Despite ever more sophisticated medical technology and more expensive healthcare, chronic diseases are increasing. If mainstream medicine is doing its job, why are the rates of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease rising instead of decreasing? Years ago people died from infections, plagues, and flus. It can be said that today we die from toxins in food and the toxic side effects of drugs. Obesity and diabetes have become the new plagues of our time. What can we do? How can we turn our focus from a sentence of perpetually taking more and more drugs to creating a new model of healing care? Tostado advocates healing people, not just assisting people in managing their diseases. When he was a doctor at a large and reputable HMO, he realized that primary care is not focusing on prevention and that he was becoming a licensed killer by prescribing medications that could potentially do harm to a patient. He says, “Health is a mindset. It’s how we look at it that will determine whether we live with a chronic disease or, if we choose for ourselves to want to, live free from the disease. It is significant that in medical school we’re taught pharmacology for two years. That’s half of your medical school education and it’s perpetuated throughout your training residency. We always see these pharmaceutical representatives coming to us to push their wares, so to speak. Never have I ever seen a nutritionist come to me and say, ‘Have you considered giving bananas and apples to your patients?’ Never.” This deep dialogue explores how many of us are choosing a toxic lifestyle and what we can do to transform it into a healthy one.
