Your Sickest “You” Is the Most Profitable “You”
Maybe another pill is the last thing you need to consider
People who are highly medicated, specifically for psychiatric problems, are historically those who tend to harbor the greatest grievances when I speak of the importance of nutrition. They’re also those who generally report the highest incidences of joint pain and body aches and the lowest incidences of exercise. Personally, I do not believe this is a coincidence.
We balk at simple interventions, like balanced nutrition and sleep, because we’ve been groomed to believe that something is seriously wrong with us, and that hysterics are our best course of action. Complexity of health stamps us highly profitable to insurance companies, our primary doctors, our gynecologists, and our therapists. After all, our diagnoses are far too convoluted to be addressed with simple, dumb ideas like eating a vegetable or consistently sleeping for 8 hours. We’re harboring a disease or illness or syndrome so intricate and so multi-pronged that the diagnostic manuals may not even have a name for it yet! We’re certainly not viable for a simple, elementary treatment …. Right?
Our fetish for complex problems is far from the actual problem. The actual problem lies within the providers, the professionals who elegantly gloss over the basics so they can ruefully relay how damaged you are— and bill for it. In case readers have forgotten what I speak about ad nauseum regarding America’s healthcare and our dependence on it: insurance is not concerned with your health. It is reliant on your sickness. It demands you stay progressively ill, as chronic problems equal chronic revenue.
This is modern healthcare. It is deliberately split into sub-niches and categories to ensure you’ll have to foot the bill for 5+ specialists while failing to see much improvement in any of your symptoms. The psychological relief of booking an appointment with a specialist may help you “feel better”… at least initially. They’ve successfully capitalized on the human desire to feel understood, seen and heard. Wow! Someone who specializes in depression for post-partum moms with fibromyalgia and are of Russian descent with high arches in their feet and Raynaud’s Syndrome! It’s like this discipline was made just for me! The sense that we’ve been specifically chosen for service from a niche professional gives the illusion that we’re being helped, despite the providers offering little more than copy-and-pasted, repeat interventions and prescriptions. It’s unlikely a provider whose salary is funded by insurance will tailor medicine to your liking. While I’m certainly for narrowing some industries’ methods down, as there do exist highly complex issues that often warrant complex solutions, much of health is simply not this complicated.
Psychiatrists have rarely asked me what my diet and exercise routines look like. They ask in more of a passive manner, and in a tone that suggests their billing requires them to ask patients if they eat well or exercise, but does not demand any form of accuracy with a response. This is a huge, HUGE problem. But, again, modern medicine is not designed to address root causes. It’s designed to treat problems when they’re at their worst or in a state of crisis. And, without addressing the root cause, we can expect to see that same patients with the same problems year after year, billable hour after billable hour.
I know individuals who are on three different anti-anxiolytics and SSRIs and report they feel better, but regularly crumble under what I’d consider minor life stress. They appear largely incapable of handling their emotions in stressful situations, and require extensive hand-holding to commit to most anything moderately challenging. Their decisions rest almost entirely on the response they receive from people around them. To me, this is not evidence that their pills are “working”. It’s evidence that the provider has convinced them that these pills will “help” or “work”, despite having any real evidence to support such theory. The “support” lies within subjective reporting by the client, the person we’ve made feel they cannot possibly function without medicinal intervention.
People cling to “care” because our system teaches them that what they’re offering is just that - “care”. It is not.
Today’s respectable healthcare goes as follows: we conduct lackluster, surface-level assessments using the templates required by insurance. The templates required by insurance are created by staff who are not practicing clinicians, and are therefore unable to interpret the results of the assessment. After we see the client and complete an assessment, which is typically a copy-and-pasted mishmosh of guesswork and no more accurate than a madlib, we submit the paperwork to insurance. The unlucky bastards of insurance companies then get their turn to play professional dress-up. They either reimburse providers for “service provided” (aka, we get paid to kill time), or they deny based on an arbitrary infraction, like “no data was provided”. This is comical and terrifying, coming from people who do not know how to analyze data.
We’re stuck in the weeds of putting out fires versus doing anything meaningful. We’re told, though, that pathetically and frantically putting our fires is meaningful. “You’re helping to improve an outdated system!” “You’re amazing because you actually care!” By use of personal example, I work with mentally ill patients. Many of them are in their 50’s and 60’s, and have been fat sources of revenue for the agencies and hospitals who house them, for several decades. Their paperwork, year after year and decade after decade, minimally changes. They’re prediabetic, so let’s give them a pill. They’re entering an episode of psychosis again, let’s up the dosage. They’re not sleeping, let’s give them a sleeping pill. Oh no, their sleeping pill exacerbates their symptoms of depression, let’s add a stimulant. The stimulant makes them manic, don’t forget the Lorazepam. When myself, guardians, or family members show even minimal concern regarding their diet of M&M’s and Mountain Dew? Eating spinach won’t help a psychiatric problem.
Not once in any client’s paperwork is the reason for sleep disturbance or malnutrition addressed. It is simply listed as a conclusion: sleep disturbance is a symptom of his psychiatric disorder. He doesn’t eat healthy because he has autism. Which may be legitimate, but with no data to support this theory, aside from an Instagram post and a blog article by a Mom whose child mystically has every known condition under the sun despite complete absence of symptoms? Okay then!
The answer then becomes, “Well, we’re out of ideas, let’s bring in other providers.” Mind you, these clients have cycled through dozens of providers in their years as patients under the healthcare system. There is not a single provider that will be of service, considering the root cause of the issue is continuously being ignored by every provider of every discipline. “But Kayla, exercise doesn’t cure bipolar disorder”, squawk the bipolar individuals who spend 9 of their waking hours writing manifestos in comment sections and arguing with strangers online yet claim they’re saved by their medication. Sure, exercise and good nutrition might not “cure” bipolar disorder —— but neither does medication. Crickets.
I heard Dr. Casey Means, author of Good Energy refer to the food we feed ourselves as being comparable to printer ink. Our day-to-day functioning, whether internally, physically or mentally, is an expression of what is fed into the printer that is our digestive system. Media outlets have attempted to scare Americans into the dangers of fast-food with documentaries like SuperSize Me, and political authorities like Michelle Obama have signed bills promoting healthy snacks and increasing exercise opportunities in school settings. Not a single warning has resulted in change; in fact, the more information we receive, the fatter and more unhealthy we become. Apparently, “you are what you eat” is not potent enough as a catchphrase to force us into reevaluating the quality of our printer ink.
Because the gut microbiome is wildly complex and requires decades more research to fully understand, we cannot fully conclude that junk food in the gut reliably results in symptoms of depression or anxiety. I do, though, believe strongly in the gut-brain axis. They seem too closely connected and to operate in tandem for me not to believe that they heavily influence our intellectual and emotional functioning. Nearly 100% of serotonin is produced in the gut, for crying out loud! Skeptics are telling me the two aren’t working together to better facilitate healthy coping skills and mood?
The gut-brain axis is a two-way street that links emotional and cognitive functions of the brain with intestinal functions of the body. This is referred to as the “enteric brain”, or “gut brain”, and is described as such because of how heavily it’s influenced by signals from our brain and the nutrients (or lack thereof) we provide it with. According to an article by Zheng and colleagues in a 2020 article titled Ultra-Processed Food is Positively Associated with Depressive Symptoms Among United States Adults, individuals whose dietary intake was more than 73% ultra-processed had a 35% higher risk of depressive symptoms. Science 101 reminds us that this statistic, in and of itself, does not give us enough information to determine that Doritos cause depressive symptoms. Do depressed people eat ultra-processed food because they’re depressed, or did they become depressed only after eating the ultra-processed food? It’s difficult to determine whether the chick or the egg arrived first. Still, though, it is an interesting finding.
Another 2022 study reported that the more highly-processed food individuals ate, the greater degree of depressive and anxious symptoms they’d report. Again, it’s important to note: this is not necessarily proof or causation, but there is a clear association between what we consume and the manner in which we experience the world. While research continues to develop in this area, what I would suggest is this: do not allow yourself to become a pawn in the American healthcare system. And do not take any government-funded education as guidance worth abiding by. It’s highly unlikely you need to see an endocrine specialist and a neurologist and a psychologist and a dermatologist and a general physician for a lifestyle problem. The system is designed to cycle people through a series of hyper-specialized providers with a promise of identifying the root of the problem, even though all of medicine rests exclusively on putting out the fire of the problem itself. Preventative medicine is far less profitable than continuing to put soggy Band-Aids over problems we’re convinced to believe are “chronic”.
Most “chronic” syndromes or diseases I hear of are experienced by women. I find this, in and of itself, worth investigating. Is it because women are more likely to identify with their diseases and syndromes and disorders and are therefore less motivated to address root causes? Is it because “emotional eating” and “binge eating” are more common in women, which possibly results in increased experiences of depressive and anxious symptoms? I suppose this topic is socially unpopular and politically incorrect, so the research may be sparse for some years. Regardless of gender, though, I do think there are more basic forms of medicine we need to consider: sleep, nutrition, and exercise. I’m often struck by nutrition questions that, to me, seem quite obvious: “What do you mean Special K cereal isn’t a meal?”, “Are vegetables really that important?”, “I heard sourdough bread makes you lose weight!”, “If I put peanut butter on an apple, is that healthy?” Our healthcare system and its messaging have made nutrition appear so complicated that women seem incapable of making even the most basic, informed decisions about what to eat, how often to eat, and even the purpose of eating. And ultra-processing of food has undermined our satiety, making adult food more like adult baby food--- requires minimal to no chewing, melts in your mouth, and makes you scream like an infant for more.
It's more common than not to hear women reporting symptoms of fatigue, low mood, fertility problems, hating their body, and feeling like they generally are just “unhappy”. It’s actually so common that it’s a state widely accepted as “normal”. Medicine tells us that all of these issues, whether depression or PCOS or high body fat or joint pain, are all separate, and that each will require their own intervention. And maybe even their own specialist! What I would tell you? This is bullshit.
Because we’ve been made to think being generally unhealthy and uncomfortable is an expected homoeostasis, we often underreport our dysfunctional and maladaptive lifestyle problems. “I don’t sleep very well and go to bed at 2AM, but that’s just normal for me--- I’m a night owl!”, “ I eat pretty clean, I have protein bars and Fairlife shakes and try to stay away from gluten.”, “I’m always stressed, lolz”, “Oh yeah, no, I don’t cook”. Maybe this will sound ignorant or even harsh, but I am shocked that adult women don’t know how to cook for themselves. This is a massive problem. I primarily blame the education system.
The lack of awareness that modern medicine encourages is, I believe, the root of many biological evils. We’re sold cognitive dissonance and told it’s “self-care” or “healthcare”. This is also bullshit.
If we don’t believe Big Pharma, our government, and our climbing illness rates are in bed together, here are some facts to consider. Firstly, according to an article by Calley Means, “95% of the panel who created the US nutrition guidelines had financial ties to food or pharmaceutical companies.” Pharmaceutical companies who push weight-loss drugs like Ozempic, then, are relying on high sugar intake and poor diets to make money off of obese individuals. Large junk brands, like General Mills, Nabisco, and Kraft, are owned by tobacco companies. Tobacco and cigarettes receive “four times more government subsidies than all fruits and vegetables combined… despite current government guidelines recommending that 50% of the American plate be filled with fruits and vegetables.” Public messaging is not meant to educate--- it is meant to indoctrinate us until we’ve lived out the plot of Wall-E. Children’s movie, or documentary?
With all of this in mind, perhaps it’s unsurprising that being put on a medication, especially something like an antidepressant, is considered a rite of passage. In fact, pharmaceutical companies, especially ones like “hims” or “hers”, romanticize the use of antidepressants as a brave act toward vulnerability and self-care. What a beautiful means by which to finally attain “good mental health” that young people have been forced to believe is their most important and meaningful life goal! Similar to how our concept and consumption of nutrition is dictated entirely by cash flow, psychiatry is, according to Harvard psychiatrist Dr. Loren Masher, “almost completely bought and paid for by drug companies.”
No, body positivity is not body-positive. It is so fragile and obsessed with sickness that it is discriminatory against anything that threatens to prolong a person’s life. And a movement that cannot show positivity for and appreciation of healthier, longer lives is cult rhetoric about as corrupt as our government-funded nutrition and exercise “initiatives”. I am not anti-medication nor am I anti-therapy. I am, though, relentlessly pro-figure-it-out-yourself-first-by-using-critical-thinking-skills. I also don’t believe the large majority of your problems warrant medication or that you’re due for another overpriced round of supplements… because your problems are diseases of civilization, not genetic or incurable issues. They are lifestyle problems you’ve attempted to medicate. It’s no wonder we’re frustrated, under muscled, in pain, and fatigued: we’ve cycled through all of the trendiest approaches for years and done exactly what the “experts” and “the science” told us to do with little to no avail.
Nothing I’ve learned about taking care of myself, or even managing my own horrendous psychiatric experiences with anorexia and panic disorder, were taught by doctors. They certainly weren’t encouraged by psychiatrists, psychologists, or psychotherapists. They came straight from dusted books whose information is considered antiquated or too passé to be taken seriously. I urge young people to ditch the blogs and the influencers and the psychotherapists’ couches and pills and consider what our ancestors used as medicine: Exercise. Sleep. Good nutrition.