How Science, Education, and Government Promote Widespread Chronic Illness

Illness changes the way a person views the world.  I’ve spent much of my life following “scientific principles”  and “medically approved recommendations” for health management and diet.  I always trusted public education to provide information that is helpful to individual citizens.

 
Remarkably, the only times I’ve reversed any long term illness have been the times I’ve given up on all the so called “science based” USDA dietary guidelines, FDA and USDA approved food products,  EPA approved water, and AMA approved medicine that our public school system taught me to trust and respect. 
 
This experience has helped me to understand that what is wrong with our science and our education is the scale at which it is carried out.  
 
We don’t need  a few publicly funded scientists and educators working in ivory towers to make recommendations for the many.  We need a few billion grass roots innovators who have sufficient resources and intellectual freedom to test new ideas at micro scales.   Life is simply too variable to make accurate predictions about the safety of any drug, agrochemical, or food processing procedure.  
 
Regulations  that restrict individual options for food, health, and environmental management will always result in broad, generalized approaches that only work in a few of the circumstances under which they will be applied.  No laboratory study can ever accurately predict how a drug will affect you in your daily activities over the course of a life time.  
 
On the other hand, each of us is endowed with a system of biosensors developed and tested over evolutionary time to alert us to hazards in our environments.  Our taste, touch, smell, hearing, and sight interact with our past and present awareness to guide our actions.  It is time to start trusting these internal sensors over and above the new and untested technologies modern agriculture, food processing, drug manufacturing, and medicine have to offer.  It is time to question educational approaches that discourage us from trusting our own senses over top down guidelines.
 
My new policy is that if it does not smell, taste, or feel good, I don’t want it in my body!  
 
My new challenge is finding foods, beverages, and medicines that smell, taste, and feel good.

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