When we have free access to information that improves our lives, we, as free-thinking individuals, can use that information to make better decisions about what we eat, how much we exercise, what we avoid and essentially how we choose to live our lives. It doesn't mean that every single person who reads these articles is going to instantly become a super-healthy human, but it does show that everyone can be healthier than they used to be, and that making those changes is often spontaneous once people have the right information. That makes a lot of defenders of organized medicine really nervous. They simply don't want patients to have access to information.
The FDA, for example, is deep into the business of censorship, believing that the public must be "protected" from too much knowledge. For example, the agency recently sent threatening legal letters to 29 cherry growers who were posting scientific studies describing the health benefits of the many phytochemicals found in cherries (cherries work better than anti-inflammatory drugs at easing arthritis pain, rendering COX-2 drugs utterly obsolete, if you didn't already know). The FDA warned the cherry growers that if they continued to post scientific studies about cherries, the agency would consider cherries to be "unapproved drugs" and ban their sale in the United States while arguing that cherries have never been proven "safe and effective." That's the FDA for you -- blatant censorship and a good dose of plain old racketeering to boot. Only in today's outlandish system of monopoly medicine could someone look at a cherry and call it a drug.
Organized medicine believes that information, just like chemicals, needs to be centrally controlled. I, on the other hand, believe that information needs to be free. I'm a believer in the open-source movement, and I believe that information about health should be made freely available to anyone, so that they can search for solutions to their health problems and educate themselves on what to do better. That stance is something that scares organized medicine half to death, because it recognizes that if people really knew how easy it was to prevent chronic disease, reverse cancer, or replace dangerous prescription drugs with natural alternatives, then organized medicine would utterly collapse overnight.
The whole system depends on people not having access to good information. By writing these articles, I feel like I'm playing a small but important role in boosting the health literacy of everyone who cares to participate. Look at this in comparison to the history of the United States in the 1800s. In the slave-trade days, plantation owners wanted to keep their slaves illiterate, because they knew that if their slaves could read, they would educate themselves and realize that there's a bigger world out there, and they could no longer be easily controlled. Today, we're all treated like slaves by the censorship efforts of the FDA and organized medicine in general.
You see, organized medicine doesn't want people to be self-educated about health, nutrition or disease prevention. In fact, medicine has its own secret language and medical jargon created to isolate everyday people from medical conversations. Even disease names are created to cloud their true meaning. "Hepatitis" just means "inflamed liver." "Osteoporosis" simply means "bones with holes in them." But conventional medicine insists on using Latin, not plain English. Part of the purpose for that is simply to confuse people and make medicine seem more complicated than it really is. If you've been diagnosed with "osteoporosis," that sounds a lot more official than a doctor saying, "Your bones are fragile and full of tiny holes." When the word "osteoporosis" is used, it sounds like a bona fide disease (which probably calls for some kind of drugs, by the way), but if someone says your bones are fragile, that's merely an observation, not a disease.
What I like to do is translate so-called complex health concepts into everyday language that anyone can understand. The results of that are what we're seeing right here in this survey: Sixty-five point four percent of the people are saying their health has improved because they're taking the initiative to read and apply this information that was made freely available to them.
Almost half of the readers, 48.4 percent, reported experiencing improved energy. It's a big issue for a lot of people. They feel fatigued all the time. They feel like they can't get up in the morning or focus at work, so 48.4 percent experiencing improved energy is a good milestone.
Thirty-six percent reported boosting their appearance. This means they now look younger or healthier. That's a good, strong number, as well. I'm happy to see it, because as we get healthier and change our diets for the better, we do look younger. We actually appear to reverse in age. I know that today I look at least 10 years younger than I did five years ago. Some people think I'm still in my 20s. That's what can happen when you take care of your health. Your biological age actually begins to reverse and the signs of aging can reverse or disappear. It doesn't mean you're going to live forever. This is not about immortality, but it is about living longer and better with the body you've been given.
Twenty-four point five percent reported eliminating mood swings, anger or irritability, and this was probably due to avoiding refined sugars, refined grains or soft drinks. When you eliminate sugars from your diet, your mood stabilizes. You're no longer depressed or irritable, and your nervous system has an easier time dealing with the pressures of everyday life.
Twenty-four point five percent reported losing at least 10 pounds of body fat. This indicates that this information has helped a quarter of the readers lose a significant amount of body fat. That's an amazing number because most diets don't even have that kind of success. Yet this information isn't packaged as a diet. It's packaged as general health information that talks about weight loss or fat accumulation from time to time.
Ten point eight percent reported lowering their cholesterol by at least 30 points, and 13.7 percent reported lowering their blood pressure by at least 20/10 points. These numbers aren't all that impressive, but that's probably because not all the readers have actually measured their cholesterol.
Nearly 50 percent (49.4 to be exact) reported increasing their mood and outlook on life. Just by following this basic health advice, almost 50 percent of our readers are reversing depression and improving their outlook on life. I think that's a phenomenal number, and I know that if the antidepressant drug manufacturers could see this report, they would be alarmed to learn that simple, open-source health information is helping people overcome depression without dangerous, expensive prescription drugs.
Eleven point six percent reported receiving praise from their doctor for making positive health changes. This is an interesting number because it shows that when patients rise to the challenge and are able to put some of those positive changes into play, that a little over one out of 10 of their doctors will actually praise them for it, and I think that is one sign of a good doctor. If you have a doctor who's noticing your positive health changes and giving you praise for it, that's probably a good doctor to stick with. Doctors are not just people who write prescriptions and diagnose disease; they can also serve in some way as coaches, and they can help motivate people to continue making those positive changes.
Thirty-one point four percent reported receiving positive comments from their friends on their improved health or appearance. So, while some were being positively praised by their doctors, three times that many were receiving positive praise from their friends, and this just goes to show you the power of peer pressure in making positive changes. If you get healthier and lose weight and have more energy, your friends will notice.
So, that's the wrap-up of the healthy results section of this survey. In the next section, we'll talk about how this information is helping people enhance their career performance and work performance. The bottom line is this information has the power to dramatically improve the health outcome of people who choose to read it, learn it and apply it.