Hype vs. Discernment

Marketing of “health” products:
Hype vs. personal discernment

Everywhere we’re reading about health alternatives, with the morass of information we’re exposed to these days and the enormous growth of the health food and supplement industries. As consumers, we’re accustomed to marketing hype in advertising. We may not buy the car just because it looked sexy on TV!

But what about soy protein shakes, energy bars, calcium supplements, green tea, antioxidant supplements, low-carb diets, and the latest herbal product for weight loss? How do we judge these lotions and potions, products and programs, and apply reason over the hypnotic trance of marketing hype?

The key distinction that needs to be made is that product marketing of herbal and nutritional supplements, diets, etc., is often NOT based on real principles of herbalism, nutrition, etc.

The herbal formulas you find in the health food store are largely NOT the same formulas that a trained clinical herbalist would recommend for you, given your particular pattern of imbalance. You may have been labeled with the same disease name as someone else (arthritis, hypertension, etc.), but the herbs and nutrients that you need may be quite different.

The nutritional supplements that are promoted as generally good for everyone may NOT be appropriate for you, given your constitutional type and the particular imbalances you have at particular time.

Many of the offerings from this vast health industry are products of marketing more than anything else. Many contain irrational combinations of nutrients and herbs based on pseudo-scientific studies. Some are actually health damaging products that no one should use (for example products containing soy). Some are decent quality products that have been cleverly marketed to appear spiffier than they really are, or promoted according to the “more is better” philosophy.

Green tea is an example.. There are hundreds of other herbs that have just as much value but don’t have marketing clout behind them. And “more is better” is not true for green tea. Looking at the individual chemical constituents separately and promoting one chemical to celebrity status — as is done with herbs that are standardized to one particular chemical deemed the “active” one — this is really the same allopathic approach we thought we were getting away from.

Many of the “alternative” approaches we’re hearing about aren’t fundamentally different in principle from conventional medical approaches, but are simply using less toxic substances (nutritients and herbs) in place of drugs that usually have greater toxicity potential.

Really we’re not seeing anything significantly different, even in herbalism, nutrition, naturopathy, everywhere in the health field. It’s mostly a different flavor of allopathy, in a different package, so it appears to be an alternative.

Authentic natural medicine isn’t only about using less toxic substances, because the substances are only the tools. It’s rather meaningless to say that a hammer is the best tool out there, or that everyone with nails needs to hammer them all the time :).

It’s how we use the tools, what guides our choice of tools, that’s really important. It’s how we decide what really needs to be addressed, especially when we have various symptoms and disease labels. The way herbs and nutritional supplements are marketed is to target the disease or symptom label, without an understanding of how to treat the person.

This is why one-size-fits-all methods, whether with products marketed to consumers or even recommended by practitioners, aren’t as successful as some would expect. For example, herbs with anti-inflammatory properties may be used to treat inflammation, and those are generally safer than steroid drugs. But the approach is fundamentally the same — to counteract the inflammation. Is inflammation really the cause of the problem, or is it the result of a deeper cause?

The real reason for inflammation could be very different for two different people even when their symptoms appear similar. So the concept of “anti-inflammatory” treatment, even with herbs that we might consider more safe than drugs, is a simplistic approach fraught with problems.

Suppressing symptoms is the allopathic approach, whether using drugs or nutrients or herbs.

When you suppress symptoms, you’re working against the body’s efforts to expel the disease, and the disease is pushed deeper into the system where the body will simply try to expel it again. And next time it often involves more vital organs. What was nasal congestion can move into the lungs, for example, and this is how more serious illnesses like asthma often develop.

This is just one example, and there are many more that illustrate how “alternative” medicine repackages the allopathic method in targeting symptoms and not addressing true causes.

“Complementary” medicine is also just another way of moving natural healing more and more underneath the umbrella of conventional medicine, not showing us anything categorically different.

With the pharmaceutical/food-processing cartels controling most of the health food industry, no real fundamental alternatives are being produced from those sources. Just like with other types of product advertising, we get “new and improved” versions appearing all the time. With laundry soap we more or less ignore that “new and improved” trend, but we need to become similarly savvy when it comes to health products.

Some of the modern health myths are:

* soy as a health food
* other industrially processed foods marketed as health food (vegetable oils, meat substitutes, etc.)* low-fat and vegetarian diets
* the belief that meat and cholesterol are bad for us, and we need cholesterol-lowering drugs
* the belief that vaccines are harmless (they really shock the life force and can trigger serious disease even many years later)
* invasive routine screening tests
* the belief that there’s no cure for cancer so we need to keep pouring money into the cancer industry, etc.

I’m not saying there are no kernels of truth anywhere there. But if we really want to pierce through the layers of disinformation, now we’re engaging in the personal process of developing true discernment.. in other words, to become aware of our own unconscious biases and the ways that we have been conditioned to accept many false ideas as reality.

Advertising is powerful, and we’ve been subjected to advertising in the realm of health and medicine just as much as in the realm of pop culture. Often simply hearing the same thing repeated over and over so many times, or the same unspoken assumptions made, like “Vaccinations are important for personal and public health,” we never question, “Have there ever been any long-term safety studies on these?” How much do most of us really know about the safety and efficacy of vaccines (or soy foods, etc.) beyond these learned assumptions.

Learning to see through the marketing hype, whether it’s health foods or new herbal remedies or drugs, we can come to recognize the rhetoric for what it is, learn to research the facts, and make better judgments about the real value of all these things… even when the false belief was comfortable in a way, and even in the face of being a bit socially ostracized for our different views.

The Truth vs. Beliefs

Hearing the truth can be disturbing when we have emotional or ego attachments. When they’re unconscious, we feel driven to defend our beliefs. But as we become more conscious, we can examine the beliefs, evaluate them (are they helping or hindering me?), and let go of the ones that aren’t serving us.

When we identify with beliefs, we have a false sense of who we are (being a vegetarian, for example, is a way of thinking of oneself). That sense of self may center around a certain dietary philosophy or religion or other kind of belief system, (the “idols of the mind,” as Bacon called it.)

If that’s how we maintain a sense of who we are, then we have to continually defend those beliefs, and we feel personally threatened when they’re challenged. That’s a fearful way of being in the world. And that’s why when beliefs are challenged, peoples’ feathers get ruffled and emotionally charged arguments ensue.

The true self has no beliefs to defend, and the process of challenging beliefs and growing discernment can be welcomed as a great gift, because we’re being pushed to grow beyond our attachments.

And sure there are growing pains. But we’re free to choose to remain attached to the false, or let go and grow into the truth, without judgment either way. And that’s a beautiful process that I am constantly in awe of. We really have tremendous support for this process of developing discernment, even when everyone around us is of a different mind.

I know it can feel pretty disorienting and lonely when everyone around you seems to be in another world with different values. In a sense we do the work alone, because the gift of freedom is our own. It’s not an easy path, but that’s the blessing I see hidden within the dilemmas we face, because we have the chance to choose real freedom, and we have all the deep inner resources that we need.