Unhealthy lifestyles and over-dependence on drugs is hurting American children | Opinion
A country’s progress can be measured by how it treats its children, and how those children progress in knowledge, service, and love. This perspective may not treat our country kindly.
Mental, autoimmune, and other chronic disorders in children have risen dramatically. Fortunately, I have found in my practice that non-prescription strategies are usually effective in managing these disorders. Causes of autism are identifiable with routinely beneficial treatments, sometimes dramatically so. I’ve found that common childhood scenarios including anxiety, depression, and ADHD are nearly always fixable without drugs. A young boy developed dyslexia, writing backwards with behavioral issues; after I suggested mold as a possible cause, black mold was discovered, he was moved to Grandma’s, and his dyslexia and behavior issues resolved in weeks. An adolescent with severe Tourette’s had complete resolution when his high homocysteine, cow product sensitivity, and mercury toxicity were fixed.
In my four decades in medicine, it is increasingly apparent that the drug paradigm, while offering short term resolutions, is not stemming the growing epidemic of childhood health disorders. An antidepressant will not solve depression due to omega-3 fat, magnesium, vitamin D or B vitamin deficiencies. Worsening nutrition, food sensitivities, food herbicide and preservative toxins, with a sedentary lifestyle lead to a consequential hormone imbalance. Lead and mercury overloads, mitochondrial dysfunction, and detoxification impairment further magnify problems. Add isolation, loss of a nuclear family, political hatred, addiction to video games with violent themes, and lack of a spiritual foundation, it brings a stormy prognosis.
Drugs complicate the outlook. The brain is so complex, intricate, and delicate that any chemical that enters the brain inevitably does damage; the scars of these medicines can last a lifetime.
Our health system is increasingly designed and controlled by corporations, resulting in only enough time at an office visit to write a prescription. If we were succeeding with our massive, world-leading investment in health care, health facilities would be shrinking; but instead, they are mushrooming, feasting off the ill health multinational corporations have created. Instead of moving ahead, our health is falling further behind other industrialized countries. A New York Times headline noted an adolescent starting their tenth mental health drug. While packaged to avoid that image, corporate lobbying controls Congress. Due to requisite advertising dollars, television media has largely become addicted to, and blinded by, drug companies.
There are answers to these seeming dilemmas. After my despondent results treating patients with conventional strategies, I found success in comprehensive assessment, nutritional, digestive, lifestyle, and supplement strategies. Assessing nutrients, heavy metals, hormones, organic acids, mold, toxins, genetics, and food sensitivities is essential. The more rocks we look under the more answers we find. Drug companies don’t want us looking under rocks for answers because their profits rely on chronic therapies. Though it may take hundreds of years, as safer approaches are identified, inevitably the era of drugs will fade into the background as they have an inherent flaw: they always have side effects.
What about the side effects of botanicals, for example turmeric? Research suggests that turmeric lowers blood pressure, blood sugar and cholesterol, dampens inflammation, promotes circulation, is anti-viral, anti-bacterial, anti-fungal, has antidepressant qualities, addresses one hundred anti-cancer markers, not a cancer has been identified without improved outcomes, reverses amyloid plaque build-up in the brain characteristic of Alzheimer’s, and may grow the brain by two mechanisms. Those are the type of “side effects” I prefer.
How could vitamins, minerals, and botanicals have an impact? By favorably modulating powerful hormones. Because we eat processed foods, are exposed to xenoestrogens like BPA in plastic water bottles, and many of us larger than our ancestors, most Americans have too much estrogen, promoting anxiety, inflammation, autoimmunity, and tumor growth. Excess estrogen lowers available testosterone. Testosterone is anti-inflammatory and strengthens the immune system while dampening autoimmune activity in my experience; it reduces waist size, lowers blood sugar and cholesterol, is healing, and anabolic I find to every organ and tissue. A diverse, fresh, whole food diet, a balanced lifestyle, and nourishing supplements are integral in solving these challenges.
Most important is to recognize and teach our children that there is a reason for each of us on this Earth; we find meaning in unconditional love and service to all as an infinitesimal part of a large, loving Universe and Creator.
Dr. Jim Roach M.D. of Midway an integrative medicine expert, a botanical physician, and the author of “Brilliance — The Pursuit of Hope, Wisdom, and the Divine.”
