In the modern era of medicine, where innovation is often equated with progress, many people assume that the dominant healthcare model in the United States reflects the best that science has to offer. Yet despite this, chronic illness continues to rise, and more Americans than ever rely on daily medication to maintain a semblance of health.
What part of this equation remains unresolved, and what has the system failed to account for? The documentary above, “The Big Secret,”1 answers this question by exploring the deeper forces shaping American healthcare and invites you to reconsider many of the assumptions you’ve long accepted without question.
Through interviews with physicians, researchers, and health advocates, it follows the trail of influence that has quietly determined how doctors are trained, how treatments are chosen, how the foundations of care were built, and how those foundations continue to shape health outcomes today.
The Making of a Medical Monopoly
For most of history, healing was guided by direct observation, traditional wisdom, and a blend of natural therapies drawn from plants, minerals, and food. That changed at the turn of the 20th century, when industrial and financial interests began reshaping medicine into a centralized, pharmaceutical-first system. What emerged was a model built not around patient health, but around patentable products, standardized protocols, and institutional control.2
• The Flexner Report laid the groundwork for corporate control — The push began with the Carnegie Foundation, which commissioned educator Abraham Flexner in 1908 to conduct a sweeping review of American medical schools. Though Flexner had no medical training, he visited every school in the country and produced a report that would become the blueprint for what would count as “real” medicine in the United States.
• The report sidelined entire healing systems that didn’t conform — The Flexner Report, published in 1910, called for stricter admissions, standardized training, and a closer alignment with laboratory science. While framed as a push for quality, the reform wiped out much of the therapeutic diversity that once defined American medicine.
At the time, schools taught homeopathy, naturopathy, herbalism, nutritional therapy, and other empirical, non-drug-based approaches. The Flexner Report dismissed them not for poor outcomes, but for failing to fit the narrow research model promoted by industrial interests. Its adoption signaled the collapse of a pluralistic system and the rise of a pharmaceutical-centered medical order.
• Rockefeller interests steered medical education toward patented treatments — The Rockefeller Foundation, already heavily invested in the growing pharmaceutical industry, saw the report as a perfect opportunity. Using their vast financial resources, the Rockefeller Foundation began offering grants to medical schools, but only those that adopted the Flexner model and rejected alternative approaches.
They began to steer the entire medical education system toward a model that favored patented drug treatments over nutritional or holistic care. Schools that taught homeopathy, naturopathy, or nutrition were denied funding and accreditation. With the inability to compete financially, over half of them eventually closed.
• The American Medical Association (AMA) was installed as the official gatekeeper — Through strategic lobbying and financial backing, the Rockefeller Foundation pushed for laws that granted regulatory authority to the AMA, a private membership organization that previously held no official power.
This gave AMA the ability to accredit medical schools and oversee licensure standards at the state level. With this new authority, it became the gatekeeper of what would be considered legitimate medicine in the United States. As explained in the documentary:
“Unfortunately, the AMA was also heavily influenced by the Rockefeller Foundation … Consequently, the AMA promoted allopathic medicine to the point that it became the only approved form of medicine taught in the U.S. Consequently, doctors began prescribing the Rockefeller Foundation’s patented medicines to manage, not cure, illnesses and diseases.”3
• Doctors are legally incentivized to follow pharmaceutical protocols — If a doctor recommends a natural or unconventional treatment and a patient suffers an adverse outcome, they face the threat of malpractice suits and professional sanctions. But if the same doctor prescribes an approved pharmaceutical, no matter how harmful or ineffective, it is legally defensible.
Because these drugs are the “standard of care,” doctors are protected by liability insurance and institutional guidelines. This has created a climate where risk-avoidance overrides innovation, and protocol compliance replaces independent thinking.
• Even journals were captured by industry — Scientific journals, increasingly reliant on drug company advertising and sponsorship, skewed publication in favor of products with commercial potential. Research that challenged dominant drug narratives was buried, while favorable studies, regardless of quality, were widely promoted.
• Alternative approaches are excluded by insurance and medical boards — Insurance systems are structured to reimburse only AMA-approved treatments, which primarily include drugs, surgeries, and diagnostic tests. Nutritional therapy, detoxification, and lifestyle-based interventions are often denied coverage, even if they outperform drugs in safety or efficacy.
• Educational systems suppress therapeutic diversity — Medical students are rarely taught about prevention, nutrition, or holistic strategies. Their training is shaped by pharmaceutical models that equate symptom suppression with care. This tunnel vision is the predictable outcome of a system engineered to reward profitable treatments, not those that restore autonomy or health.
This healthcare structure remains intact today. And the deeper you look at it, the clearer it becomes that the purpose of this system was never to eliminate disease, but to build a permanent, profitable industry around managing it.
Rethinking Cholesterol, Heart Disease, and Cognitive Decline
Modern medicine has framed cholesterol as a primary threat to health. From routine checkups to national guidelines, patients are taught to fear high numbers and suppress them with medication. Doctors reinforce this view through routine statin prescriptions, and entire treatment protocols revolve around reducing cholesterol to prevent heart disease. But this narrative was built more on commercial interest than biological truth.
• Cholesterol is actually essential for cellular and neurological function — Cholesterol plays a structural and metabolic role in every cell. It stabilizes cell membranes, regulates permeability, and serves as a building block for steroid hormones, including estrogen, testosterone, and cortisol. Your body also uses cholesterol to synthesize vitamin D and produce bile acids necessary for digestion.4
Nowhere is its importance more evident than in the brain, which houses nearly a quarter of your body’s total cholesterol despite accounting for just a few percent of its mass. Neurons depend on cholesterol for synapse formation and communication. Without it, cognitive function collapses.
• Suppressing cholesterol introduces metabolic instability — Over time, the campaign to lower cholesterol has driven levels below what’s needed for optimal function. Dr. Peter Glidden, a naturopathic doctor featured in the documentary, explained:
“Low cholesterol levels are associated with an increased chance of death, an increased chance of cancer, high percentage of birth defects, peripheral neuropathy, short temper and aggressive behavior, kidney failure, and dementia.”5
• Statins don’t prevent heart attacks and undermine key systems — Statins are a class of drugs that inhibit HMG-CoA reductase, an enzyme in the liver involved in cholesterol synthesis. By blocking this enzyme, statins lower total and LDL cholesterol levels, which has led to their widespread use as a preventive measure for cardiovascular disease. Yet the evidence for their benefit is limited.
For people without a prior history of heart disease, statins offer little to no reduction in mortality or heart attack risk. Even in higher-risk populations, the absolute benefit is small, and often eclipsed by the drugs’ side effects, which include muscle pain, fatigue, liver dysfunction, memory loss, mood disruption, and reduced hormone levels, among others.
• Cholesterol thresholds were redefined to expand drug markets — Guidelines for what constitutes “high cholesterol” have steadily shifted. Numbers once considered normal are now treated as risky, not because of new evidence but due to committee decisions shaped by pharmaceutical advisors. Each downward revision expands the pool of statin candidates and the market. The redefinition of normal into pathological has been one of the most profitable moves in modern medicine.
• The rise in Alzheimer’s parallels low-fat, low-cholesterol policies — Alzheimer’s disease, now one of the leading causes of death in older adults, was virtually unheard of before 1940. Since the 1980s, its incidence has soared in tandem with low-fat dietary guidelines and widespread statin use.
Experts interviewed in the film describe Alzheimer’s as a manmade epidemic triggered by the chronic starvation of the brain’s most essential lipid, not an inevitable consequence of aging. These trends suggest the disturbing possibility that modern policies intended to protect the brain have helped dismantle it instead.
• Overlooked strategies point to broader metabolic dysfunction — For example, Jonathan V. Wright, M.D., an expert in natural medicine, noted that regular blood donation significantly lowers the risk of heart attack and stroke, likely by reducing iron overload and oxidative stress. These outcomes surpass what statins offer, yet they’re rarely promoted because they can’t be patented or monetized.
• Glyphosate could be the real driver behind lipid disruptions — While cholesterol has been vilified, the real metabolic threat may lie elsewhere. The film notes a tight correlation between glyphosate exposure through GMO corn and soy and rising LDL levels. Cholesterol levels rise not because of saturated fat or eggs, but as a biological response to environmental toxins. Meanwhile, heart attack trends don’t track with cholesterol levels at all, calling into question the entire lipid hypothesis.
For a deeper look at how to restore healthy cholesterol levels without pharmaceuticals, check out “Lower Cholesterol, Naturally and Safely — No Statins Required.”
How Did Nutritional Collapse Engineer the Rise of Chronic Disease?
The modern health crisis was manufactured through a long sequence of changes to how food is grown, processed, and delivered. The documentary traces how the food system has been reshaped by political and corporate forces, stripping food of its essential nutrients, altering its biochemical nature, and creating a population dependent on a system that no longer feeds the body what it needs to stay well.
• Industrial agriculture severed the soil-nutrition link — Diverse, biologically active topsoil was flattened under heavy machinery and drenched in synthetic fertilizer. Crops were bred for speed, size, and uniformity, not nutrient density. These result in a food supply that looks the same but no longer delivers the same materials your body requires to function.
• The body cannot make minerals, and neither can plants — Among the most essential of the missing inputs in food today are minerals, which come from soil and are only absorbed when microbial life converts them into bioavailable forms. When those microbes are destroyed, plants grow, but their nutritional core is hollow.
According to the film, between 1950 and 1999, data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) showed significant reductions in protein, calcium, phosphorus, iron, riboflavin, and vitamin C in 43 common crops. The losses have continued since and have significantly affected human health.
“The more deficient we are, the sicker we get. And this is why everybody’s getting sicker. It’s because of mineral deficiencies, which have been accelerated by agribusiness,” said Dr. Peter Glidden, a holistic health expert.
• Government policy made the problem worse — When industrial farming began to exhaust the topsoil, the response was not ecological restoration but chemical replacement. Nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium were added back to grow large, fast-yielding plants. But those were only three of the more than 60 essential minerals required for human health.
To make food cheaper and more shelf-stable, it was refined, extruded, sweetened, and preserved. Nutrients were stripped, fats were hydrogenated, and flavor was recreated through additives. What the population consumed became a simulation of food — high in calories, low in substance. And as people became sicker, they were told to eat less and move more, rather than to investigate what had been taken away.
• This same period saw the rise of high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) — As corn subsidies pushed down the cost of raw material, food companies replaced traditional sugars with this lab-made sweetener that bypasses normal insulin regulation and floods the liver with unbuffered fructose. This resulted in fat buildup, mitochondrial stress, and fatty liver disease. HFCS also became a primary driver of metabolic syndrome.
• Glyphosate has turned our food into slow poison — Introduced as a weed killer for genetically modified (GM) crops, glyphosate acts as a mineral chelator and microbial toxin. As explained by Raymond Francis, a chemist and registered consultant:
“Glyphosate is the main component of weed killers like Roundup. It is a very toxic chemical that has already been linked to irreversible metabolic damage, infertility, obesity, learning disabilities and birth defects.
In 2009, American farmers sprayed 57 million pounds of glyphosate on food crops, mainly on genetically engineered corn and soy crops. U.S. farmers are now using so much glyphosate that researchers are finding it in the rain, in the air, in the streams, and our water supplies.”6
• Scientific warnings were buried and regulators looked away — Researchers who warned about glyphosate faced censorship, funding loss, and legal threats. Regulators relied on industry studies and approved its use without long-term safety data. As with pharmaceuticals, profit signaled safety. This is how GMO crops designed for glyphosate tolerance quietly flooded the food supply without public awareness or consent.
To understand how corporate interests like Big Tobacco helped design the modern food system, read “The Hidden History of Our Modern Food System — How Big Tobacco Shaped What We Eat.”
What Is Fluoridation — And Why Is It Still Used in Our Water Supply?
Fluoride is added to drinking water to purportedly reduce cavities across the population. This narrative has led most people to assume it’s both safe and beneficial. But did you know the chemical that enters most municipal water systems is not even the pharmaceutical-grade sodium fluoride used in controlled clinical settings?7
• Industrial waste rebranded as a public health tool — Hexafluorosilicic acid is classified as hazardous waste at its point of origin. If disposed of conventionally, it would require costly toxic waste management. Instead, it’s rerouted into the water supply, rebranded as a health intervention, and distributed into homes, schools, and hospitals. According to the film:
“Fluoridation of the drinking water supply is done to get rid of the toxic waste hexafluorosilicic acid from the smokestack scrubbers of aluminum and fertilizer factories. This practice has caused cancer and brain damage for almost 50 years.
The aluminum and fertilizer industries would have to pay a fortune to dispose of the hexafluorosilicic acid if it were not for the municipal water fluoridation … Dr. Dean Burk of the National Cancer Institute said fluoridation is a form of public mass murder, and he also said, ‘In point of fact, fluoride causes more human cancer death and causes it faster than any other chemical.’”8
• Linked to neurotoxicity and reduced IQ in children — Dozens of studies, including large meta-analyses, show consistent associations between fluoridated water and lower childhood IQ. The most vulnerable window is during prenatal and early-life development, when the blood-brain barrier is immature and the brain is highly sensitive to chemical interference.9,10
• Disrupts thyroid function, especially where iodine is low — Fluoride competes with iodine in the thyroid gland, impairing hormone production. Subclinical hypothyroidism in children, marked by slowed growth, mood changes, and altered development, emerges without diagnosis. In adults, long-term thyroid suppression contributes to fatigue, weight gain, and reproductive dysfunction.11
• Shielded by professional alliances and industry influence — The American Dental Association (ADA) remains one of fluoridation’s most active defenders, citing historical dental benefits while downplaying toxicological risks. But the ADA receives financial support from chemical industry stakeholders, and investigations have revealed conflicts of interest and selective data use.
• Delivered without consent, dose control, or monitoring — Fluoride exposure is not prescribed, not adjusted for age or body weight, and not subject to individual opt-out. Infants, pregnant women, and the medically vulnerable are exposed daily, with no system in place to track cumulative impact. Unlike pharmaceuticals, which require informed consent, fluoridation happens passively; one dose fits all.
The promise of public health is to protect, not expose. And yet fluoride remains in the water, shaping neurodevelopment, hormone balance, and metabolic health across generations, with no informed consent and no end in sight. To see how I’ve challenged this practice directly, read “My Open Letter to the American Dental Association.”
Cancer — A Preventable Crisis Ignored by Modern Medicine
Cancer rates keep rising, despite decades of medical advances. The documentary implicates glucose and promotes the ketogenic diet as a solution. But while it rightly exposes the failures of the modern cancer model, it miscasts glucose as the enemy. In my view, the real issue isn’t sugar — it’s mitochondrial damage caused by fat overload and oxidative stress.12
• Progress in cancer outcomes remains elusive — Despite hundreds of billions of dollars poured into research, the cancer death rate has barely improved. Patients still endure the same chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery protocols developed decades ago, often with harsh side effects and poor long-term results.
The documentary argues this stagnation isn’t due to a lack of knowledge. It’s the product of a medical model that deliberately obscures workable, non-pharmaceutical solutions to protect the pharmaceutical status quo.
• The role of glucose in cancer — The film emphasizes that cancer’s metabolic engine is glucose-dependent, noting that malignant cells burn through sugar at nearly 200 times the rate of normal tissue. This observation has shaped alternative strategies aimed at restricting glucose to slow cancer growth.
However, this framing overlooks an important nuance — glucose is not inherently carcinogenic, and sugar metabolism itself is not the root cause of cancer. In fact, glucose is the most efficient fuel for mitochondrial ATP production per oxygen molecule and plays an essential role in maintaining redox balance, nuclear integrity, and antioxidant defenses.
• The ketogenic diet restricts glucose, but may come at a cost — Ketogenic diets induce a metabolic state called ketosis, which lowers insulin and blood glucose while raising ketone levels. The documentary promotes this shift as a way to exploit cancer’s rigid metabolism and starve tumors of fuel.
Some early studies have shown promise in stabilizing aggressive cancers through dietary ketosis, and fasting can mimic similar effects short-term. However, long-term ketosis is not without risk, and it is not universally beneficial. Ketogenic metabolism relies on beta-oxidation and increased fat intake, which raises mitochondrial oxidative stress, reduces electron transport efficiency, and impair metabolic flexibility.
Clinical data show that long-term ketogenic diets increase LDL cholesterol, accelerate muscle loss, and raise the risk of cardiovascular mortality. These tradeoffs may not be justified in individuals whose mitochondria are capable of oxidizing glucose cleanly and efficiently through restored metabolic pathways.13
• Metabolic dysfunction stems from fat overload, not carbohydrate excess — The core issue is not that your body is using glucose. It’s because your mitochondria can’t use it properly. One overlooked cause is lipid-induced insulin resistance, which occurs when excess fat blocks glucose uptake via the Randle cycle.
When fat oxidation dominates, glucose metabolism is suppressed, lactate accumulates, and cells shift toward anaerobic pathways. These are hallmarks of the cancer phenotype. Rather than cutting glucose, restoring glucose utilization by reducing fat intake and supporting mitochondrial repair may be the more biologically sound solution.
• A real solution supports, not starves, glucose metabolism — Instead of chronic carb restriction, the path forward lies in restoring the cell’s ability to use glucose well. This includes improving mitochondrial membrane composition, restoring enzyme function, reducing linoleic acid, and supporting nutrient cofactors required for clean glucose combustion. In this view, glucose isn’t a toxin but a vital energy substrate that’s being poorly handled due to upstream damage.
For a deeper look at how glucose fuels cellular resilience and why it deserves to be reclaimed, not restricted, read “Glucose — The Ideal Fuel for Your Cells.”
The Big Secret — Health Was Always in Your Hands
The most striking message in “The Big Secret” isn’t about hidden toxins or corrupt institutions. It’s about power, specifically the biological power each person carries. Despite decades of dependency, censorship, and regulatory control, the most potent force in medicine remains your body’s ability to repair, regulate, and recover. The film makes clear that the system didn’t just overlook this truth. It was designed to suppress it.
• The health system was engineered to manage symptoms, not restore function — Chronic disease is framed as inevitable and treatment means lifelong medication. Nutrient-poor food is normalized, metabolic poisons like fluoride are defended, and biological dysfunction is treated as fate. But this framing serves institutions, not individuals. Real healing begins not with more control, but with fewer interferences and the return of what your body needs to thrive.
• The root inputs of health are simple, unprofitable, and biologically potent — Achieving optimal health doesn’t begin with a pill. It starts with minerals, real food, movement, metabolic renewal, clean water, light, rest, and community. These fundamentals don’t generate recurring revenue, but they recalibrate biology at the source, reversing patterns that pharmaceuticals only manage.
• Censorship has silenced the strategies that work — The film documents how clinicians who promote natural healing are often discredited, censored, or removed. Therapies that bypass pharmaceutical dependence are dismissed not because they threaten the medical business model. Reclaiming your health means seeking out what the system tries hardest to hide.
• Health is not fragile, and it’s not inherited from institutions — You are not broken by default. Health isn’t a privilege tied to income, insurance, or expert access. It’s something you build through choices once you understand how the system works, and more importantly, how to step outside of it.
The film’s final warning is also its core truth — the greatest threat to the medical industry isn’t a competitor. It’s the informed individual, someone who no longer waits to be “saved,” no longer accepts decline as normal, and no longer forgets that biology was built for resilience.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) About Today’s Medical Myths and Hidden Health Truths
Q: Do statins actually prevent heart attacks?
A: For people without prior cardiovascular disease, statins offer little to no benefit in preventing heart attacks. They lower cholesterol levels but come with significant side effects, including muscle pain, memory loss, liver dysfunction, and CoQ10 depletion. In many cases, lifestyle changes offer more protection with fewer risks.
Q: Why are alternative treatments discouraged in mainstream medicine?
A: Alternative and natural treatments are often excluded from insurance coverage and medical education because they can’t be patented or monetized. Doctors face legal and financial disincentives for recommending anything outside of pharmaceutical protocols, even when safer or more effective options exist.
Q: How does medical training shape the way doctors treat disease?
A: Most medical schools focus heavily on pharmaceuticals, surgery, and disease management, not prevention, nutrition, or root-cause treatment. Over time, this has created a system where doctors are exceptionally skilled at stabilizing symptoms but underequipped to address root causes.
Q: Why is chronic disease so common today?
A: Chronic diseases like cancer, diabetes, and heart disease are rising due to a combination of nutrient-depleted food, chemical exposure, pharmaceutical overuse, and a healthcare model that treats symptoms rather than causes. Poor soil quality, processed diets, environmental toxins, and sedentary lifestyles also contribute to systemic breakdown.
Q: What’s the biggest health myth today?
A: One of the biggest myths is that chronic disease is inevitable and must be managed with lifelong drugs. In reality, many diseases are rooted in reversible dysfunctions caused by environmental and dietary factors. Health isn’t something granted by institutions. It’s something rebuilt by removing interference and restoring what your body truly needs.
Test Your Knowledge with Today’s Quiz!
Take today’s quiz to see how much you’ve learned from yesterday’s Mercola.com article.
Which type of infrared light penetrates deepest and activates mitochondrial repair processes?
