Health Decisions Need – I believe in following public

I believe in following public health guidelines and respecting your doctor’s medical opinion – because it is a general opinion and doctors are experts in science and medicine – and I believe in not giving full authority to medical professionals who must make individual decisions about their bodies, their health and their medical choices using their full decision-making power. If years ago our government had prioritized socialized medicine, educated patients and provided resources for better nutrition and healthy lifestyles, emphasized and paid for medical needs to effectively treat injuries, provided funds for research and use of effective medical alternatives, taken drugs and pharmaceutical companies out of the system in exchange for profit, ended white supremacy and the horrific health consequences of BIPOC, and regulated I would never recommend blindly following your gut without critical thinking and educating yourself on the recommendations of medical experts, public health guidelines, the opinions of medical experts and the impact of their decisions on the health of others. And I think we need to be empathetic trauma sensitive people and understand that marginalized people – like BIPOC, LGBTQIA+ and socially disadvantaged people – often have limited access to therapeutic trauma, are more likely to live in food deserts, have less chance of healthy eating, suffer from collective traumas, such as racism and socioeconomic inequality, and do not benefit from being blamed for chronic illness or embarrassed by poor health habits that often result from exposure to severe trauma. People may have misinterpreted my best-selling book Mind Over Medicine as a blind defense of the former, and now they see my articles about following Covid’s public health recommendations as proof that I drank the Kool-Aid of conventional medicine and now oppose it. I believe that patients get the best results when they gather all the tools of global medicine and make good medical decisions about what tools to use and when to use them to affect their personal and collective health. It offers us two options: personal freedom to choose what is best for our bodies, OR surrender our power to the health authorities and obey medical orders or public health recommendations, as in the case of lame sheep. The fact that you always defend your right to make your own informed, individual health decisions does not mean that you do not have a strong view of public health and do not take collective health into account when making personal decisions. On the contrary, I believe in science-based germ theory, and I believe that creating an ideal body environment capable of resisting and recovering from germs and other diseases is synonymous with long-term health and a long life without disability. Since we have made a spectacular mistake from the beginning, I believe that the only way to regain our personal freedom is for enough people to follow public health guidelines and be vaccinated. My hope is that this analysis of how I see health options will help you make informed, intuitive, personal and collective choices for yourself and for the world. I have also made a personal decision to reject for myself many public health policies, such as routine mammograms. Those who think they will ever have personal freedom without following public health rules are fooling themselves. Vaccination seems to be a contentious issue between the camps because it highlights the uncomfortable fact that health decisions are both personal and collective.