A recent article in JAMA titled General Health Checks in Adults for Reducing Morbidity and Mortality From Disease throws a wet blanket on the idea that going to your doctor for a 100,000 mile checkup does you any good. The authors concluded: “Compared with usual care, offers of health checks were not associated with lower rates of all-cause mortality, mortality from cardiovascular disease, or mortality from cancer. Health checks may be associated with more diagnoses and more drug treatment. Morbidity was infrequently reported, as were most harms, such as use of diagnostic procedures.” In other words buyer beware. When you go to your physician for that annual checkup, you will likely walk out with multiple diagnoses and prescriptions but you won’t end up any healthier or live any longer. Talk about a blow to modern medicine! In other words you’re probably better off going to the casino rather than to your doctor for that annual checkup! At least at the casino you have some chance of coming out a winner.

Manage, Smanage
What’s wrong with picture? I say plenty. It is true that our modern healthcare system is geared to “managing” chronic diseases mainly with drugs. The government and insurance companies won’t pay physicians to prevent or reverse diseases like obesity or type II diabetes but they will pay us to manage them. Following this strategy we should have donuts in our waiting rooms!

Both obesity and diabetes are largely reversible if they are treated aggressively when they first appear. Drugs don’t actually treat diseases–they manage them. It’s like putting a band-aid on skin cancer. The same is true for many other chronic diseases like hypertension and heart disease as well as common brain disorders like depression, ADHD, PTSD, anxiety disorders, ADHD and similar conditions.

Keep it Simple, Stupid
In order to effectively reverse these conditions you need to understand the underlying pathology of the conditions. As it turns out, many of these conditions seem to share the same pathology. This altered pathology seems to start with your diet. Excessive fructose mainly from sugar and HFCS appears to be the driving force behind insulin resistance. Once you have insulin resistance and you consume high glycemic carbohydrates, your brain is subjected to magnified glucose spikes. Because neurons don’t need insulin for glucose to enter into the cell, over time these blasts of glucose can damage neurons leading to a form of food-induced brain dysfunction called Carbohydrate Associated Reversible Brain syndrome or CARB syndrome. People with CARB syndrome can develop up to 22 brain dysfunction symptoms that interfere with their ability to function and they enter a bear-in-fall metabolic mode where they store extra fat at virtually any caloric intake.

Labelitis
Patients with CARB syndrome end up with metabolic problems like obesity and type II diabetes and they are often diagnosed with multiple brain disorders. When you go to your physician you end up with “labelitis” with a long list of new diagnoses. Each condition generates a prescription or two but these drugs actually do nothing to treat the underlying pathology—they only cover up the symptoms for a period of time. When the symptoms return, you end up with more prescriptions and because all drugs have the potential for side effects, you end up much worse off than you started.

Five Simple Steps
Because your physician doesn’t yet know about the CARB syndrome concept, he or she will follow “the standard of care” and order more tests followed by more drugs. This leads to a vicious circle of declining health. What surprises me about this JAMA article is that we now have evidence to support my views. In order to stay healthy you need to take control of your own health. If your clinical picture fits the CARB syndrome pattern, you don’t need more drugs—you need to change your diet. How do you know if you have this disease? If you have cravings for sweet and starchy foods, you likely have at least early stage CARB syndrome.

The basic elements of treatment for CARB syndrome are fairly simple:

• I usually recommend following a Paleo-style diet because it eliminates all the triggers of CARB syndrome. You can modify this diet to fit your own situation. I like Robb Wolf’s book The Paleo Solution.
• Eliminate sugar and HFCS from your diet. Read Richard Johnson’s books The Sugar Fix and The Fat Switch.
• Reduce your intake of omega 6 fatty acids from vegetable oils and take a high quality omega 3 supplement to obtain around 2,400 mg of DHA and EPA daily. I also recommend Barry Sears’ book Toxic Fat.
• Exercise for at least 30 minutes every day, not because it burns calories, but because it improves brain function. Walking is a good place to start.
• Take supplements to reduce carb cravings including L-glutamine, Cinsulin and CARB-22.

Checkout Rather Than Checkup
There you have it. Sure, go ahead and schedule that annual checkup with your physician. You certainly don’t want to miss a serious medical disorder. But if all you end up with is a bunch of new diagnostic labels and prescriptions and you have symptoms that fit the CARB syndrome model, checkout of the standard approach to healthcare and enter a new world of optimal health. I’ve already given you the only prescription you will need for a healthy and long life. Your only decision is whether or not to follow my advice.