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You have happened upon the top secret chapter that I pulled from all of my books. I put it online for free because I wanted this information to be available to everyone. Not just my book readers. You’re reading this either because you were directed here by one of my books, or a friend thought you might enjoy my point of view on the medical world and how it works.

For those of you who don’t know, I’m a professional comedian who lost his voice for seven years and twenty three doctors couldn’t figure it out. I told them all to piss off and started doing my own research. The result: I not only figured out my own issues, I spent those seven years studying and researching how the body works and now help people understand why they’re dealing with the health issues they are dealing with.

I write books that teach people how to look at their own body chemistry to better understand this device we call our body. I also make documentaries about health issues and how they can be improved. You may have heard about the film I am currently making with a client I helped lose 200 pounds in nine and half months entitled, “Why Am I So Fat?”

I’m bored about me already, let’s get at it. The purpose of this Hidden Chapter is to understand why someone like myself can spend six figures on medical bills and end up zero answers. Zero? Really? $100,000 doesn’t buy me even one answer? That kinda blows.

I Want the Whole Story

It is my experience that the majority of doctors are actually good people who are trying their best to improve the health of their patients with the knowledge they have. I think that phrase is a good place to start our investigation, “with the knowledge that they have.”

If doctors are generally good people and doing their best with the information they have, where are they getting their information? From medical school, where else? That can’t be the problem because we know that medical schools have to abide by certain guidelines… plus, medical school is hard. If doctors weren’t being properly educated, anyone could make it through medical school, right? And we know that’s not the case because how often do you come across a doctor who asks if tuna is chicken or fish? (Oops, I really was planning on making it through this chapter without a Jessica Simpson reference.)

These are all good questions and I believe the answers are going to change the way you look at your health, the choices you make, and the hands you put those choices in. Before I explain this, I just want to be clear that in no way am I saying that the entire medical world is a crapshoot, or that the entire system is more evil than that blonde guy from The Karate Kid. The advances and information that our medical professionals and researchers have provided are truly amazing and many of them do indeed save and/or prolong lives. Even some medications that result in horrible side effects still have the ability to buy yourself some time and fight off a certain death long enough to really improve your health or correct the underlying problem. The only knock on how the whole system works that I will cover here is this: We are only given half the story.

If you go out of town and I watch your dog while you’re gone, then I’m a pretty nice guy. If you come home and there’s no little piles of dog poop in your yard because I scooped it all up, then I’m an even nicer guy. Going above the call of duty, really. (Or the call of doodie depending on what we’re talking about. It makes me sad that I left that joke in here.) You might be so appreciative that you take me to dinner and even buy me a hammock just because I always wanted one. But if every day while you were out of town I took the dog crap out of your yard and dumped it into the trunk of your car, then maybe I didn’t tell you the whole story. Maybe you’ll be less appreciative when you go to change a flat on the freeway. Sure, I seemed like a nice guy, but I was leaving out some key information. Sometimes it’s just nice to get the whole story; especially when we’re talking about your life and your health.

With that in mind, here’s the piece of information I came across again and again while I was trying to figure out why each doctor and each medication was making me worse instead of better. This is the piece of information that woke me up to the realization that it was time to put my health back into my own hands. Not that I didn’t still need help from health professionals, but that I would become a player in the process of understanding what my options really were and what would be best for me. Here it is: The vast majority of curricula that are taught in medical schools in this country were put together by organizations that were founded by, or are funded by, pharmaceutical companies. Read that again.

So let me get this straight… The people who make the most money from our being sick are the same people who are teaching our doctors how to make us “healthy?”

How Do Pharmaceutical Companies Get Bills Passed in Their Favor?

Understanding how certain bills and laws can get passed in favor of the pharmaceutical companies is a great place to begin when trying to make sense of this Milli Vanilli-like medical world that we live with.

An episode of 60 Minutes titled “Under the Influence” that aired on April 1, 2007 took a peek inside the process of bills being passed that resulted in pharmaceutical industry profits rising drastically. You can watch the video of that segment here: http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=3108688n

The episode states, “According to a new study by the center for public integrity, congressmen are outnumbered two to one by lobbyists for an industry that spends roughly a hundred million dollars a year for campaign contributions and lobbying expenses to protect its profits.” The Medicare Prescription Drug Bill is one of the reasons those profits have exceeded Wall Street expectations. The show reporters described a bill that kept the government Medicare system from negotiating prices on medications for its users. So brand name medications such as Zocor can cost Medicare members $1,485.96 for a year’s supply. The same drug only costs $127.44 for a year’s supply under the VA plan. This is because the VA negotiates with the drug companies on price. Medicare could do the same thing but they are prohibited from doing so under the Medicare legislation that was being discussed on this program. Obviously, this makes no sense but it does show the power pharmaceutical companies have to get crazy bills passed in their favor. Of the 1,500 bills over the last eight years (from the time of this episode) dealing with pharmaceutical issues, the drug companies almost without exception have gotten what they wanted. 1,500 times!

The most revealing fact that was explained in this episode was: Over and over again, congress members who were instrumental in pushing these bills left Congress shortly after the bills passed and began working for one of the pharmaceutical companies that benefited from that bill being passed, at salaries in the millions of dollars. Do you really believe that is a coincidence?

In the episode, they actually name names. I don’t want to spend a lot of time on the subject, but the episode showed how easy it is for pharmaceutical companies to get ridiculous bills passed; the episode made it obvious that pharmaceutical companies have the power to create the information that is considered to be medical fact. After all, have you ever heard of a medical study of any kind that was not funded or influenced by some pharmaceutical company? It’s very rare, and those studies that do reveal evidence suggesting a beneficial method other than a patented medication or expensive procedure get buried or ridiculed by their peers. That’s why I always laugh when doctors say, “Ya know, there just isn’t enough clinical evidence out there to back up that natural method that you’re talking about.” Of course there isn’t. Who’s going to pay for it? Since the early 1900s, pharmaceutical companies have had individuals on staff whose only job responsibility was to research methods of healing that are natural and non-patentable and find ways to discredit them so more people will turn to the medications for answers.

The Information Is Out There

In medical schools now, this is actually beginning to take a turn for the better. Many medical curricula are beginning to include more and more instruction about the many methods of natural health, along with more information about nutrition, because the simple fact is that it can no longer be ignored. Too many self-educated patients are going to their doctors with questions that make too much sense for their doctor to just ask, “Hey, who’s the doctor here?” So, the young and fresh face of medicine is starting to have a more open and more broadly educated mind. But most doctors I have talked to who graduated five, ten, or more years ago tell me that in the four years they spent learning how to be a doctor, maybe 30 minutes were spent on nutrition, if that. Some say they didn’t cover nutrition at all.

Nutrition is becoming increasingly popular these days. Plus, it’s not hard to believe that our culture missed the boat on the importance of nutrition for so long. For years it was believed that smoking cigarettes was healthy. It was actually a part of their advertising. We laugh now, but there was a time when it was common knowledge that smoking was good for you. Just like it’s common knowledge now that if you have a health issue that plagues your life, your only option is to take some drugs and hope for the best.

Sometimes we’re just so hell-bent on getting answers that we’re willing to listen to anyone. I’ve been there myself. Truth be told, if I hadn’t been talked into taking so many medications that I felt like I was in a walking coma, I never would have dedicated myself to all of this research. My point is, I’m not faulting anyone who uses medications. I used them myself in my desperation. However, if I had known there were other options, I would have taken another route. After all, I’m pretty sure it was Abraham Lincoln who once said, “In a life where two paths emerge, take the less-sucky one.”

Riddle me this… (before I continue, I just want it to be clear that I’ve never uttered the phrase, “riddle me this” in my life. I’ve also never owned a pair of camouflage pants, and I am very proud of that). Back to the riddling. Imagine there was a clinic down the street from your house. It seemed like a nice enough clinic. Clean building, friendly staff, always had ample parking. But let’s say you knew for a fact that half of the people who used this clinic died of the same thing, would you go to that clinic? If you knew five out of ten people who went into this clinic were all going to die from the same thing, would you put your life in that clinic’s hands? You might not. Yet, that is exactly what we do when we put our health in the hands of the medical world. In America today, 50% of the population is dying from the same thing: heart disease. In the natural health community, it is widely believed that so many people die from heart disease because the medical world doesn’t do anything to treat the underlying cause of heart disease. They treat cholesterol by turning off your body’s ability to make cholesterol, but they don’t do anything to correct the problem that was causing the body to make more cholesterol. They lower blood pressure by restricting the heart’s ability to function. These drugs make the heart weaker so it doesn’t pump as hard and blood pressure comes down so the patient doesn’t have a blowout. These methods may be the appropriate thing to do in the short term, but they do not answer or correct the underlying cause and are not likely the best choice for the long term. The point here is: If you wouldn’t walk into a clinic where half of the patients were dying of the same thing, is trusting the medical world with your health really much different?

Isn’t it weird how many of us understand that the majority of medications out there only cover up symptoms and leave the actual problem inside of us unresolved, yet we’re okay with that? If you went to see a mechanic because your car was making a clanking noise, what would you say if he charged you $2000, installed a high-end sound system and told you to drive with the volume up? Whatever is causing the clanking noise is still there but you can’t hear it over your new $2000 stereo. In this scenario we can see how ignorant that is, but when it comes to our own bodies we just crank up the tunes.

The goal of this chapter is not to correct the system that is in place. With the power and profit levels the pharmaceutical industry has, I can only wish you luck in that venture. The purpose of including this information is to help you understand why the natural methods that have worked well for people all over the world, aren’t discussed in mainstream medicine. After all, if you learn from others who have eliminated their need for medications and you do the same, the pharmaceutical industry will have lost another customer. That just cuts into their profits so why, when they control the majority of the information that is out there, would they make that information available to everyone? That’s just bad business. We can’t blame them for being good businessmen and women. Tanning salons don’t advertise that you can get a tan just as easily if you simply STAY OUTSIDE! That’s the truth, but we don’t blame them for not telling us that every time we walk into their tanning business. Maybe a salon owner should try that. “We have a 50% off tanning special today. It’s where you only pay half price and we allow you to leave the building.” It’s really not that unreasonable for us to be required to think for ourselves.

Giving the People What They’re Asking For

Medicine in America is a market. You hear about a system, but it really isn’t a system at all—it is a marketing machine pushing billions in pharmaceuticals to consumers every year. If you were to tell me that politics and profit are the reasons the system has turned into a bigger mess than Andy Dick, I would agree with you. However, I also think it is time that we take responsibility for what the politicians have created. We still vote with our dollars and our votes count.

Let’s just suppose that I’m a doctor, and I’ve spent ump-teen thousands of dollars to finally become a doctor. I’m feeling pretty good, I’m grateful for all those nights I spent studying while everyone I knew was at that keg party. I’m thinking about that guy from high school, Mitch Gander, who gave me a wedgie, and I’m driving by the car wash where he works so I can feel good about the decisions I’ve made. I’m excited, I’m feeling great and I still have all of my integrity as I come out of medical school. I’ve decided that my patients are going to be different. I’m going to teach them to eat right and exercise. They’re not going to be smoking, they’re not going to be taking recreational drugs, they’re not going to sex everybody they meet, and I’m going to have this immaculate practice. Well, do I even have a practice if I try to do that? No, I don’t. I don’t have a practice and yet, I’m mega bucks in debt, and I already drove by the car wash yelling, “Take that wedgie and suck it, Mitch Gander!”

So I’m going to do what the American market has dictated that I will do if I want to have a medical practice. The American market has said, “I want you to take my body on Tuesday and I want you to have it back to me by Friday so I can have it for the weekend. I’m already overwhelmed and I don’t want to be conscious about anything having to do with my body.” So the doctor then, given a totally non-compliant patient base, looks at this non-compliant patient base and says, “You know, if you’re going to keep drinking that alcohol and keep abusing your body in every way imaginable, in order for you to keep functioning, I will have to start giving you these drugs and I’ll need to give you this surgery because those are the only options that will allow you to operate the way you’ve operated all your life.” That’s really why people go to doctors. They’re saying, “Will you give me a pill that will make all my horrible decisions have a different outcome?” They’re not saying, “Will you teach me how to do the right thing?”

Even I, as a natural health educator, don’t have somebody who comes up and says, “I want to work with you for the next six months. I’m going to take stock of how I feel now and stock of how I feel six months from now, and if you’ve made me feel better I’m going to stay with you.” No, in reality, I have about ten days to show clients how to bring about a result. If they don’t do something in ten days that’s pretty outstanding, that even an unconscious person can see, I don’t have them as clients anymore. But the point is, the marketplace in America has asked the doctor to practice in a certain fashion and the doctors do not need to be criticized for that. For a doctor to do what he does for his non-compliant and unconscious client base, he deserves a Nobel Prize and he deserves all the money he can get. I don’t want his client base.

What we’ve got here is a health system where the marketplace is saying, “We want our care to be in this way,” and they’re having it delivered to them the way they want it. And so, when someone decides to become conscious and says, “Well I don’t want a drug that’s going to decrease inflammation by strangling my liver. I don’t want someone to step on my foot so hard that I can’t feel my headache anymore. I don’t want that kind of treatment. I want something that’s more green, so to speak, or natural,” this person may discover that they need to look outside of the medical system to find that type of care. Going to the medical doctor who is treating this marketplace and asking for conscious treatment is like going into Kentucky Fried Chicken and demanding a Big Mac. It’s not part of the menu, and no one should expect it to be part of the menu. If you’re thinking that it should have been on the menu, you’re not recognizing the fact that you’re standing in a Kentucky Fried Chicken and you’re demanding a McDonald’s Big Mac… so, don’t do that. Realize that they’re doing what they should be doing, and that if they step outside the realm of standard medical practice, they will be sued out of existence. When a doctor says that he is working for the American Medical Association and he is a medical doctor, then he is saying that he will go along with the AMA’s way of doing things. That same “way” has been designed for the marketplace because that is what the marketplace has asked for. The doctor is basically the gas station of the American Medical Association; he is the owner of an Exxon franchise. And so he is only a gas station and he does not get to dictate to the oil company what gas he is going to pump. Let’s just face it: this is how it is.

Correcting Cause Over Symptoms

Okay, we get it. The whole thing is our fault. If we, as a community, didn’t demand this fix-it-now approach to health care, we might see the medical world trying to correct the actual causes of illness instead of just covering up the symptoms. But not every individual is looking for an immediate method to just cover up his or her symptoms. Some people actually want to correct the underlying cause and these people are willing to do the work it takes. What about these folks? Why aren’t they told that they have other options? Why are they receiving the same fiction that everyone else is being told? Why are they getting screwed with a capital F?

If you’re in the kitchen cutting celery and blood begins to gush from your hand, you don’t call your doctor and tell him that you need a medication that will make you coagulate better so you don’t bleed so much; you don’t get a $30,000 procedure to implant a special pump that pulls all your blood to the center of your body so all of your life-force doesn’t escape from your extremities; you don’t get ten years of therapy and psychiatric drugs to try and uncover episodes from your childhood that have “turned you into such a bleeder.” No, you just realize that you cut your finger with a knife while you were chopping your celery and you need to stitch it up to stop the bleeding. That’s it. Once you understand the underlying cause that is making your celery all bloody, it seems pretty silly to try any of those other choices to fix it. That’s my goal when I try to educate clients or readers: to help them better understand the actual causes behind their health issues. If people can understand those causes, they’ll be on their way to understanding how to improve those issues.

Once I found a way to turn on the intelligent section of my brain and became aware that most medical school curricula are being developed by organizations that will profit the most from people being sick, this realization was enough to make me want to “pants” somebody. But since I’m not in the ninth grade anymore, I figured I should find another solution to release my anger. I mean REALLY. For the people that profit the most from our getting sick to be the same people that educate our “Healers” is basically no different than the following scenario. What if crime was rampant in every city in the country and only licensed individuals could install security systems in your home? It doesn’t matter if you know how to install a security system, you’re still not allowed to do it because you’re not licensed. To get licensed you have to go through a grueling 4-8 year education process where you’re taught how to install home security systems by an organization made up of active cat burglars—not people who used to be thieves so they know the ins and outs of how it works—people who still rob houses now. No? Are you saying it doesn’t matter if the installation person who is licensed is a good person or not because he was educated by the burglars on how to set up the security systems? Are you saying that the burglars would probably have the installers set up the systems in a way that made it easy for the burglars to break in, steal all your stuff, and keep their profits high? But surely the government would never let that happen, right? What if the burglars had one of the most profitable industries in the country and donated millions to the campaign funds of public officials throughout government? If they actually funded a politician’s campaign, are you telling me that they wouldn’t be able to get a little favor like having a bill passed that requires all home security installers to be licensed by organizations that teach the curriculum the burglars put in place? Well, not when you look at it like that. But what if eight burglars came together and formed the “International Safety Alliance”? If we knew our security installers were being licensed by an organization with a name like that, maybe we wouldn’t ask who funded that organization.

Sounds dumb, I know. Or maybe it will shed some light on something you kind of knew already but have been choosing to look the other way. Well, I’m holding it right in front of your face. Where are you going to look now?

My Big Plan

If the world continues to be suckered into this “only treat the symptoms” system of health care, I’ve already decided how I’m going to retire. I’ll share my idea with you as long as you promise not to steal it. I’ll start by taking all of my profits from my books and use them to make large campaign contributions to politicians all over the country who I feel have a great chance of taking office. So, when they win, they’ll owe me a few “favors.” Next, I’ll hire some scientists whose only job will be to prove the dangers of using an umbrella. I figure I can prove that the little support rods that stick out of the sides can be a huge menace to the visual health of our community. I’ll show how if a shorter person were using an umbrella, literally anyone of a taller stature in the near vicinity would be in danger of having his or her eye poked out. If anyone manufacturers little coverings for the ends of the deadly protruding shafts, I’ll be able to prove that these coverings can fall off and be a choking hazard for our children, or even worse, could end up floating in our oceans where seabirds would mistake them for small fish only to swoop in and end up choking on the covering device. I could easily get some volunteers to stand out in front of the grocery store tormenting shoppers into signing petitions to “save the birds”.

Once I have my “facts” in order and my politician buddies have cashed in their favors and pushed a bill through congress to outlaw the sale of umbrellas, I could put my invention on the market. It will be similar to a walker, the kind your grandma uses, except the outer cage will come up over the user’s head. On top of the cage will be six high-powered air blowers all pointed down into the cage where the user will stand and push the device as they walk. The left side of the unit will hold the engine that powers the blowers and also supplies enough juice to keep the windshield wipers going so you can see where you’re walking. On the right side will be a compartment for the battery and a spare set of dry clothes just in case the system fails. As you walk down the street, pushing your walking “Weather Cage” through the rain, the blowers will blast air all over your body and dry any moisture that lands on you from the sky, almost instantly. The unit will sell for $2,895 and will be covered under Medicare for anyone who would rather not get wet. Side effects will include dry eye, chapped skin and “crazy hair”.

When industries come along and make suggestions that would cut into my profits, I’ll be ready for that too. For instance, if someone asks, “Instead of using a device that constantly dries the rain off of you, why not just use something to cover your head so you don’t get wet in the first place?” I’ll just be able to say, “Well, there really isn’t enough research in that area yet to show that something of that nature would be effective. We’re working on that now but there just isn’t enough data that would cause us to change what we’re currently doing.”

I think it’s a good plan. It makes sense according to what is working for one of the most profitable fields in the world, and the umbrella industry is wide open. Once I get this in place, you’ll all be invited to come and stay at my beach estate for the weekend. Hopefully it won’t rain while you’re there.

Look for the cause of your health issues and stop settling for just covering up the symptoms.
Work with your body, not against it.
Every dollar you spend is a vote, and your vote counts.