When did natural health become politicized?

This is a rant. If you’re not up to it, I won’t be offended. I just have to get this off my chest.

I have been an advocate of natural health since I was in my 20s. That’s more than 50 years. I have always done deep research for my own health and even more so since I began writing about natural health for magazines, in books and in this newsletter over the past 25 years.

I’ve never been a lunatic who advocated coffee enemas to cure acne or chanted a magic word to overcome all types of illness or figured that taking a whiff of lavender oil will melt off 25 pounds overnight.

But now I am being lumped in with looney toons like that and worse. You know the ones I mean–the ones who believe in their hearts of hearts that somehow if a vaccinated woman who walks by an unvaxed man in the office, she will shed some weirdo vax cooties, which he carries home and causes his wife to miscarry and potentially become infertile. Seriously! I’ve had that line laid on me by an MD. What a load of unadulterated bullshit! And please don’t pardon my language. I am mightily pissed off, irate and infuriated.

There is now even evidence that far fringe political groups are attempting to infiltrate and co-opt groups of yoga and reiki practitioners, energy healers and other proponents of natural therapies, even moms practicing natural for their children. I find this more repulsive than I can say. (DISCLOSURE: I am a Kripalu yoga teacher and have been so since 1978. It is fascinating how much Western medicine has “learned” in the past 40 years or so about the value of meditation and yoga practice, introduced by Patanjali more than 1,700 years ago.)

Yes, I have a healthy skepticism about Western medicine. We all should. We all should be educating ourselves and asking questions and learning as science learns and unfolds new approaches.

Yes, I have an even deeper distrust of Big Pharma. I think their major focus is profits, not altruism. Example: The opioid epidemic which has cost tens of thousands of lives, all because opioids are highly profitable. Any of you who have read this newsletter for more than a handful of times know my stance on Western medicine and Big Pharma. I am also about as far from a right-wing conspiracy theorist as possible.

I believe in science. Again, those of you who have read my articles know that science is always behind what I write. There is no question in my mind that science often lags behind practice. Imagine what might have happened if you were living in 1650 and you told anyone that we all have little bugs crawling around on our skin and even inside our bodies! You would likely have been accused of witchcraft or if you were extraordinarily lucky, you might simply have been locked in an insane asylum for the rest of your life.

Way back in the day, the belief in natural living was called “alternative medicine,” and later, “holistic” and later “complementary” and now “integrative” medicine. In the past 50 years, science has learned a great deal and even had to re-learn the wisdom of ancients. Remember how Western medicine “discovered” acupuncture in the late ‘60s despite the fact that this ancient Chinese practice had been revered in the East for millennia?

Science is ever evolving. There is always more research, more evidence that proves or disproves something we thought was written in stone. Science is NOT political. It is fact. And yes, it is fluid and ever-growing as we learn more on almost a daily basis.

The pathways to a long and healthy life should never be political.

To my readers: Please rely on what you know and what you have experienced. Take a deep look at any health data you are receiving. Did your info come from a credible and reliable source? Is it validated by other credible and reliable sources or did it come from your Facebook friend’s second cousin’s neighbor? Be a critical thinker and you will never go wrong.

It is deeply painful to me that the long-held truths of millennia of the wisdom of the ancients has been twisted into nonsense. It is a betrayal of all we know intuitively and scientifically what we need to do to live long and healthy lives, to be twisted into divisive and even hateful rhetoric.

I promise you that I have always presented unbiased information to you based on what I can validate scientifically. You deserve the best I can give and you will always get it.