Ah, spirituality. The word alone is enough to conjure images of incense wafting lazily through the air, a yoga mat spread under the rising sun, and a neighbour peering over their fence to whisper, “Have they joined a cult? Or just stocked up on enough crystals to make geologists curious?” The thing is, spirituality doesn’t always come draped in patchouli-scented robes. Sometimes, it’s hiding in plain sight, dressed up as something far more clinical and modern—like the healthcare system. Yes, that grand, sprawling juggernaut of pills, scans, and surgical interventions. And if you adjust your perspective just slightly, you’ll start noticing how medicine has quietly slid into the role of the 21st century’s moral authority, demanding faith, unquestioning loyalty, and, dare I say it, worship.
We don’t often frame medical science in terms of spirituality because, God forbid, the word “soul” should wander into the sterile halls of Sciencetown uninvited. The High Priests of Rationality wouldn’t take kindly to it.
Let’s start with the language of medicine—Sciencese. You know it when you see it. A string of syllables that seem specifically formulated to stupefy the masses, not unlike ecclesiastical rites in Latin meant to mystify congregants while keeping them obedient. It’s not, ‘Drink more water because your kidneys are struggling.’ No, simplicity would be too… human. Instead, you’ll hear something like: ‘Implementation of a hydration regimen to facilitate homeostasis and optimise renal function in the setting of acute systemic dysregulation.’ Or, perhaps, more in line with the Sciencese stratosphere: ‘Patient demonstrates suboptimal hydration parameters, with potential compromise to glomerular filtration efficiency aligned with adaptive renal medullary hypoperfusion.’ Because clearly, what this moment needs is more syllables, not more water.
It’s true; Sciencese is a language designed to sound definitive and solemn, like the universe itself stood still to approve this message. And for years, it’s worked. People placed their trust in the incomprehensible, assuming that if they couldn’t understand it, it must be too brilliant for their small human minds to penetrate. But now more of us are waking up to a discomfiting realisation: it’s not brilliance; it’s choreography. A ploy to keep the Proles in line.
Medicine isn’t just science. That’s the polite fiction we cling to because we like to think surgeons don’t have bad days and anaesthetists never lose concentration. But medicine touches birth and death, triumph and loss, hope and despair—in short, every profound moment that makes a human, well, human. We come to it limping, broken, terrified, or merely exhausted by the weight of living, and we ask for salvation. Not forgiveness, precisely, but a kind of deliverance: a cure, a fix, a return to our previous, pain-free incarnation. And we don’t just want science when we’re vulnerable like that; we want something to believe in. Is it any wonder, then, that our healthcare system demands our faith as its currency?
At its most obvious, this shows up in our reliance on doctors. We treat them like oracles, balancing the fragile entirety of our being on their diagnoses. They are trained, of course (though if you ask quietly, some might admit to having paged Dr Google—or, increasingly, ChatGPT—during a tricky moment), but they’re also fallible. Their opinions are, as often as not, educated interpretations. They are riddled with biases, influenced by subtle pharmaceutical marketing, and juggling workloads that would induce panic in an octopus. But the system conspires to hide that fragility. Instead of being treated as flawed humans navigating an absurd system, doctors are anointed with an unspoken divinity. They must not falter because our entire scaffolding of belief would collapse under the revelation that the priesthood is just as mortal as the congregation.
And now, studies suggest that LLMs—yes, chatbots—are not just assistants but outperforming human doctors in diagnostic reasoning. The next doctor you see might not just have Dr. Google on speed dial—they could be phoning in reinforcement from ChatGPT during the consult.
Then there’s the medicine itself—the potions and pills, the sacred dosages etched into electronic charts like commandments on stone tablets. We cling to them with the fervour of pilgrims, pop them with the faith that they will deliver relief from pain, uncertainty, or just the general inconvenience of mortality. No matter that some come with side effects so medieval-sounding (anal leakage and suicidal ideation come to mind) that they feel like they’ve escaped from Dante’s Inferno. To question these miracles is to commit sacrilege. And most don’t, not openly. Most of us endure, swallowing small doses of chemical chastisement, hoping that compliance will ward off the spectre of our finitude.
Let me clarify something. Medicine has done extraordinary things—emergency medicine, in particular, can work miracles. Sepsis, car crashes, heart attacks, war zones—these are moments where modern medical interventions save lives every day. But we’ve been conditioned to treat the entire healthcare system as though it were just as indisputably miraculous. We hand over not just our physical bodies but also our trust, autonomy, and critical thinking. We approach healthcare with the expectation that behind every white coat lies a benevolent oracle, possessing absolute truths that shouldn’t, under any circumstances, be questioned.
If that’s not a spiritual practice, I don’t know what is.
But faith is crumbling. It’s not happening all at once—it never does—but quietly, steadily, like sand slipping through clenched fingers. For decades, the system has been wobbling under the incongruity of its aims: saving lives versus turning profits. The pandemic shook the altar violently, revealing the extent of Big Pharma industry misconduct—morality plays scripted by government bodies, Big Pharma, and corporations who have far more in common with televangelists than scientists. Where once we turned to healthcare as a source of salvation, we’re now faced with the stark truth: much of what we believed about its power was myth. Resurrection (or at least resuscitation) belongs to ambulance teams in movies—not always to the real ones. And health, true health, is not something that can be bottled and sold.
The rushed vaccine approvals, the suppression of dissenting voices, the authoritarianism cloaked as “public health”—none of this is how science is supposed to work. Science thrives on disagreement, debate, and discovery, not suppression. What should concern you isn’t that people have started questioning the system. But that it took them so long to begin asking.
Think about it. The pandemic didn’t just highlight flaws; it exposed the machinery—the damp and rusted cogs we were never meant to see. For decades, we’ve been spoon-fed the idea that progress in medicine always points onward and upward, that the system is too intricate and venerable to be anything but infallible. We were told to “trust the experts”—and many of us did.
At least at first.
But when questions arose about rushed approvals or about the Big Pharma deceptive tactics behind the medical-industrial stage, dissent was silenced rather than answered. Not debated, not reasoned with—erased.
We were told to ‘trust The Science™️,’ but the science refused to trust us. Voices of dissent weren’t just questioned—they were wiped from the discourse entirely, flagged by algorithms, shadow-banned by platforms, and dismissed with slurs like ‘COVidiot.’ And the censorship continues. Raise so much as a whisper of concern today, and you might find yourself shadow-banned from even the Scottish COVID-19 inquiry—or vanished altogether into YouTube’s digital graveyard.
And isn’t that exactly how cults handle doubt?
There’s a bitter irony here: science, true science, should thrive on questions. It’s built on uncertainty, on chasing the gaps in knowledge and bridging them through rigorous, unflinching inquiry. That kind of science doesn’t ask for faith because it has nothing to fear from doubt. And yet what we’ve seen in recent times looks more like a fortressed dogma, protected by political alliances and corporate interests that threaten to cast out heretics and questioners alike. To undermine the façade is to risk collapsing the whole institution. Just as churches refused to admit Galileo might be onto something, the healthcare system has closed ranks around its orthodoxy rather than face the terrifying notion that medications are the third leading cause of death. That The System might, in some ways, be broken beyond repair.
Of course, this all might sound a little melodramatic. And yes, most doctors, nurses, and healthcare workers deserve enormous respect—they’re overworked and underpaid, trying to save lives in conditions that should make even the most stoic among us burst into tears. They’re not the problem. The problem is the towering edifice of a system that demands too much of them—and of us. The problem is the narrative that conflates healthcare with health, as though our well-being is the property of hospitals and not the result of how we nourish, move, and live in the world.
And let’s address the elephant in the room—Big Pharma, whose ethical violations have become as routine as their quarterly earnings reports. The industry whose PR team would have us believe it’s been sent by some biomedical deity to shepherd us into an age of infinite health and happiness. We enter the clinic burdened, confess our symptoms, and await our penance—a prescription slip or perhaps a referral—offered not as salvation but as compliance with the system’s unspoken commandments.
In truth, Big Pharma is less Florence Nightingale and more Machiavelli with a stethoscope. Yes, the successes of medicine have been marketed to us as proof of its divine infallibility. Anaesthetics, antibiotics, and organ transplants—the holy relics around which we’re expected to rally. But what about the failures? The iatrogenic harm swept under the rug? Or the Big Pharma ethical violations that lead to countless preventable deaths each year through misleading safety data and aggressive marketing? Then there’s the unspoken addiction cycle, where patients return not for healing but for dependence? As I wrote in Big Pharma: Saving Lives or Killing for Profit? (https://thefoodphoenix.co.uk/big-pharma/), this is not philanthropy; it’s business.
My own journey navigating gadolinium-based contrast agent toxicity revealed just how often patients are abandoned as footnotes in modern medicine. (Read more: Are gadolinium deposition disease symptoms ruining your health?) I learned the hard way that healthcare, for all its promises, often puts system survival and profit above the lives it’s meant to save.
Let me rewind a little to a point I made earlier about our expectations of medicine. We’ve been conditioned, not unlike Pavlov’s dogs, to salivate at the sound of a bell—or, in this case, the rustle of a prescription pad or the crinkle of a cereal box while rolling our eyes at “natural” options. Pills are “strong,” “fast,” “effective.” Natural options (whether diet, movement, sunlight, or rest) are dismissed as wishy-washy or quaint, a relic of our grandmother’s era. And yet, the results speak for themselves.
How many of us still eat ultra-processed food, nutritionally bankrupt cereal, and hyper-palatable snacks, then wonder why our health remains in tatters? When I hear people say, “I’ve tried everything,” I can’t help but wince. Usually, “everything” translates to calorie restriction paired with pre-packaged nonsense wearing a bright green traffic light on the label to declare their virtuous low-fat, sugar-free, low-salt status. At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if the cardboard cereal box contained more minerals than the contents inside it. (Truth be told, I went as far as researching the micronutrient content of cardboard and discovered it does contain more of certain minerals than whole wheat. Check out this article where I look at what we’re feeding our kids to discover which ones.) We’ve gone from ‘have your daily bread’ to ‘praise be to the Beyond Burger,’ while the nutrients in both hover just this side of a mid-tier cardboard snack pack.
Food itself has become another battleground. Something as unassuming as an egg yolk—laden with nutrients like choline and retinol—has been demonised to “sinful” status alongside slabs of chocolate cake. When did eating become a moral act? A beige, plant-based diet is often presented as a gilded halo, while a grass-fed ribeye steak, liver, and butter are framed as Old Testament temptations to be resisted at all costs. And yet, multinational monoliths like Big Food, who benefit most from filling supermarket shelves with rainbow-coloured garbage, are writing the dietary guidelines that governments and their doctor mouthpieces parrot, lockstep. They’ve masterminded a narrative so twisted it would make Orwell blush. And if you dare raise questions about its validity, don’t be surprised if you find yourself downranked, debunked, or—ironically—“cancelled.”
When the nutritional lies became too glaring to ignore, the goalposts shifted. Suddenly, it wasn’t about health anymore; it was about the environment, climate change, water usage, animal welfare, pollution—anything to keep us from questioning the real motives behind the messaging. Books and films like Kiss the Ground, Common Ground, Sacred Cow, Cows Save the Planet, and Defending Beef have demolished these straw men, but the zombie science persists.
When nearly nine out of ten vegans revert back to cheeseburgers or buttered toast, you’d think we might rethink the narrative. Why bother with ancient culinary staples like butter-drenched steak or a handful of sun-ripened berries when you could sip your meals from a packet of beige sludge? Enter Soylent: industrialised gruel packaged as the holy grail of convenience and climate-conscious living. It’s the ultimate halo product—half lifestyle accessory, half resignation to a tasteless future. And in case you were wondering, yes, the marketing execs who push Meatless Mondays and Veganuary probably have shares in it.
The same pattern emerges in medicine itself—a sacred trust slowly unravelled, not by sceptics but by those thrown into its chaos during crises like the pandemic. We weren’t just asked to trust the science; we were commanded to kneel before it, unquestioningly, on penalty of social ostracism. Those who wavered, the so-called “anti-vaxxers” and “conspiracy theorists,” weren’t just vilified—they were dehumanised. But here’s the thing: dismissing inconvenient truths has never made them less true. Dissent wasn’t erased because it lacked substance; it was erased because it was inconvenient. And that, my friend, isn’t science. It’s theatre.
Stories like mine are part of the growing groundswell of quiet rebellion. After my own health collapsed under the weight of misguided treatments—a direct result of Big Pharma ethical violations regarding gadolinium-based contrast agents (a story I’ve shared in From Darkness to Light: A Personal Journey of Gadolinium Toxicity Recovery https://thefoodphoenix.co.uk/from-darkness-to-light-a-personal-journey-of-gadolinium-toxicity-recovery/), I learned the hard way that the entire system is designed to defend itself at all costs. Patients like me—tossed aside as footnotes in the annals of modern medicine—learn to claw our way back through alternative therapies, nutrition, and old-fashioned grit. And what we’re finding, unsurprisingly, is that healing looks a lot more like getting back to the basics than doubling down on the latest FDA-approved elixirs.
So where does that leave us? Is modern healthcare a lost cause? No. Hope exists—but not where they’ve told us to look.
Healing isn’t found in sterile corridors or symptom-checking apps. It’s sizzling in the pan. It’s in the bright-red nutrient density of liver, the yellow marrow of bones, the golden fat of grass-fed butter. It demands our attention. Our engagement. Our rebellion.
The ABC of emergency medicine—that scaffolding that saves lives when seconds matter—relies on oxygen, electrolytes, B vitamins, vitamin C, NAC, magnesium. Not pharmaceuticals. Nutrients. The very supplements they mock as “expensive urine” are what doctors reach for when death hovers. Funny, that.
Sometimes salvation sits in a farmer’s market stall, where you can look the person who raised your food in the eye. Sometimes it’s bathing in sunlight as you braise bones into broth. Sometimes it’s tending to soil that will feed you tomorrow. But make no mistake—it’s rarely in a prescription pad.
Step back. Question everything. The truths about healing aren’t complex—they’re inconveniently simple. And terribly unprofitable.
Your body isn’t broken. It’s not a pharmaceutical deficiency you’re suffering from, despite the Big Pharma deceptive tactics designed to convince you otherwise.. Reclaim what they’ve stolen from you: your sovereignty, intuition, and primal connection to real food. Your right to heal on your own terms.
The system trembles when you realise this. As it should.
Because while systems rise and fall, one truth endures: the human capacity for resilience and self-healing is the real miracle. But it’s not on prescription. And that? That scares the system more than anything else. Healing looks a lot less like bioengineered ‘solutions’ and more like community-supported farmers, eggs fried in butter, and sitting barefoot in actual sunlight. It’s not a miracle potion Big Pharma can patent—it’s what humans have always done to survive and thrive.
Now, if you’re ready, take a deeper dive into the lies we’ve been sold (Toxicant-Induced Loss of Tolerance, anyone?): https://thefoodphoenix.co.uk/what-are-adverse-reactions-to-drugs/. Let’s keep pulling at the threads together.
You’ve read this far. Perhaps you’re nodding along, feeling that peculiar mixture of validation and frustration—validation that someone else sees the emperor’s new clothes for what they are, frustration that you’ve wasted so much time, money, and hope on a system designed to manage symptoms rather than create health.
I specialise in toxicity—particularly the kind that arrives courtesy of modern medicine’s “helpful” interventions. Gadolinium from MRI contrast dyes. Pharmaceutical side effects that doctors dismiss or deny. Dental amalgams slowly leaching into your system. The ultra-processed food-like substances that fill supermarket aisles.
Sound familiar? You’re not alone.
Many of my clients have already endured the special hell of being gaslit by medical professionals who insist their symptoms are “all in your head” or “unrelated to treatment.” These doctors aren’t necessarily malicious—they’re simply products of a system that profits from illness while systematically erasing evidence of iatrogenic harm.
Think about it: The same industry that manufactures toxicity controls the research about toxicity. They fund the experts who write the guidelines. They even decide which conditions deserve names and diagnostic codes—while conveniently omitting categories for their products’ side effects. It’s a masterclass in institutional gaslighting.
But here’s what gives me an edge: I’ve crawled through this toxic swamp myself. Gadolinium toxicity nearly destroyed me before I painstakingly pieced together a path toward recovery. The journey taught me what textbooks can’t—how toxicity actually operates in the body, how to identify its subtle signals, and how to support your body’s innate detoxification pathways without causing further harm.
I’d like to offer you something rarely found in healthcare—a conversation where you’re actually heard. A free clarity call. No rushed appointments. No dismissive explanations. Just deep listening and the benefit of experience—both professional and painfully personal.
As my client Mike O’Connor says, “If you’re hesitant, simply try the initial free consultation. You won’t regret it.”
Will a single conversation solve everything? Of course not. But it might be the first time someone truly listens to your health story and sees the patterns that others have missed. It might be the beginning of finally understanding what’s happening in your body, rather than questioning your own experience.
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