Chronic illness is at an all time high, and people are scrambling to find the answer to health problems like autoimmune disease, diabetes, pain, chronic fatigue, anxiety, poor immune function, cancers, symptoms of multiple sclerosis and other neurological disorders, Alzheimers, dementia, and more.

People are suffering from joint pain, headaches, indigestion, sleep difficulties, sinus problems, skin rashes and irritation, hair loss, obesity, foggy thinking, and many more symptoms that everyone tried to ignore but really should not.

We seem to have the idea that the human body just gets old and wears out. But all of the research tells us that’s not what’s happening. Our bodies are made to renew themselves. We have a mechanism that creates new cells, yes, even brain cells – replaces them all within a matter of months. We have a mechanism that can remove bad cells, yes, even cancer cells, and can heal our body when it is functioning correctly.

The Lie

But what we’re “bought into” is the lie that our body gets old and worn out and we need to take things to get better. The typical story is that your body gets old and worn out and you need to take supplements to make up for nutrients or hormones, or things that your body no longer produces. Nobody who is selling a pharmaceutical or supplement is going to tell you that if you just stopped eating or drinking something you currently consume regularly, your body would begin to recover and heal itself. There’s no profit in telling you that and you need to think twice when you’re accepting advice or even paid research where the people paying are also trying to sell you a cure.

The Truth

The truth is that the only reason we need those things is that the people who sell them – chemical companies, pharmaceutical companies, supplement companies, all want to sell you their products.

Once farmer put it quite wisely – he said, “The companies that sell us our seeds also make pharmaceuticals (drugs) and don’t you think they’ve had a conversation that goes something like ‘if we put something in our seeds that makes you feel bad, then we can sell you drugs that make you feel better.?'”

I think that’s a very reasonable assumption and given the profit motivation and the prevailing behavior of these companies, I think it’s better than 90% likely that conversation has happened more than once.

Did you know what farmers know that are forced to buy seeds from the chemical companies? if they don’t buy seeds from those companies, a black van full of ex-military private security folks show up on their doorstep and ask them why they’re not purchasing GMO seeds. Do you think that’s not true? Ask any midwestern farmer or what the variety of videos now available on Youtube – the evidence is already out there for this massive coercion of farmers.

Bending Your Mind

So what’s called for is just a slight bending of the mind – a single thought like, “Maybe everything I’m being told isn’t really true.” And with that thought some reading and investigation – the information is readily available – it’s out there if you look for it. The answers are everywhere.

Inflammation is the Culprit

If you read my prior article on this site then you know about this already, but let’s just review the key points because understanding this is EVERYTHING.

• Inflammation is a chronic cause of all of the symptoms you can feel and think are normal aging.
• Inflammation is not natural nor is it necessary.
• Inflammation is caused by eating, drinking, or breathing or exposure to things that you body doesn’t like.
• You know when you’re suffering from inflammation when your joints hurt, your head hurts, you stomach hurts, your muscles hurt, your vision blurs, you thinking gets foggy, or you start developing the hold list of chronic diseases I listed at the start of this article.
• The warning signs are the minor aches and pains which if ignored turn into the chronic diseases which are much worse.

Your Doctor

Unfortunately unless your doctor has been trained in functional/integrative medicine, he’s bought into the same lie. He believes like you that your body is just going to get older and there’s nothing you can do except medicate, medicate, medicate. His job, as he has been trained, is to identify your disease, and then prescribe the right drug or procedure. It’s not his fault but he’s not really trained to find the real cause and treat that.

Normally the correct treatment for what you have is 180 degrees away from what your doctor has said. He will always tell you to add things – take a drug or a medicine, take a supplement, and of course the old standby – GET MORE EXERCISE, EAT LESS.

Against All Odds

You’re in a tough situation. In order to get better you have to disagree, even if silently, with everyone around you. You have to develop a belief and evidence that drugs and traditional advice will make you worse not better.

Now I’m not saying you need to disregard or go against medical advice. There are times like when you have Type 2 Diabetes that your condition is such that you have to follow your prescribed treatment plan until you don’t need to anymore.

But once you identify the root cause and begin to treat that, your body will know when you no longer need insulin or whatever it is you’re taking to mask your symptoms.

Getting to the Root Cause

Now the fastest way to get to a root cause if money is not an object is to select a functional medicine doctor and go see him or her. They will employ tests that will look for the root cause and will never prescribe anything until they know what is underneath your symptoms.

If you’re obese and diabetic, they look underneath that and find the underlying cause.

If you can’t afford that or even one of the over-the-counter tests then the next best approach is to start making “lifestyle changes.”

Lifestyle Changes

What’s meant by “lifestyle change”? it refers to things you consider to be normal and natural parts of your life like eating bread or drinking coke. Lifestyle changes are changes you currently believe to involve activities that couldn’t possibly be causing you to age and to malfunction.

When it comes to getting older, experiencing pain, and chronic diseases, you have to decide that you don’t believe those are in fact a part of getting old and commit yourself to finding out if there’s a better state of being than getting old and sick, becoming a burden to your family, and living for another 10-20 years in pain.

Can you get up enough motivation to at least test your lifestyle to see if you give up things that something about your health changes?

Most people have to wait until the situation gets dire – a heart attack, a stroke, a failure in the liver, pancreas, or adrenals. Are you the type that has to wait that long to wake up and smell the coffee?

If not, then you’ll need to make some massive changes rather quickly to find out if anything you eat and drink or use is the problem. Your approach is to eliminate the things that statistically almost always cause problems for most people. You’re not being very scientific, you’re just going to operate on the clinical experience when functional medicine doctors treat other patients with your illness.

Here’s your plan – for 4 weeks…

• Remove all sugar from your diet – don’t use sugar in cooking, don’t take a litter in your coffee, don’t eat any fruit besides berries occasionally.
• Remove all grains from your diet – that includes any kind of bread, cereal, muffin, bagel, and not even whole grains. That includes rice, millet, barley, Quinoa, and anything that remotely resembles any of those.
• Remove all dairy from your diet and that includes cheese, yogurt, cottage cheese, and anything else made from milk or dairy of any kind.
• Remove all GMO from your diet and that will include anything made from corn or soy because those are the two crops that contain GMO throughout 90% of our fields.

Believe it or not, that still leaves a lot of things you can eat but after 4 weeks you will know whether any of these is causing the problem. If not, you can transition to your next phase of testing but the chances are better than 80% that you’ll find your symptoms changing just based on this list alone. Once you do, you can put things back in to your diet until you find the one or two things causing the problem. Generally your reaction will be greater and more pronounced when you introduce it back than when you took if off your list before.

Here are some extra tips on foods that might help you get there faster…

• At each meal, try to eat mostly vegetables – steamed broccoli will fill you up so you don’t have to eat as much meat. Make your plate “mostly vegetables”
• When it’s beef, try to find “grass fed” beef and eat less of it.
• When it’s fish, try to find “wild caught” and salmon is probably your best choices because of the Omega 3.
• Eat salads and use virgin olive oil and vinegar as your dressing.
• Don’t cook with vegetable oils or any bulk oils – safflower corn oil, sunflower, peanut oil, etc. If you have to use oil, find some coconut, avocado, or olive oil and cook on low heat.
• When it’s chicken, try to find some cage free organic chicken and eat less at each meal and more vegetables.

Using this second list will give your body more to work with and eliminate some other possible sources of inflammation more quickly.

The idea is to make some “radical” lifestyle changes quickly in order to see if anything changes. Once you feel the changes, you motivation to keep moving forward will be a lot greater.

Remember, “In order for things to change for you, you have to change.”