In a recent interview with NTD, Mark Sherwood, a naturopathic doctor and former 2022 candidate for governor of Oklahoma, said Americans need to focus more on the self-sovereignty of their health and free themselves from the corporate, government-influenced health sector.
“Sovereignty is the ability to self-govern,” said Sherwood, founder of the Functional Medical Institute in Oklahoma.
When people are self-governing, they don’t depend on the government, the pharmaceutical industry, or powerful churches to guide their lives, Sherwood said. They make their own money, take care of their own health and wellness, and care for their families.
“I want to see people begin to own that once again, because I think it’s probably the epitome of the American dream, but I also think it’s the epitome of humanity,” he said. “If we lose the ability to take care of ourselves … we’ve lost the ability to even self-govern, and therefore, we become governed and we lose our rights, and rights become privileges.”
Doctors in the mainstream medical system are trained to do the “bidding” of corporations to supply patients with drugs, Sherwood said, and when the U.S. government got involved and promoted the idea of a food pyramid, Sherwood said things became even worse.
“So Big Food, Big Pharma, and Big Medicine got together,” he said. “I call it a marriage made in hell. ‘Food and Drug Administration.’ It doesn’t work.”
Rates of disease keep rising, and every year, 600,000 people die of heart disease and another 600,000 die from cancer, Sherwood said. Obesity has become the fastest-growing noncommunicable disease in history.
As of March 2020, 41.9 percent of American adults over the age of 20 were considered obese, according to the most recently available data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
These problems stem from a Western lifestyle based on Western medicine, which pushes the idea that if you get sick, a pill is the solution, Sherwood said.
“That’s not the way the body works,” he said.
Today, there are people who have no trust in the health care system anymore. Some people are scared to go to a hospital because of the distrust they have about doctors and hospitals, Sherwood said. This is due to the fact that the health system is “no longer about people.” Instead, it is all about profits, and a for-profit system is designed to do whatever it needs to make money, Sherwood said.
The media does not talk about diet, exercise, stress management, sleep, or other factors important to health. Instead of avoidance or reversal of disease processes, the media mostly talks about management of disease processes, Sherwood explained.
Correcting the Problem
To alter people’s reliance on the current health care system and improve their self-governance and health, Sherwood wants them to first understand that human beings “are not born with medication deficiencies.” People should not be dependent on medication to be their primary solution for health care.
Instead, people must realize how the body operates. Getting essential nutrients like minerals, vitamins, fatty acids, and amino acids from their diets and adding physical activity to their lives is crucial to maintaining their bodies, he explained.
Going to the doctor when someone gets sick should be a last resort, not the first resort, he said.
“When people understand that everything in earth, here, is for us to not only exist but to thrive—not survive, but to thrive—it’s here, right here,” he said. “If we can shift our thinking into that way, that’s the initial part of it.”
