Happy Healthy Gut Read Online Free PDF Page B

milk protein) and cancer, “the health damage that results from doctors’ ignorance of nutrition is astounding.” 67
    When confronted with treating patients who have any type of chronic disease(not limited to digestive disease), most doctors will order expensive tests, prescribe expensive drugs, and if all else fails, recommend expensive surgeries. All of this expense adds up to an unbelievable sum of money spent on treatments that are typically ineffective, or could be treated more efficiently through dietary changes and real, fact-based, nutrition education for the public. Ergo, our skyrocketing healthcare costs and devastating, life-threatening cuts. Who benefits from dealing with our health issues in this typically ineffective and overly expensive manner?
    Pharmaceutical companies do.
    If you were able to eradicate your digestive disease symptoms naturally, it would amount to billions of dollars in lost drug sales for major drug companies. It’s deeply unfortunate, but it is not in anyone’s interest but your own to actually cure what ails you. That means that only you can accomplish this properly, through food and lifestyle rehabilitation. Don’t take that as scary or hopeless information . . . it’s some damn empowering knowledge! Use it to your advantage, mon ami!
    An example of this inefficiency to unearth the root of digestion problems in order to heal from the bottom up is the story of my friend Kim, who is one of the sisters I mentioned in chapter three, in the section on IBD (page 23). Kim was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease at the age of nineteen, although she says she can remember digestive malfunction occurring as early as seven years old.
    When, at the age of twenty-seven, she could no longer cope, she underwent two and a half weeks of testing that included a bariumenema, a CT-scan, and numerous x-rays. After pondering the results of these examinations, Kim’s doctors gave her an ultimatum: she could either begin steroids which would have cost her hundreds of dollars per injection, or she could have major stomach surgery, where they would ultimately perform a resection of her bowel. So, because Kim could not afford such an expensive alternative, she had a one foot-long damaged portion of her small intestine removed, along with a six-inch section of her colon. This left her with a crude scar that is about seven inches long, running from her navel to her hip bone, and she was kept in the hospital for over three weeks to recover.
    During her recovery, her doctors administered the steroids that she had refused up until this point without her permission. She felt no physical (and certainly no psychological) relief from the surgery or the steroids, and regretted it within months. In fact, because of her scar, she has since become self-conscious, too. The hospital staff also administered morphine and ciprofloxacin to Kim, even though she was wearing a medical bracelet stating her allergy to these medications, as well as the information being clearly included in her chart. After these events, her doctor tried to persuade her to begin more steroids that would, in theory, put her Crohn’s into remission. She refused, believing there must be a better way to manage the symptoms, without having to experience the numerous side-effects of the steroid. Up until this point, she had gotten by with regular prescriptions of antibiotics to manage the inevitable, constant, and recurrent kidney infections that are associated with her condition.
    Kim was told nothing about what to expect with the surgery or the subsequent pain and recovery. She was given no information about proper nutrition for a Crohn’s patient, let alone what foods she should eat or avoid eating right after having the surgery. The parting communication that she had with her doctor was him trying to convince her to fill a prescription for the pain killer Demerol. She didn’t. Her Crohn’s symptoms were back within two months afterthe reassurance of her