I was very slow and stubborn about alternative medicine back in the mid 1960’s. Armed with abundant arrogance and a newly-minted college degree, I knew it all, including everything about medicine and health.

However, my chronic nosebleeds couldn’t be eradicated permanently. Each one required a physician’s visit. After moving from Hartford to New Haven, Connecticut, I had to find a new nosebleed doctor.

The New Haven physician boldly told me that I had a Vitamin C deficiency--scurvy. He prescribed 1,000 mg of Vitamin C daily which, if taken as prescribed, would mean no more nosebleeds.

Oh no, this quack was trying to prevent my future nosebleeds with Vitamin C!

Trying to prove this guy wrong--after all, then I believed only in “scientific” medicine--I took the Vitamin C. No nosebleeds for a week, then a month, then many months.

What was happening here? No more nosebleeds? Perish the thought. Was there something to alternative medicine? Was this doctor really not a quack?

Was I nosebleed free, thanks to Vitamin C? Answer: yes to all of these.

Is this what the Apostle Paul felt like when he was knocked off his horse on the road to Damascus-— arrogance quashed, ears and mind now open?

Perhaps. Like Paul,I unexpectantly became a convert-—in my case, a convert to alternative medicine.

So I studied and experimented with multi-vitamins and minerals. When I lived and worked in California in the early 1970’s, my physician was a gifted alternative medicine medical doctor.

I had become so burnt out and exhausted from workaholism, I felt like a 120 year old. Diagnosis: extreme hypoglycemia, mineral deficiencies, food allergies and adrenal exhaustion.

He prescribed alternative solutions, which worked during a six month period. I felt like a kid again. No drugs! No surgery! Boundless energy.

Fast forwarding 30 years to 2005, I’m even more convinced now of alternative medicine, correct diet, organic food, regular vigorous exercise, and good sleep habits. Alternative medicine now is ever better than the 1970’s.

I have studied this field intensely and consistently from the 1960’s to the present. I’ve kept up with what’s new.

Sadly, though, a majority of people are in bondage to allopathic (surgery and synthetic drug) physicians, to Big Pharma’s greed, and to “factory fresh” junk food from agri-business and food companies.

But my hope is to see people released from the bondage and ruination of needless surgeries and drugs, from dangerous doctors, from devitalized junk food, and from the lethargy of sedentary living with no regular exercise.

If you’re still unconvinced, here are more specifics:

1. Some 61% of American adults and 30% of children are obese.

2. There are 167,933 diet book titles, yet 300,000 Americans die prematurely from obesity-related reasons each year. Diets don’t work, lifestyle changes do. The first three letters in the word diet are DIE !

3. 62% of McDonald’s customers supersize their fries. 14% of Americans eat a diet mostly of fast foods. 22% of those ages 18-24 eat mostly fast foods.

4. And did you know Americans eat 48% of all meals in restaurants, obviously not knowing what exactly they are eating?

5. 106,000 Americans die in hospitals each year, having taken doctor-prescribed, legal drugs. There are 2,216,000 annual, non-fatal hospitalizations from reactions to legal drugs as well.

Drugs, legal and illegal, are fraught with dangers and, in many cases, prescribed drugs aren’t needed at all.

If you want to suffer and die prematurely from heart disease, stroke, cancer, or diabetes, please don’t make any lifestyle changes.

Ignore what I say. Keep making agri-business, Big Pharma, fast food chains, and the $25 billion sickness industry richer with your hard-earned money.

The choice is yours: an abundant, healthy life or a miserable unhealthy life and premature death all too soon. You decide.

John J. Alquist owns and operates Alquist Enterprises. John is a professional speaker, author and business consultant. Visit John at http://www.tell-it-well.com or email him at john@tell-it-well.com .