It All Starts with Prevention

I started reading the book Grain Brain and the introduction started with this quote:"Maintaining order rather than correcting disorder is the ultimate principle of wisdom. To cure disease after it has appeared is like digging a well when one feels thirsty, or forging weapons after the war has already begun."-- Huangdi Neijing, 2nd century BCIt makes perfect sense, right? However, we now live in a country where 133 million Americans or 45 percent of the population have at least one chronic disease (heart disease, diabetes, etc.). How do you think we got to this point? We got to this point by getting away from healthy diets and exercise, and buying into the mainstream medical model that a pill can fix our problems. I found in a Bloomberg article the statistic that in 2012 Americans spent $263 billion on prescription drugs. This is 11 percent more than the $236 billion we spent in 2007!Many of these prescription drugs can be avoided by buying into Ben Franklin’s model instead: “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”