We were never taught how to stay well. We were taught to manage symptoms — and to trust the system managing them.
The food industry engineered products to be convenient, inexpensive, and addictive — not nourishing. Healthcare is dictated by the procedures and prescriptions that insurance will reimburse, not the hour-long conversation that might be preventative. The incentive model model is fee-for-service: every test ordered, every procedure performed, every prescription written generates a billable code for revenue. Prevention doesn’t have a billing code, and with the short routine visits, there’s no time for conversations around nutrition, sleep, or stress. The incentive isn’t to keep you well. It’s to treat you once you’re sick enough to bill.
The pharmaceutical industry profits from conditions that persist, not conditions that resolve. A drug taken once is far less valuable than a drug taken daily for decades. Diabetes management, depression, hypertension, high cholesterol — these are maintenance markets, and the goal isn’t remission.
GLP-1 receptor agonists like Ozempic and Wegovy are the latest iteration of this model. Originally developed for type 2 diabetes, now widely prescribed — and aggressively marketed — for weight loss. In the US, where insurance coverage is inconsistent, many people are paying hundreds to over a thousand dollars a month out of pocket. The drug suppresses appetite effectively. It doesn’t address what drove the metabolic dysfunction in the first place. If you stop taking it, the weight returns. It’s more of a subscription.
They’re incentive structures shaping what gets researched, what gets prescribed, and what gets called treatment.
The result is a system that looks like healthcare, but functions like disease maintenance. The architecture rewards treatment over prevention, volume over inquiry, and management over resolution.
I watched it work exactly as designed — on both of my parents. And eventually, on me.
What They Thought Was Healthy
My parents believed they were eating well. There was always food on the table — Hamburger Helper, Rice-A-Roni, cold cuts, bread, margarine, canned everything, frozen vegetables, Jello. Convenient, affordable, familiar. The packaging said wholesome. The marketing said balanced.
What nobody said was that the liver — the body’s central filter, key to metabolism, detox, and hormone balance — processes everything we eat, drink, breathe, and absorb. Fructose, processed fats, additives, medications — all of it lands there. A diet built around convenience is a diet built around burden. Over time, that burden accumulates without symptoms, until it isn’t quiet anymore.
Aging and metabolic decline are largely driven by exactly this kind of accumulated cellular burden — declining mitochondrial function, chronic inflammation, glycation from excess sugar, and impaired autophagy, the body’s internal repair system. These aren’t inevitable. They’re the downstream cost of a food system optimized for profit over biology.
My parents’ generation was also the low-fat generation — skim milk, margarine instead of butter, diet everything packaged and promoted as healthy. Red meat was the enemy. Cholesterol was the villain. The messaging was to eat more grains, cereals, and low-fat products. Looking back it was poor nutrition by design, sold through savvy marketing. Fat wasn’t the enemy. The replacements were worse.
One prescription led to another. Some for the condition. Others for the side effects. No one ever asked about what they were eating, how they were sleeping, or what their lives actually looked like. Once the medications started, they only multiplied.
The food did what it was designed to do. The system responded the way it was built to respond.
I watched the pattern without fully understanding what I was seeing. It would take my own body breaking down before I did.
When Grief Arrived in My Body
After years of stacked stressors, and then losing my mother, grief pushed it over the edge — showing up in the body the way it always does when there’s no space to feel it fully.
Chronic GI issues arrived first — IBS, GERD, bloating, constipation, sharp stomach pain on waking. The gut microbiome — the ecosystem of bacteria and microbes that governs digestion, immunity, mood, and metabolism — is exquisitely sensitive to stress, grief, and dietary disruption. Mine had been under sustained pressure for years before I recognized it.
When I saw a GI doctor, I was immediately prescribed medication that made the symptoms worse. When I mentioned nausea, I was given something to mask it. Nobody asked about my diet, my stress, my sleep, whether I was drinking, or what my life looked like. There was no connecting the dots.
By then the habits were already grooved — wine to decompress, takeout because cooking felt like too much, structure gone because everything familiar had collapsed. The weight arrived slowly enough that I almost didn’t notice. That’s how it works. The body absorbs what the mind is too overwhelmed to process.
For the first time in my life, my blood pressure spiked. Three abnormal EKGs. A cardiologist concerned enough to order an immediate echocardiogram. More prescriptions. No real inquiry. A conveyor belt.
In 2019, I noticed something in my chart: fatty liver. My doctor never mentioned it. Nobody called. When I followed up, I was told it was common.
Common isn’t the same as harmless.
Fatty liver is one of the clearest early signals that the body is metabolically overloaded — and it’s no longer just an adult problem. We’re now seeing it in children and teenagers, something nearly unheard of a generation ago. The same dietary pattern that drove my parents’ health decline is now showing up earlier and earlier.
Once — in the aftermath of losing my mother, when everything had already shifted — I had elevated liver enzymes and lipids flagged in my results. No one called. I followed up with no response. Confusing results, worsening symptoms, and nowhere to turn.
I was scared. And I knew this wasn’t the way.
Becoming My Own Advocate
I stopped waiting for the system to help me and returned to the functional medicine principles I’d studied many years ago. I stopped the medications — the side effects were compounding the problem. Instead, I focused on what I could control: what I ate, how I moved, how I slept, how I managed stress.
I rebuilt my gut — crowding out the processed inputs and replacing them with whole food, adequate protein, fiber, and fermented foods. I reduced alcohol significantly. I started strength training consistently and walked daily.
I used a CGM to track how food affected my blood sugar in real time. An Oura ring to monitor sleep and heart rate variability. A blood pressure cuff to watch my numbers daily. Slowly, I felt better. When I retested, my labs had returned to normal range.
Medicine has its place — acute care, emergencies, and life-threatening conditions are exactly where it belongs. But chronic, lifestyle-driven conditions deserve a different conversation first. Not solely medication. When you address the nervous system, the nutrition, the movement, the sleep, the actual life — that’s where real change begins.
These days, aside from annual labs and a mammogram, I manage my own health. I outsource labs directly — ordering what I actually want tracked rather than waiting for a rushed appointment with a doctor who can’t greenlight labs I want because insurance won’t cover it.
The standard panel (CBC, CMP, lipid panel, TSH) was designed around diagnosing existing disease, not detecting early dysfunction. The tests included are those insurance will reliably reimburse — which means they’re optimized for the fee-for-service model, not for prevention. The markers that catch problems early — vitamin D, ApoB, cystatin C — often fall outside that standard.
I monitor my own numbers in real time. I don’t wait for a system that has already shown me how it responds.
What The System Costs Women
Women are dismissed at higher rates, medicated at higher rates for symptoms that are never investigated at the root, and handed diagnoses — anxiety, IBS, fatigue, depression — that describe the experience without explaining it.
The system was not designed with our physiology in mind. It was not designed to ask real questions. And it was not designed to follow up when your labs come back abnormal and the intervention required is a conversation rather than a prescription.
You were not failed by your own body. You were failed by a system with no financial incentive to help you heal — and every incentive to keep you managing.
Your body is remarkably capable of recovery — when you stop overriding it and start supporting it.
“Common isn’t the same as harmless. And a system that normalizes early warning signs isn’t protecting you — it’s protecting itself.”
Build real meals that are protein-anchored, colorful, and simple enough to make on a weeknight. Real ingredients, no barcodes, no rules. → Cooking Unscripted: Eating Well Without Hunger
Read:
→ Fatty Liver Disease: The Silent Epidemic
→ Menopause Musculoskeletal Syndrome
→ Invisible in Research, Invisible in Care
→ The Metabolic Advantage
→ Eat to Feel Good Again
