How healthy are we as a nation? Ultimately, its all relative - but compared to 100 years ago, its very hard to argue that we are any better off. In fact, we are getting sicker and sicker.

The idea portrayed to the public is that we have never had it better. The gold standard measure of health, life expectancy, is the highest it has ever been. But all is not as it seems.

The average life expectancy for a British man born today is seventy-five. In 1900, the figure was only fifty years. On paper, this would seem an impressive triumph for the people in white suits in making us healthier and more resistant to disease. Its not; this is purely down to a reduction in enfant mortality one century ago, this was the number one cause of death and now it is incredibly rare. These developments in understanding for new-born children were made in the early part of the 20th century, long before the gadgets of hospitals were available to us, likewise antibiotics/immunization. This continuing improvement saw the average life expectancy rise to sixty-eight years, all before 1950.

However, the most important thing to understand is that our real life expectancies have hardly changed since records began. Adults from a hundred years ago lived on average into their seventies, as we do now; although a child born in 1900 would, on average, live for 50 years, provided they made it through their childhood the same man (eg. at 20) could expect to live until he is 72. So with all the medical tools at our disposal, we have only added three years to our lives.

So, for all the added years that developments in emergency surgery, immunization and cancer treatment etc have given us (and believe me, they have), we are clearly losing almost the same elsewhere. The sad reality is that, as a society, we are getting better at delaying death in hospital rooms, but we are visiting them with increasing frequency.

Just one example of this is the increased prevalence of asthma. This is particularly worrying because, unlike most others, asthma is not only an illness in its own right but also an immune dysfunction (an inability of the body to deal with elements in its environment) and so the unnaturally high increase ties in with the fact we are become less able to deal with all diseases.

Of course, its not just real diseases that are affecting our general well-being. We are also told we are ill when we are not by drug companies like GlaxoSmithKline whose only concern is to boost sales of their drugs. By scaring us and convincing us that we have the symptoms of a condition, then offering a solution to it through their drugs, there is a lot of profit to be made.

There are far too many examples of this to list here. But the industry is selling diseases left, right and centre; ADHD, female sexual dysfunction and Restless Legs Syndrome are amongst the classics used to increase drug sales. Even shyness is not outside of the radar of greed this is now diagnosed as Social Anxiety Disorder, and sufferers are prescribed anti-depressants (which do more harm than good)! Surely it can only be a matter of time before the industry diagnoses every teenager and a lot of adults with Morning Laziness Disorder. That may sound entirely stupid but, as I wrote this article, another illness was created in America it seems we no longer get angry, simply suffer from Intermittent Explosive Disorder. Im not making this up.

This is not the fault of the doctors. Doctors are, through necessity, extremely intelligent and thorough people with a high level of education in their field. However, their field is as pathologists that is to say they deal with the correction of problems rather than preventing them. Even if they did have the desire or initiative to deviate from the modus operandi they had spent six years learning (and there are plenty that do), the policies of local health authorities ensure they stick to dishing out quick-fix drugs these are the most cost-effective solution to remove the symptoms of the problem. They rarely touch the cause.

This attitude is seen most commonly in the over-prescription of Ibuprofen etc for various pains, particularly joint problems. This is one of a family of Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs, deemed NSAIDs, that serve to reduce swelling in affected areas, therefore reducing pressure on pain receptors and therefore pain itself. This does nothing for the cause of a problem, so if a small tear in the cartilage was the cause of the pain, NSAIDs will no nothing to correct the problem; only take away the pain, which makes new injury more likely. In contrast, taking the natural compound S-adenosyl-methionine (SAMe) will give similar results in pain relief even though it has no anti-inflammatory effects; it helps by improving the conditions within the joint, especially when taken synergistically with vitamin C and sulphur-containing amino acids like cysteine. And yet the NHS regularly shun proven natural remedies.

This negligent decision-making processed is indirectly controlled by the drug companies. The problem is that there is no money to be made by anyone in natural products. Because drug companies cannot patent naturally-occurring products, there is very little margin to be made on them (supply and demand principle). However, if their clever guys in white jackets can create an innovative concoction which does things to the body that nothing else has, then they have created the supply. Now they simply need to find a disease that it can be used for and hype the benefits (or, if no disease exists, create one see Restless Legs Syndrome, Intermittent Explosive Disorder). All is left is to then push the drugs through the medical industry, employing both legitimate marketing and underhanded manipulation (as seen with Merck and Co and Vioxx, amongst many other examples). Rightly or wrongly, money talks.

There are unmentionable amounts of examples where dealing with a problem is simply a case of correcting a mineral deficiency or avoiding a physical or chemical cause of a disorder. Masking it with painkillers and other drugs is a short-term step which, on its own, is always more likely to make it worse and make surgical intervention ever more likely. The irony is that we are becoming more and more dependant on the help of health authorities as a direct result of their ignorance in looking after our well-being.

It has been said before, but prevention is definitely better than the cure. Health beats medicine every time. Until the can authorities resist the lure of the pharmaceutical kickbacks and rethink their policies beyond the scope of cutting waiting lists then you have to look out for yourself. Even if you are not suffering from any condition now, your health is very likely compromised by a variety of nutritional deficiencies which create an unnatural balance within the body which allows an unnatural state (illness) to develop. To correct this is very simple, but requires action on your part. Stop waiting to do something before something stops you.

So has medical science helped us? I am not against the ever-advancing technology that makes up the core of the modern health service. It is a massive advantage, and combined with our superior knowledge and understanding of the body at cellular levels, we are now at a point where we can triumph over many ailments that would previously have meant the worst. However, the problem is that this appears to be the only focus; what should be last-ditch intervention has become our first and only line of defence.

The lack of consideration given to health maintenance and the ignorance to the impact of our sustained denaturing of the earths resources makes illness more likely; the synthetic treatments, created in artificial lab environments and promoted with shady pharmaceutical money, often exaggerate these problems in the long run, sometimes creating brand new man-made problems of their own. Through every major medical advance, we are able to keep people living longer and longer but for every year we are gaining in the surgery room, we are losing almost the same elsewhere through insufficient diets and languid degeneration of our bodies.

What is the use of being ill until we are 100? Medical science does not have the answers. It has some answers in some areas. It had no input on our evolution. Our bodies are incredible machines crafted by nature they will only stay that way if we continue to follow the rules of nature.