The Snake Oil Sellers and Health

Someone discovered that I’m a fifty something male so every day my inbox fills up with news of miracle cures for low testosterone and erectile dysfunction. I also get emails about the health benefits of lemon juice, baking powder and apple cider vinegar for conditions from arthritis to diabetes to indigestion. Some of these miracle cures are already in your kitchen, but the majority are potions concocted in a laboratory in Taiwan – and they are going to cost.
I should say at this point, that I am not a medical practitioner and the opinions I express here are based on a dose of common sense mixed with a dram of scepticism rather than on any expert knowledge or extensive research into medical issues.
When I open one of these emails, the typical pitch goes like this:
1. You can’t trust the medical establishment – they’re in cahoots with Big Pharma to make you ill and keep you ill – type 2 diabetes being the crowning example.
2. Most if not all prescription medicines have dreadful side effects, some of which are worse than the condition you started with.
3. Surgery is a drastic way to make your back/shoulder/knee pain worse.
4. There are various natural remedies for almost every illness known to humanity, but because of pesticides, poor quality control etc you can’t just get your medicine from the supermarket. You need supplements. And ours happen to be the best.
5. If we don’t have a supplement to sell, we’ll sell you a cookery book or a set of DVDs
The same applies to exercise. These health gurus are now telling us that everything we thought was true about exercise is false. Far from keeping you lithe and young, conventional “cardio” and “carb burning” exercise clogs your body with free radicals that accelerate the aging process. Ditch the running, cycling and gym classes and buy our miracle exercise programme: four extremely intense minutes a day and you’ll have a physique to die for…
Some of the promises are clearly overblown and result in fairly swift use of the delete button. But the most effective messages are carefully crafted, with references to rigorously controlled trials published in respected medical journals and “case studies” of people like you and me with “before” and after “photos” to seal the deal.
The most pernicious aspect of these emails, though, is the claim that the medical establishment wants to keep you ill so they can make big bucks from your misfortune. Medical practitioners in the US, where almost all my emails originate, may have incentives – for billing purposes – to tell you you’re really ill and you need a battery of medications, surgery, physio etc. though I doubt it. But the situation in the UK is very different Here, because of NHS funding and resourcing issues, medical practitioners have more incentive to ration treatment. For example, patients with long-term conditions such as diabetes or hypertension can claim free prescriptions, so what’s in it for GPs in keeping patients drug-dependent for life? There is every incentive to minimise the use of surgery and other therapies because of long waiting lists. The NHS even has gate-keeping services to limit demand by offering telephone or online advice. The NHS certainly has no incentive in keeping you ill.
Similarly, because of lower food standards in the US, it might be difficult for many consumers there to access good quality food. That is not the case in the UK at the moment (though post-Brexit things may be different). Here food production and labelling standards mean that consumers can be confident that a pound of carrots will contain reasonable levels of whatever vitamins and minerals are associated with them.