I haven’t written a blog in over a year. The major reason is that I have little to add to prior ones. A whole food plant-based diet doesn’t change from year to year. Exercise, relaxation, sleep, and social contacts remain the other essentials of a healthy lifestyle. The entire story is simple and logical.

What is the other good news? I follow multiple sources of information about medical research and current medical practice. Mainstream medicine information flow is more and more about lifestyle, especially diet. Anyone in the medical field who doesn’t know about healthy diet doesn’t read the medical literature. Around twenty years ago, when I began my own search, this was not true.

And the bad news — overall health in the United States is worse every year – more chronic disease, more premature deaths, more obesity.

How can this possibly be true? Medical scientists and practitioners now know that lifestyle is the key to health. 

There are two easily identifiable reasons for our nation’s failing health:

Number one is poverty. Only a small portion of this is lack of access to medical care. The big impacts of poverty are lack of access to healthy food and education. Poverty also creates hopelessness with ensuing anxiety, depression, substance abuse. Rage about an unfair system and a life with no hope leads to violence against self, family, co-workers, and strangers. Para-military political movements are typically a tiny minority in most democracies. As life becomes more intolerable for many these movements swell.

The second reason for our nation’s failing health is a medical system controlled more and more by financial interests. Medical practices and hospitals have been swallowed by large corporations. Some still fly under the flag of a non-profit organization but in practice the difference is whether the leaders are paid seven, eight or nine figures a year to run the business. All of these leaders are given the same mandate – make money or you will be replaced with someone who does. Lifestyle healthcare does not make money. Procedures, drugs, equipment make money, and they are all vastly more profitable with less emphasis on lifestyle. 

Anyone reading this should have enough access to information about healthy diet and lifestyle. It’s all easily available now. Studying and making use of it is a personal choice.

My writing now is novels. I’m not capable of creating literary fiction nor do I wish to become famous or sell books. I’m writing to tell stories that I want to tell — sort of like the boring person who cornered you a recent cocktail party. Hopefully a few others will find my stories and characters amusing and entertaining. My first novel has been carefully reviewed by a professional editor and I am revising it. The second is well underway, allowing me to make up more stories. Both of these novels are focused on our current medical system and the impact of lifestyle education.