A MOTHER’S REBELLION

I recently corresponded with a young mother of two. Her first letter was as follows:

My wife and I were among those listening to you recently at the university where you gave a speech. We listened to you in a state of mind that questioned and bewildered us about what we had experienced in the past year (anger, pain, sadness, hope, and ultimately acceptance).

I wish our paths had crossed much earlier. As a mother, I regret not what I did, but what I didn’t do, what I didn’t realize, and you made my husband and me realize this, even though it was too late for us. I’m sure that if we had met much earlier, both of our children would be living healthy lives like their peers instead of fighting for their lives in hospitals.

As parents, the panicked decisions we made in the name of our children’s health have ruined our lives.

After hearing what you’ve told me, I wish I could turn back time and go back to those happy days when our children were healthy and we had no regrets. I feel a great, a very great regret. How is it that, while the health of children comes before everything else for a family, we, as parents, can become blind to the fact that we are dragging our children to the abyss with our own hands? How can this emotional pressure be explained when death has been felt so close?

Kind regards.

After reading this letter, I contacted the family. I learned that their identical twins (monozygotic) had been experiencing endocrine and metabolic disorders, and that they had repeatedly visited doctors, but as the situation worsened, they desperately sought help from counselors on social media who promised “definitive solutions,” and as a result, their children are now fighting for their lives.

A deep sadness overwhelmed me. What parent would want harm to come to their child?

I reviewed the children’s files and realized that dangerously high, enlarged body fat is actually a sign of a much larger and more complex clinical problem.

Monozygotic twins share a similar genetic identity. Endocrine and metabolic disorders affect a large portion of the population, including twins. Diabetes, obesity, and autoimmune thyroid disease are the most common endocrine disorders in general practice.

I asked my assistants to analyze the 100 most popular videos on social media and search for “how to get rid of dangerously high body fat.” These videos have a total of 1.5 billion views. 97% of these videos promise that by taking just a few supplements a day (with fake endorsements from well-known organizations) and doing some exercise, dangerously high body fat can be melted away in just seven days, leading to a fit, long, and healthy life.

Now the problem is, they’re lying.

I’d like to think it’s not because they’re bad people, but simply because they don’t understand that dangerously high body fat and a string of serious illnesses are symptoms of a broken metabolism. The truth is, you can’t fix a broken metabolism by taking supplements, eating less, counting calories, attending detox camps, getting liposuction, using weight-loss injections, and taking even more dangerous shortcuts, all while exercising. You need to get to the root causes.

Among 100 videos with over 1.5 billion views, my assistants had to scroll down to video 120 to find the first one that truly addressed root causes and how to improve metabolism.

My team noticed that when comparing viewership, for every person seeking to address the root causes, there were 300 people looking for quick fixes. And you know what I thought when analyzing these results? It’s actually not that strange, because that’s who we are all as a world; when we’re desperate and can’t find a solution, we want quick fixes, sometimes for ourselves, sometimes for our loved ones, even if health problems take decades to develop, we want to dedicate minutes to finding solutions.

Health scammers rely heavily on this human psychology…

Because people seeking solutions are easy prey for them.

People’s attention spans have shortened so much that social media participation across all ages has increased sharply in the last nine years. The percentage of children, young people, and adults using social media in various countries has risen from 8% in 2005 to 72%. Every day, 100 million active Twitter users send more than 65 million tweets, and two billion videos are watched on YouTube.

That’s why the healthy living – longevity “sector” is so popular worldwide, but a large part of it is far from scientific, consisting of deception and fraud.

There are even doctors, educated in good schools but speaking about health, who see this loophole, become ambitious, and act on the principle of making a lot of money quickly by paying large sums to television channels to appear on screen, building trust and becoming ‘famous,’ sometimes doing it purely for the sake of making a living, and who may appear extremely unhealthy from the outside.

Some of them aren’t even proficient in professional networking and training, organizational promotion, patient care, patient education, or public health programs. So they fill the gaps. How?

Just like well-meaning people who trust highly persuasive con artists and fall into a “Ponzi” trap.

At the school where I graduated with the highest marks in Basic Medical Sciences, there was a revolutionary code of honor regarding moral awareness. Therefore, in my eyes, anyone and anything that operates with a marketing and advertising mentality, regardless of their title, is part of a “Ponzi” scheme.

Therefore, I have two very clear facts:

MEDICAL EVIDENCE AND INTEGRITY…

Health is never something to joke about and absolutely cannot be risked. Forget all promises. Therefore, like me, seek only medical evidence and integrity…

If you look at healthy, fit people and think, “I’ll give this a try,” and then you don’t get results or look like them, you might wonder, “What’s wrong with me?” Maybe you haven’t tried hard enough, or maybe something is fundamentally wrong, but that’s not the point.

The issue is what those who promise you health, a long and healthy life, are not telling you.

If ‘health’ is a value within the family, then parents will prioritize it first and only then expect their children to value health.

If ‘health’ is a value in society, then the physician is the first to fulfill this requirement – ​​not only with their knowledge, but also by ensuring personal integrity through their physical and mental well-being, and by motivating and leading their patients within that framework, expecting their patients to value their health.

I wish you good health.