According to casual conversation most people are convinced they will live 100 years. The irony is that in one breath Americans talk about long-life expectancy, while in the next they commiserate about chronic disease symptoms. If we are so focused on disease, are we really healthy?
Today, the average American live span of 79 years is comparable to that of the Victorian Era (1837 to 1901). It is a myth that people dropped dead at 40 in the mid-1800s. Historical records have been greatly distorted. Today’s chronic diseases were extremely rare for them.
The Victorians had stronger immune systems and lived healthier lives, often working until the day they died; providing they survived the first five, vulnerable years. They lived in rural communities, worked long days, and ate 2000 more calories a day to sustain themselves. Obesity was virtually unknown except in the upper-middle and wealthier classes. And they lived without modern diagnostics and medical treatments.
A clue to their success? The mid-Victorian era, between the years of 1850 and 1872, was a ‘golden age of nutrition.’ “They typically ate eight to ten portions of fruit and vegetables daily,” in a nutrient-dense diet of real food. They ate seasonally and locally. They ate organ meats (brains, heart, liver, kidneys, and ‘pluck’), fatty fish, and prebiotic foods (including onions, garlic, Jerusalem artichokes, dandelion greens, and leeks). They ate less salt (except to preserve corned beef), sugar, alcohol and tobacco. They did not eat processed or refined foods.
Unlike life in Victorian times, we habitually expose ourselves to chemicals and heavy metals in what we eat, drink, breathe, apply, insert, implant, and inject. Today, 2 out of 5 Americans, or 32 million people, have at least one chronic disease. Chronic diseases are the major causes of illness and death across the globe. And while the U.S. has the most expensive healthcare system in the world, we are far from the healthiest.
Today in America, a state of health is a myth that contradicts the reports:
The Institute of Medicine’s 1999 report To Err is Human, estimated some 100,000 Americans die each year from preventable adverse events. An adverse event is any unfavorable and unintended sign, symptom or disease associated with the use of a medical treatment or procedure that occurs during the course of a study. A serious adverse event includes any untoward medical occurrence that results in death, is life threatening, requires inpatient hospitalization, results in persistent or significant disability, or leads to a congenital anomaly or birth defect.
The Starfield Report of 2000, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, cited western medicine as the third leading cause of death, including 2038 deaths per week from prescription drugs alone. If science is the backbone of evidence-based medicine in this country, then what does the medical science tell us?
The editor in chief of The Lancet, one of the world’s most distinguished medical journals, published a statement suggesting that much of medical literature is false:
“The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards darkness.”
In a 2013 report in the Journal of Patient Safety, preventable medical errors persist as the No. 3 killer in the U.S. – third only to heart disease and cancer – claiming the lives of some 400,000 people each year at a cost of $1 trillion each year.
“Medicine today invests heavily in information technology, yet the promised improvement in patient safety and productivity frankly have not been realized,” said Peter Pronovost, MD, senior vice president for Patient Safety and Quality and director of the Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality at Johns Hopkins.
“What these numbers say is that every day, a 747, two of them are crashing. Every two months, 9-11 is occurring…we would not tolerate that degree of preventable harm in any other forum.” – Peter Pronovost, MD, Senate Hearing July 16, 2014
The 2013 U.S. Health In International Perspective report shows that Americans are living less long in poorer health at all stages of life. And this is not news. The trend has been alive for at least one hundred years.
According to the 2014 Mirror Mirror Report by the Commonwealth Fund, the US underperforms in most aspects of healthcare among 11 industrialized nations. We Americans live shorter lives and experience more injuries and illnesses than those in other high-income countries.
The National Research Council and World Health Organization reported that Americans, for many years, have had shorter life expectancy that their peer countries, and are less healthy in the at all stages of life, from infancy to childhood to adolescence to young adulthood to middle and old age.
The U.S. health disadvantage spans many types of illness and injury yet the report uncovered no single cause for these findings and offered no call to action. Americans as a group fare worse in at least nine health areas:
- infant mortality and low birth weight
- injuries and homicides
- adolescent pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections
- HIV and AIDS
- drug-related deaths
- obesity and diabetes
- heart disease
- chronic lung disease
- disability
If our future is our children and their health, how does it break down for the children?
Autism reflects our future state of health. Autism is not a one-size-fits-all diagnosis. It is expressed in children on a spectrum from ‘mild to severe,’ and clinically as neurological and gastrointestinal toxicity. A review of U.S. studies found that prevalence increased 10-fold between the 1970s and 1990s, from less than 3 cases per 10,000 children to over 30 cases per 10,000 children. The U.S. CDC also found rising cases throughout the 1990s. Today, the autism spectrum has risen to 1 in 32 children in our modern era. Researcher Dr. Stephanie Seneff, phD estimates that number will rise to 1 in 2 by 2025.
Infectious Disease Not Eliminated
If vaccines are miracles of medical science that have eliminated infectious disease outbreaks of the Victorian era and prior, why does a 2014 report released by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) show the opposite?
The CFR map identifies “Council of Foreign Relations Disease Map: Highest Disease amongst the Vaccinated Countries.” While the mainstream media like PBS ran the story, they missed the fact that the CFR map showed the highest disease outbreaks in the most-vaccinated populations.
This was especially true for measles, mumps, rubella, polo, and pertussis outbreaks. The US, Canada, the EU, Australia, New Zealand and Japan– each with the highest number of mandated vaccines – as well India and Africa where GAVI implemented vaccine campaigns, led the list of nations. South America is almost void of any communicable disease dots.
Ironically, if you go to the link today, February 2020, the article title has been changed to “How Vaccine Fears Fueled The Resurgence Of Preventable Diseases”
However, that does not change Missouri. The state with the highest vaccination rate, and strictest mandates, also has the highest infant mortality rate, and the highest death rate for pregnant women.
What has gone wrong?
Has living in a sterile, “modern day” bubble sabotaged our immune systems beyond repair? Have we trusted the wrong people? Has the vaccination program, with its promise to eliminate infectious disease instead increased outbreaks through vaccine viral shedding? Have processed, refined, genetically-modified foods left us vulnerable at all ages?
An infant’s immune system begins to grow and develop when it comes into contact with bacteria, viruses and fungi and can wage an attack against them, as nature intended. A child’s immune system develops over time, some say up to twelve years. Yet, infants, beginning on day 1, are given their first vaccine. The childhood vaccine schedule has never been scientifically tested for safety or effectiveness, yet requires a child to take 74 doses of 53 injectable vaccines by age 17. Is that science or negligence?
We roll up our sleeves to “injectables” that contain a concoction of chemicals, heavy metals, antibiotics and carcinogens that few would consider drinking.
Vaccines require boosters since they only provide temporary immunity. Vaccines promote B-cells (antibodies) which suppresses a full-body (T-cell) long-term, innate immunity. Because vaccines fail to provide real immunity (sometimes less than 6 months, or not at all), the adult schedule is being implemented to “keep Americans healthy.”
In our “advancement” as a science-savvy species, we not only experience high infant mortality rates, and continued outbreaks of infectious disease like the Victorians, but we have added chronic disease to the mix. Modern foods and medicine have replaced nutrition and nature. Blind obedience and mandates have replaced choice and consent.
Is it possible to go backwards to a new future? To return to a Victorian lifestyle in health and vitality by reevaluating our exposures as well as what we accept as truth from those who deem themselves truth sayers? To return to Victory in Health means eating nutrient-dense, unrefined foods, moving more, and going back to nature. It means challenging the status quo, asking questions, and questioning our definition of advancement. Returning to the past in mind and spirit, if not in body, may be the only way to preserve our species.
Rosanne Lindsay is a Naturopath, Earth Keeper, liberty-lover, and author of the book The Nature of Healing, Heal the Body, Heal the Planet. Find her on Facebook at Natureofhealing and her website at natureofhealing.org.
