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Are We Fodder In The Battle For The Health Dollar?

DYA SINGH

'Aj kal dudh vich, atay khuraak vich, barkat naheen reh geyee' (“These days, neither our milk nor our food has any good left in it!“)

This is an observation from my 100-year-old mother. She also complains vehemently that we have stopped eating ghee and drinking milk which is so important for growing and working bodies.

At 64, and surprisingly - despite a chunk of my youth being misspent -- I am ailment free, but I feel some suspicious stirrings within me. Or, is it that I have been made suspicious by some well-meaning friends who are in the ‘medical field.

A dear friend who is a pharmacist has prescribed some vitamin tablets and impressed upon me the attributes of green apples and carrots. He has generally made me more aware of being proactive about my health. My older brother, S. Gurmukh Singh, has had a stem (or is it a stent?) or two inserted into his arteries after a heart scare. My father died of an enlarged heart at age 69.

So, here I am at 64 - a little overweight but generally healthy and still able to kick around a football with my grandson.

I have also recently been exposed to a medical research scientist (pharmaceutical) and a dietician, as well as in-house ayurveda treatment where I am organising a health camp in Kerala in May this year.

I have learned a few 'truths' over the past year which I wish to share. Remember, I am a layman and not a medico or a scientific type. Just concerned about my health. I do not wish to be bedridden. I want to lead a healthy life and leave this sojourn still kicking and screaming!

The journey is more important than the destination, so to speak.

Pharmaceutical companies have grown big and powerful over the last few decades and one gets the uncomfortable feeling that they are not really concerned about making us healthy, but instead, making us more and more dependent on their drugs!

There is no doubt that life expectancy has generally improved, especially in western countries, over the last century. In USA, for example, life expectancy was between 40-50 years in 1900. Now it is 70-80 years, thanks no doubt to medical advancements. But are we living 'healthy' or is it that our lives are prolonged so that pharmaceutical companies can make more money out of us?

Let us face it - the western educated medical fraternity are really 'sickness consultants', not 'health consultants'. Think about it - we go to them when we are sick. They are specialists in prescribing drugs and have intimate knowledge of ailments and the drugs they have to prescribe, keeping the discussion of the issue of side effects down to a minimum.

They diagnose our ailments and prescribe drugs to ‘cure’ us. Hence, more money for the shareholders of the pharmaceutical conglomerates and multi-nationals! They are certainly not interested in nutritional or preventative medicine.

My medical friends - doctors and physicians - seem to know about as much as me about good nutrition and supplements. In fact they turn up their noses when I mention supplements or detoxification. One common retort from them is that it is a good way of making expensive urine!

I first heard about anti-oxidants about thirty years ago and even took them for a few years until the 'fad' died out and I came to realize that I did not need them. The Australian gentleman who had written about them and took large doses himself died suddenly of complications while being operated upon in a hospital. The 'fad' died with him in Australia.

Now it is about supplemental nutrients and vitamins, green apples, carrots and green salads! 

There is no doubt whatsoever, for a start, that the food and drink that we consume today, compared to say only fifty years ago, have alarming levels of toxins within them which are harmful to the body, no matter how much we wash them and even boil them (in the process of which, we lose the nutrients within). The level of harmful additives there are in our food due to chemical fertilisers, hormonal additives, sprays, pesticides, preservatives, general pollution and additives to drinking water besides literally thousands of other pollutants, has reached alarming levels and this situation is not going to improve.

Even green apples need to be skinned. There was a time when the outer skin was considered the healthiest part of the apple. Today, it is probably the most poisonous part of it!

All this means, firstly, that we need to detox our bodies regularly. The best and cheapest method apparently is to fast two days out of five, consuming only filtered water, fruit juices and, if needed, green apples and green salads.

There are other methods, of course.

It was Deepak Chopra who I first heard on our Australian TV many, many years ago, who claimed that our organs have the capacity of rejuvenating themselves if we eat  the right foods. Most people I think took that with a pinch of salt. Today, there is research being done and the possibilities are being researched and discussed.

Take for example - diabetes. As a layman I know that diabetes is due to the pancreas not performing to its optimum to produce insulin. So what does the GP (general practitioner) do? He/she first prescribes some pills. Then it leads to insulin injections. If more is needed, then the doses are increased.

The question is - why are efforts not made to 'cure' the pancreas? Is that considered impossible? Could proper diet, vitamins and nutrient supplements not rejuvenate the pancreas? Shouldn't nutritional medicine be given greater publicity and more research done in this field?

Yes, it would be detrimental to the pharmaceutical companies profits. It is also true that a great deal of medical research is financed by pharmaceutical companies and it stands to reason that they would wish to sell more and more drugs rather than 'cure' us.

The other example is this great mystery of cholesterol. First the 'experts' told us n the 70's that it was all bad. Then there was the good cholesterol and the bad cholesterol. Now apparently, even the bad cholesterol is necessary for the body, just that it turns bad when affected by some naughty guys called free radicals! According to the experts, the new bad guy on the block is called homocysteine.

In USA, only 6 percent of physicians study nutritional medicine as an elective! So, at present, the medical fraternity just appears to be the front for drug prescriptions.

There is growing concern now about the over-prescription of drugs, especially antibiotics (which are no doubt very important, but also proven to weaken one’s immune system) and doctors are more conscious of attempting to advise patients about good food and drink. But, until all doctors and physicians become experts in nutritional medicine, they cannot really call themselves 'health consultants'. They are merely 'sickness consultants'.

Looks like Waheguru is not the one who got it wrong. Our 'experts' seem to keep running around in circles trying to prove Him wrong.

Guru Sahib offers this:

‘baba hor khana khushi khwar / jit khadhai tan pirriyai man mai chelhe vekar’ [GGS:16] - “My friend, ruinous is the pleasure of edibles, the partaking of which ruins your health and introduces sin to the mind.”

And ...

‘jit peetai mat dhur hoe / baral peevai vich aaye …’ [GGS:554] - “By drinking which, intellect departs and madness enters the mind; man distinguishes not between what is mine or thine, he moves away from godliness.”

Finally, at a recent seminar on health, an uncle of mine who is well into his 90's but still fully capacitated, a former police officer from Malaysia and one who has lived on naam simran most of his adult life, had the following to offer.

He said, "Dya Singh, if only these good people who do so much seva towards our good health could tell everyone at the end that one should do saadhna, meditation or naam simran and always ask for good health, then Waheguru is always there to guide you to eat and drink right too!!" 

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In the process of organizing a group of friends for an ayurveda 'retreat' to Kerala, I have been writing regular 'inspirational group-emails' which always draw interesting comments. A groupie from Malaysia recently wrote back:

'Better to take food as medicine or else we shall end up taking medicine as food!'

[If you’re interested to learn more about this Sikh Body Mind Spirit 'retreat', you can contact me at dyasingh@gmail.com.]

March 18, 2015
 

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