The FDA, Causes of Death & Preventative Care
The world's biggest drug cartels & the future of healthcare
Key Questions
What does the US Food & Drug Administration do?
How does the US pharmaceutical industry work?
What can we do about the leading causes of death?
Why is US life expectancy declining?
How is technology affecting healthcare?
Topics Covered
The FDA
Big Pharma
Leading Causes of Death
Preventative Care
The Supplement Industry
The Federally Recommended Diet
There is still no clear indication what the perfect diet is. It is becoming clear that it may be highly dependent person to person and this complicates the issue quite a bit. Food sensitivities exist and can significantly affects diets. Also, it is becoming evident that dairy and grain products can often contain unnecessary added sugars making diets unhealthy.
Another thing to consider is that protein might be under-recommended. If you are trying to build muscle or play a sport or even use your brain, your body requires protein. Everything in your body is made from protein and we are constantly repairing everything using new protein.
Other Shortcomings
The FDA has made some strides in public safety through nutritional labeling, food quality, and pharmaceutical innovations. However, there are quite a few issues present in modern food, supplement, and pharmaceutical industries. Recently there has been work to address these issues, but it is shocking it took this long for any official acknowledgement.
Merchants of Doubt
It identifies parallels between the global warming controversy and earlier controversies over tobacco smoking, acid rain, DDT, and the hole in the ozone layer. Oreskes and Conway write that in each case "keeping the controversy alive" by spreading doubt and confusion after a scientific consensus had been reached was the basic strategy of those opposing action. In particular, they show that Fred Seitz, Fred Singer, and a few other contrarian scientists joined forces with conservative think tanks and private corporations to challenge the scientific consensus on many contemporary issues.
Things like this are still occurring in different parts of society. For example, the processed food industry is generating immense profits putting highly refined seed oils and added sugars in just about every food product. This is actively detrimental to the general population yet it continues. There are far more examples to list and it is insane!
Big Pharma
Pharmaceutical Titans
Do you notice anything? 6/10 of the 10 largest pharmaceutical companies in the world are American. In fact, Eli Lilly, Johnson & Johnson, and Merck are valued greater than 4/10 non-US companies combined. The American pharmaceutical industry is a giant like no other. It is also the largest lobbying spender in the world.
The Leading Causes of Death
Clear Preventions Available
We can see that heart disease is easily the most prevalent cause of death across the world.
We now definitely know what causes heart disease.
Dietary sugar consumption and health: umbrella review (The British Medical Journal, 05 April 2023)
Introduction: As an important component of the human diet, sugars have been shown to be harmfully associated with a variety of risk factors for decades, mainly including obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, hyperuricaemia, gout, ectopic fatty accumulation, dental caries, and some cancers.
Conclusions: High dietary sugar consumption is generally more harmful than beneficial for health, especially in cardiometabolic disease. Reducing the consumption of free sugars or added sugars to below 25 g/day (approximately 6 teaspoons/day) and limiting the consumption of sugar sweetened beverages to less than one serving/week (approximately 200-355 mL/week) are recommended to reduce the adverse effect of sugars on health.
Another big contributor may be sedentary lifestyles. I will be covering “Sapien fitness” in the next 3 posts!
Cancer is a difficult one because there are just so many different types. However, the solution may lie in more regular diagnostics. Catching cancer early is the strongest predictor of survival and could effectively be cheaper by avoiding greater complications down the road.
The next leading causes of death could effectively be impacted by an active lifestyle and healthy diet: lower respiratory disease, alzheimer’s disease, stroke, diabetes, kidney disease, pneumonia & influenza.
Modifiable Risk Factors
There are other factors not listed here such as air quality. Bigger cities will almost always have worse air quality. Hopefully we will see this improve as vehicles become electric. One negative consequence of climate change are the forest fires along the North American west coast. The smog from these fires can travel long distances and linger depending on wind patterns. It is recommended that people stay indoors during these conditions as the air pollutants are carcinogenic.
Deaths of Despair
Unfortunately we are seeing a rise in drug overdoses, alcohol poisoning, and suicides. This is definitely a symptom of a larger issue within Western nations at the moment. Suicide rates are incredibly high in East Asian countries, and are generally elevated in other Western countries such as the US & Canada.
Obesity Epidemic
Preventative Care
There is a saying that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
Continuous Diagnostics
Currently this model of healthcare is brand new and quite expensive. However, this type of system at scale could become much more affordable. The government may be inclined to subsidize these services as it may reduce the long term cost of healthcare in the nation.
https://www.insidetracker.com/
Rapid Diagnostics
Digital Care
With all of the data from continuous diagnostics, advancing radiology, and other emerging technologies we can develop a much deeper understanding of biomedical data.
Network medicine is the application of network science in healthcare to accurately and precisely diagnose and treat patients.
These complex networks can be managed with AI tools. There is discussion of whether AI diagnostic tools should be implemented alongside doctors. Some early studies show that it could already improve accuracy. Misdiagnosis is a common issue occurring in hospitals across the globe.
Another important part of modern medicine is gene sequencing. We can determine a patient’s genetic risk factors and we may eventually see personalized medicine for your genetic makeup. The great thing is that the cost of gene sequencing has dramatically declined in the past couple decades.
Catching Cancer Early
Modern Radiology
Available in Vancouver, New York, and other states. Prenuvo offers a chance to proactively screen for cancers and other complications for a premium price. Unfortunately MRI machines cost unbelievable amounts of money to install and maintain. This is owed to the complex engineering/physics behind this invention.
The vital component in MRIs is its superconducting coil. Hopefully in the future better superconductors will drive down costs for MRIs and other technologies such as maglev trains. The problem is that they have to be supercooled with liquid gas, so a room temperature superconductor would change the game completely.
Aside from cost, what matters for medical imaging is resolution. With more resolution we can see more detail and diagnose with more accuracy.
Brain Images Just Got 64 Million Times Sharper (Duke.edu, Apr 17, 2023)
We are constantly seeing advances in this area and it will enable leaps in diagnostics. Currently we are unable to precisely diagnose many soft tissue or neural issues due to the lack of resolution in modern radiology.