We’re publishing an original piece today by Dr. Rachel Nicoll, a post-doc medical researcher, about the enduring problem of chronic disease. These are diseases for which there is no cure, condemning sufferers to live with them for the rest of their lives. Examples of chronic conditions include Type 2 diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease, autoimmune conditions, dementia, lung disease and cancer. Here is an extract:
Why is there still no cure for chronic diseases? By ‘cure’, I am not referring to medical management through drugs that have to be taken for the remainder of life, I mean a complete reversal of the disease, so that the patient can say, for example, that they no longer have Alzheimer’s disease or diabetes. With the trillions poured into medical research over the last several decades, we can be forgiven for asking what scientists have been doing all this time, as there seems to be very little to show for it in terms of reducing chronic disease. Furthermore, part of the definition of chronic disease includes the damning fact that it has no cure. So according to the current medical model, we apparently cannot prevent chronic disease and nor can we cure it; instead we must take ever-increasing numbers of drugs for the rest of our lives. In 2021, after decades of highly funded research, this is truly shocking. Not only is conventional medicine failing to cure chronic disease but the incidence of all chronic diseases is increasing dramatically.
Worth reading in full.


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In my personal experience, it’s possible to change a disease that’s not cureable – without resorting to nasty drugs – and making life liveable again. It takes a bit of research, living healthily, plus having the b*lls to try it and possibly go against a doctor. I’m posting this in case someone out there finds this info useful.
Some years ago I was diagnosed with R.A. I’m very active and so I was poleaxed – physically and mentally. It took me about six months to find a positive course of action – you have to hang on in there – it’s quite a journey. I’m now able to live my old life – yes, I have one or two aches and pains but I’m back to full activity – just occasionally take an anti-inflammatory (over-the-counter version). I take no dangerous drugs – to watch me move you’d not know I have this condition. It took me about six months taking the following supplements below to get there – worth the wait!
The things I use :- Serretia = serrapeptase – a digestive enzyme which removes fibrin, the thing that binds up joints, from the system. (The Japenese have prescribed it… Read more »
Great post. Well done
More about Serrapeptase – also good to dissolve blood clots
https://goodhealthnaturally.com/218-serrapeptase
Dr. Jason Fung and VirtaHealth have both helped Type 2 diabetics put their diabetes into remission with a combination of a low carb diet and intermittent fasting. In some cases, patients can stop most or all medications within two weeks of beginning this insulin-lowering protocol.
Many of these chronic diseases are related to the same process that produces T2D, chronic hyperinsulinemia. Heart disease, for example, is strongly associated with T2D. Chronic high insulin damages the blood vessels. Reducing that chronic high insulin can have immediate beneficial effects.
A number of authors have covered this in detail. Why We Get Sick by Benjamin Bikman is a good one.
See also: https://www.virtahealth.com/
http://www.dietdoctor.com
High doses of zinc cure many of those. I find it interesting Firefox and Chrome close down more now when you write a dissenting comment.
‘Why is there still no cure for chronic diseases? By ‘cure’, I am not referring to medical management through drugs that have to be taken for the remainder of life, I mean a complete reversal of the disease, so that the patient can say, for example, that they no longer have Alzheimer’s disease or diabetes. With the trillions poured into medical research over the last several decades, we can be forgiven for asking what scientists have been doing all this time … ‘
They’ve been doing the same thing priests did in the past, taking the money and justifying their position with false promises. The belief that science can make life perfect is as childish as the belief that a mythical sky dweller can.
Money Money Money... I’ve set up a ‘FREE’ site including updated information. resources and useful links: https://www.LCAHub.org/
Why are there still no cures for chronic disease?
According to many doctors and others, the Western diet and lack of physical activity are the main causes of chronic diseases. Who was it who said “We have a health system that doesn’t recognise the importance of food and a food system that doesn’t recognise the importance of health”?
For just one example checkout Prof. Ian Chapple, a world authority on periodontitis. He says that severe periodontitis is the sixth leading disease in the world. He believes that the main cause is the western diet https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTnuUQ6xyuY
Oh please.
everybody has to die of something at some time. Yeah probably best avoid CV disease and type 2 diabetes….and it can be in most cases. I know I am genetically prone to type 2 diabetes. Do I let myself get fat? Do I hell. is it fun? No it’s shit.
if we could cure cancer, how much longer do you think everyone would live? Given that one third of us will die of it? Average life expectancy in the west would go up by less than 3 years. The majority who get it are old, they’ve accumulated genetic mutations and their immune systems are failing.
Good diet, exercise, enough sleep and good immune health. That is what is needed. But personal responsibility seems to be lacking and people are unwilling to make the lifestyle changes needed.
Not just unwilling but misinformed as to what to do, like eating high carb low fat with the majority of fat industrially produced omega 6 seed oils and worse avoiding meat. How’s that working out?
Jamie Oliver is fond of saying that if you look at the ingredients on a packet and your granny wouldn’t recognise what they are then you probably shouldn’t eat it – wise advice to my mind. It is factory food.
The chronic diseases described in Dr. Nicoll’s article are mostly caused by metabolic dysfunction. Virta Health has had great success reversing Type 2 diabetes and restoring patients’ health by using a diet low in carbohydrates. Often they have been able to improve their patients’ condition to the point they no longer need to take insulin and drugs for high blood pressure, etc. https://www.virtahealth.com/ ,
I have read all the comments on healthy lifestyles.
However you can give patients all the information they could possibly want on changing their life style to improve their health but basically they don’t want to. T.hese people can be told of what will happen if they don’t alter their lifestyle but they just ‘can’t be bothered’
I used to feel like I was bashing my head against a brick wall. One patient told me that as he paid tax he thought the NHS should look after him. Sadly this is a common view.
So true! I share your frustration!
Many wants a magic pill (solution), that will never exist as no money to be made from it
It’s asking too much to expect people to give up on things we have evolved to consume as much of as we can whenever we can. The food industry, which knows very well how to hook us into addictions to things that satisfy us, is the culprit. The government allows car producer to sell cars that are capable of well in excess of one hundred miles an hour in a market with an absolute maximum permitted speed of seventy, then punishes drivers who use those cars at higher speeds. The same is true of food; the government allows food producers to put all sorts of unhealthy things in our food, simply because they are cheap, filling and tasty, then rebukes us for buying those items because they are cheap, filling and tasty, even proposing higher taxes on foods people like Vallance and Whitty deem ‘unhealthy’.
Everyone’s diet and health could be improved by tighter controls on food production.
There are cures but its all been hidden. Take a look at the 1939 Cancer Act. Anyone suggesting natural cures for cancer will be fined, second offence is punishable by prison.
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Geo6/2-3/13/contents
Until today I didn’t even know that there was a Cancer Act – indeed it make on wonder why the UK should need one – do other countries have similar legislation???
I’m not sure. All I know that in 2011 after being diagnosed by the NHS and refusing all their barbaric treatment, I went to Germany for an education and ‘treatment’ that allowed the body to restore balance. I know that a body can never be bullied into health by drugs. I am living proof to my testament.
When I started nursing back in 1976 we were informed that there would likely be a cure for Multiple Sclerosis – 45 years later no sign of a cure being found.
To me it is more of a horrific disease than cancer – many of which CAN be cured, if caught early enough
There is no money in a cure, but lots of money to be made on life time medication. Why do you think the Covid virus is not allowed to be treated and cured? Because there would be no need for lots of injections, lots of boosters, (every 5 months) according to Fauci, and so lots of money to be made,
Big Pharma is not about curing illness, its about getting the population reliant upon drugs and thus providing a long term income stream.
Did you notice how the BBC is at pains to demonise Ivermectin – got to quash any possibility that people might cotton on that they could TREAT or prevent covid with Ivermectin in case they don’t go for their jabs
Cures are difficult. But if government magic money were put into more research on prevention, advances might be made. More research on how nutritional deficiencies and adverse incidents before and during pregnancy in mothers might link to conditions such as heart disease and autism in offspring, and the “grandmother effect”, how this can effect three generations, first noted after the WW2 starvation in the Netherlands. Vitamin D status – really a hormone – in pregnancy is an important issue.
I have long believed that women intending pregnancy should first blood test to identify deficiencies and difficulties, especially thyroid problems, incipient diabetes etc, and low levels, not necessarily frank deficiencies, of nutrients, and correct these before conception. That’s a first world possibility now. I am certain it would radically improve health for the next generation, and perhaps the generation after.
In poorer countries the situation is shocking. Over twenty years ago I watched in amazement in Afghanistan the men eat first, eat the meat, and abandon the leftovers for their almost continuously breast feeding or pregnant wives. Iron deficiency was endemic. I wonder how much that still exists in parts of the world.
Great post
vitamin D & Gestational diabetes
https://vitamindwiki.com/tiki-index.php?page_id=5526
vitamin D & Pregnancy
https://vitamindwiki.com/Pregnancy
https://drjockers.com/pregnancy-diet/
‘I have long believed that women intending pregnancy should first blood test to identify deficiencies and difficulties, especially thyroid problems, incipient diabetes etc, and low levels, not necessarily frank deficiencies, of nutrients, and correct these before conception.‘
That would require women to understand and accept that the baby they wish to produce is not ‘theirs’ to do with as they please and it’s hard enough to get expectant mothers to stop smoking and drinking alcohol. I think your idea has merit but is not capable of flight.
A lot of these diseases can be reversed/cured by diet alone. Even Alzheimers can be considered to be a type 3 diabetes of the brain and can be greatly slowed with dietary considerations.
The hyperprocessed foods, brightly packages, formulated to be addictive, are at the root of a lot of chronic disease and make a lot of money for big agriculture, big food and big pharma.
Go back to a diet based on real food. Cut out the junk – most things with a lengthy ingredients list and watch your health improve.
Great post
Is Alzheimer’s Type 3 Diabetes?
https://thenoakesfoundation.org/news/blog/is-alzheimers-type-3-diabetes
This is a very strange attitude for a “medical researcher”. Humans are healthier and live longer than ever before. Diseases involving external agents or mechanical failure of the body are largely treatable with a short term treatment. Is it so terrible that diseases involving the body itself malfunctioning or simply wearing out require chronic treatment? There’s a huge difference in complexity between killing a virus or bacteria to stop an infection and altering or replacing the entire immune system when it attacks the wrong target (as in autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis). Many chronic conditions will only be permanently fixable with gene therapies and require much greater understanding before they could be safely applied. Others are simply the inevitable effect of time.
That is the myth perpetuated by the ‘health’, medical and pharmaceutical industry. Most of those illnesses can be avoided or completely reversed by lifestyle, food and consumption changes. It does not need medical intervention, drugs or gene therapies.
Yes, and she also makes the point that chronic disease is being found in much younger people today so it’s not just a matter of the inevitable effect of time.
My wife was stricken with arthritis, so bad she could hardly get up the stairs. Rather than follow the conventional route of taking drugs to relieve the symptoms she followed the advice of a certain Dr John McDougall who has consistently (and successfully) advanced a starch and plant-based diet, that mankind has followed up until modern times. Most important of all is the simple point about removing milk and eggs from one’s diet. Milk is intended for the fast growth of calves; we are the only species to use the milk of another species. It is both nonsensical and damaging to the body. Eggs, believe it or not, are even used in petri dishes to promote the growth of cancer cells. The wife’s arthritis improved dramatically after this simple (cost-free) act. Were the medics at the treatment centre impressed by this? – you can guess the answer. They are trained to disregard the ‘simple’ solutions. As with this covid business, it is only the interventionist heavy handed (and expensive) procedures that are followed, what I term the ‘Bomber Harris’ approach to health-care. Treat it like warfare where you see an external enemy or invader and hit it hard; damn the… Read more »
Cows milks is terrible for the body. Many skin conditions can also be attributed to milk and it’s in so many products (basically processed foods).
The milk industry (like many areas of the food industry) has perpetuated this myth that milk is good for us and required for calcium. It’s not – there’s many other foods higher in calcium weight for weight with better absorption properties.
I love the Bomber Harris approach to healthcare, will borrow that!
Approx 10% of people with diabetes in the UK have type 1 (c 50k), which can’t be cured as the issue relates to functionality of the pancreas itself.
I’ve a theory that many chronic diseases are caused/perpetuated/exacerbated by environmental factors (interacting with each individual body) but fixing those would require fundamental societal change and ultimately would restore power to individuals rather than big business/the state, so the Govt won’t do anything serious about it. For example, how many conditions are there in which stress and poor sleep are major contributory factors – and what’s the biggest cause of stress/insomnia for most people?
Then there’s pollutants, chemical/radiation exposure, food additives, constant noise…. We’re just not supposed to live like this.
Type 1 Diabetes can be much better managed with low carb diets.
Conventional medicine advice that diabetics should just inject more insulin when they have heavy carb meals / snacks is very detrimental to health – the end result is amputated toes/feet/legs, deteriorating eyesight/blindness, extremely poor health and early death
Yes Type 1 is autoimmune. It used to mainly onset in childhood but last time I looked at number there were about twice as many adult onset cases. Lots of othe autoimmune diseases and other “genetic” diaseases have increased and changed in incidence which must be driven by environmental factors
You didn’t mention stresses due to overpopulation.
Silly question. Why is there no cure for death? These “chronic diseases” basically reflect your body slowly dying. This process of destruction starts after reaching adulthood and becomes gradually worse. The best you can hope for is slow it down a bit. And no, not all of it is related to “lifestyle and nutrition”, wild animals also get some of those chronic aging diseases – if they manage to survive long enough without being eaten.
‘..this summer saw the publication of the 1970 British Cohort Study, which periodically tracks the lives of about 17,000 people. This showed that around one in three people in their late 40s has multiple chronic health issues’
So not necessarily the effect of old age?
“During the Second World War we were extremely healthy.” Huh? No, we weren’t.
Indeed. My maternal grandfather died of cancer during the second world war, one of my mother’s sisters died of tuberculosis right at the end of the war, another had one and a half lungs removed because of some dreadful illness contracted during the war. That aside, many many people must have suffered during the war with conditions due to poverty developed before it.
I think the idea stems from the opinions of far from unbiased medical puritans who believed that a basic diet of essentials, a form of enforced fasting, was necessarily good for people – the sort of ‘experts’ who opine that going without regularly and living on bird seed and raw vegetables when it is necessary to eat is the only way to live healthily.
If only someone would research lifestyle factors and how much some of these diseases could be avoided or minimised by changes in diet and lifestyle. Oh wait there wouldn’t be any profit in that would there.
You’d be surprised how much profit there is in “diet and lifestyle” coaching (obviously, also throw in some miracle supplements in the mix).
I note your approach has become much more subtle in recent days
Many have and the results have been published and well publicised for many decades.
That aside, there is nothing wrong with making things for profit, as long as they are not harmful, and nothing wrong with considering the economic aspects of any compulsory changes in production, marketing and consumption.
There’s no money in curing people, the money is in treating symptoms for ever more. Big Pharma must hate the two doctors who discovered the cure for stomach ulcers was a 2 week course of antibiotics, big pharma lost billions as their life long treatment drugs became worthless….
Why would big pharma and medicine put themselves out of business? Especially right now?
Demonise cholesterol, red meat, saturated fat and eggs. Promote GM plants and pesticide fruit. Trick is to slowly kill us, timed just at retirement age. Modern day slavery.
I hear Mr. Atkins died of heart disease YMMV.
idiot. He slipped on ice and cracked his head.
There’s no ‘cure’. If you stop doing what CAUSES them the illnesses will not get any worse. If you take drugs, they’ll distract the body from doing the uncomfortable stuff it needs to do, and, sure, while the body tries to deal with the new toxins, you’ll ‘feel better’. But the drugs cause their own problems of course. ‘There is no curse causeless’. Sufferers are not ‘unlucky’ – there’s a reason why these things happen!
True
There is also no magic pill to treat illnesses. Sadly many people insist that their doctor give them a pill
There’s a suggestion that type 2 diabetes may be caused by a herpes family virus (I don’t have access to the relevant information as I’m away on holiday). Also there is a strong genetic factor involved in type 2. Multiple Sclerosis appears to have a viral involvement.
What is certain is that type 2 diabetes is not solely down to lifestyle. It is suggested that Alzheimer’s may be related. From a medical point of view, there’s a tendency to treat symptoms rather than identify the real causes of disease. Coronary heart disease is treated with stents after a heart attack or an arterial bypass. There’s no real understanding of what actually happens in the development of clots in coronary arteries or those in the brain.
I have 3 sisters. One has MS, another has Parkinsons disease and there is something wrong with my other sister, health wise though she won’t admit it yet. Your comment about MS having a viral involvement is something I have long suspected. We all had whooping cough badly as children. My sister with MS was a 6 week old baby. When you’re back from holiday, I’d love to know what literature you have come across on this subject.
There is no medical cure for MS; if there were, you would have heard about it. I say, if one doctor’s black bag is empty it does not necessarily follow that all other doctors’ black bags are. Go where you can get the outcome you need. The first rule of fishing is to put your hook in the water, for that is where the fish are.
Still, when I tell you that Frederick Robert Klenner, MD was curing multiple sclerosis back in the 1950’s and ’60’s, you would not easily believe me. And who in their right mind would? A MS patient confined to a wheelchair, perhaps. Like the one who was wheeled into my office one day by his private RN.
I shared the details of Dr. Klenner’s protocol with them. They went home and did it. It worked. In little over two weeks, the man was out of his wheelchair, walking with a walker or cane. It was beautiful to see.
What did they do? Read Dr. Klenner’s Clinical Guide to the Use of Vitamin C and you will find out precisely what they did. It is posted for free access at https://www.seanet.com/~alexs/ascorbate/198x/smith-lh-clinical_guide_1988.htm
The multiple sclerosis protocol takes up about five pages.
http://www.doctoryourself.com/ms_1.html
http://www.doctoryourself.com/ms_2.html
also hyperbaric oxygen treatment for multiple sclerosis https://www.msntc.org.uk/
[mask wearing… Read more »
Is it something to do with the fact that the pharmaceutical industry wouldn’t make any money if people didn’t suffer chronic illness?
‘.. instead we must take ever-increasing numbers of drugs for the rest of our lives. “
Does that answer the question? There’s no money in curing diseases.
Well done.
I sometimes wonder if I am reading the same article as everyone else.
Before this genocidal movement kicked off I must admit to being ambivalent with regards to big pharma but with a decidedly jaundiced view of their shenanigans ģiven the billions in fines they had racked up. Now I realise how seriously I had misunderstood the sheer evil of these corporations.
Big pharma are as valid to good health as much as Bill Gates is essential to rescuing the children of Africa from poverty.
Yeah right….
As Goldman Sachs put it ‘Is curing patients a sustainable business model?’
DIabetes can be put into remission through a LCHF (low carbohydrate high healthy fat) diet. Not only is it doable but it is sustainable.
Just look at the success of Dr David Unwin and the Norwood surgery in Southport with LCHF, and in the USA the success of Virta Health with a similar approach. Not only has diabetes been put into remission for many of Norwood’s diabetic patients but significant de-prescription happens also saving the NHS considerable money. Here is an update on youtube from May on the Norwood surgery.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyB-UNjt_V0
Many chronic conditions can be improved or stabilised also through such a real food LCHF diet that cuts out inflammatory seed oils.
Insulin resistance is at the heart of many health conditions including Alzheimers, heart disease and many auto-immune conditions. Ben Bikman’s book ‘Why we get Sick’ explains the mechanisms and evidence in a very clear way. You will find many videos on youtube with Ben Bikman also. As Joseph Kraft put it, those with cardiovascular disease not identified with diabetes are simply undiagnosed, and that generalisation is very close to the reality. So tackle diabetes with nutritional and other lifestyle interventions and you tackle heart disease also.
Most… Read more »
Great post!
What should happen is to establish and fix the underlying cause of the disease. Treating symptoms with poly pharmacy (endless drug prescriptions) will only make people sicker or even kill the
Thanks.
You might be interested in this paper published on 29th July 2021 reviewing the literature if you’ve not already seen it
Dietary strategies for remission of type 2 diabetes: A narrative review
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jhn.12938
Thanks
Yes, low carb diets (with medium protein and good quality fats) should be a permanent lifestyle change. Many people are carbohydrate intolerant and ‘going back’ to a high carb diet will result in diabetes 2 returning. Yes, it is not fair! However, we are all different but should do the best with how our unique bodies are ‘designed’
All of the above is great stuff.
However the Pharma industry has actually been wildly successful The price of insulin was put up by several hundred percent. Metformin is cheap as chips but there are now a plethora of other drugs with similar effect but much higher prices. So basically no-one wants to “cure” diabetes (or any other chronic disease) when it can be treated for life with expensive drugs. Not many doctors and even fewer dietitians will endorse low carb diets and some patients have been threatened with withdrawal of treatment unless they return to high carb low fat.
This used to be the advice from the ADA
https://web.archive.org/web/20040203222331/http://www.diabetes.org/nutrition-and-recipes/nutrition/starches.jsp
Metformin decimates Vitamin B12 in the body
If you combine heavy weight lifting, along with a calorie reduced diet, diabetes 2 can be reversed quite quickly.
Diet and lifestyle definitely; I’m not totally convinced about “toxic chemicals” though. Nor that the increases in prevalence aren’t just because of an increase in diagnoses and living longer?
Everyone has to die of something so aren’t these chronic diseases just stuff that people have to die of? I don’t want anyone I know to get them, but it’s not going to keep me awake at night.
indeed they do. if there’s a “miracle cure” for disease “a” it just means more people are suddenly going to die of disease b (or c or d…) instead… and naturally the media will be pumping out articles about the “massive” increase in disease b and how we all need to change our lifestyles.
There’s no cure in profit