The China Study summary

Medicine has come a long way, but people still get sick – and stay sick – all the time. Why is this the case?

To improve health overall, focusing too much on medical care is a mistake. While it’s important to seek cures to the things that make us sick, finding a precise solution to some of the more complicated illnesses is challenging at best.

For instance, many events that lead to serious disease, such as carcinogenesis – the process by which cancerous tumors are formed – modern medicine has yet to fully comprehend.

What’s more, pushing for more healthcare system investment doesn't necessarily translate into better overall public health.

In fact, the health of Americans has steadily worsened, even though the proportion of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) spent on healthcare has risen by almost 300 percent in the past 40 years!

Since 1970, more people are dying from cancer; and the rate of diabetes among 30- to 39-year-olds rose by 70 percent between 1990 and 1998.

What’s worse, however, is that an overreliance on medicine to remain “healthy” can blind us to its drawbacks.

Consider that approximately 7 percent of hospital patients who take medication as instructed by a doctor suffer severe side-effects – and sometimes even die. In other words, the pharmaceutical industry’s promise of a “magic pill” for health isn not only costly but also dangerous.

A better focus would be improving nutrition. Maintaining a good diet is a proven method of preventing disease. You literally “are what you eat,” since every cell in your body is composed of the nutrients that go into it!

Nutrition thus is the logical cornerstone of good health, not pills or surgery. The best part is, compared to elaborate and expensive medical cures, it’s easier to focus on a healthy diet to prevent disease.

Maintaining a healthy diet has already been shown effective in preventing illnesses such as early-stage heart disease and diabetes – and even cancer.

But first, it’s important to understand what is healthy when it comes to nutrition.