This blog is dedicated to the premise that we must know and speak truth. All truth is God’s truth. But sadly, truth is somewhat of a rare commodity these days, particularly in certain circles. The medical/pharma establishment is one of those places where right now lies have been enjoying a long reign.
So how do you feel most days? Vibrantly healthy? Tired and yucky? Somewhere in between? Who do you turn to for help if you’re not feeling especially great?
Well, your average medical doctor may not be the best place to start, according to Dr. Ken Berry, MD, author of the provocatively-named book Lies My Doctor Told Me.
This is not necessarily breaking news for those of us who already reject the steady diet of lies we’ve been fed by Big Pharma, Big Food, and Big Medicine. Dr. Berry isn’t buying it either – he’s one of the growing (but still very small) number of medical doctors who are realizing they weren’t taught properly about how people get and stay healthy.
A lot of advice doctors have been giving – for years – is just plain wrong, as Dr. Berry details. For instance, doctors are still telling people to stop eating red meat, and for decades they counseled families to switch out “dangerous” saturated fats (like butter) with so-called “healthy” polyunsaturated fats like vegetable oil (also known as seed oils, or referred to as omega 6 fat). But we now know this was a lie pushed by corporations looking for a way to profit off waste oils from other manufacturing processes – a lie that facilitated far cheaper ways to manufacture processed products. Studies purporting to prove this lie were peddled aggressively, and apparently the medical community didn’t care enough to dig into it themselves. Thus it became doctrine among those advising us on wellness.
SIDE NOTE: If you google “why are seed oils bad” ” you’ll find a bunch of articles in mainstream publications even today refuting the claims that vegetable oil is a terrible food for humans and vastly inferior to butter and animal fats. But you’ll also find documentaries like this one and common sense Q&As like this one – great sources for more accurate information.
WARNING: When you see how seed oils are manufactured, you may suffer considerable nausea.
What else does Dr. Berry say his profession is getting wrong?
Well – sadly – research. “It turns out that researchers often slant the conclusions of studies toward what the researcher thinks or wants the study to show,” he says. “Even worse, conclusions are often tainted by the desires of the Big Pharma or Big Food corporation that sponsored the study.” In other words – we really cannot “trust the science” when the science is not really objective science. This section is so important because we also cannot unquestionably accept study conclusions – or even more accurately, journalists’ understanding of study conclusions.
Dr. Berry hits many hot topics we need to reconsider:
fat and cholesterol are not our enemies
why eating a lot of wheat might not be a great idea
how to enjoy exercise but not count on it for weight loss
hormones and toxicity
antibiotics and probiotics
salt (hint: it’s good if you eat good salt)
meat is good – including grilled meat – and he’s not afraid of bacon, either
the truth about water consumption
My favorite section of the book, however, is entitled “God Made the Sun, and God Made You.” Here he debunks the pernicious lie that the sun is something from which we need to protect ourselves. This chapter is absolutely packed with common sense – so much so that I used my phone’s notes feature to download almost every page so that I could more easily share this wisdom with friends and family.
For all these topics, he explains where we went wrong. Almost always, it comes back to faulty research paid for by people who had a conflict of interest, or lazy “science journalists” who further muddied the waters by not bothering to read the actual studies. In only reporting researchers’ summaries – which can easily mislead as to the actual study content – they sometimes were reporting the opposite of what a study actually showed.
Another great feature of Berry’s book is that for almost every topic, he provides weblinks, articles, books or videos explaining more – so we can learn more about the things that can really help make a difference between feeling yucky all the time and feeling vibrantly healthy. Since health is a huge topic of importance to me, more book reviews and articles are forthcoming, but this easy-to-read book is a great first step in rethinking what we’ve always been told about our bodies.
I recommend this book highly, and as an Amazon affiliate I will get a small percentage if you buy it through my link here (no additional cost to you).