Kevin Cullis | On December 22, 2020

Prostate cancer!

That was my diagnosis. Stomach, meet floor. That one word brings to mind the many who get it, die from it, survive it, and lots of fundraising and research to “find the cure.” Mention Medicare/Medicaid and healthcare costs rising every year, and our loss of national productivity is creating a crisis looming before us. The health and wealth of our nation are a Code Blue!

I tried my hand at self-care but ended up in the E.R. at the end of August. My PSA was 595 on August 27th, 2020; my father’s PSA started at 400, and he lasted 15 years with it. But times have changed for the better.

Time, knowledge, and the most significant change: A lifestyle diet becomes lifestyle medicine.

The two months before and after my diagnosis were overwhelming. Once diagnosed, I had to switch my focus from wealth creation to health correction with the amount of medical and dietary information I needed to read and digest. My wife and I recently began to change our diets because of friend’s recommendation to watch the documentaries Forks Over Knives and Fat, Sick, and nearly Dead. He had flown to see a specialist who recommended he go on a 90 day all raw diet of fruits and vegetables to get rid of the 12-15 pain pills he was taking every day. As he told me, “I knew within 30 days this was going to be my lifestyle and resulted in pivoting my whole diet” to a whole-food, plant-based (WFPB) diet. While this was new information to us, it’s not new when the Bible points out the WFPB solution from Daniel in about 550 B.C.

In Daniel 1:8-21, Daniel questioned the health benefits (verses 8-9, 12, 20) “with the king’s choice food or with the wine which he drank” versus what he knew was better, vegetables and water (v. 11). Like all good doctors today and the commander of the officials in Daniel’s time ask, “Where are the results and data?” Daniel asked for a ten-day comparison between those following Daniel’s diet versus the king’s diet. Under the penalty of a fear of failure, the commander worried, “you would make me forfeit my head to the king,” but agreed to the test. Not only did Daniel win over the commander, but the king “found them ten times better than all the magician and conjurers who were in all his realm” (verse 20). Talk about the results of a healthy diet and lifestyle, coupled with God’s wisdom (v. 17). Imagine the productivity and prosperity which comes from good health for us to create wealth.

With my diagnosis, friends recommended the book “Chris Beat Cancer” by Chris Wark, Dr. Neal D. Banard’s “Your Body In Balance,” other books. I bought Wark’s book two weeks after leaving the hospital and began his diet protocol. However, on a second trip to the hospital ER for an infection, I met “Dr. Mac.” He was the ONLY doctor who could and would discuss the WFPB diet with me to treat and prevent diseases and gave me some diet recommendations, which proved fruitful. After 45 days with a hormone shot and 30 days of the WFPB diet change, my PSA on October 16th at 24! A whopping 571 decrease! My wife could not see my smile under my mask but knew right away when I pulled it off: It was good news!

I watched Chris Wark’s YouTube channel and his interview with Dr. Saray Stancic. She shared her life’s journey from a multiple sclerosis diagnosis as a third-year resident to serving as Chief of Infectious Diseases at the Hudson Valley Veterans Administration (VA) Hospital in New York. Dr. Stancic’s most significant health change came with her adoption of the WFPB lifestyle she shared in her recently released documentary “Code Blue.” Her diet changes resulted in her being able to run a marathon. She then pursued becoming an entrepreneur and opened up her private medical practice in 2012 to focus on the new medical approach: Lifestyle medicine.

With my treatment, I think I have healthcare golden handcuffs with the VA. Not one doctor has mentioned or advocated a WFPB diet as a form of treatment for my diagnosis. They say eat healthily, but they don’t see food as medicine—because they don’t know. I bring up the WFPB diet with all of the VA staff I come in contact with, but the topic goes nowhere. But talk with some nurses and staff, and they will talk about it with me in whispers. I should go elsewhere, but I am limited.

At this time, only one medical school, the University of South Carolina School of Medicine Greenville, integrates lifestyle medicine, i.e., a WFPB diet, in their curriculum for their students. Healthcare costs in the U.S. are $2.6 TRILLION, with 86 percent coming from chronic illness, heart disease, diabetes, etc.^[1] America is not practicing health care; it’s sick care. Today’s medical-industrial complex treats symptoms (multiple heart bypasses, breast cancer surgeries, drugs) instead of dealing with the root causes of our poor health, which originates from our inadequate food supply and food choices. Just as we know what causes poverty; what we want is prosperity. We don’t want sick care; we want healthcare. Yet what we are providing to the American public and its associated rising government spending is sick care; it will bankrupt us.

Watch drug advertisements, and they tell us about the potential various drug side effects. Yet we fail to understand and promote that there are always many additional side benefits associated with a WFPB diet consisting of eating the right combination of foods, herbs, and spices.

When businesses are reactive and not proactive with managing and controlling their costs, their profits dwindle. Yet if we look at our current “healthcare system,” encouraging and engaging Americans to adopt a healthier lifestyle, we swap bandaid dollars paying for bypass, breast cancer, and other surgeries for proper healthy solutions used for authentic, healthy living.

Healthcare professionals can become medical entrepreneurs and invest in 24 Hour Fitness, Farm-to-Table cooperatives, or farms switching to organic produce and regenerative agriculture principles. The medical profession has the most significant opportunity right now to change our sick nation into a healthy one. It’s not just healthcare professionals, businesses like Costco are investing millions to increase the availability of organic crops, and organic farmers can’t keep up. Not to mention the Tasmanian agricultural scientist Bruce French cataloging more than 30,000 plant foods around the world to increase the health of people from their native crops. Farmers in third world countries create health security can now become entrepreneurs and export their unique and healthy crops around the world, providing food as medicine.

Instead of medical school students memorizing 50 drugs, they learn 50 plants out of the 30,000 to recommend to their patients. Rather than business continuity and having “customers for life,” we’ve changed the medical, restaurant, and farming industry to ensure that they provide “life for customers.” Prosperity returns for all with these lifestyle changes.

Originally published on Townhall Finance.

Kevin Cullis

Kevin Cullis is owner of Startups On Main Street, LLC and the author of “HWJDB How Would Jesus Do Business?” and “How to Start a Business: Mac Version.” You can read more of his writings at HWJDB.com and StartupsOnMainStreet.com or attend one of his Bible-based Fish Tank Startups Workshops designed for individuals looking to start and grow Christ-centered businesses.