On a fateful Thursday in May some years ago, a good friend of mine died of cardiac arrest. Not in this case, as I will explain below, but heart disease first shows up in 50 percent of cases, as a fatality. He was sixty-seven years young. He managed a sizeable retail location in central Toronto which employs some two hundred and fifty fine Torontonians. He had a wonderful generous sense of how he should live life. He was funny and kind. Irascible sometimes, never cruel but he would get furious at laziness, careless attitudes or rudeness to customers, but he was, as imperfect as we all are, on the whole, a stellar friend and boss.
His family was splendid: A wonderful wife; Two beautiful daughters; Three grandchildren. He enjoyed life. I admired him every bit as much as the giants of reason who I often muse on in my articles. He lived a wonderfully well-managed life. He was the very definition of a good person. In the corporation which employed him for many decades, he was widely respected. He supported local events whenever he could. He loved the underdog, and  in all my years with him, I never saw him fire a single employee. Often those let go, got it from other managers while he was on holidays. He was all about second chances. He built a grand thing, a thriving neighborhood grocery store in downtown Toronto. It took decades of work and exceptional managerial skill. But in one way, he was not well-managed. That was in the area of his healthcare. He made a critical mistake, as many people do these days.
Thousands of mourners turned out to see him off. Everyone was in shock. He loved his family and his job. In an important sense, his employees were also his family. Many of us had been with him or had known him for decades. Being around people was his passion. One time, I was with him in the belly of the beast at the company headquarters in old Toronto. I was flabbergasted to see the offices and cubicles empty out as the buyers, specialists, supervisors and executives came out to greet him. He was a legend, and of course, they all came out to the funeral service as well. He loved to chat it up with customers, supervisors and employees alike. Whether it was investment, sports, sales, politics or the news, he loved to talk about it. Customers, chefs or restaurateurs would tell him of the latest food craze and he did his best to find the product and fight with corporate to get it in “his” store. He was nicknamed “the Colonel” and the store was known as “the Palace”. It was a busy, often  frenzied state of affairs; and it had a certain flavor that was not to everyone’s taste. Despite that, his customers and staff were fiercely loyal. Many have remarked something to the effect that shopping at the competition was like cheating on him.
My friend as awesome as he was, had a conventional view of medicine and trusted doctors as people three centuries ago trusted priests. Many of us want government certification when it comes to matters of our healthcare providers. In just this way, we destroy competition, debate and even encourage mediocrity. If you have developed heart disease, that’s a fatal error. They’ll restrict your diet; but it will be a “low-fat low-carb” with some caveat against red meat and not too much  “junk food” (with a cautious exercise routine offered, but not insisted upon). Such visits to the doctor could kill you. They have a protected monopoly. To put it in the crudest language, state sanctioned practitioners belong to the most powerful union in the world. Their “associations” rail against their competition whether its holistic, therapeutic, chiropractic, herbalists, nutritionists, or any unlicensed professionals which economically threatens them.
Collectively, they know what keeps them in coin: keeping the “quacks” away from the same “deal” they have with the state and working with the government toward medical conformity. Of course, “the quacks” are the very people you need to see and study if you have heart disease. Not unlike the mercantalists of the pre-industrial revolution who fattened their coffers with state-granted monopolies such as the original Hudson Bay Company, doctors’ associations use their cartel to cosy with regulators, food giants and pharmaceuticals. The result for the modern industrial world has been apocalyptic. Sixty percent of all adults in North America are now either fat or obese. Heart Disease is the West’s number one killer. The certified food pyramids from the government regulators from around the world is the poison peddled by the state who shouldn’t have anything to do with it in the first place. I have not read one single independent nutritionalist who agrees with any of it.
From, Metabolical (2021): "If the last fifty years of medicine has taught us anything, it’s that we physicians have a whole lot to unlearn—except when it comes to nutrition, in which case you can’t unlearn what you were never taught in the first place. Modern Medicine is a racket. Full disclosure—I was part of that racket through my forty years of practice, although when it came to money, I was the lowest (academic) of the lowest (pediatric) of the low (endocrinologist). I learned nutrition in college, and then unlearned it in a medical school curriculum influenced by Big Pharma."
Two hundred years ago, for ideological reasons, states around the world began to license and regulate medicine; and all of these years later, the bloated governments of the West, which cannot control their own appetite to regulate all of the facets of our lives, has brought about the frightening results of today’s diet. Heart Disease? Licensed medicine declares, “Fix it with surgery!” The cost of these centuries-old decisions to license doctors by addled white Empire boys who knew best, is now devastatingly clear: we see Paleolithic cultures, the so-called hunter-gatherers, live without heart disease or cancer until they start eating a modern diet of sugar, salt, bad-fat, refined grains, dairy-products, and processed-foods with all of their carbs stripped of any nutrients which leads to metabolic dysfunction, which in turn lends itself to cancers, diabetes, atherosclerosis, mental decline and neural degeneration. Like the Theory of Evolution itself, the science behind this criticism of our current diet is irrefutable. If you have developed heart disease, stents, by-passes, and nitroglycerine, do not address the root cause of your illness. A strong genetic component (i.e., a family history of heart ailments), exists for atherosclerotic disease, and anyone can have it, all the more reason to  get advice from the experts in fitness, nutrition, lifestyle change, etcetera, who doctors shun, 
You May Be Surprised to Learn that There is a Cure for Heart Disease.
My friend used to say to me about his general health that everything was in hand – Nitro at the ready! The secret was to see the doctor as often as possible. He was confident that he had the best medical care in the country. This was not only NOT true – everybody has the best doctor in our “free” medical healthcare system, that is a given – it was the opposite of the truth. Indeed, the best is the worst. In some important sense, the doctors themselves are today’s quacks. Surgery can never heal heart disease. Would you think about it for just a moment? Homo-sapiens are whole organic living creatures evolved from many thousands of millenniums on a particular diet; if our heart is in trouble, so is every other organ in our bodies and the whole system is threatened. If you took Common Chimpanzees, our closest biological relative, and let them eat anything they wanted from a food store (what their evolution has forbid them for millions of years) they would begin to die of heart disease, cancer or other degenerative ailments within years. What is required for anyone with heart disease is a radical change and it has to be communicated in such a way as to get results, i.e., from a healthcare provider such as a holistic doctor, nutritionist and personal trainer, etc., working in sync with a general practitioner: a clinic which provides total care for a permanent cure especially when a customer comes in after a brush with death and is highly motivated to make a lifestyle change.
Six years before his death, my friend had a stent after such an awful scare. At that point he was fully pliable, and if he had been  able to access such a clinic (none actually exist), it might have made all the difference whether he would live into his nineties or die in his sixties. He would have gotten what he gave to so many other people: a second chance! He possibly would have gotten two more decades out of his body by following a strict – but certainly doable – lifestyle change, and there are some amazing ones, vegan, pegan, paleo, Mediterranean, etc. If we compare people with heart disease given surgery with those who radically alter their diet to remove all processed food and take up regular exercising, there is this shocking evidence: one group dies after five to seven years from the surgery, the other group goes on to live decades after the scare – and without heart disease. You positioned yourself into it and you can condition yourself out of it.
Lifestyle change and exercise – no matter how old you are – make all the difference in the world; especially the strict paleo-diet reset to a normal weight on the Bio Mass Index, BMI, (this may take some time depending how overweight you are), followed by an exercise regime and a diet restricted to complex carbs (whole foods, that is, fresh fruits and vegetables), moderate amounts of soft carbs (a small amount of bread, pasta,  and grains like quinoa, not endorsed, but many people can't live without them!), and fats from “good oils”, raw nuts, and lean protein, especially fish. Radical adjustment to a hunter-gatherer type gets you to a leaner body reset. Your weight loss, causes some of your youthful energy to return. This gives you a decent shot at an exercise program, no matter how old you are. If you have heart disease and you carry around nitro as my friend and many others do, you are a ticking time bomb. You are going to die before you have to!
Within years, if you refuse yourself  processed foods, stay away from restaurants and stick to a strict non-processed food lifestyle, and get proper exercise, you will live into your eighties and nineties without modern degenerative diseases – You can throw the nitro away! – And though it might be counterintuitive, exercise gives you more vigor.  You will be energized. You will feel much better. On paleo, pegan or vegan, for instance, you will never go hungry. You can have all the lean protein your body can tolerate, fresh fruits and vegetables to your delight, and even a large variety of raw unsalted nuts.
I think my friend had twenty good years left in him. He will never get to see his second daughter’s wedding in the Caribbean. He never got to retire. He let his employees, friends, and family down. It doesn’t get much worse than a preventable death. Something occurred that could be totally averted. I cannot say outright that his doctors killed him, but in a manner of speaking, that is certainly what happened. A union, a monopoly, endorses a distinct procedure on diet from ignorance and lack of training. State-licensed medicine is bankrupt. Processed sugar kills more people than tobacco or alcohol products. Processed sodium kills more people than sugar. Harmful saturated fat kills more people than both sugar and salt, especially cheese and its main partner in its ingestion, pizza. Pizza takes the worst of everything in food wrong for human consumption: refined grains, salt, bad fats, processed meats, cheese, and is almost always accompanied with sugary or alcoholic drinks. Ice cream is a killer (fat and sugar). We have whole aisles of it in grocery stores. French fries, (salt and fat), snack foods in a bag, (salt and fat), soda drinks and juices, (sugar), salad dressings, (fat, sugar, and salt), jars of marinated foodstuff, and tinned anything, (salt); these are all injurious as are tortured industrialized meat products, antibiotics. chlorine in water, excessive alcohol and smoking.
Nutritionalists argue on the peripherals about whether to eat this or that, or what oil to fry meat in and such minor points in the big scheme of things; however, in regards to what not to eat, there is total unanimity among experts. This list includes most processed foods. If it is in a box, bag, jar, tin, restaurant, it’s to be avoided. I’ve seen boomers shopping, their carts laden with armfuls of these noxious foods (some of it which they think is good for them), and not a piece of lean protein or fresh vegetables in sight. All the while, they carry nitroglycerine, aspirin, and blood thinners in their pockets prescribed by their general practitioner; “Just in case”.
While the lion’s share of the guilt for this tragic event, which has engulfed our culture and is now threatening the world, comes from homo-sapiens’ “comfort gene” and its manipulation by the food industry, much of the responsibility also comes from individuals who over-eat and under-exercise; however, licensed medicine itself is much to blame. Long ago they should have joined with “Health Food” advocates to condemn the modern diet. Everyone should fight to put an end to their monopoly. Doctors of course have a central place in your healthcare but not as a partner with the state enabling them to stigmatize their competitors; they should be working in unison with nutritionists, chiropractors, trainers, etc., and not pretending to have the market cornered on science. Believe me, the opposite is closer to the truth. When it comes to science, often the research results they use are covertly funded by big money, especially the processed food industry and the pharmaceuticals. This is not counting the iatrogenic generated by modern medicine, surgery and stupid pharmaceutical choices. If you are not in perfect health, are overweight or have chronic pain, depression or lack of energy, I urge you to read some or all of the books below. I couldn’t get my friend to read them, (though I wish I had tried harder), but I am hoping now some of you will, if not in memory of him, then for your own sake please.
Postscript: I have followed a strict whole-foods, paleo-pegan lifestyle from the time my friend died. At first, I did it as a 30 day test, but my youthful energy returned quickly as I lost weight and I began adhering to it incrementally more strictly. I was able to start a rigorous exercise program and even occasionally went jogging. The nutritional experts say you don't have to be over-the-top; and if you are young and in good shape, that may be so, however the thing sells itself once you're on your way. It becomes a lifestyle event and a physical transformation occurs.  My first blood work after this alteration, (2007), my then current doctor said, "I see you've made quite a change. After the second year, "Goodness, amazing." The third year, "Whatever you're doing, keep doing it." How would you like to hear that at annual medical appointments? My current doctor said in 2023, "You don't have the health problems of 70 year olds." Those health problems are cancer, diabetics, athersclerosis, metabolic syndrome, and mental decline-neural degeneration. By 2024. increase longivity in North America has stalled for the very first time ever. For a post COVID 19 analysis of why the cheap and effective wonder drug ivermectin was rejected in the stead of lightly tested (and turns out dangerous) vaccines, see War on Ivermectin and The Courage to Face COVID.
For about 70,000 generations we were hunter-gatherers, so if you time-condensed human history to a year, the industrial revolution would have occurred in the last hour, our agrarian period would be two days long and the hunter-gatherer period would be 363 days; we would have been eating refined mass-produced carbs in the last five minutes. Paraphrased from Live Long, Die Short.