In Search of Balance Page #2

school gardens, community

organization, spiritual centers,

farmers,

and natural trades.

Thank you.

We are hitting a wall,

and we know that pills

and surgeries are not making

cadent in the rates of diabetes

and heart disease

that we are seeing.

The most important thing

to understand is that

there is no one answer.

Health is something that needs

to be engaged with everyday

throughout the day in dozens

of little choices that we make.

The bad news is that

it's complicated.

On my 48th birthday

I had a really bad headache.

Ultimately

it was determined

that I had a disorder

called Neurosarcoidosis.

They started treating me

with prednisone, with steroids.

I tried to watch TV,

TV was too slow,

so I finally had to bring in

my laptop and that was the only

thing that was, you know,

fast enough that I could feel

because these drugs

just had my brain go --

A 106,000 Americans

are killed every year

from side-effects

of prescription drugs.

This is not drug errors,

this is not illicit drugs,

and this is actually

just compliant to drugs

given in hospitals.

And the steroids were great

and that the symptoms

that I was having went away and

within maybe two weeks of going

on these massive

dosage of steroids,

my appetite was back

and I gained somewhere

in the neighborhood 30

or 40 pounds in two weeks,

because I was eating

like a teenage boy.

What I didn't know at that

time was that prednisone

can lead to diabetes.

So I began a course of

medication for diabetes.

We tend to medicalize health,

we tend to really think of it

within the purview of what we

can do that's either a drug

or a surgery or some kind

of chemical intervention

to make us feel better,

and in fact we know

that there is many, many

other things out there

that have everything to do

with creating this balance.

I mean,

I am really thankful

that Western medicine

saved his life

because, you know, definitely

it was going downhill fast.

But at the same

time, you know,

prednisone caused terrible

side-effects that is --

it's just one of

those things that --

It was like those

old '40s and '50s movies

where somebody saves your

life and now they own you.

This is where I pay you off.

The hubris of thinking

that we could simplify

this complex system,

put it on a pill, we should be

surprised if that ever worked,

if a drug company

came up with a pill

that had the

benefits of broccoli,

I mean, they would be

making billions of dollars

because it's

just so clear-cut.

So, our reductionist

approach is doing very little

in the phase of this epidemic

of chronic disease.

Reductionism means

taking a system

and reducing it into

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