Why Has Nutrition Become Alternative Medicine?
During the second half of the twentieth century, commercial interests have succeeded in
changing the popular meaning of "primary" healthcare. Common sense nutritional
approaches to health are now labeled "alternative" or "complementary." Drugs have
become primary.
Throughout history, healers have said that food is the best medicine. A child's mental health
and behavior are intimately related to what he eats — both the good and the bad. Is he
getting enough essential macro and micronutrients? Is he consuming too many non-foods
and toxins?
How can there not be mental disorder when potato chips and French fries make up more
than one-quarter of the vegetable servings eaten by children, and nearly one-third of the
veggies eaten by teenagers? How can a child function at his best when he drinks more
soda pop than water? This is common sense, but the commercial media does not remind
us of this. Because vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients are not patentable, there is little
commercial incentive to promote them.
Dr. Joseph M. Mercola, D.O., the medical director of the Optimal Wellness Center in
Schaumburg, Illinois, treats complex chronic illness by integrating lifestyle changes with
innovative tools in nutrition and energy medicine. Writing in his December 1999 column in
the Townsend Letter for Doctors & Patients, he's says that "restricting sugar, grains and all
fluids but water will improve nearly all children with ADHD. Nothing works all the time, but
this is close to it."
DAK |
