Audio Essay: Free Yourself From Medical Oppression

Chris Albert 00:00:01 (link to this point)

What's going on, guys? This is Chris here, and this is an in between episode. We'll call it episode number 37. I haven't really thought of a title yet. It's gonna involve something with the phrase medically oppressed.

You know, since I've been working with Andrew and dealing with all the ins and outs of his situation, you know, knowing his history as a Green Beret and as a veteran who suffered from traumatic brain injury, it's become more and more apparent to me that as a society, not just as a group of veterans, but as a society, we need to take more charge of our fates. Now, I think that looking at the medical realm in particular gives us some insight as to why this is important. If you look at our current medical system, and I'm not just talking about the VA here, and I'll get into why I think veterans are so important in a second. But if you look at our current medical system, it is in no way really set up to prevent disease. You know, we do get vaccines as kids to try to prevent some of the the plague type diseases that have, you know, wrapped the human population throughout history.

But the problems we're really experiencing, you know, things like diabetes, things like heart disease, things like cancer. The medical system really isn't set up to keep us from experiencing those things. Right? It's it's set up to to try to fix us or to try to put us back together once those things have already happened, once they've gone too far. And the problem with this is that nowhere in our medical system is there room to help people prevent these things in the first place?

Now granted, there are certain genetic factors that go into having diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. But largely, they're also epigenetic. And what I mean by epigenetic, that means it's a combination of our own genetics and the environment we put ourselves in or the environment that we create within our bodies through the nutrition we eat. And if you look at the common nutrition recommendations that most doctors give, you know, it's somewhere along the lines of eat fewer calories and try to avoid fats and sugar. But it's...

That's so inaccurate. It's so inaccurate. It's a tragedy that most doctors have no idea what they're talking about when we speak of nutrition. And that the most advice they can give you is to eat fewer calories. And they don't even tell you to eat less sugar until you've already had something like diabetes or until you come back with something like a prediabetic hemoglobin A1C blood test.

But it's not the doctor's fault. It's ours. It's our jobs to be the stewards of our own bodies. It's our jobs to ensure that we prepare our bodies and our minds for the trials and tribulations of this world. That means we need to exercise.

That means we need to eat right. And we cannot continue to outsource our health and our freedom because this is what we're really talking about here is freedom. Our freedom to the medical establishment. The only thing that the medical establishment wants to do is to make more money through pharmaceuticals. And this brings me back to veterans and the VA.

I'm a big believer in the idea that there's a lot of people in the VA who do want to help Veterans. There's a lot of people, a lot of doctors, a lot of nurses, a lot of personnel who truly chose that path because they wanted to help this generation of veterans. But again, it's not their fault. You know, we we have people being prescribed so many pills, many medications, so many different chemicals going into the body. And very seldom do we see anybody coming out of that a healthier and better person.

You know, the plagues that are racking our veteran population right now, things like traumatic brain injury, things like PTS. There's gotta be more than just giving these guys some pills. You know, I was having a conversation over Instagram today with a few of my friends, my friend... My friends over at Hellhound Apparel. And, you know, one of the things I I posted on on Instagram today is that there's such a concern about veteran suicide, and and everything's about veteran suicide prevention.

Everything's about keeping people from killing themselves. And, of course, I agree. I want I want to end veteran suicide. But the more we talk about veteran suicide prevention and the more we talk about the 22 a day who do take their lives, the more we normalize that idea, the idea of a broken veteran, the idea of someone who is destined to be broken. And I talked about this in episode one, why I don't like to mention veteran suicide.

It's because of this idea of social proof where you put out an idea of, you put out the example of somebody committing suicide to a group that has similar shared experiences, things like that. I don't think that that's the best thing to prevent veteran suicide. So, my focus isn't on veteran suicide prevention. It's on getting veterans to live their lives and live every single day of their lives. And when we talk about the way we treat things like PTS and TBI, In my mind, giving people a bunch of pills and not doing anything else for them.

You know, talking about the idea that they shouldn't try to kill themselves and not giving them anything else. It's not the right path to go down. What we need in our community is more examples, more instruction, more provision of advice to help veterans live. Part of that is encouraging good nutrition. Part of that is encouraging fitness regardless of their physical capabilities, encouraging them to exercise, encouraging them to get out of the house, encouraging them to put good food in their body.

Because when you look at a case like Andrew's, where he was so far gone, where he couldn't walk in a straight line, where he was a complete alcoholic because he was so depressed over the fact that his mind wasn't working correctly because of his traumatic brain injury. And you look at how he was able to fix himself through the help of Doctor Mark Gordon by shutting down his brain inflammation and to come back to his high performing state, that tells us something. You know, Andrew got rid of all the meds, and I'm not telling all of you that you need to do that off the bat. You do need some supervision here. But Andrew was able to get off of the pills, get off of the meds simply because he decided that he was going to pursue a methodology that would shut down his brain inflammation.

And I think the things that Andrew and Doctor Mark Gordon are working on over at the Warrior Angels Foundation, those are going to change not only the way we treat veterans, but the entire medical system here in The United States. We need to be done giving big... Making big pharma rich, And we need to begin enriching ourselves. I'm also convinced of the idea that the reason...

One of the reasons... I do think trauma was a factor here, but one of the reasons we're seeing such profound destructive effect on the veteran population because of traumatic brain injury and because of post traumatic stress and the lack of physical resilience to come back from these injuries, I truly believe that one of the major reasons because of... Behind this is the poor quality of nutrition that's given to our service members throughout their time as active duty military members. The amount of sugar, the amount of inflammatory compounds they put into their bodies through MREs and through through chow hall food. And, again, I'm not saying that this is the fault of, anybody who works in the chow hall or anybody who's cooking or anything like that.

It's it's a lack of knowledge. It's it's nobody's real fault. It's a lack of knowledge about the effect of nutrition on human physiology. The higher your levels of inflammation when you sustain an injury, the less resilient you will be. The higher the levels of inflammation in your body when you sustain an injury, the less resilient you will be.

And, of course, there's diff... There's differences here between acute inflammation, happens directly after an injury, and chronic inflammation. Chronic inflammation is much more dangerous. You can't feel it. You can feel acute inflammation.

You break your arm, you feel that. Chronic inflammation is a low burn that keeps going. It affects your gut, your intestinal tract. Because it affects your intestinal tract, it can affect your entire immune system. It can affect your heart.

It's the leading cause of heart disease. It can affect your neurological function, the ability of your brain to think, and the likelihood that you're gonna get something like Alzheimer's and dementia, depression, or other neurological disorders. And it most certainly affects the likelihood of you being heavily affected by a traumatic brain injury, a low level traumatic brain injury, or your ability to recover from post traumatic stress. And I truly believe that if we improve that nutrition, that we can head a lot of these things off. I'm not saying we can entirely head off PTS and TBI, but we can head off a lot of the issues before they become too severe, before a veteran ever gets to the point to where he's at the end of his rope.

We can make our military members stronger and more resilient through better nutrition, And we can prevent a lot of the tragedies that are happening today. And I am so optimistic for Andrew's work and for Andrew's book, Tales From The Blast Factory coming out later this year. I'm so optimistic about the impact that this work is gonna have. You know, if you watch Andrew and Doctor Gordon on the Joe Rogan podcast, one of the things they say, Andrew's case could have been completely prevented just by taking a very inexpensive supplement called N-acetylcysteine throughout his time operating as a Green Beret. That would have saved the government hundreds of thousands of dollars, millions of dollars by retaining him as a Green Beret because Andrew wanted to stay in.

He just couldn't because of his injuries. That would have saved our government so much money, and it would have kept an experienced operator out there battling terrorists. And this goes back to the bigger picture here because much like the hippie... Hippies of the nineteen sixties were on the fringe, I truly think that but but the hippies were able to change America's culture. I truly think that veterans are the new hippies.

We're on the fringe of society. Right? That doesn't make us abnormal, but we are on the fringe of society. You know, we're the less than 1%. And I truly believe that what comes out of our generation as far as leadership, as far as being a harder generation of veterans who've who've had to deal with these plagues.

I'm not saying that we're better or harder than any other generation, but I'm saying harder than the rest of our generation who have not served, you know, being that 1%. The better we make ourselves, the stronger we make ourselves as civilians who come out, the more we're gonna be able to change the course of this country, the more we're gonna be able to change it for the better. So for all of you at home who are listening to this, and I know that, you know, you can't change the world with a single podcast episode. You can't change the world with, a single voice. But I know that there's some of you at home who can take your fate into your own hands and begin improving your lives by doing something about the diseases that are potentially rocking your body, by doing things to make your brain stronger, by doing things to make your body stronger.

I know that you have the potential to continue to lead, to continue to bring this fight, to make our country stronger. And I know that you have great things in you and in your future. You just have to decide that you're gonna make them happen, and you have to prepare your mind and your body for the trials and tribulations that lie ahead if you want to take that path. So take care of your mind. Take care of your body.

Provide yourself with good fuel. And we will continue to provide you with the resources necessary to do so. Till next time. We'll talk to you all soon. I love you all.

It's Chris Albert out.