Are supplements really what they seem?

There are a lot of shortcomings in the field of nutrition. Partially because it’s difficult to learn all the science and then learn how to apply it to actual clients and actual real-life situations. But the main reason is that the food and pharmaceutical industries in America are multi-billion dollar industries. It is their job to sell products, and in the case of pharmaceuticals, it’s their job to sell drugs. They cannot sell drugs to healthy people…. 

Or can they? 

Yep, Big Pharma has found a way to sell drugs to seemingly healthy people. But they don’t call them drugs, they call them supplements. The supplement industry is very loosely regulated. It’s the loophole in the sales circle. Business 101 tells us that to make money, you must identify people who need your product or service, convince them that they need it, then sell them that product or service. And if you’re really good at your job, you don’t just sell them one product, you make them life-long customers. 

We all need to eat, usually at least 3 times a day. So the BEST business plan would be to patent food so you could make money off the sales. Even healthy people need to eat! But how to turn that into a viable business?

How do you do that with food? 

It used to be understood that to be healthy, you must eat real food (fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, whole grains, and legumes). That’s what our ancestors ate and every other culture around the globe ate. With the Industrial Revolution, the farming industry morphed into the food “industry”. Industry, by definition, requires a profit. There’s not much profit in broccoli or beans, unfortunately, and even though they know that’s what we need to eat in order to be healthy, you cannot patent nature, so the earning potential is very slim. If everyone knew what to eat and could get their nutrition from food, there would be a cap on consumers needing pharmaceuticals. So what do the market execs do? They need new customers.

Or, they need to turn their existing customers into lifelong customers. 

How? By finding a way to take that super healthy broccoli or bag of beans and make them able to be trademarked. You cannot trademark nature. But you can trademark the compounds that make food so healthy if you create them in a lab. Enter synthetic drugs. 

Let me back up here a sec…

All drugs originated from natural substances. Aspirin is the synthetic version of the active constituents found in willow bark. Valum came from valerian root. And so on. But you can’t trademark (and therefore make a profit from) willow bark because you can’t trademark nature. So scientists found ways to re-create these compounds in labs and then their marketing teams, which are the best in the world and get paid A LOT of money, took these once natural products and trademarked them. They convinced the world they needed them.

That’s all fine and dandy (not really, but for the sake of keeping things moving here we’ll pretend their narrative makes sense), but what if the vast majority of people don’t need to be on aspirin or Valium for the rest of their lives because they’re healthy?

Easy. 

These synthetic drugs all come with a whole list of “side effects”. Let me be clear here, side effects are not “unintended consequences” of drugs. Those drugs are doing exactly what they are designed to do. Aspirin is a blood thinner so an obvious effect it has on the human body is to make blood flow more easily. If you cut your finger off, taking aspirin is probably not the way to go. It’s not a side effect, it’s doing its job - really well. 

So, they figured out that they could have doctors prescribe one drug, hype up the side effects, and then prescribe other drugs to “treat” those side effects. The reality is that drugs often don’t actually “treat” the condition, they merely suppress the symptoms. I felt this firsthand when I was prescribed Vicodin for severe back pain in college. The drug did nothing to actually heal my body, but I was so doped up that I didn’t care. Hmmmm….. That just doesn’t seem like a great strategy to me, and hopefully, it doesn’t seem great to you either.

Ok, great. So now we understand that drugs are synthetic versions of nature and we can use other drugs to suppress the “side effects” of drugs. Are you still with me? Hopefully, I didn’t lose you! I’m getting to the important stuff in a sec! 

Just keep following me…it’s more than just a rant about Big Pharma.

But how do we make life-long customers? That’s the goal, remember?

That’s simple too! And I already answered it. We make sure our drugs don’t treat the root cause of the condition, we just use the drugs to suppress the symptoms. Remember my severe back pain? It was a pinched nerve in my neck. Were the narcotics I was prescribed un-pinching that nerve? Nope. They were just making me loopy so I didn’t care about the pain anymore. If they would have fixed that pinched nerve, I would no longer need the drugs. The scary thing is that the more narcotics you take, the more you need to reach the desired effect. Eventually, pills stop working so you need something better. Congratulations! You are now a heroin addict! 

That’s how the heroin epidemic started. And that’s a topic for another day.

Luckily for me, all it took was one day on narcotics and I swore them off for good. The next time a doctor tried to prescribe them to me for my back pain (“prescribe” is being nice, it was more like “pushed” me to take them), I said no. And then no again, and then the next time, still no. If you think I’m joking, I guarantee I could walk into any urgent care unit right now and get a prescription for narcotics. One look at my medical records, and they would hand it out like candy. Along with some anti-depressants and some anti-anxiety pills. It happens every time I’m at a doctor’s office. Every damn time. 

Ok, so we now have life long customers because we’re not actually treating the root cause of disease. Great. That’s some good money rolling in right there! You get to keep people sick while you count your gold coins and dive into your stash ala Mr. Duck style.

But you’re still missing a key demographic. What about the healthy people out there that don’t have any health concerns? Those people who think they can get all their nutrients from food, or that use exercise and stress management techniques to lower their blood pressure. Or those people who just don’t want to go to the doctor or take pills? How do you reach them?

Now is the time that you would partner with your good old friends in the food industry. Those guys must be up to some pretty cool things right about now! 

You are right! Since the Industrial Revolution, food scientists have done some pretty crazy things with food. Did you know that Twinkies don’t rot? You could save a box and in 50 years or so, they would be exactly the same as they were today. Eek. They have taken food from nature and figured out how to recreate it in labs. No need to actually grow fields of broccoli, we’ll make the compounds ourselves! Remember, you can’t trademark nature.

So now we have a plethora of what I like to call Franken-foods available to us 24 hours a day. What are these fake foods doing to us? The truth is, we just don’t know in many cases. There has been very little research done on most of the chemicals in our food supply. Are they bad? Are they good? We just don’t know. One chemical that is common in food is propylene glycol. It’s what makes pretzels brown and look like they were baked in an oven. Where else do you find propylene glycol? In your car. It’s called antifreeze. Hmmmm….

I don’t know about you, but I generally make it a point to NOT eat or drink antifreeze or other fluids that go into machines. But that’s just me….

What we do know for sure is that if these chemicals are in this stuff we call “food” other things must have been taken out to make room for these chemicals, right? There’s only so much room in broccoli. (Yep, that’s totally over-simplifying the process but stick with me) So what did scientists do? They took out (or did not add) the parts of the broccoli that rot, spoil, and are not shelf stable. Or the ones that they deem as “not necessary”. Talk about a major God complex, right?! They don’t seem bothered as they’re eating caviar on their yachts.

Well, when food doesn’t rot, it doesn’t digest. So that fake food you’re eating, not only are you not getting many nutrients from it, but you’re also not breaking it down. When food is not digested, it doesn’t just slide right on through and end up in the toilet. It does some damage along the way.

We now know that many autoimmune diseases are caused by undigested food in the bloodstream. How does food get into our bloodstream? It leaks out of our digestive tract. Have you heard of leaky gut? Or if you’re using the medically appropriate term “increased intestinal permeability”. Repeated damage to our insides causes food and other particles to get into places it doesn’t belong. If that is undigested protein, it collects in the joints and you get diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis. If it’s undigested gluten, you get Celiac Disease. And if it’s fat, you get heart disease, which is the number one cause of death worldwide.

Now back to those people that don’t need drugs. If we deplete the foods of most nutrients in the foods that people most commonly consume, eventually people will develop nutrient deficiencies. How do we treat nutrient deficiencies? With supplements!!

Jackpot!!

If you’re an executive at Big Pharma, you are now assembling a team to start buying up all the small, independent supplement companies! Let’s be one big, happy family! Then, as a way to make extra money, let’s take the processes that those supplement companies use and replace them with our technologies for synthesizing drugs in labs! YAY! Now we have an easier, less expensive way to produce supplements. And guess what? Taking too many supplements, because they’re synthetic, will even cause some damage along the way which can turn these once-healthy people into people with actual diagnosable conditions, such as heart disease, autoimmune conditions, or even cancer. 

If you feel sick, don’t worry, you’re not alone. This is a truly depressing and disgusting industry. Our healthcare system in America is not “health care”, it’s sick care. And it’s killing people. 

So what do you do?

As a marketing exec for Big Pharma, you vacation in Aspen and travel the world on your private jet. As a consumer, you spin your wheels in circles trying to grasp at every glimmer of hope offered in a random magazine at the grocery store checkout, every “superfood” talked about on the evening news, and you stock your shelves full of supplements. You are trying to do the right thing. You are trying to be the healthiest you can be. You are trying to do what’s best for your family. You’re overwhelmed and have no idea who to trust or where to turn.

But here’s the thing. This process is difficult to understand by design. If everyone knew that this was happening - and worst of all, being ALLOWED to happen - they would be outraged. But it’s not a coincidence. Those people making the rules and allowing Big Pharma to continue down this path are the ones directly or indirectly benefiting and making millions on it. They are profiting from making and keeping us sick.

But it changes right now! 

If you’ve read this far, way to go! This is a very long article! But it’s an important one. Here’s what I want you to do. 

First, go into your medicine cabinet, or wherever you keep your supplements, and look at the labels. Can you read it? Are foods listed? Or is it a bunch of science-sounding words? If you do not know those ingredients, I recommend you look for a different brand. Start now, so when you run out, you have a plan. If you’re taking synthetic vitamin A, stop. Throw it away. That one is dangerous.

Second, if those supplements were recommended by a healthcare practitioner or a doctor, give him or her a call and ask why you are on them, each and every one. Take notes. Also, ask what happens if you were to stop taking them. You may be amazed to learn that they have no idea in some cases. Ok great, that should weed some of them out.

Third, do some research. You need to be your own health advocate. Don’t simply take the professional’s word or even my word for that matter. Do your due diligence and find a brand that you are comfortable with. You are looking for a whole-food supplement line. One that is free from fillers, additives, artificial sweeteners and colorings, and one that uses ingredients that you can understand. Be careful, there’s only a handful of those companies out there. If you can’t easily find this information, go to the next one. The companies that have research-backed products gladly boast about it everywhere! If you’re not seeing links to the science, it’s probably because they don’t have any. If you want my recommendation for a brand, I will tell you that Optimal Health Systems is the only one I use and recommend. 

Finally, I would encourage you to assemble your own health team. Look beyond your basic doctors. Have a nutritionist on standby. Call a few chiropractors and find one you mesh with. And look into other therapies such as acupuncture, herbalism, massage, or color puncture. These therapies all go back really far because they work! Western medicine is in its infancy and there’s a lot we don’t know about it. It’s naive of us to think Western medicine is the only way when it discourages people from using techniques dating back thousands of years! 

If you want help sifting through all this information, send me a message. I would be happy to walk you through this and help you come up with a plan - even if it’s not working with me. I just want to help you feel your best! 

Ok, let those questions roll! Let me know your thoughts and your questions. Send me an email or message and let’s chat!

Peace, love & kale!
Lindsay

*Please note that the information in this article is my own opinion and should not be used as medical advice. Speak to your healthcare practitioner before starting or stopping any medication or supplement.