In the four years since, national attention has, thankfully and significantly, turned toward solving chronic disease and reducing the ‘overmedicalization’ of America. In mental health alone, 1 in 6 adults is on an antidepressant, 1 in 10 children has a Rx for mental health, 30% of college students have taken a psychiatric medication in the past year, and more than half of nursing home residents are on prescribed antidepressants.

Despite tremendous pushback from corporate, legal, and political vested interests, progress is being make. We are moving steadily along the road to learning why Americans are so sick, why autism has grown exponentially, and what policies and funding streams will support a healthier population.

With attention and support building nationally, we might be tempted to think that federal policies and funding will Make America Healthy Again. And yes, government can require real food in schools and prisons and hospitals, negotiate for more nutrition in medical school curricula and fewer toxic additives in processed food, and it can sort out the causes of autism with better research.

But government funding and policies, as critical as they are, cannot directly heal.

Healing requires coming home. Home to the space, relationships, and actions that are the direct healers of body, mind, and spirit.

Re-inhabiting our homes and gaining the awareness and skills needed to heal will take time. But we can make American homes places of healing, we can support home caregivers as they learn how to apply food as medicine, recognize a healing crisis, protect children from trauma and toxic environments, and so much more.

America needs a tomorrow where wellness is mainstream, not alternative. And it is “Coming Home to Heal” that will get us there.

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To summarize Parts 1-6: (1) Americans are too unaware of how environmental toxins from economic activity impact their health; (2) allopathic medicine adds to the separation of health from economy by not addressing the root causes of disease; (3) knowing the origins of disease is critical for any society’s long-term survival; (4) place-based healing with holistic medicine tells patients why they are sick, engages community, and offers America a pathway to resolving the health-economy separation; (5) place-based healing and wellness localizes food and medicine, allowing communities to take health as an economic strategy; and (6) lifestyle-based medicine and medical biotechnology address chronic disease with different results for patients, healthcare, communities, and the economy.

Here in Part 7, we explore the two major medical systems that are currently advancing solutions: the broad field of holistic, natural, root cause, and lifestyle-based medicine and the patent-based field of medical biotechnology.

Although from diverging paradigms, we suggest these two systems can become allies, but only when the body-mind-spirit’s ability to self-regulate can remain strong and protected.

Medical biotechnology is a well-funded discipline whose pharmaceutical solutions are the mainstay of modern allopathic medicine. It is covered by insurance, used in primary and specialized healthcare, and rapidly evolving in concert with computer-based systems and Artificial Intelligence.

At the same time, America’s potential for resolving its chronic disease epidemic using food, lifestyle, clean environments, and natural, drugless therapies has been rapidly expanding. Despite limited insurance coverage and historically less research funding, America’s free enterprise system has allowed consumer choice to move many forms of lifestyle-related medicine forward; these include Naturopathy, Chiropractic, Traditional Chinese Medicine, Acupuncture, Ayurvedic, Homeopathy, Herbalism, Bioenergetic Medicine, Energy Medicine, Physical Therapy, multiple other forms of manual therapies, and more.

Support for these drugless alternatives continues to expand as the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Commission and other Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) policies build toward understanding the root causes of disease. Although the Commission’s policy position on healthcare includes “increasing the amount of research going towards preventive, alternative and holistic approaches”, HHS also affirmed biotechnology’s contributions when HHS Deputy Secretary, Jim O’Neil interviewed three biotech pioneers at MAHA Action’s inaugural summit in November 2025. They presented epigenetic reprogramming, brain-computer interfaces, longevity drugs, and psychedelics as the next frontiers in healthcare.

It appears that both lifestyle and biotechnology are set to be significant parts of America’s medical landscape.

Medical biotechnology also includes ‘precision medicine’ which uses genomic data plus environmental and lifestyle information to choose tests, drugs, and doses that best match the individual or patient subgroup. This personalizes care, yields better prediction, prevention, and treatment, and reduces the side effects of pharmaceutical care.

However, what even precision medicine does not do is address the root causes of illness. As noted in Part 6 of this series: “Drugs can lower blood sugar, blood pressure, and inflammation; they cannot remove the ultra-processed diet, sedentary lifestyle, toxic exposures, and chronic stress that created the problem in the first place.”

Lifestyle medicine’s effectiveness with chronic disease relies on the body’s capacity for self-regulation and self-healing. Treatment seeks to identify and remove what is harming that capacity, repair the damage, and nurture and protect the body-mind-spirit’s innate, regenerative ability to restore function and create resiliency.

Biotech’s allopathic methods, however, can damage self-healing mechanisms. America has learned the hard way that allopathic care is expensive, that ongoing management of disease only deepens it over time and leads to more complex diseases, more medications (polypharmacy), and greater healthcare costs. In the process, such care too often overrides and damages self-healing mechanisms.

For example, anti-acids and protein-pump inhibitors lower stomach acid production to give relief from acid reflux, but with continued use low stomach acid damages digestive and metabolic function. Finding and removing the causes of acid reflux (e.g. a food allergy, stress, toxins) is essential to protecting digestive and metabolic health. Another example is managing blood pressure and blood sugar with medications when adjusting food, environment, and lifestyle factors can provide control and even healing.

De-prescribing the pharmaceuticals being used allopathically for managing disease may well be a needed part of healthcare’s future if we are to benefit from the success that is proving possible with lifestyle-based care.

Managing illness rather than resolving its root causes is why healthcare costs have become such a huge contributor to America’s national debt. ‘Managing rather than resolving’ also creates disability and greater suffering and expense at the end-of-life.

Even so, there are rare diseases, acute care needs, and severe injuries for which biotechnology is life saving and life giving. Finding ways for biotech and lifestyle to co-exist and work together appears critical for making Americans healthy again and lowering healthcare costs.

Making biotech and lifestyle allies becomes a process that requires awareness and understanding by researchers, educators, practitioners, and patients. Only time will tell how well, and even whether, this ‘paradigm stretching’ process will be successful.

America has become an innovator and leader in both systems of care. Will we also take the lead in making sure both are well understood, fairly funded, and able to co-exist as allies? And will we be able to ‘even the playing field’ between the two so that the current resources of biotechnology are not used to discredit or inhibit natural approaches?

While precision medicine and other biotechnologies hold promise for the toughest and most critical of medical needs, we as consumers - and America as an indebted nation - will benefit at multiple levels from applying food, lifestyle, clean environments, and natural therapies for chronic disease.

As both medical paradigms evolve, it is important to remain vigilant about their impacts beyond health and disease. How they impact society, ecosystems, and the future of human evolution is as important as their success with treating disease.

Technology has gifted humanity with amazing ‘advances’, especially in connection, convenience, and information. Yet, technology has also, and too often, been a primary source of damage to biological, emotional, mental, spiritual, and social functioning. Most critically, it has damaged the self-healing mechanisms of nature, which includes the biological human.

The question now is whether we want to repair and protect nature and the natural human or use technology to fix what too often technology has broken.

Next: Part 8 of Health and the Economy: Reclaiming the Natural Human

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The Wellness Economy Defined

A wellness economy arises from the economic activity generated by consumer demand for the goods and services of healthy living. It emerges organically as individuals and families embrace healthier lifestyles - and particularly the patients who address chronic disease through food, lifestyle/environment, and root cause medicine.

When healthy goods and services are sourced locally, consumers build local wellness economies sustained by regenerative family farms, wellness practitioners, and locally owned businesses. Whether farms, clinics, or businesses, scale and independent standing affect both quality and what can be offered. Smaller-scale, independent operations are best suited in size and flexibility to providing the quality and personalization that wellness and healing require.

Why Quality Matters

Quality is the foundation of healing and wellness. Ultra-processed foods, toxic cleaning agents, endocrine-disrupting personal care, pesticides, and similar commercial products deteriorate health and must be replaced by nutrient-dense foods and natural products to support true wellness: real food grown in living soil, natural therapies that support self-healing, and clean environments in and around the body. From gardening supplies and furniture to textiles and art, the quality that local production provides builds both human and economic resilience.

From Sick Care to Healing and Wellness

Over the past century, medicine has become increasingly allopathic and pharmaceutical—saving lives in acute care but defaulting to managing chronic disease rather than healing it. This system of sick care has resulted in rising costs, escalating national debt, and a healthcare system dependent on corporate suppliers far from patients and the communities in which they live.

Healing requires a foundation of real food, clean environments, and lifestyle interventions, all things that are best created in the places where patients live and work - i.e. their place-based communities.

Healing also requires going beyond management of symptoms. Thankfully, alternative systems of healing and wellness have been emerging in America for some decades. Good science, advanced diagnostics, technology and AI-enhanced awareness are allowing practitioners to go behind symptoms to identify root causes: environmental toxins (e.g. chemicals, heavy metals, molds, radiation, electropollution), allergens, ultra-processed foods, microbial imbalances, poor gene expression, stress, emotional trauma and more. Practitioners can now identify root causes and work with patients to apply food and lifestyle interventions that restore the body’s ability to self-regulate and self-heal.

Surviving cancer by any means is powerful, but healing cancer by understanding and changing its specific causes in individual patients is even more so. When one knows why they are sick, they know how to stay well. Daily, at-home routines, coupled with natural restorative clinical therapies, are the foundation of healing and wellness. As well as the catalysts for how patients and their families live.

Knowledge and Awareness: The Catalysts

Wellness-driven economies are catalyzed and sustained by knowledge and awareness of what causes disease and what keeps us well. Whether knowledge is self-acquired or from the clinical process, understanding why we are sick and how we can heal provides the ideal blueprint for changing the way we live and for stimulating consumer demand for healthy foods and natural products crafted for quality. We can only be as healthy as our environments and the products we consume.

Regeneration + Proximity + Collaboration = Synergy

Regeneration is the natural process by which life and function are revived and restored. In farming, regenerative practices renew biological life in the soil. In human health, real foods from nutrient-rich soils help restore the body to proper functioning so that self-healing mechanisms can reduce or reverse disease.

In addition to regenerative practices, the proximity of fields, clinics, and homes in place-based communities encourages collaboration among farmers, practitioners, patients, and residents. Collaboration is what builds community and supports the healing process in which individuals and families reclaim their health.

Synergy is the dynamic, creative force that emerges when parts of a system integrate well together and create a better-functioning whole. An example: regenerated soils grow nutrient-dense foods that restore ecosystems, nourish human health, and result in a revitalized system that functions with less pollution and less disease-driven costs, certainly more so than America’s current systems of food production and healthcare.

Synergy creates momentum and resiliency in local wellness economies and supports independence and sovereignty for families and communities . . . something that is missing when medicine and food come from distant suppliers.

In short, regenerative practices, proximity, and collaboration create the synergy that powers place-based healing and builds local wellness economies. In time, cultures of health take root and grow to surround everyone. This is when community well-being becomes aligned with economic prosperity, enabling self-sustaining cycles of vitality and economic resiliency to take hold.

Healing and Wellness as Protection and Empowerment

Healing and wellness not only restore vitality to individuals, they also guard against unavoidable toxicity and the physical and mental strains of modern life. Local cultures of health are also empowering; no matter the income or status, everyone can find a role to play in helping regenerate their community . . . if nothing more than to be a consumer of as much local wellness as possible.

The Living Well Locally Vision: Regenerating America

The Living Well Locally vision stands on the conviction that healing and personal wellness are the most effective drivers of systemic change. While policy changes are needed at all levels, it is at the level of home and community that health and wellness can bring the most sustainable change in economic, social, and political systems, change that is more sustainable than top-down efforts. Why? Because those who have healed chronic disease become health-aware consumers who are also voters and advocates. Everything changes - values, incentives, outcomes - when consumers understand how to put health at the center of their lives. And when that activity begins in place-based communities, the synergy of regenerative methods has the power to heal - not just patients, but families, ecosystems, and local economies

Regenerative methods matter, synergy moves the needle, and community collaboration results in cultures of health where anyone can seek wellness.

One patient, one family, one community at a time . . . this is how America regenerates.

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To summarize Parts 1-5 of Health and The Economy: (1) Americans are too unaware of how environmental toxins from economic activity impact their health; (2) allopathic medicine adds to the separation of health from economy by not addressing the root causes of disease; (3) knowing the origins of disease is critical for any society’s long-term survival; (4) place-based healing with holistic medicine tells patients why they are sick, engages community, and offers America a pathway to resolving the health-economy separation; and (5) place-based personal wellness localizes food and medicine, allowing communities to take health as an economic strategy.

Part 6 compares two fundamentally different approaches to America’s chronic disease crisis: lifestyle-based medicine and medical biotechnology. And explores what each means for people, communities, and economy.

A CRISIS OF ADAPTATION

For most of human history, new tools and technologies arrived slowly enough that bodies, cultures, and ecosystems could adapt. In the last half-century, however, the pace of technological and economic change has outstripped biology’s ability to keep up. The evidence is written in rising rates of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, autoimmunity, neurodegeneration, and mental illness. These and other chronic diseases are seriously challenging humanity and America.

Slowing the pace of innovation to allow time for adaptation is unlikely, given that technology is a crucial driver of the economy, and medical biotechnology currently supplies mainstream healthcare with pharmaceutical interventions for chronic disease.

Chronic conditions now account for about 90% of the United States’ $4.9 trillion in annual health expenditures, nearly all of which are ultimately financed by households, employers, and taxpayers. Health care spending itself has grown into one of the country’s largest industries, consuming roughly 17–18% of GDP.

Put simply: poor health is now both a result of our economic model and a driver of its costs, debt, and instability.

At this point, the health of the American population has become an economic variable that begs consideration in the development of economic policy . . . including the medical approaches currently being used to treat chronic disease.

MEDICAL BIOTECHNOLOGY compared to LIFESTYLE-BASED MEDICINE

Medical biotechnology and lifestyle-based/root-cause medicine are fundamentally different approaches to chronic disease. Both are prevalent in America’s medical landscape. Biotech in mainstream, insurance-covered care, and lifestyle medicine largely in patient-selected, private-pay care.

Medical biotechnology creates high cost, high dependence. Since the 1970s, biotech has promised to repair damaged biology using tools like recombinant DNA, biopharmaceuticals, gene therapies, and vaccines. These are primarily allopathic tools: they target tumors, correct specific gene defects, modulate immune pathways, or compensate for insulin resistance.

Biotech has been hugely successful in acute and rare conditions—from curative gene therapies for some inherited blood diseases to advanced cancer drugs that can add years of life. But for the bulk of common chronic disease, biotech has mostly improved symptom control, not cause removal. Drugs can lower blood sugar, blood pressure, and inflammation; they cannot remove the ultra-processed diet, sedentary lifestyle, toxic exposures, and chronic stress that created the problem in the first place.

Economically, biotech requires heavy up-front investment from public and private capital for research, trials, and regulation. It produces high-value intellectual property and profitable therapies, often monopolized by a few firms, while channeling a large share of health-care dollars into the major drivers of rising costs: hospitals, specialty clinics, and pharmaceuticals.

This generates impressive corporate earnings and contributes to GDP, but also feeds public and private debt as governments, employers, and families struggle to pay for ever-more expensive care. It also continues the concentration of wealth upwards, increasing income inequality.

Biotechnology’s digital and infrastructure backbone, from data centers to wireless networks, also creates environmental externalities. For example, recent analyses estimate that air pollution from data centers alone has generated billions of dollars in U.S. health-related costs in just a few years. In this way, some of the same technological systems that support biotech also create additional health burdens and economic costs.

In short, medical biotechnology is a high-cost, technology-intensive management of poor health. Poor health caused, in large part, by economic activity that has failed to protect the health of humans and the environment.

Lifestyle-based medicine creates restored health for people, communities, and local ecosystems. Lifestyle-based medicine starts in a different place. When combined with therapies for resolving root causes, lifestyle medicine supports the body as a complex, self-healing system that breaks down when the inputs are wrong: ultra-processed foods, sedentary living, chronic stress, trauma, and continuous exposure to environmental toxins.

Rather than allopathically treating symptoms, lifestyle medicine seeks to understand the food, toxin, stress, and social patterns that are driving dysfunctional biology and to find ways to change them.

Evidence for this approach is no longer anecdotal. For instance:

• Dean Ornish’s Lifestyle Heart Trial showed that intensive lifestyle changes—plant-forward diet, exercise, stress management, and social support—could not only prevent but actually reverse coronary artery disease, with measurable improvements over time.

• Terry Wahls and others have shown that targeted nutrition and lifestyle protocols can significantly improve quality of life and sometime achieve reversal in people with multiple sclerosis and related neurological conditions.

• Dale Bredesen’s work on reversal of cognitive decline is now in clinical trials using a precision medicine approach that identifies multiple pathways for dementia and applies appropriate lifestyle and root cause therapies.
  

Going a step further, when lifestyle medicine is place-based and paired with regenerative local farms, healing homes, and community support, it produces a very different pattern of economic and environmental effects; it regenerates local economies, repairs ecosystems, and creates cultures of health as the side benefits of healing chronic disease.

Other side benefits of place-based, lifestyle medicine include sustainable local jobs in wellness enterprises, cleaner air and water, and more citizens who understand the root causes of disease. Such consumer and voter awareness is key to effective, market-based regulation and to helping government create health-informed policies. Overall, populations that understand the root causes of illness are better equipped to vote, organize, and govern for long-term well-being. As well as a more resilient democracy.

SUMMARY: Biotech-based medicine and lifestyle-based medicine are fundamentally different.

Both approaches require research, training, and supportive policy. Both can save lives. But their side-effects and side-benefits for the economy and society diverge sharply.

Biotech medicine is centralized, capital-intensive, and IP-driven; its solutions are manufactured in labs and applied in clinics and hospitals; its management of chronic disease symptoms results in long-term demand for products; its economic value flows upward to corporations, investors, and large healthcare systems; and, because of its largely allopathic approach, biotech has created debt for families, employers, and governments.

Lifestyle medicine (when place-based) relies on homes, farms, local clinics, and community; reduces and reverses chronic disease; shrinks the long-term demand for high-cost interventions; circulates economic value locally through food systems and wellness services; protects the body’s ability to self-heal; and regenerates soils and ecosystems.

Overall, biotech medicine tends to centralize power and cost, leaving citizens dependent on distant institutions and public policies. Place-based lifestyle medicine tends to build local capacity by increasing individual and community control over health that is anchored in everyday practices and locally produced goods and services.

However, the question is not “biotech or lifestyle?” But rather what balance we choose and what outcomes we value most.

Part 7 of “Health and The Economy”, asks the question: “Can biotech medicine and lifestyle medicine work together?”

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Here in Part 5, we take a closer look at how personal healing encourages local food and local medicine and allows communities to take ‘health as an economic strategy’.

In a previous post, Alison posed the question, ‘What’s Missing from Local Economic Development?” and looked at research from The Blue Zone Project where three American cities raised their wellbeing scores by taking an intentional community focus on health. Social engagement around a shared goal became the driving factor for success.

In this post we explore how personal healing with lifestyle-based medicine fosters community wellbeing and enables communities to take health as an economic strategy. By supporting holistic practitioners, local farms, healthy food vendors and cottage industries making healthy products, communities can keep more consumer dollars circulating locally, strengthening and boosting the local economy.

By personal healing we refer to going beyond managing chronic disease to actually reversing it with lifestyle change, clean environments, and personalized protocols that address root causes. This requires patients to actively engage in the healing process with a lifestyle-based practitioner and nutrient-dense real food as the foundation for reversing metabolic dysfunction. Examples of verified reversal exist for many conditions; so far, we have written about heart disease, autoimmunity, and brain disorders. Each of which employs lifestyle, food, and root cause resolution.

When patients and their families experience real recovery from a chronic condition, or even sustained improvement, by using food and lifestyle change, they become consumers of healthy foods and natural products whose quality can best be produced by smaller scale farms and businesses. Regenerative farms selling locally are ideal for producing nutrient-dense, toxin-free foods that are freshest and healthiest when long distances and early picking times can be avoided. Independent, small businesses are ideal structures for ancillary wellness services and makers of nontoxic products. Both create jobs within the local area.

Holistic, lifestyle-based clinics create demand for community herbalists, real foods cooks, farmers markets, fresh food kitchens and restaurants, native plant nurseries, orchards, compost making, healthy home consultants, natural personal and home care products, and more. The list really extends to almost everything that surrounds us in daily life: clothing, home furnishings, kitchen wares. Synthetic clothing and infertility, fire retardants and endocrine disruption, aluminum cookware and neurotoxicity are but a few examples. Not all goods can be made locally, but many can.

Unlike jobs in today’s massive healthcare and food industries, the proximity of localized food and medicine creates personal engagement, effective feedback loops, and local cultures of health that grow to surround everyone.

To make place-based healing a reality, however, requires more than a vision. Awareness, time, and intention are needed, and this is where the promise of rebuilding local economics brings in another key player - the local economic developer whose focus is to bring jobs to the community. Place-based healing can do this. It’s not a factory with 100 jobs at once, but neither is wellness likely to remove 100 jobs when technology evolves, or supply chains are disrupted. Food and medicine are essentials of daily life and as such are sustained economic sectors.

Consider this simple idea: products and services for health and wellness create businesses and jobs just as any product or service does. As health-conscious consumers increase in number, health-aware businesses also increase in number, organically revamping the economy away from toxicity and toward healthy consumption. This is America’s free enterprise system working at its best.

If the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Commission is supported in its efforts to uncover root causes of autism and chronic disease, its work will increase health awareness from the national level. The forces against this, however, are powerful; healthcare, agriculture, and food are massive, corporatized industries with huge profits at stake. Understanding the causes of chronic disease will threaten these industries and some are already sending lobbyists and political influences against MAHA’s efforts.

Health-literate consumers and voters are the counterbalance against these powerful forces. As families choose medicine that can reverse chronic conditions, as they support their loved ones through healing journeys, health literacy grows. At some point, the power of knowing why we are sick will overtake the power of vested interests. The collective force of consumers and voters who buy and vote for health will gradually shift food and medicine into regenerative methods. Why? Because these are the methods that do no harm, these are the methods that multiply benefits instead of accumulating side effects. Because these are the methods that heal people and land and local economies.

Living Well Locally suggests that reversing chronic disease is the change agent that could eventually localize significant portions of food and medicine, making ‘health as an economic strategy’ at the community level entirely possible. Might we then see the national separation between health and economy reduced, at least to where neither endangers the other?

Relying on consumers and voters to create a healthier world may not sound simple, and it will not be fast. But as a process based on markets and democracy it is perfect for America.

Place-based healing of chronic disease will disrupt society, economy, and culture as we currently know them . . . but slowly and not nearly as costly or disruptive as most technological change. “The Beauty of Slow: Lifestyle vs Technology” becomes Part 6 in our series on health and the economy.

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In Part 4, we begin describing ‘place-based healing ’ and how it raises awareness about the root causes of disease among patients, families, and communities.

Living Well Locally envisions place-based communities as the most logical and effective place to address America’s chronic disease epidemic. Why? Because most elements needed for healing are found in our homes and communities. This is also where the synergy between lifestyle medicine and regenerative food systems can be coupled with social connection and clean environments for the most effective support of the healing process. As side benefits, whether rural community or urban neighborhood, the ripple effects of healing can help create resilient local economies, restored ecosystems, and cultures of health that surround everyone. See The Best of Living Well Locally.

In times past, all medicine was place-based, taken from the local environment, and applied by community herbalists and other healers using various practices. Tomorrow’s place-based healing, however, will require a significant upgrade to address modern environments and complex chronic diseases, as well as interface with new technologies such as artificial intelligence.

Place-based healing is the opposite of today’s mainstream healthcare where standard-of-care protocols are centralized in government agencies, delivered by corporate healthcare entities, supplied therapeutics from global biotech firms, and reimbursed by an increasingly complex insurance industry. The origins and controllers of modern healthcare lie far from the places where we live.

Place-based healing could not be more different. Community-centered healthcare, as we envision it, focuses on healing chronic disease with lifestyle changes, clean environments, natural therapies, and resolution of root causes. Its ‘food as medicine’ foundation requires a supply of nutrient-dense, toxin-free foods, preferably fresh from local farms. This type of food quality is only made possible by the new methods of regenerative farming, as distinct from the agrochemical methods of large industrial farms that grow for export, livestock feed, and the processed food industry.

In addition to reducing chronic disease, Living Well Locally predicts that place-based healing will have a slow but progressively positive effect on the American economy, environment, and health systems, and will return control over food and medicine to families and communities.

For several decades, a growing number of American consumers have been supporting a paradigm shift to organic farming and holistic medicine. By living healthier lifestyles and buying nontoxic goods and services, these ‘alternatives’ have moved closer to the mainstream and are no longer considered merely fringe efforts.

Making the alternatives in food and medicine place-based is the next step.

The success of lifestyle-based medicine is helping us see that many elements essential to healing are found in our homes and communities: daily routines, food, environment, physical activities, social support and engagement - elements that require patient participation and help both patients and families learn to take more control over their lives and health.

Resolving chronic disease, however, often takes more than lifestyle change. Clinicians typically have to go beyond food and lifestyle to address ‘root causes’ for full healing. Major conditions such as heart disease, dementia, autoimmunity and more are responding positively to Functional, Environmental, Bioenergetic and other lifestyle-based medical systems. It is in these alternatives to drug-based, allopathic medicine that extensive health histories are being combined with special diagnostics to find root causes and to allow the personalization of protocols. The ability to individually address each patient’s disease state, rather than applying a standard-of-care protocol, is proving important to fully resolving health issues. And to preventing their return.

When these alternative medical systems become more widely available and insurance reimbursed, America will have found a solution to its costly chronic disease crisis. Even infectious disease will be less threatening to a healthy population, especially when biodiversity in local ecosystems is increased by regenerative farms. The side benefits are many when lifestyle, clean environments, nutrient-dense foods and resolution of root causes are used to heal chronic disease.

Whether food allergies, nutrient deficiencies, heavy metals, chemicals, emotions, trauma or any one of many reasons for poor health, knowing causative factors is key to resolving disease states. And to creating the awareness that helps patients and families live healthier lives. Such awareness also helps communities address the causes of poor health on a larger scale, e.g. toxic waste dumps, poor school meals, pesticide spraying, remediating radiation sources, and more.

When the clinics, homes, and fields of the communities where we live can provide natural healing in clinics, healthy daily routines in homes, and nutrient-dense foods from farmers’ fields, it becomes possible to resolve chronic disease. It also means that lifestyle-based primary care can prevent chronic disease from developing, reduce extensive and expensive end-of-life care, and reduce America’s healthcare burden.

All of the above can be accomplished with what America already knows how to do. The challenge is to help more people believe that healing is possible and to effect policy changes that support regenerative farming and lifestyle medicine.

The challenge for place-based healing is that its two most essential elements, food and medicine, have become largely corporatized, global, and based on methods that have led to costly healthcare, damaged soils, and poor food quality. Emerging regenerative methods, on the other hand, are proving to be healing of people and land. We have learned the hard way that method matters, and this awareness is motivating consumers, practitioners, and farmers to adopt new methods. Methods that make place-based healing not only possible but practical and highly effective.

The question now becomes: if America moves to place-based healing, how might this impact our country’s long-standing separation between health and economy? The answer: increased awareness. Successful healing of chronic conditions creates patient awareness, which translates into consumer and voter awareness and places health into buying choices, voting preferences, and the activism that creates a healthier America. Health in the marketplace changes business; in the voting booth health changes government and policy.

Now that the Make America Healthy Again Commission is focusing the country’s attention on both unhealthy food and overmedicalization of children (could the polypharmacy of adults be next?), public awareness of the root causes of disease will increase.

If the Commission, backed by a growing MAHA health advocacy movement, is allowed to shed real light on the origins of disease, this could become a time when America steps onto a new path. Place-based healing could be that path, one that serves the health of people, environment, and economy equally well.

In addition to awareness and time, the localization of food and medicine also needs intention. That becomes Part 5 in our series on health and the economy. “Health as Economic Strategy” brings in more players at the local level to join farmers, practitioners, patients, and consumers in making place-based healing a reality.

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In Part 3, we underscore society’s need to understand the origins of disease, and what happens if those origins, which we also called root causes, are not uncovered and addressed.

In the 1930’s, gold prospectors found an estimated one million tribespeople living in the Papua New Guinea highlands. By the 1950’s when researchers made their way to the villages, a fatal neurological disease was killing almost 200 women and young children, mostly girls, every year. The Fore, a tribe of 11,000, called the disease kuru, which means "shivering" or "trembling", and thought it was caused by sorcery. In some villages, there were almost no young women left, and the tribe was facing extinction. After ruling out contaminants and genetics, researchers discovered the source of kuru was a cultural practice in which women, as an act of love and grief, prepared and ate the brains of their dead, giving small bites to their young children, usually girls who had not gone to join the men’s groups as the boys had. Finding the cause of the sickness meant the tribe had also found a solution and were able to reverse their population decline.

America needs to know the causes of our epidemic of autism and persistently high chronic disease. Despite billions adding up to trillions of dollars spent on medical research over decades, knowing the causes of our costly and painful diseases has, for the most part, eluded mainstream medical science. In 1971, for example, America began its ‘war on cancer’ and committed funding for medical research to ‘find a cure’. Still today when a patient completes chemo and radiation, they know little about what caused their cancer in the first place.

Americans know that healthy diet, exercise and reduced stress help prevent illness, but we need to more. We need to find causative factors and use this knowledge to change our health for the long term. When finding cures does not include finding the things we can change, then disease continues.

Thankfully, there are American researchers and clinicians developing richly textured understandings of complex disease processes. The most successful protocols are the ones that include removing root causes. Let’s examine what is happening with one of the world’s most debilitating and costly conditions - Alzheimer’s Disease. Having identified more than 36 factors influencing ‘downsizing’ in the brain, Dr. Dale Bredesen’s work is now in clinical trials exploring the reversal of early-stage Alzheimer’s. After three decades of researching, clinically proving, and publishing patient success stories, his search for the multiple causes of this complex disease is providing hope for patients and families. Addressing “all 36 holes in the roof” is not as easy as taking a drug, but if this is what actually makes disease reversal possible and provides better overall health at the same time, then America has a way to eventually stand down a terrible and costly condition.

While not as simple as stopping the one cultural practice that was causing kuru, the principle remains the same: the origins of disease matter, and illness is not completely reversed until we address all ‘36 holes’.

Addressing root causes results in a healthier, more productive society that better understands how to keep itself well. And, as written about previously, healthier people make a healthier and less indebted nation.

For some decades now, America’s private sector has been supporting and evolving holistic alternatives to allopathic care. (See: The Many Faces of American Medicine and Resources) Given modern challenges from ultra-processed foods, loss of home caregivers, microplastics, social isolation, heavy metal and chemical pollution, wireless radiation, digital capture, and more, reversing chronic disease with holistic, lifestyle-based medicine is a major accomplishment both for medicine and for the patients who invest in changing the way they live daily life.

The origins of disease in America are by no means as clear-cut as the single cultural practice causing kuru among the Fore tribe in Papua New Guinea. But the wide array of medical approaches that are evolving and being honed to address our country’s deepening epidemic of chronic disease is heartening. As are the prospects for positive social, environmental, and economic change that come with understanding why we are sick and having real motivation to change the way we live. Curing cancer changes culture. And vice versa.

As MAGA races to boost the economy, sources of pollution will no doubt multiply and add to MAHA’s challenge of sorting out the root causes of illness, as well as our challenge of removing them.

Learning the origins of disease is huge, healing disease is powerful and changemaking. The privileged role of medicine is to shepherd humanity through this critical time. And we as citizens will be not just be witnessing change, as patients we have a starring role in Making America Healthy Again.

How does our country move from managing disease with allopathic healthcare to resolving its root causes? In Part 4, Living Well Locally suggests a way.

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In Part 1 of this economy and health series, we focused on the tragic blind spot America seems to have about toxicants and health, especially in everyday life. Here in Part 2, we explore the separation of health from economic activity in the presence of allopathic medical care.

Leaders from the fossil fuels, nuclear, and auto industries came together at the White House in mid-June 2025 to hear the latest developments in the Trump administration's strategy to Make America Great Again (MAGA). MAGA sees America’s path to greatness as rebuilding industry and leading in new technologies. This means aggressively boosting energy supplies, including for AI data centers which require massive amounts of electricity and water. This in turn means relaxing, removing or ignoring government regulations meant to curb the negative environmental impacts of industry, especially fossil fuel production.

Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) is the movement that brought Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. into his role as Health and Human Services Secretary under President Trump and is now officially The MAHA Commission. MAHA seeks to address our country’s health crisis by disrupting corporate influence over federal agencies and identifying the root causes of chronic disease - many of which come from the products and services generated during economic activity.

In May 2025, the MAHA Commission’s first report highlighted factors negatively affecting children’s health: 1) ultra-processed foods, 2) the cumulative load of chemicals, 3) the digital age and physical decline, 4) overmedicalization of children, and 5) scientific integrity and corporate influence. The first four of these are directly related to the products of economic activity.

Are health and economy on a collision course? Will the high visibility of MAGA and MAHA help America find a way to blend these essential human activities into something better than we have today?

Historically, the separation between economy and health goes back to our country’s beginning. Although government invested early on in public health and spends heavily today on medical research, disease treatment has always been the purview of privatized medicine.

Today, by definition, modern healthcare is the allopathic treatment of disease, primarily with pharmaceuticals and surgical interventions. This is in contrast to alternative practices (e.g. functional, holistic, regenerative, energy medicine) which seek to support the body-mind-spirit’s natural self-healing ability when at all possible. This includes nutritional support, natural therapies, and finding and removing the root causes of illness.

What is important to point out is that mainstream, insurance-reimbursed healthcare focuses on determining a diagnosis and prescribing a drug treatment, including ongoing drug management as needed. The term ‘allopathic’, as often applied to this type of medicine, has come to mean treatment of symptoms rather than identification of causes.

This approach has not served America well when it comes to connecting the dots between economic activity and chronic disease. As long as a society does not understand the origins of the diseases that plague it, health and economy will remain separate strategies.

Patients who are treated allopathically for asthma, cancer, dementia or any number of chronic conditions cannot be told how to protect themselves from recurring illness when they are not screened for causative factors. Practically speaking, this translates into not knowing how to live or buy wisely to prevent harm and stay well.

Thus, people become sicker, healthcare expands (from 5% of GDP in the 1960’s to almost 18% today), and government pays more for research, treatment, end-of-life care, social dysfunctions, and more. Another little considered impact of patients not knowing why they are sick is that the marketplace (i.e. consumers) cannot give business the feedback it needs to make safer products.

Arguably, America’s separation of health from economy - in the presence of allopathic medicine - has brought us to where we are today: high chronic disease, an unsustainable federal deficit, rising societal costs of unhealthy people, and a future dependent on children who are suffering highest levels of anxiety, depression, autism, obesity, and more. (The American Academy of Pediatrics calls children’s mental health an epidemic.)

America needs solutions to its health crises. Since biotech cures for disease do little to uncover the reasons for sickness, and because we know much of chronic disease is tied to the way we live (i.e. diet, lifestyle, environment), we must ask ourselves if ‘inventing our way to wellness’ is even possible.

To be well, we must know what in our environment and our way of life needs to change. This is where MAHA’s search for root causes has much to offer. And when coupled with lifestyle-based medicine and personalize treatment protocols that give patients specific knowledge of why they are sick and how to heal, we as patients, consumers, citizens, and voters are making real progress in understanding what needs to change.

As more Americans take awareness of why they are sick - not just generally but specifically - into the marketplace and the voting booth, they create change at multiple levels. And they do so aside from any corporate capture of regulatory agencies.

Freedom of choice also plays an important role in making America healthy. It means that patients and people seeking wellness can support medicine that heals, real foods from farmers who restore healthy soils, and cultures of health that sustain local wellness economies.

This is how a free country puts its ingenuity, innovation and small businesses to work healing its people, communities, and local economies. This is also how democracy and capitalism at their best create a healthy humanity and a peaceful world.

To be fair, modern allopathic healthcare is highly skilled in acute and rehabilitative care. Yet, in the treatment and reversal of chronic conditions it falls short. In failing to address root causes, allopathic medicine allows illness to deepen, often creates interference with the body’s natural ability to heal, and leads to a generally unhealthy population over time. Unhealthy people cost the government more in multiple ways, adding to the federal deficit and ultimately increasing the need for an economy that produces more.

Is America on the ‘economic growth’ treadmill with no way to get off?

What happens if Americans learn about root causes of disease and decide to get healthy? Of course, it would cost government less in multiple ways. But the big question is this: Could it eventually change the ‘economic-growth-to-pay-down-debt’ pressures MAGA currently faces?

Allowing more pollutants into air and water, failing to adequately promote regenerative farming practices, supporting digital and wireless technologies that do not consider their harm to human health - these are each serious concerns that seem hard to address when growing the economy is critical to reducing America’s debt, providing jobs, and meeting government’s many obligations - healthcare, defense, entitlements, infrastructure needs, and so much more.

It’s hard to get a handle on prevention in the middle of a crisis. America’s current debt, poor health and overspending have us continuing to rely on boosting economic output. Whether through new technology, weaponry for war, or back shifting to gas cars, MAGA’s current strategy, although deemed necessary by most, is keeping us on a path that has yet to solve the basic problem: the costs of poor human health and how it undermines freedom and sovereignty on both personal and national levels.

Poor health causes decay in even the greatest of nations.

Chronic disease in an allopathic healthcare system also shifts wealth upward, concentrating it to the owners of the technologies we hope will save us, while doing little to solve economic inequities and the outsized political influence of wealthy elites.

How long can we continue to ignore the expensive dilemma of separating health from economy?

Real solutions begin with correctly naming the problem and understanding its causes. As the high-profile work of MAGA and MAHA moves forward, America will have a never-before opportunity to explore the harm caused by the separation of health from economy. As harmful economic activity meets consumers and voters who are more aware of root causes, the changes they seek with their dollars and votes could bring health and economy closer together. The marketplace and voting booth could become stronger players in guiding business, industry, and government. We could even be entering a new era where American ingenuity is placed as much in service to health as it is to economy.

Living Well Locally seeks to explore a way out of this economy versus health dilemma and perhaps even off the economic-growth-at-all-costs treadmill. In Part 3 of our “Health and the Economy” series we explore what place-based wellness brings to the table.

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In any case, America is an expensive country to run, develop, defend and maintain. And while most efforts to bring the debt under control have focused on boosting the economy and cutting government spending, neither has succeeded in taming a runaway deficit. We are simply continuing to spend more than we have.

While economics, finance, and bond markets are beyond our expertise, there is one idea Living Well Locally wants to offer: ‘healthy people cost less.’

The public costs of an unhealthy population are massive, and today America is paying dearly in higher healthcare costs, addiction, crime, mental illness, lost productivity, disability, stressed families, children who cannot learn, exploding end-of-life care . . . the list goes on.

This truth is captured again in the ten top functional categories of our national budget: Social Security ($1,354 billion), Health ($889 billion), Medicare ($848 billion), National Defense ($820 billion), Income Security ($775 billion), Net Interest ($658 billion), Veterans Benefits and Services ($302 billion), Transportation ($126 billion), Commerce and Housing Credit ($101 billion), Community and Regional Development ($87 billion). It has been estimated that as much as 51% of the population receives more from government than they pay or have paid in to government coffers.

While many hard-working Americans want to call some around them ‘lazy’ for not holding jobs, a closer truth may be that growing numbers of Americans are sick and/or disabled, unqualified and/or under-skilled, or among the many who must care for a parent or spouse or child with chronic illness.

Poor health has a way of seeping into everything our country knows and values. And then becoming something we need government and/or medicine to fix.

Fixing poor health is not easy when mainstream medicine is allopathic, something we have written about often. And when primary care cannot fix the root causes of simple ailments, those ailments become chronic, deeper, and more expensive. Healthcare costs are now the second and third major categories in the federal budget.

It is with this in mind that Living Well Locally offers the idea that wellness will make a difference, that wellness will offer the hope that our country needs for renewal, for unity, and for solving a very serious debt crisis.

Yes, it will take time for Americans to become well. But we begin by continuing to identify the problems (e.g. the MAHA movement), understanding how wellness benefits issues beyond health itself, and increasing public awareness and hope for what is now possible with medicine that heals.

If we are patient and able to focus on building the regenerative infrastructure that is needed for healing, we will, at the same time, rebuild America’s local communities and neighborhoods, put healthy, real food on American tables, and clean the air we breathe and the water we drink.

Along the way, we will have to deal with the powerful interests invested in the current paradigm of allopathic medicine and chemical agriculture, and we must be willing to undergo the economic shifts that will eventually bring place-based wellness into existence. We will come to think of wellness in a new way, not as a product or prescription or even a therapy but as the things we do in everyday life. Wellness will become the things we take responsibility for with little conscious effort . . . eventually.

Because it’s hard to do wellness alone, especially in a culture rampant with poor food and distractions, the early phases of place-based wellness may be the hardest. But as more lifestyle practitioners help more people understand why they are sick, and more regenerative farmers grow real food for local consumers, supporting each other in healing may provide the best medicine of all - purpose. We will then find ourselves evolving the local ‘cultures of health’ that make it much easier for everyone to find wellness.

Wellness is not a quick fix for America’s spiraling debt. But it is a reliable and sustainable one. And its side benefits are the perfect antidote to our current state of living allopathically.

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Poor diet. No exercise. Smoking. Insomnia. We know these things are harmful. Yet, despite decades of research confirming damage to human health, environmental toxins and toxicants have not made this list. Not for most Americans in everyday life.

How many times in a day do we expose ourselves to toxicity? Constantly.

Do patients with dementia or cancer or diabetes understand which environmental toxins contributed to their disease? Usually not.

Can we create safe environments when we don’t understand the causes of illness? No, how could we?

Are the environments our infants are born into toxic? Yes, very.

Are environmental toxicants changing the human species? Yes, but we don’t talk about it.

By strict definition, ‘toxins’ are naturally occurring elements such as pathogens, fungus/mold, radon, geopathic stress, poisonous plants, animals, and minerals.

‘Toxicants’ are man-made elements: heavy metals and chemicals, plastics and nanoparticles, radiation and electro-pollutants. Toxicants are ubiquitous in cosmetics, household cleaners, processed foods (and even on fresh produce as pesticide residues), coatings on food containers (think microwave popcorn), synthetics in clothing, beds, couches and carpets, cell phones, computers, and “smart” devices in homes, hospitals, and offices, including in personal equipment such as wearables for monitoring health. Even baby monitors.

Human life on planet Earth in the 21st century is a daily swim through toxicants that are known to be harmful to human biology and function. Modern societies have heavier burdens of toxicants, yet no place is completely free of harm. Now that satellite-based wireless technologies, pharmaceuticals, and processed foods have reached most corners of the globe, even largely indigenous societies are affected.

When not properly understood, environmental toxins and toxicants affect more than acute and chronic disease. They eventually impact the functioning of family and society. Then economics, politics, and culture.

So, how are we dealing with toxicity in America? How do we pull together all that we know and eliminate or lessen the harm? We have made some progress with finding non-toxic alternatives, yet too many Americans still live embedded in toxic harm. Despite, ironically, some of the most strident environmental regulations on the planet.

A key quest of science is to determine the impacts of toxicity. The purpose of medicine is to heal from the damages. The responsibility of government is to protect the public from undo harm. But the goal of the private sector is to make a profit on the goods and services that consumers desire.

What if science and the media get even louder about this issue? What if medicine - let’s say your primary care physician or pediatrician - explains how toxicants contribute to disease? What if public health officials provide a list of common household toxicants? What if regulatory agencies were not so influenced by lobbyists and industry? What if enough consumers become aware of toxicants to shift the demand to ‘clean’ and ‘non-toxic’? Could the marketplace be a better way to move industry away from toxicants than ineffective regulations or NGO advocacy?

When science, medicine, government, and industry operate without an integrated vision for how to enhance health and reduce harm, too many products of industry work against us rather than for us. Without wellness as an agreed upon goal of society and in all academic disciplines, we live at the mercy of what we ourselves create.

Toxicity is a large topic and the questions that need to be asked are also large: How could an advanced country like America walk so deeply into toxicity? Why has mainstream medicine remained so silent on the problem? How can we change the impact of toxicity on chronic disease? What happens if we don’t?

Make America Great Again (MAGA) defines ‘greatness’ as rebuilding industry and taking the lead in new technologies such as AI and bitcoin. Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) defines ‘healthy’ as finding and changing the root causes of chronic disease, including such things as chemicals in the food supply, environmental toxicants in air and water, and over-medication in the management of sickness.

Perhaps unwittingly, MAGA and MAHA are publicly poised to confront America’s long-standing conflict between economy and health. In Part 2 we discuss how allopathic medicine has added to the problem.

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Speaking to an audience in West Virginia on March 28, 2025, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr announced new SNAP waivers and pointed to that state as being the first to enact new laws banning food dyes.

West Virginia recently pulled ahead of Mississippi as the state with the highest rates of obesity and chronic disease. Governor Patrick Morrisey, present on the podium, was called a visionary leader for taking the lead on dealing with America’s processed food addiction. (And for personally engaging in weight loss . . . with Kennedy as his personal trainer - laughter.)

The impact of chronic disease, the Secretary noted, is significant - “It is bankrupting our country”. Diabetes alone costs more than our military budget; chronic disease is the largest contributor to America’s debt; and, given our current trajectory, in ten years half of every taxpayer dollar will go to service the debt; in 15 years, 100%. “It’s not sustainable. It’s an existential threat. If you love our country, you’ve got to take care of yourself.”

Living Well Locally affirms Secretary Kennedy’s advice to love our country by taking good care of ourselves. How else can we heal the chronic disease epidemic? How else can we solve the debt crisis? How else can we make America healthy and strong again?

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Across America, many users of the weedkiller glyphosate (once the active ingredient in Roundup) have sued for damages to their health. The number of cases and the verdicts in favor of plaintiffs have been huge: about 170,000 cases have been filed, with 23 Roundup trials in court so far. The largest award happened in January 2024 in a Monsanto case: $2.25 billion was awarded to a man in Philadelphia but was reduced by the judge to $400 million.

The first verdict in favor of a plaintiff was in 2018 for a school janitor with non-Hodgkins Lymphoma whose job required him to control weeds, including on the playground. The latest verdict was to a man in Georgia for $2.1 billion: $65 million compensatory, $2 billion punitive. While the EPA has its approval of the weedkiller under review, Monsanto still claims it is not carcinogenic. The punitive damages awarded by the courts are based on evidence that Monsanto concealed known dangers. The company will appeal this recent ruling.

Recognizing a renewed need to protect itself, the pesticide industry began a new strategy in 2024 to get state legislatures to pass bills that prevent consumers from being able to sue. A history and recent analysis of this issue can be found here. Although vaccine makers sought and won liability from congress in the mid-1980’s, pesticide makers, perhaps because of a new administration at HHS and EPA, have turned to the states.

Known as “pesticide liability protection”, the state bills vary in detail but generally are intended to protect pesticide makers (and usually sellers) whose products have EPA approval. The strategy began in Florida, Idaho, Iowa, and Missouri in 2024, and expanded this year to include Mississippi and Wyoming as of late January 2025. Others will likely be added.

As a humid, agricultural state where everything wants to grow, especially weeds, Mississippi is highly dependent on pesticide use. Although the state’s HB 1221 died in committee two weeks after being introduced, it’s reintroduction in 2026 is likely.

Because three federal district courts have issued rulings that see this issue differently, pesticide liability will likely go to the Supreme Court. But that will take time, the legal details are complex, and we don’t know what the final verdict will be.

From gardens and roadsides to school playgrounds and parks, we have long used glyphosate as a weedkiller. But large-volume use, of course, has been in agriculture, especially for commodity crops like corn and soy, important for their use in feedlots, pet food, processed foods, and, of course, as exports.

Three recognized human health concerns with pesticides are: 1) their ability to mimic hormones, thus the term ‘hormone or endocrine disruption’; 2) impact on the gut microbiome leading to ‘metabolic dysfunction’; and 3) impacts on the nervous system and IQ development.

Now, however, there is good news: 1) regenerative farming practices avoid pesticides, 2) the most nutritious beef is that which goes from diverse pasture forages to market without a stop at the feedlot, and 3) consumers of highly processed foods are becoming savvier about harms to health. With time, growing awareness and changes in methods and buying preferences will greatly reduce pesticide use.

Still, current dependence on the use of pesticides, the profits made from pesticide sales, and the awards being made by the courts all indicate that pesticide makers will continue to seek protection in some form, likely from the states.

As consumers we have a huge role to play in what happens with the future of all pesticides: we can personally choose to use nontoxic products and practices in gardens, lawns, and in our homes; we can encourage our agricultural colleges and local Extension Service to promote regenerative methods in gardening, farming, and household pest control; we can ask our state legislators to vote ‘NO’ on any pesticide liability protection; and we can take any action that lets all elected officials know that we want a cleaner environment.

Yet, pesticides are just one environmental toxin out of the many that flow into America’s air, water, food, ecosystems, homes, and workplaces on a daily basis. Now that federal health authorities are promising ‘gold standard science’ to understand the root causes of chronic disease, and ‘root cause medicine’ is moving toward the mainstream, America’s chance of overcoming the costliest item in the federal budget - healthcare - is improving.

Even if you already know how to avoid toxic products, many persons around you still may not. This means harmful products and services will remain on the market until more consumers, farmers, policymakers, health practitioners, and educators make the changes needed to reduce their use.

In reality, it will take changes in the way we think about and live our everyday lives to create a safe environment for humans and the planet. Which is what the vision of Living Well Locally is all about.

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There is no lack of wellness information available on the web; the challenge is to sort out what is useful from what is not. These two resources are worth checking into as they may fit your wellness needs and interests.

First: Regenerate Yourself Masterclass is free and online, March 17-23, 2025. The material is curated by GreenMedInfo founder, Sayer Ji, who also wrote Regenerate Yourself (2020). GreenMedInfo.com houses an extensive database of research on natural substances and drugless healing. In the masterclass, Sayer Ji and presenters focus on what is currently known about regenerating body systems and organs. “By listening to and trusting the innate intelligence of our bodies, we can all look and feel healthier, stave off life-threatening chronic diseases and strive towards living vibrant long lives.” The goal is to help us take more control of our health destiny for the long term. Some of this material can also be found anytime online for free.

Second: From the world of energy medicine: Dr. Bradley Nelson, DC, offers a holistic healing system designed to identify and correct different types of energetic imbalances in the body’s biofield, e.g. the trapped emotions that often underlie physical conditions. Practitioners are certified in The Emotion Code, The Body Code, and The Belief Code, although a dedicated DIYer can self-learn and self-apply the techniques using Dr. Nelson’s books and videos. Find more on Dr. Nelson’s website or through an online search.

On the day of his swearing in as Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. said in an interview: “When we get up in the morning, the question to ask ourselves is, ‘What can I do to help?’” This pulls forward from history another famous request made by his uncle, President John F. Kennedy, “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”

Only if Americans are able to think this way will we truly be able to conquer the disease epidemic and reclaim the health of our children. Secretary Kennedy promises a refocusing of research and health policy at the national level, and this will go a long way toward better health. But can research and policy alone make us well? Government can do many things, but even its best work can only go so far.

It will be up to us as consumers, parents, and patients to do the daily work of taking care of ourselves, our families and our communities. This is our personal role in MAHA.

The announcement of the President’s MAHA Commission noted: “Overall, the global comparison data demonstrates that the health of Americans is on an alarming trajectory that requires immediate action”. In late 2025, the Commission will deliver its report on the root causes of America’s escalating health crisis. In his welcome remarks to HHS staff, Secretary Kennedy noted disease statistics and declared that all potential causes are up for review, from food ingredients and electromagnetic radiation to health policies and the “over-utilization of medication”. (Given as examples of the latter are selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), antipsychotic drugs, mood stabilizers, stimulants, and weight-loss drugs.)

Healthcare contributes $3.5 trillion to the American economy (ahead of 9 other developed countries), yet our health is still declining. Can America be truly great if the health of our population continues to decline?

In remarks made directly to the American people, Secretary Kennedy said: “After we get clear on the causes of chronic disease, we are going to take action to reverse it. I know that many of you have lost hope. I know that many of you take these chronic conditions as a normal part of life. Well, it doesn’t have to be that way. I know that because it wasn’t that way when I was a kid, and it doesn’t have to be that way tomorrow.”

Now that HHS is prioritizing and actively focused on the causes of disease, we will all be more empowered to take control of our health. So, “What can (we) do to help?” Selfcare may just be the most patriotic answer we can give.

Jn February 2024, Living Well Locally posted “The Many Faces of American Medicine”, the first in a series exploring holistic medicine and natural modalities that fit well at the local level, with an emphasis on those that support the rebuilding of local economies around the wellness needs of the local population. So far, we’ve covered Functional Medicine and Naturopathy.

Yesterday's premiering of a new film, “Introducing Homeopathy”, provides an opportunity to showcase another holistic alternative, one that also fits well at the local level because it can be offered by independent practitioners, carried in local pharmacies, and, for dedicated DIYers, even made in home kitchens from locally available ingredients.

The history of homeopathy in America is a fascinating story. By 1900 there were 22 homeopathic medical schools, more than 100 homeopathic hospitals . . . and 1,000+ homeopathic pharmacies in the U.S. Although homeopathy declined with the advent of (and pressures from) pharmaceutical medicine, it is still alive and growing in use.

“Introducing Homeopathy” is well worth watching, especially for anyone seeking help with illness unresolved by conventional medicine and by those seeking to build a pathway to wellness that honors the body-mind-spirit’s ability to self-heal.

There may never be a more critical time than now to speak up for children, nor a more non-partisan issue than their failing health. By using our voices to policymakers and spending our consumer dollars wisely, each of us can help shape more protective policies for children and encourage healthier products in the marketplace.

Here we focus on protective policies for children.

Our senators will be voting this week on whether Robert F. Kennedy, Jr will head the Department of Health and Human services. The questions asked of him in two confirmation hearings focused largely on vaccines and abortion, two politically charged issues. Vaccine questions dominated both hearings.

Some senators believe vaccines are essential to saving lives; others believe vaccines are being overused and may have become harmful to their health overall. Studies of vaccinated versus unvaccinated children are just emerging, with a 2020 study concluding that “A thorough evaluation of vaccinated versus unvaccinated populations is essential to understanding the full spectrum of health effects associated with specific vaccines and the childhood vaccine schedule in totality.” It will take time and more objective science to sort out whether unvaccinated children are actually healthier, as the 2020 study suggested.

One of America’s greatest strengths is our freedom to speak up about things we feel are important. From slavery and racism to toxic waste dumps in poor neighborhoods, Americans have always had the freedom, the right, and ultimately the responsibility, to boycott, peacefully protest, petition, and advocate for better protection and support, especially when government fails to act.

And we have failed to act. As measured in both physical and mental health, America’s children have become sicker in body and mind than they were only a few decades ago. (See paragraph 4 this earlier post.) Our failure to protect them appears to be a systemic one and a reflection of our not adequately understanding the root causes of disease.

Thankfully, with national conversation turning to health and our chronic disease epidemic, we are finally asking good questions: Why are so many artificial ingredients still being added to processed food in America when they are banned in other countries? Or granted ‘generally recognized as safe’ status without testing? Why have we not yet secured protections for children on social media? Why do we still have no standards and protections for the use of wireless technology when we’ve known for decades that it negatively impacts human health, especially the developing brains of children? Why has it taken so long to remove fluoride from water systems when we have long known about its negative impacts on IQ? And why was mercury’s use in dental amalgam not banned long ago when the proof of its toxicity was first known?

Why has America not applied the precautionary principle, especially when children’s health is at stake?

Has society merely been asleep at the wheel, stressed by modern life, distracted by illness itself? Do we just not understand the dangers? Has allopathic medicine failed to explore the root causes of disease and thus cannot teach us why we are sick? Has government been so thoroughly captured by industry that public outcries make no difference? Has the science been so unsettled and/or conflicted that neither activists nor government can make their case?

Perhaps we have been living in a paradigm that believes science and technology will save us, will always find a cure or a fix. Perhaps we have known the dangers but traded away our health to keep the economy strong and jobs growing. Perhaps we are so enamored of wealth and achievement that we fail to think critically about where that wealth could take us.

Our failure as a society to protect and support the health of ourselves and our children has no lack of reasons.

America is in a very critical moment. Our children are sick, and we want to know why. Most importantly, we seem to be finding our voices and valuing our freedom to use them.

Meaningful change will come from society leaning into the values we espouse, asking for objective science, and for positive change.

No individual, family, community, or even state can effectively address large system concerns alone; national action is required. This makes ‘we the people’ an important voice for children. Our policymakers need to hear from us, especially on the critical issue of making America healthy; you can comment to any lawmaker via the congressional switchboard: (202) 224-3121. Or find your elected officials here.

It does not matter which side of the aisle we favor, the hope is that children’s health can help bring unity to a politically divided nation. And that good questions and good science will help us get there.

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With modern home life often falling short of quality time and full support for children, and with schools and teachers under increasing pressures from multiple sources, the next place a child can hope to find support is from extended family, a caring neighbor, a church youth program, community or special sports, or some other place-based entity or activity.

As Hillary Clinton wrote in It Takes a Village: “…like it or not, we are living in an interdependent world where what our children hear, see, feel, and learn will affect how they grow up and who they turn out to be.” That was in the book’s 2006 edition before social media and cell phones so fully grabbed the attention of America’s youth

Although we have recognized the need to protect children from online threats for over two decades, we still lack good solutions. And the need is only intensifying with artificial intelligence. How do we use this and other marvels of technological advancement and still protect children? And the problem is not only distracted attention and online threats; radiation emitted by phones, wi-fi, and cell towers is a danger being assessed in the legal system. Unfortunately, America has walked far into our current technologies without paying attention to the concerns of those who have tried, sometimes for decades, to warn us of their harms.

Parents and schools cannot solve such dangers alone. Today, the need for a village is more acute than ever. Place-based communities can be the space in which face-to-face activities give youth connection with the real world, with nature and hands-on engagement - like gardening and building, fishing and biking - experiences that develop skills and promote values like giving, being part of a team, and caring about others.

It won’t be easy. Finding solutions starts with understanding the problem and finding the causes. Most often that means looking at changing the things we have created and come to depend on, and this means we must choose to put children above all else - above profits, above favored lifestyles, above political pressures and conveniences.

For those issues that are place-based like pesticide spraying, contaminated water, and toxic wastes, communities are needed as problem identifiers and advocates for change; they must take on the larger economic and political forces that resist change. For example, a large, community-level advocacy effort is having success around the placement of 5G towers, especially near schools and homes. Place-based communities can gather their strength from numbers and call up the forces of their citizens acting together.

And when communities take a focus on wellness, their awareness of what is harmful increases, and their ability to make change at the local level becomes a powerful pillar of support for all residents, including children.

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Living Well Locally sees early childcare and k-12 schools as the second pillar of support for America’s children. Given what has been lost from the home environment and the worsened state of children’s health, the work of educators has increased. This is especially the case in public schools.

Early childhood and K-12 schooling are hugely impactful environments for all students; we all remember the best and worst of times spent walking halls, stressing through tests, relating to others. When teachers and administrators have enough time, enough training, enough empathy, enough resources, and enough support they can make a huge difference in the lives of students.

This ideal, however, is seldom met given the pressures under which most schools function today. Despite increased budgets, schools face modern challenges that rarely existed a few decades ago: cell phones and social media, bullying, transgender issues, curriculum controversies, school shootings, and an ever-expanding body of technical knowledge that must be taught. Plus, all of the above happening in the context of students who are increasingly unwell.

More than 40% of America’s children have one or more chronic diseases; 1 in 3 are overweight or obese; the autism rate keeps rising (now 1 in 33); and in 2023, the CDC declared “our nation’s youth are experiencing a mental health crisis”. Then from the Pentagon, we learn that by the time American adolescents reach military age, 77% of applicants for service must have health waivers to be accepted.

Of particular note is the impact school has on children from impoverished and/or broken homes. In her dissertation, Alison explored the question: what kind of school interventions moved the needle for children in poverty. It turned out that two things made a significant difference: smaller class size and an extended school year. When teachers had more time to assess and design for student needs, students more often rose to their expectations, both teachers and students found greater satisfaction, and educational outcomes improved.

When students struggle from poverty, broken homes, abusive relationships, or learning disabilities, school becomes more than a place of formal learning, it may be the only hope some have for breaking free of their circumstances, for finding a safety net from abuse or a footing when adrift in a complex world.

Community control and smaller neighborhood schools could make a real difference. This would be especially true in communities and schools that have taken an active and intentional focus on wellness. Improving student health could achieve more than healthier students, it could serve as a valuable learning tool for everyone - parents, teachers, administrators, staff, and especially students themselves. It would also ensure that ALL students could benefit regardless of their home environments. Two real food meals a day, physical activity for everyone, and teaching habits of good selfcare could turnaround the crisis America currently faces in children’s health.

The question, however, becomes: can we ask schools to do more? Can we ask busy school cafeterias to convert from ‘heat and serve’ frozen foods to real, whole foods from local farms that require prepping and different cooking skills? Can schools develop and apply meaningful wellness programs when there is so much else to teach? Who possesses the skills and time to re-write curricula around health and wellness when making it through standardized testing has become a time-consuming goal in itself?

Asking schools to play a significant role in making America’s children healthy again is a big ask, but one certainly worth attempting and supporting so that all children have access, not just those whose homes manage to become healthier. Plus, school environments offer social support, something that makes wellness efforts far more successful than going it alone.

Living Well Locally suggests that ‘local’, ‘small’, and ‘well’ are worthwhile considerations for helping schools become true pillars of support. It won’t be easy with schools already under significant pressures, but the effort and learning would be worth it for everyone involved.

Schools today have no choice but to deal with what has gone awry in homes and society. Children have little choice but to accept the circumstances of their young lives. If both home and school should fall short of what any given child needs, we can hope that somewhere in the wider worlds of community and society he or she will find the support, awareness, and opportunity needed to flourish.

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Home is the most impactful place in the lives of children. It is the ‘human nest’ where the knowledge, time, and commitment of parents shapes the early development of offspring and where a child’s physical, mental, and spiritual health first takes hold. When the environment is healthy and parents can be attentive, home sets positive values, matures healthy emotions, and instills good self-care.

This is the ideal. In today’s busy, stress-filled world, it is an ideal not easily met.

Home plays a central role in the Living Well Locally vision, and we have explored its impact in multiple posts: how losing home has contributed to losing health (here), about the power of well-tended homes (here), and the healing potential of the home kitchen (here). We describe the role of clinic, home, and field in healing chronic disease (here), and we began sharing resources on creating healthy homes (here).

The American Psychological Association’s annual polling of homes and families in 2024 reported the top two stressors were health and finances, both at 82%. The fact that quality family time at home is now down to 37 minutes a day is a likely reason why working parents report high levels of worry about the development of their children.

Let’s look at one critical element of health that originates in the home - food. From pre-natal to late teens, home has a major impact on what and where children eat. As America’s food supply went from being mostly ‘real and natural’ in the last century to being ‘highly and ultra-processed’ today, diet-related diseases have risen, including obesity and chronic illness in children. Food served to children today, whether on cafeteria plates, in homes, or at restaurants is seldom the natural fare their grandparents or even their parents had growing up. No space impacts what children eat more directly and lastingly than the daily choices and decisions made in the home.

As mainstream healthcare begins to apply ‘food as medicine’, we are seeing not only what is required to turn around America’s chronic disease epidemic, but how far from nutrient-dense and toxin-free our daily foods actually are.

Beyond food there are many factors in the home that support or harm children’s health. Developing bodies and minds are especially harmed by toxic exposures, many of which exist inside our homes. Biotoxins from mold, chemicals outgassing from building materials and furniture, fumes from cleaning products, and direct contact with personal care products, cosmetics and even clothing too often contaminate bodies and living spaces. Elimination begins with awareness and is critical to supporting children’s health. (For consumer guides on foods, toxins and more: EWG.ORG.)

Turning around chronic disease and renewing children’s health will take re-inhabiting our homes in new and healthy ways, and this in turn will require awareness and lifestyle change . . . and more than a little time.

Meanwhile, how do we feed America’s children healthy food? With k-12 students getting at least one and often two meals a day at school, putting real food meals on cafeteria plates could serve all children equally well, while improving behavior and academic performance. Schools would benefit from as well as support farm-to-school programs and help build the community food webs that are so essential to place-based wellness. Community-based programs aligned with healthier eating can also help, like this one recently posted by Marion for an after-school program that teaches students cooking skills, responsibility as family members, and sharing of healthy food knowledge.

Still, there is really nothing that can take the place of home as the first and most critical pillar of support for children. It will be an interesting journey from where we are today to where home can be, to where real food meals are daily fare, and our homes are the toxin-free and peaceful sanctuaries needed for rest and recovery from the stressors of modern life.

Healing homes are foundational to the Living Well Locally vision of place-based wellness and the primary contributors to local cultures of health.

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This revised post introduces a 4-part series on children’s health in which we explore how place-based action is a needed partner in national efforts to improve the health of America’s children.

Despite differing opinions on how best to achieve good health, most of us do agree that health itself, especially children’s health, is a non-partisan issue. And that working to resolve the root causes of America’s chronic disease epidemic is essential.

Living Well Locally has recorded statistics on children’s health in previous posts, so here we share just one: by the time American youth reach age 17, 77% require a waiver for health issues if they want to join the military. This is more than a national security issue; this is the future of our country. And of human generations to come.

The 2024 Presidential campaign made children’s health part of our political conversation by asking two key questions: Why are American children so much sicker now than only a few decades ago? And where is the research to understand the root causes?

With broad strokes in this introductory post, we set the scene and suggest four key “pillars of support for children”. In follow-up posts, we take each pillar and explore it in more detail, giving special attention to what local actors can do to achieve place-based wellness.

The pillars are health, education, community, and society. For our purposes and in practical terms, this translates, respectively, into homes and clinics, schools, place-based communities, and the larger context of society which includes all of us.

Health is a broad category that holds many things - from having a stable and loving family life to safe and clean environments to the healing foods and primary care that help avert chronic illness. Education includes the school environment but goes beyond formal training to include the extra support children need to understand themselves and the world around them, and to possess the skills that make for successful daily lives. Community support recognizes that while parents and homes have primary responsibility for children, they do so best within the context of village life. The society pillar could stand for the richness and support that all children need from their total environment, but for our purposes here - to improve children’s health - we focus on how we as individuals make up society and how our actions as responsible citizens can impact national health policies.

For each pillar, we look at the current state of affairs and then at what might be accomplished when solutions evolve at the community level, supported by national policies.

In earlier Living Well Locally posts, we set out our reasoning and vision for working on health and economics in the local arena because, among other things, we see face-to-face social interactions as the fuel for success in most human endeavors - whether wellness, education, business, parenting, faith and more.

We make the case for improving children’s lives by first focusing attention on the places where children live their everyday lives - homes, schools, and their place-based communities. Other influences, like social media and cell phones, are also powerful and growing more so. These, however, are systemic, and real change requires action by government and business. This is where society comes in as the 4th pillar of support; as voters and consumers we all have a role to play in children’s health.

This series of posts is intended to raise awareness by suggesting the contexts in which actions can be taken to improve children’s health. Homes, schools, villages, government, business, and society at large are all needed. From kitchen tables and council meetings to board rooms, legislative halls, and the Oval Office, everyone is needed to help make a difference in the lives of America’s children.

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