I know because I ask this question all the time to hear the answer they give. Proof that vaccination is not risk free is abundant and out there for you if you care to kick over some of those rocks I was talking about. Start with vaccine pamphlets.. they highlight many of the risks right there!
Scientists and researchers may generally WANT to help people but they usually have to take the work they will be PAID to do. Pretty soon they learn that only some studies can actually be funded and the money stops coming unless the outcomes reflect what bigger interests want. Science can be bought. It IS bought every day. This is reality.
The many, many thousands of kids who have been injured or killed by vaccines are called anecdotal evidence at best, collateral damage at worst. Neither is acceptable. Vaccines can hurt; vaccines can kill. Parents need to be informed of this. What they decide after that is their own business.
Well my oldest daughter has had most of her shots, she is 4, and my other is 9 months and is “due” for shots, how would I go about denying the shots? They make me nervous and I don’t want it in my life at all…
You can simply refuse them. Doctors cannot make you vaccinate. They may refuse to treat your kids and then you might have to get a new doctor who takes unvaccinated patients but that is about it. When school time comes you just sign a waiver and take an exemption, depending on what your state has available. I have an 11, 8, and 6 year old, ALL unvaccinated.
You get to make that decision for your children, no one else. I feel like we hurt our oldest daughter by letting her doctor “catch her up” on her vaccines and give 5 in one day. She has autism. So I didn’t get my youngest vaccinated except for a meningitis shot, but when she was 2 she got whooping cough. It was so unimaginably frightening and went on and on for so many weeks and we had to stay in the house for weeks too that I thought to myself that we should have risked the DTaP rather than whooping cough. What made me not do the DTaP at first is because I thought it was absurd that she should get Diptheria and also Tetanus shot as a baby. I still do. This is one shot that should be divided up if Doctors want to stop or calm the outbreak of pertussis.
Anyway, I agree with Tiffany that shots are not heroic, painless save-all solutions. But I personally decided after dealing with a vaccine-prefentable disease, to slowly get my little one vaccinated over the years. I wait until she is completely healthy, I give her tons of vitamins the days leading up to her appointments…and only ever, one at a time. Good luck.
Keep spreading the word and raising awareness. We need to be conscious and aware of what’s going on in our broken system. Thank you for being a voice that shares the information with us.
Thanks Mike. You’re an inspiration in that regard as well!
I was one of the commenters on your last post who disagreed when you said that “sugar causes diabetes,” using my career as a physician to support my opinion. I get the impression I was perhaps the inspiration for this post? Just be sure to not lump all physicians together, cause we’re a pretty diverse group! Some are pro-vax-no-matter-what, and others see pros and cons. Some “swallow the blue pill,” follow conventional wisdom, and believe everything that is spoon-fed to them. Others are skeptics, try to learn about other viewpoints, and attempt to be open-minded. Please don’t stereotype us readers!
I think that for all of us, it’s important to understand the credibility and validity of where our information comes from. Yes, some research is biased, but a lot of it isn’t. Without well-designed studies to provide objective supporting evidence, we can’t yet say “for sure”. We all need to be careful when stating nonconventional ideas as solid facts. If those ideas end up becoming “facts”, yes, that’s progressive. On the other hand, if they don’t, it’s misinformation.
If physicians truly are a diverse group, then I haven’t seen it. The frustration is out there and my family’s case we suffered injury to our little one by trusting the “credible” and “valid” information of a doctor who swallowed the blue pill.
As a mom who has more respect for her own intelligence than a medical degree, I quickly and sadly learned that I have to do my own research first and foremost and never ever believe that “convention” is best with no questions asked. It will be a happy day when there are more than only 2 progressive doctors in town. And I also find it eye-opening that these progressive doctors are so booked up that it is almost impossible to get into the practice.
Finally, I think that most of the frustration lies in the confusion that all studies are cloaked as “well designed”. It is sad that our children have to be are own science as we gamble with “progressive vs misinformation” because conventional medical science is so corrupted by money and big business.
I agree with you about vaccinations, health and nutrition. We need to educate ourselves and take responsibility for our health. We cannot trust big business to tell us what is good for us as their motivation is all about money, not the health of the masses.
From reading your posts over the past few months I am curious to see how you are eating now…the diet change, has affected how you feel and or look. I know that you have researched a lot about it…I am very curious about the effects it has on you personally as you are actually living and implementing this way of eating/living.
My daughter is on the spectrum and so by default she eats only organic meat, fresh organic veggies and fruit. We do the rice pasta and rice grains too but no bread at all, not even GF bread. We stay away from soy, pesticides and preservatives too.
I have to be really organized to do this for her. I can’t imagine giving up bread myself. There is something really nice about a baguette and butter to go with the lovely organic chicken soup I make. I feel hungry if I eat only the soup.
What would your advice be about making that lifestyle change…and if our whole family does adopt your food recommendations, how do we ease into it? I can’t do the whole list in your most recent post…so where should I start?
Suzie, we did it almost overnight. I read one too many books about how bad grains were and just decided NO MORE. I don’t find it that hard to avoid them honestly and so far I wouldn’t want to because my tummy feels so amazing without them. I didn’t realize how bloated I was until I stopped eating them. I also found I was not hungry anymore. I went from ravenous all day and wanting constants snacks to it being 3:00 pm and going “ooops I forgot to eat.” It has only been a month so I cannot say a whole lot but so far so good.
I have a question for you and would like your opinion. Why is it that we are finding out how harmful grains can be for you, obesity and diabetes, but our government still puts out a food pyramid with grains as our largest food group to be eaten? Money?
The movie Fat Head discusses this a bit. It was faulty science and scientists with an agenda that spurred the turn on saturated fats the adoption of “heart healthy” whole grains. The story is quite fascinating. NOW to do a 180 on what they have been telling the public for decades would no doubt cause a lot of problems. Industry that sells these products also have too much power now as well. Why else is wheat/soy so heavily subsidized? The growers are in bed with government. They can’t do right by diabetics by telling them grains and processed food are making them sick and fat without letting the car out of the bag.
Our child has never had a vacination of any kind. She is now 14 and talking about becoming a doctor/missionary. We appluad the thought but are concerned about the manditory shots to go to the missionary field.