Some people point out that when we try to get healthy, we need to develop custom health strategies for each individual person, or at least for different categories of people.

Okay, so you want to treat us like we're all different, with different problems. Sounds fine, huh? But this is exactly what modern medicine is all about. This customized approach has resulted in a terrible record of making us healthy.

The problem with this approach is that it is extremely expensive, and that it simply doesn't work.

Even though we are all so different, the practitioners of this customized approach end up prescribing exactly the same drugs to almost everybody -- statins, SSRI's, blood pressure meds, the same antidiabetic meds, and so on. A list of only a few dozen drugs are the ones prescribed to 99% of us.

So, if we're so different, why are so many of us taking the same drugs?

Because, after everything is said and done, we are NOT so different.

In order to get and stay healthy we need understand what that looks like. We need to visualize the big picture of health.

It is not possible for anyone to get or stay healthy while consuming a diet that is deficient in required nutrients. Most people actually need to eat MORE of the proper menu items to return to health. And more often. And they need to eat LESS of the foods that are blocking healing processes in the body -- usually meaning less omega-6, less sat-fat, less sugar and high energy density carbs. People who are grossly fat or merely overweight usually need to eat more, more often. So do the underweight.

Fat people are in fact undernurished. Too many calories with poor nutrition. Too little fiber. Too little anti-oxidants, too little spice content... a bland, sweet, fatty, low fiber and low mineral content diet. Grossly fat people are usually eating thousands of colories a day in nutritionally worthless foods.

And the energy content of this vast food intake often never gets to the muscles where it could be burned, due to very high levels of insulin resistance. Unburned, these sugars and fats are stored, making them obese. Extremely thin people suffer from poor apetites and overactive adrenal systems that tend to burn more energy, while failing to proper stimulate their desire for foods.

This is often fixed by increasing the nutrient content of their foods so that these misbehaving systems return to normal operation. In some cases medication may be required where a system has been permanently damaged due to DNA changes, diseases, infection or chemical exposure.

Both people, the fat and the thin, usually benefit from a similar approach. Both will come to the organic middle, the mean. This mean is what the body's homeostatis systems is designed to maintain.

Balance is what is needed. Exercise comes at the end of this process, simply because we need the right stuff for things to work right in the body, including exercise. Without the right nutrients, exercise can and in fact will produce even more inflammatory stress and pro-oxidation increases throughout the body.

Once you are chemically enabled to suffer the stresses of exercise, then exercise can and will be healthy. Some people can't exercise for many reasons; loss of limbs, gross obesity (which was my case for the first year or so), overall health states, etc.

These people have to try to get healthy without it, even though their body was in fact designed to need it and benefit from it. Unfortunately, the verdict that many of these people will find is that they cannot 'win' their battle.

A doctor friend of mine pointed out to me that every young doctor must learn that not every person can be cured. Some cannot be helped, or can be helped only to a small degree.

Enthusiastic young doctors get their wings singed by this unhappy news. The challenge they face is not to give up hope for the rest that can be helped. But for the great majority of us, we can get healthy.

We can return to the vigor or something close to the vigor of youth, extending our useful and enjoyable years. We can go from the level 3 stages of overt disease to the level 1 stage. That is the aim of my health program. I have observed something in my conversations with physicians: They concentrate on exceptions.

They emphasize minute differences to develop their disease management and treatment strategies. That is the analytical process.

Because of this approach, they almost always fail to see the overall picture of health, and their patients are never able to move in the right direction, because their doctor is alway a step or two behind in dealing with the emergencies of their declining overall condition.

I wrote 2 essays about this problem a few years ago:

Weight Loss Diets: Getting the Big Picture

    http://www.level1diet.com/weight-loss-diets.html

Magic Bullet Medicine: How One Man Focused Medicine on Disease Instead of Health

    http://www.level1diet.com/magic-bullet-medicine.html

When we focus on all the details of fixing what's wrong with a patient, we risk losing track of our goal -- getting and staying healthy.

And, we risk forgetting that or goal is actually health, not curing any particular condition. Modern medical practitioners have become salesmen for pharmaceuticals and partners in scanning and testing companies.

I have had them scream at me, "That's not my job!" When I told doctors about my health program, about balancing fats, ensuring mineral sufficiencies, etc.

They are so busy prescribing drugs and collecting fees for the insurance companies that they can't help patients actually get healthy. Most of this is due to their 'magic bullet' approach to health. We need more of the big picture, and less of the magic bullet philosophy. The big picture is what Level1Diet is all about.