Why Can't Americans Get Healthy?

At least 23% of adults in America have mental illness: https://mhanational.org/issues/state-mental-health-america


At least 88% are metabolically unhealthy: https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/met.2018.0105


And it’s getting worse every year. From 1960 to 1980, childhood chronic illness prevalence went from about 1% to about 3%: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1646496/#:~:text=Data%20from%20the%20National%20Health,parents%2C%20educators%2C%20and%20physicians.


In the following 40 years, it doubled, doubled again, doubled yet again, and about doubled once more: https://www.cdc.gov/healthyschools/chronicconditions.htm#:~:text=In%20the%20United%20States%2C%20more,%2C%20and%20behavior%2Flearning%20problems.


Essentially, it went from 1 out of every 100 kids in the 1960s to where it is now: 1 out of every 2 kids. Subdivisions of disease look even worse. The definition, categorization and screening for autism did meaningfully change from 1968 (DSM-II) to 1987 (DSM-III) and to 2000 (DSM-IIIR). But it has not since. In the last 20 years the prevalence went from 1 in 200 to 1 in 36. People try to do hand-waving and dismissal when comparing the 1960s estimate of 1 in 15,000 against the current Californian boys prevalence of 1 in 20. Wave your hands all you like. We are not in stasis. We are not getting better. And we are not getting only a tiny bit worse.


Any in-depth analysis of public health trends shows overall worsening and at younger and younger ages. Thus, we are left with a simple question: why can’t people get healthy? Or one might simply wonder, “if  it’s impossible for us to make an improvement, can we at least slow the rate of detriment?”


This question plagued me long before I entered the fitness industry. However, in the over two decades I’ve been a health and fitness professional, it seems the deeper question is, “Are People Too Rigid to Be Helped?”. I’ve only seen the critical thinking capability of people decline along with a total collapse of American public health by every measure. It’s gotten me to wonder if people are simply too inflexible in their cognitive ability to be helped, even when it’s their own personal best interests of getting healthier. Also, it’s made me ponder a chicken-and-egg scenario, wherein the physical health of most people is so bad that it’s perhaps too much to expect that they’d become sharper in their reasoning. If they can’t get healthy, perhaps they can’t think clearly. If they can’t think clearly, perhaps they can’t get healthy.


If we zoom out and look broadly at outcomes directed by modern day keepers-of-truth and the priestly caste, things aren’t getting better. Absolutely, since antibiotics and sanitation at the beginning of the 20th century, public health mostly improved until the 1970s. Since the civil rights movement from 1954-1968, many great steps undeniably followed for society. However, the overall trajectory since the 1970s sees a definite deceleration in progress and/or reversals. There are whole webpages dedicated to the dramatic worsening of overall prosperity since the 1970s: https://wtfhappenedin1971.com. Specifically, in medicine and health sciences, the bar today is so low that it’s embarrassing: https://www.westernstandard.news/news/half-of-ucla-med-students-fail-basic-tests-since-lowering-standards-for-minorities/54812. 


Certainly, since the beginning of the Department of Education on May 4, 1980, American students have steadily worsened when compared to international students. Black and minority illiteracy collapsed almost entirely until 1979: https://nces.ed.gov/naal/lit_history.asp. In fact, that year was the narrowest EVER gap between white students and non-white students. In the years since, we have moved to a place where 85% of black students are “functionally illiterate”: https://thehill.com/opinion/education/579750-many-of-americas-black-youths-cannot-read-or-do-math-and-that-imperils-us/. Thus, just broadly, our citizens do not have basic literacy, let alone advanced thinking skill. Things are not improving.


Contemporary studies don’t raise my hope. Less than 5% of American adults can consistently tell the difference between a statement of fact and an opinion:
https://misinforeview.hks.harvard.edu/article/fact-opinion-differentiation/


To be clear, this is not an evaluation of WHETHER the fact is true or untrue. The statement of fact may be untrue. The opinion may be true. Or vice versa. But people cannot tell the difference between them.


This has an obvious impact on healthiness.


Without a doubt, those in positions of authority are working against the average person. We can see it in how pharmaceutical companies own media and the very regulatory agencies which are supposed to be protecting us from those same companies: https://www.elev8wellness.com/wellblog_best_nutrition_training_coaching_experts/conflicts-of-interest-in-science-and-human-health-have-reached-the-tipping-point


And simply stated, researchers at Ivy Leagues are actually not very smart or honest: https://www.elev8wellness.com/wellblog_best_nutrition_training_coaching_experts/red-meat-research-from-harvard-faculty-who-are-sloppy-liars-idiots-ordered-by-the-justice-department-to-return-millions-in-stolen-funds-and-owned-by-foreign-interests


Over and over again, we see “health authorities” champion superstitions, anti-science and pseudoscientific proclamations. As I’ve detailed before, the anti-scientific position of “scientific consensus” has been outright abysmal with regard to the radical mastectomy, Barry Marshall’s research on H. Pylori, and many unsafe medications, most recently notable are the vioxx scandal and the opioid scandal/crisis. But the embarrassments have no end. The flu vaccine effectiveness is negative: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6518843/. The efficacy is so low as to be nonexistent. Moreover, when we factor in people’s increased risky behaviors once vaccinated, the effectiveness is worse than being unvaccinated. 


It’s not merely that public health experts’ lies and half-truths are so pervasive and prevalent. It’s that “authorities” are so overconfident in their superstitions that they exuberantly partake in suppression of speech and thought. When children like Maddie de Garay became permanently paralyzed (https://downloads.regulations.gov/FDA-2021-N-1088-129763/attachment_1.pdf ) by the mRNA vaccines during the late 2020/early 2021 youth trials, the public never even had a chance at informed consent. Pfizer labeled the adverse reaction as “stomach ache.” A healthy Ontario boy died shortly after his mRNA vaccination, along with 400 other deaths and 10,000 serious adverse reactions suspiciously tied to mRNA vaccine rollouts: https://torontosun.com/news/local-news/warmington-health-canada-deems-400-deaths-after-receiving-covid-vaccine-low . Nonetheless, these very concerning cases have their reactions listed as “rash” or other non-serious response. Numerous legitimate researchers have been raising concerns in peer-reviewed publications about our hurried adoption of the novel vaccine technology. But they are minimized, dismissed, and vilified. 


Now, maybe these are merely coincidences. Maybe it is totally dumb luck that Sweden had far better outcomes than the US while not locking down, while not closing schools, while not enforcing youth mRNA vaccination, while abiding by the heterodoxy of the Great Barrington Declaration formulated by Stanford and Harvard researchers. Maybe. Unlikely. But maybe. Maybe the US being the only country on earth to recommend infants receive three mRNA Covid vaccinations before nine months old is just a fluke, a glitch, and not a feature of a strategically-designed public health machine aimed at destroying its citizens’ vibrancy and turning them into lifelong sickly customers. Maybe.


But really, people can just look around. Look at the average populace around you. People are not healthy or fit. People are not independent thinkers. They’re generally regurgitating verbatim talking points from corporate media. Or simply look at an average classroom. The percent of children with severe special needs is outrageous. The number of children with major physical challenge and mental/emotional instability is climbing. Obviously.


As such, I charitably gift a fair bit of my personal time to help clarify a number of health and fitness topics, pulling from extensive professional experience, my own personal experiments, and also the overwhelming evidence in the field. I make nothing from this. I don’t want notoriety. I purposely take months or years off of social media platforms precisely because I do not crave attention. I have a family and multiple businesses to attend to in the real world with real people. My online presence is purely to teach and to learn. I make nothing from it. I want nothing for it, except to beneficially impact the handful of people willing to grow. It is exclusively downside, a cost both in the time I could be making money or with my family, and a cost in the actual money to pay for a business website and hosting. The ROI is negative. An extreme loss.


In fact, even this is an understatement, because almost everything I share which is iconoclastic or heterodoxy gets de-amplified, suppressed, or hidden. Unlike online influencers, I have a real company with a physical storefront; and giant tech companies collude to delegitimize any genuine outlet like mine from showcasing dissent. My early Facebook posts on Parkinson’s gained up to half a million views. A one-off YouTube video I made on knee-related orthopedic issues gained hundreds of thousands of views and tens of thousands of engagements. My brief efforts at Instagram peaked around twenty-thousand followers and interactions in the thousands. Our website once had a single day with tens of thousands of visits. However, after 2018, with each blog entry on conflicts-of-interest and the prevalence of non-replicable scientific research, we could actually measure the linear suppression of our visibility by Google and Meta algorithms. It turns out that the speech suppression machines ramped up at precisely that time period: https://judiciary.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/republicans-judiciary.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/EIP_Jira-Ticket-Staff-Report-11-7-23-Clean.pdf


https://oversight.house.gov/release/the-cover-up-big-tech-the-swamp-and-mainstream-media-coordinated-to-censor-americans-free-speech-%EF%BF%BC/


https://www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/politics/zuckerberg-says-the-white-house-pressured-facebook-to-censor-some-covid-19-content-during-the-pandemic


Ironically, in the aftermath of algorithm suppression, I made a lot more money. It pushed me to spend less time on charitable online posts which make nothing for me; and the more I focus on my live business which has always made my entire income, obviously, the better it is for me.


But from time to time I still share, explain, cite and offer pieces of advice for those who are curious. Many aren’t curious. That’s fine. In discussions, however, I find that even some of the curious people have a genuinely hard time understanding the material, even when dumbed down, even when devoid of opinion, even when simplified to totally non-debated facts for simple takeaway.


No shame. Lots of complex topics can be confusing. But when people cannot decipher whether a statement is opinion or fact, genuinely I am not sure where to begin. 


Thus, some years ago I built a critical thinking guide: 


https://www.elev8wellness.com/wellblog_best_nutrition_training_coaching_experts/4-tips-to-sift-conflicting-science


https://www.elev8wellness.com/wellblog_best_nutrition_training_coaching_experts/validity-and-soundness


https://www.elev8wellness.com/wellblog_best_nutrition_training_coaching_experts/induction-is-not-deduction


https://www.elev8wellness.com/wellblog_best_nutrition_training_coaching_experts/opinion-versus-argument


https://www.elev8wellness.com/wellblog_best_nutrition_training_coaching_experts/correlation-is-not-causation-trend-is-not-even-close-to-mechanism


https://www.elev8wellness.com/wellblog_best_nutrition_training_coaching_experts/settled-science


Yet still, I find that people simply struggle to weigh input. In some circles, insults become a sort of shorthand to refuse any sort of discussion, thought, debate, engagement, evidence or argument. Slurs take the place of thoughtful discussion. “Racist” and “nazi” and “bigot” and “______phobe” and “pseudo_____“ have lost any relevant meaning. They are too often the universal language of low-IQ people dodging thoughtfulness and flexible learning. I have encountered even highly educated people insisting that anyone who doesn’t perfectly agree with them is always one of three things: unintelligent; crazy; or evil. This itself is the Ableism or Bulverism Fallacy tied into Ad Hominem Fallacy. It assumes ones own opinion is already conclusively THE TRUTH; therefore, any dissent or disagreement must be explained exclusively by attacking the opponent instead of the opponent’s arguments or evidence.


This isn’t a gloom-and-doom rant. We should recall that there are wonderful stories of progress. There are powerful examples of rags to riches, destitution to prosperity, rock-bottom to pinnacle, despair to salvation, scientific research breakthroughs, and glimmers of hope all around. That said, there is no denying that the past decade people have been competing for who is the bigger victim. Abdication of personal responsibility is the norm. A willful rejection of self-discipline is the norm. Victim narrative is the norm. Participation ribbon culture is the norm. It’s not a coincidence that the popularity of getting dumber, more opinionated, and more unhealthy all coincide. 


It’s particularly vexing for me in health and fitness topics. We can see the abject failure across fifty years of experts and authorities in public health. Yet somehow, a small percent of the populace keeps coming back to them, like an abused spouse defending her abusive husband. The good news is that trust in institutions and “experts” is vanishing: 


https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2022/02/15/americans-trust-in-scientists-other-groups-declines/


https://news.gallup.com/poll/651977/americans-trust-media-remains-trend-low.aspx


But really, there are still some 29% of people who claim to have “great confidence” in the opinions of demonstrably wrong and corrupt officials, when a healthier figure would be 0%, and a more reasonable claim would be “SOME confidence.” Sadly, 36% of the population claims to trust media a “great deal/fair amount”, when we know that they colluded with intelligence agencies to suppress speech/truth: 


https://oversight.house.gov/release/the-cover-up-big-tech-the-swamp-and-mainstream-media-coordinated-to-censor-americans-free-speech-%EF%BF%BC/


A multi-year congressional investigation into Covid measures found that nearly every single “conspiracy theory” which media suppressed or pilloried was correct:


https://oversight.house.gov/release/final-report-covid-select-concludes-2-year-investigation-issues-500-page-final-report-on-lessons-learned-and-the-path-forward/


The experts are wrong, and not a little. The voices of media were wrong, and not a little. And we now know for a fact that they lied repeatedly. Is it any wonder that the percent of the populace who trusts them is quite similar in quantity to the percent of the populace who is mentally ill?


At a bare minimum, I hope we can all see there is a big problem with authorities, experts, the modern priests, AND a problem in the individual and society. Once we do, of course, the questions still remain regarding solutions. Simply, there are four notions to keep in mind.


Foremost, I argue we must reject authorities. We must reject authoritarianism in all its forms, for now and forever. It’s actually quite weird that totalitarianism crept into liberal philosophy the past four decades. Suppression of thought and speech was a hallmark of fascism, which so ironically was embraced by “the left” during Covid lockdowns and online debate. That’s perhaps too complex to totally unpack. But suffice it to say, as a de facto default baseline, we must respond with immediate disapproval toward any and all figures of authority. Don’t listen to me. Don’t listen to others. Hear a person out. Pause. Reflect. Cross-reference. Ponder. Then, if it seems prudent, make up your mind for yourself about whether you will allow that expert’s input into your framework of acceptable conclusions. 


Second, remember your acceptance is provisional and contingent. It’s not final, ever. If at any point better evidence or questionable circumstances arise, you may reject that conclusion again.


Third, remember that the universe is predictable and run by consistent physical laws. Everything has a cause or causes. Perhaps nothing has been more injurious to modern health than the mystification of health, fitness, and disease. The Postmodernism push to make truth relative was wrong. It’s time to move back to Empiricism. Experts have worked earnestly to convince the populace that autoimmune diseases and autism and cancers “just happen.” This is anti-scientific and anti-modern thinking. Nothing “just happens.” Everything is the outcome of prior causes and influences. It’s not mystical. We don’t need superstition wrapped up in our sciences. Pathologies have causes. Policies and substances have unintended consequences and shift health risks one direction or another. We can debate TO WHAT DEGREE any given behavior or substance shifts risk. But when people completely dismiss any sort of risk or influence from a whole category of drugs or treatments, that isn’t scientific. That’s religious mystical hoodoo. 


Fourth, given that the physical universe has real palpable causes, we’d do well to accept accountability and seek greatness. If we are mystical premodern simpletons, sure, the Fates are happening to us, we are powerless by every measure, and all is pointless and futile. But if we are modern scientific people with agency and will and determination, we impose outcomes on our surrounding environment. With this in hand, we can both accept the consequences of our actions and direct ourselves toward better ones. Instead of exasperation and disempowered futility, we have agency and empowered greatness.


Of course, with random chaos as the framework, how could people possibly get healthy? If there are no causes, why consider altering them? With inflexibility and a religious adherence to listening to the experts (ie - authoritarianism), how could society improve? By definition, it cannot, because the bedrock of that society is built upon destroying any outside criticism, any non-authority input, any possible improvement. That society is a totalitarian regime. However, on the contrary, with agency and empowered greatness, you better believe people will get healthy. A free society which rejects authorities can keep making progress. It can keep improving its tactics. It embraces advancement. It embraces growth. It rejects dogma. It embraces difficult questions, uncomfortable ideas, and new and better ways. Let us be the free society, where people take responsibility for their own futures, and where the totalitarian keepers-of-truth are turned to ash, eradicated forever, and held to a standard of accountability commensurate to the power they so thirsted to impose on humanity.