Better Medicine Than Drugs

Anybody from hapless patients screened for major disorders, stuck in hospital rooms, to celebrity athletes promised tender loving care at five-star medical facilities by insurance companies can experiment with this book. Scoops of Dixon’s pro-food crusade and wholesome fruit from Holford and Burne’s explanation around the psychological constructs developed for ‘health restoration and maintenance’ by the medical world - you get dessert that tastes, “A gratified foodie outlives a pill-maniac.” 

Holford details the power of drug marketing, in creating blockbuster drugs, in the first part of his book. Pharmaceutical Companies influence medical universities and professionals who relentlessly create a neurosis within patients that these drugs are the only life-savers for the day. Medical representatives and tailor-made clinical trials work to reinforce this.

 Readers get forced to conclude, “This is what mercenaries do.” A paranoid Holford questions the authenticity of drug-approving authorities, who reassure the world [the FDA in US and MHRA in UK] into consuming dangerous pills. Chilling case-studies like one where MHRA ignored suicide risk for depressed children treated with the drug Seroxat, for seven years after clinical trials, establish his horrifying claims on their error in judgement. 

For people who lost loved ones to the rules laid down by consultant practitioners providing treatment as determined right by the FDA, rather than to the disease, the book’s second part is an eye-opener. He effectively argues the need to work with the body’s design to maintain well-being and ‘fix the wobble’ when something goes wrong instead of disrupting whole metabolic pathways, recklessly, with drugs. 

The third part of Holford’s book runs to 200 pages describing nine chronic disorders and suggesting non-drug treatments, mainly innocuous foods.  The facts presented are both alarming and useful. The long term use of joint pain-killer Cortisone disables the body causing adrenal gland dysfunction and instead of protecting joints, ruins them and further destroys bones. Aspirin can damage joints by lowering Vitamin C. So when Holford suggests a nutritional supplement like Glucosamine fish or turmeric as alternative treatments, people may not believe him immediately. He provides prescription dosage for foods and data on research trials that prove cartilage [cushioning tissue] sparing at joints when they are 

consumed. This portion of the book appears cumbersome to handle initially but makes good reference.

The fourth part contains revolutionary and forthright demands: get over the medical world’s apathy around nutritional supplement ask your ‘new age medicine man’ to deliver better health, get drug companies to provide charity to help treat chronic disorders and increase political will for these things to happen. He suggests a social mutiny to transform ‘health business’ into ‘the art of healing’.

Holford’s book is more comprehensive compared to his earlier ones on nutrition and immunity. Burne’s contribution, unearthing unpublished clinical trials and hidden data that drug companies got sued for later, after claiming many victims, makes excellent investigatory journalism by a medical journalist.  Read it and make sure your doctor does too.