Introduction
Your decision to pick up this book is the first and greatest step toward improving your overall health and well-being. You are about to enter a world where you take back control of your own destiny. Instead of relying on the status quo of our current medical system to get you back on your feet and feeling great, I will show you how to prevent or reverse some of the most common medical problems we all encounter.
Too often, people in our society feel completely dependent on their doctors and other healthcare practitioners to provide them with the answers and treatments they’re looking for. They desperately seek to reclaim the active lives they once led before succumbing to their illness. More often than not, they are left feeling discouraged, frustrated, and hopeless as yet another pill, fancy procedure, or expensive device has left them in the same old predicament—sick and worn out. I’m here to tell you that it doesn’t have to be this way and that you deserve better.
I’ve been a practicing pharmacist in our current healthcare system for well over a decade now. I’ve worked in both the retail pharmacy and inpatient hospital settings. My eyes have been opened to a great deal of pain and suffering during this time. I’ve seen patients burdened with an array of chronic illnesses that include cardiovascular disease, obesity, diabetes, cancer, arthritis, osteoporosis, and autoimmune disorders such as lupus, migraine headaches, dementia, asthma, allergies, and many more.
Even though many of the patients I’ve seen have suffered from various diseases, they’ve all shared one thing in common—they keep coming back for more treatment. If they keep coming back for more treatment, then that means one thing—they’re still sick and worn out.
It’s not uncommon for me to see patients like the following in my everyday duties as a hospital pharmacist:
Case #1: A fifty-three-year-old woman is admitted directly from her doctor’s office complaining of severe abdominal pain. Betty is extremely weak, confused, and hasn’t had much of an appetite lately even though she’s been drinking water like it’s going out of style. Her doctor checked her blood sugar at the office and found it was five times the normal level. Up to this point Betty has no history of diabetes but is currently taking four other medications for various reasons—Synthroid for thyroid disease, Prilosec for acid reflux, Prozac for depression, and a diuretic for high blood pressure. Betty was also complaining of not being able to sleep well since starting on Prozac.
After spending one day in the intensive care unit and four days total in the hospital, Betty is finally well enough to go home. Her blood sugar is back to normal but not without the help of more medication. She’s now leaving with five additional medications—metformin, glyburide, and insulin shots for her new diagnosis of diabetes, lisinopril to help protect her kidneys since she’s now diabetic, and Ambien to help counteract the insomnia caused by Prozac. Betty will have to check her blood sugars a minimum of four times a day at home and will sadly become a “regular” around the hospital due to continued complications of her diabetes.
Case #2: Jim, age fifty-nine, is rushed to the emergency room with crushing chest pain. He has never had a heart attack before this but has been flirting with disaster over the past decade because he’s developed some bad habits in his later years, such as not exercising and eating out a lot. His doctor put him on Lipitor for his cholesterol seven years ago, and since then he’s had three additional drugs added to the list—Norvasc and Lasix for high blood pressure and Viagra for erectile dysfunction.
After a crazy initial ten minutes in the ER, Jim is stabilized and then whisked to the cath lab to have a stent placed in one of his coronary arteries. Three days go by before Jim is finally well enough to go home but not before having four more medications added to his daily regimen. This makes eight now with the new drugs being Coreg and Vasotec for blood pressure along with Plavix and aspirin to thin his blood.
Although Jim’s life was saved this time, he leaves the hospital with a false sense of security that his new stent and medication regimen will protect him from any future heart attacks. The worst is not over, however. Little does he know that in fourteen months he’ll be readmitted to the hospital with the very same problem. This time two more stents are required to open up completely clogged arteries surrounding his heart.
In an age where technology and all that it has to offer has become so readily available in the modern medical system, why are we seeing cases like these over and over again? Never before have we had more medications, state-of-the-art equipment, or cutting-edge procedures available to us than we do today.
The statistics can be mind-boggling when you look at them. Over four billion prescriptions were filled in the United States in 2011, and approximately three-fourths of all visits to the doctor involved drug therapy.1,2 Over 850,000 coronary angioplasties and more than 250,000 open heart surgeries were performed in 2008 in the United States.3 We spent over $2.7 trillion on healthcare in the U.S. in 2011 alone, which is nearly double per person what other developed nations spend on their citizens.4
Yet, despite these numbers Americans are growing fatter and getting sicker by the day. Everyone seems to be looking for that one simple fix that will make their problems vanish overnight. In spite of all the well-meaning intentions of both doctors and patients, none of these modern remedies seems to work. Something has definitely gone wrong.
All of this seems to raise more questions than answers for both patients and doctors. It’s easy to give up hope and just accept the fact that you’re destined to spend the last two to four decades of your life taking a handful of pills and going from one doctor to the next in search of answers. However, the answers to these tough questions are better served by less medical care, not more, as you will soon find out. This was best put into words by one of our country’s most famous founding fathers when Benjamin Franklin said, “Nothing is more fatal to health than an over care of it.”
It’s as if Benjamin Franklin had a crystal ball and was looking into the twenty-first century. After reading this book you’ll have a clear understanding of exactly why “over care” may be so fatal.
In my daily duties as a pharmacist it’s not uncommon for me to see a patient be put on one drug to counteract the adverse effects of another. Before you know it, this patient has a list of medications that reaches into the double digits and monthly co-pays that force them to re-evaluate their family budget. Instead of feeling better, patients typically feel worse or, at best, the same as before they started. So how do we go from feeling broke, sick, and helpless to feeling robust, healthy, and empowered?
We will explore this solution together as this book reveals the power of plant-based nutrition. Your key to success comes in the form of a grocery list and not a prescription. This program is not the latest fad or just another one of those diets failing to live up to infomercial hype but rather a lifestyle program that has been proven to be the most effective way to achieve optimal health while permanently reaching your ideal weight at the same time.
If you’ve tried every diet known to man and none of them has worked, don’t despair. This program has worked for thousands of patients and will work for you too. The information I will give you is backed by an array of scientific evidence that has been published over the last several decades in many highly respected scientific and medical journals. I will teach you the same strategies used, with unrivaled success, by leading experts and clinicians in the field of medicine. The results you will see, and the transformation you experience, will make you wonder why our current medical system hasn’t given these strategies the emphasis they deserve.
As the saying goes—the proof is in the pudding—but it’s a different kind of pudding both figuratively and literally, and it’s starting to grab the attention of the mainstream media. Talk shows, news broadcasts, print media, and even documentaries are now starting to share this life-saving message as our nation tries to find a way to tackle the growing
healthcare crisis.
Significant hurdles remain, though, and you’ll learn how vested corporate and political interests are attempting to keep this information from reaching the masses. As you are aware, the public’s best interests are not always well served by those in a position of power. There is no doubt that our most pressing issues today rarely find a satisfactory outcome because of the sheer magnitude of special interest money floating around within the circles of the privileged few at the top. Prime examples of this type of malfeasance are our healthcare and food industries.
You will soon come to understand the critical need for a grassroots movement to carry a different message forward for the betterment of all—a message that inspires hope and produces results in the form of increased health and happiness for individuals throughout our nation, whether it is in the small communities of the Midwest or the sprawling urban suburbs of the Northeast. We all deserve a life where we’re not just living longer but living better with a higher quality of life well into our eighties and nineties.
I invite you to join me as I unveil the secrets to health, longevity, and ultimately greater happiness as you find yourself living a lifestyle devoid of chronic illness, free of prescription medications, and full of energy. This program can change your life as it has changed mine. I live by these same principles and have helped many others get the most out of their lives because these methods work.
Through my experience as a pharmacist, I have witnessed all that conventional medicine has to offer. There are many things physicians, surgeons, and medicine can do that have no substitute. Healthy lifestyles cannot fix a broken leg or put an end to a terrifying grand mal seizure. Nor can eating healthy foods and exercising cure a life-threatening case of pneumonia. This is not a book of holistic medicine full of “natural” powders, potions, and pills.
Instead, what you will learn is that by following the steps I set out for you, you and your family will enjoy a longer and healthier life. A life less likely to be encumbered by the many preventable diseases that plague humanity. I know of no better way to achieve these goals and end the current healthcare crisis in America than by following these principles. Come now and give yourself a brand new start at life as you embark on a promising future of health and prosperity laid out here in The Empty Medicine Cabinet.
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