We have benefited greatly as a society from the biotech revolution over the last century. Maternal mortality rates fell 98% over the past century, and we almost completely eradicated measles, mumps, typhoid, whooping cough and many other infectious diseases.
But along the way, we really lost sight of nutrition. We became so consumed with treating disease with prescription drugs, that we forgot how to prevent disease in the first place. In doing so, we created entirely new sets of problems for ourselves—like diabetes, heart disease, COPD and many forms of cancer. Deaths from prescription opioids alone have nearly quadrupled since 2000.
The CDC says we’re being ravaged by “lifestyle diseases”, accounting for 4 out of every 5 deaths in the United States and 40% of cancers.
When I hear “lifestyle disease”, I hear “preventable disease”. I hear unbalanced diet, sedentary lifestyle, and toxic chemicals in the environment.
The lack of focus on nutrition and prevention in healthcare is not new, and it’s not necessarily the fault of medical doctors. In fact, 85% of them will tell you themselves they feel inadequately prepared talk to their patients about nutrition, as this simply wasn’t taught in medical school.
Unfortunately, nutrition is one of many health issues that are commonly mishandled by conventional medicine. Conditions such as fertility, allergies, weight loss, skin conditions, digestive issues, hormone imbalances, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, auto-immune diseases and mental health are often better handled by integrative doctors, such as Functional MDs, Naturopathic Doctors or Doctors of Osteopathy.
Health Systems Taking Notice
In the last few years, we’ve seen the majority of the nation’s top health systems launch centers for integrative medicine, functional medicine, or east-west medicine to accommodate the growing demand. Most recently, UC Irvine received a generous $200 million grant to start a center for integrative health in conjunction with the hospital.
These programs, which are almost always private pay, use natural health and wellness strategies to complement, but not replace, the conventional medical practices within the hospitals. Their practitioners take into account the whole person — including lifestyle, nutrition and environmental factors — and address the root cause of symptoms, instead of treating the symptoms in isolation. The personalized and holistic approach to medicine has been welcomed by practitioners within these health systems.
Limitations of Conventional Medicine
I know what you’re thinking… “Alternative medicine is just a bunch of quackery”. “It lacks evidence”. “Naturopathic Doctors are not real doctors”. “This is not real medicine”. We’ve heard it all.
For a long time, I felt the same way too. At my last company, HomeHero, we worked alongside some of the top health systems in the country, including Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, who actually invested in our company. Even my co-founder, Mike, is engaged to an orthopedic surgeon. I have always believed that any treatment plan that lacked inconclusive evidence was too dangerous to administer to patients. But we have a serious problem on our hands.
The number of Americans addicted to opioids, which include prescription pain medications such as Vicodin and Percocet, is 2.4 million. The number of Americans who died from opioids last year is 64,000, nearly twice the number of deaths from motor vehicle accidents. And the number of drug overdose deaths since 2000 is more than 500,000, nearly 300,000 more than the number of murders involving guns. The first wave of prescription opioid mortality began in the 1990s and has worsened every year.
Americans are sick and unhealthy, and we are addicted to precipitation drugs. Human healthspan will continue to decline if we don’t change our philosophy about nutrition and prevention immediately.
We have the most expensive and inefficient healthcare system in the world, as evidenced by skyrocketing rates of chronic disease. And yet, primary care doctors still only spend about 13 minutes with patients on average, and they hand out prescriptions during 80% of visits.
Integrative doctors, on the other hand, spend an hour or more with patients, and hand out prescriptions less than 15% of the time. They instead rely on nutraceuticals like Vitamin D and Iron. Each year, 4 billion prescriptions are filled in the United States — that’s one per adult every month! We hand these out knowing that 70% of heroin deaths start with someone misusing prescription drugs.
So here we are, with 117 million people in the United States, one in two adults, living with chronic health conditions. And for the first time in over two decades, life expectancy for Americans declined last year. At our current pace, over 30% of adults in America will have diabetes by 2050. As this trend continues, people become sicker and pharmaceutical companies continue to make more money.
Big Pharma and Washington
My belief is that the reason there’s so much hostility towards holistic doctors is because they make lousy salespeople for big pharma. It makes sense why they fight tooth and nail to prevent further licensing of Naturopathic Doctors or any class of practitioners that don’t pass out prescription drugs like candy.
Despite the opposition from lobbyists and special interest groups, licensing for holistic practitioners is expanding and is expected to surpass 25 states within the next 12 months.
So let’s stop pretending the 13 minute appointment and a pill bottle you receive from your primary care doctor is actually better medicine. Conventional medicine is simply not designed to keep you healthy, it is mostly designed to provide emergency care and slow the spread of disease once it’s too late.
Turning to Integrative Medicine
Last December, my longtime co-founder (Mike Townsend) and I were closing down our non-medical home care company, HomeHero, after a series of regulatory challenges. With much of our $23 million in funding still remaining, we decided we wanted to continue fighting for better healthcare in the home. So we started talking to patients who had fallen through the cracks of the conventional medical system and found integrative medicine.
One patient in particular, Layne Thrasher, was a co-executive of our company, and is no stranger to being betrayed by people and institutions he trusted.
Layne grew up as an orphan in NYC and found a successful career in finance as an adult. For years, his primary care doctors would assure him that he was healthy, despite his constant complaints of fatigue and not feeling great. He was continually told he had “nothing to worry about”, until one day a friend recommended he see an integrative doctor (in this case, a Naturopathic Doctor). She met with Layne for multiple hours, covering all aspects of his physical and mental health, and was willing to listen and dig deep.
The doctor ultimately ran a series of clinical lab tests to examine a wide range of health biomarkers. What the doctor found, was extremely alarming, but also easily addressable. Layne had been living with excess levels of mercury in his body for years. They also identified a wide range of nutrition deficiencies, as well as a high gluten sensitivity. These imbalances were undoubtedly affecting his energy, sleep and mood.
After correcting the issues through lifestyle and supplementation changes, he started to feel much better. His mercury levels lowered dramatically and his energy increased substantially, and he started to make healthier decisions about the foods he consumed. From the perspective of most conventional doctors, Layne had been perfectly healthy. But once he asked an integrative doctor, he discovered that his body was firing off warning signs that something’s not right inside. If he didn’t correct these issues, he could have been just another cancer or neurological disease statistic down the road.
Soon we learned that there were millions of other patients like Layne that were either misdiagnosed or missed diagnosed. We’re talking about millions of people taking pharmaceutical drugs for basic health conditions like eczema and infertility, when they really have allergies, hormone imbalances or gut sensitivities.
As a result of our findings, the HomeHero team rebranded and created an entirely new healthcare company called Harvey, a telehealth integrative medicine platform that combines evidence-based lab testing with eastern philosophies of prevention and natural self-healing.
Our goal is to increase access, awareness and affordability of holistic and integrative medicine nationwide.
The opioid crisis in the United States is a very complicated issue that is affected by a wide range of social, political and economic factors. But you don’t have to wait for Superman to receive better health. You can take a more preventative approach to your health today by simply having a conversation with a doctor who cares about your holistic health and wellbeing.
Before putting more prescription drugs into your body, ask your doctor about nutrition. Ask your doctor about gut health, toxic metals, toxic chemicals, food sensitivities, hormones, allergies and mental health. Ask these questions first, and if you’re not 100% satisfied with the answers, find a doctor who can go deeper. And just maybe, you can feel better than you’ve ever felt before.
