Sickness Isn't Your Natural State: Why a "Normal" Lifestyle Is a Health Hazard.

by jake kaiser
Jul 18, 2025
7 min read
Sickness Isn't Your Natural State: Why a "Normal" Lifestyle Is a Health Hazard.


Part 1: A Failure of Diagnosis

When you see a sick animal in nature, it’s a rare and jarring sight. Your first instinct isn't to assume the animal is flawed; you immediately look to its environment for a cause. Was there a drought? Has its food source been poisoned? You analyze the world around it first.

But when it comes to humans who are, after all, just odd, bald animals with anxiety—we take the opposite approach. Widespread sickness is no longer rare; it’s accepted as the new normal. Instead of questioning the environment that is making us sick, fat, and depressed, we offer a pill and call it a day.

The evidence of our environmental mismatch is staggering. We are in a state of profound biological decline.

  • Chronic Disease is Rampant: Six in ten U.S. adults have at least one chronic disease. The U.S. has more than twice the rate of obesity and diabetes as comparable developed nations (CDC, 2024; OECD, 2023).
  • Obesity is the Norm: In 1990, not a single U.S. state had an adult obesity rate over 20%. Today, 22 states have rates at or above 35% (Trust for America’s Health, 2024).
  • Our Fertility is Faltering: Global sperm counts have fallen by over 50% in the last four decades (Levine et al., 2017), and the U.S. fertility rate recently hit an all-time low, well below population replacement level.

It’s time we stop accepting this as a fact of modern life. It’s time we start asking what changed and why we are so damn sick.

Part 2: The Disease-for-Profit Model

The core of the problem is a deep, systemic misalignment of incentives. Much of our current state can be understood through the lens of the Charlie Munger quote:

“Show me the incentive and I'll show you the outcome."

Our "healthcare" system operates on a fee-for-service model, meaning it profits from transactions—pills, procedures, and appointments. A cured patient is a lost customer. A chronically ill patient who needs to be “managed” with a lifetime of medications is a recurring revenue stream. This creates a perverse incentive to intervene only after a patient has crossed the arbitrary threshold into a diagnosable, billable disease.

I saw this firsthand. A few years ago, my standard bloodwork came back with an HbA1c of 5.6%—the borderline for prediabetes. In shock, I asked my doctor what it meant. “Oh, you’re still in the normal range, so you’re fine,” they said. If you want to see my reaction and data collection journey check out this article on using a CGM to better understand my metabolic health.

Health is a spectrum, not a switch, but the system isn’t designed to see the trend. It’s designed to wait for your health to degrade to a point where a return to baseline is often no longer possible without lifelong pharmacological intervention. My story isn't unique. Millions are told they are "fine" until the moment they are not. This sick-care system works in a brutally effective partnership with the modern food industry, which profits from creating the very conditions the healthcare system is paid to "manage."

The tragedy is that the well-intentioned individuals within this system—the doctors, nurses, and researchers—are trapped. The problem isn’t the players; it’s the game itself.

Imagine, for a moment, a different game. In this reality, freed from the overwhelming burden of lifestyle-driven disease, we could focus our collective might on the health challenges that remain. Let's examine how the leading causes of death might change:

  • Metabolic Disease (Insulin Resistance, Type 2 Diabetes): This horseman would be all but eliminated. These conditions are almost entirely preventable and often reversible. With a healthier food environment, Type 2 diabetes, which currently affects over 38 million Americans, would become a rarity.
  • Atherosclerotic Disease (Heart Attacks & Strokes): The leading cause of death in America would be drastically curtailed. The World Health Organization states that up to 80% of premature heart disease and strokes are preventable. In a healthier society, we could focus intensive resources on the small percentage of individuals with high genetic risk, making their conditions highly treatable.
  • Cancer: While not entirely preventable, at least 42% of newly diagnosed cancers in the U.S. are potentially avoidable through lifestyle and environmental changes (American Cancer Society, 2024). Slashing those numbers would allow us to pour resources into better treatments and earlier screening for the cancers that still arise, dramatically improving survival rates.
  • Neurodegenerative Disease (e.g., Alzheimer's): This would become one of our primary medical frontiers. Imagine the full force of our research funding unleashed on the complexities of the brain. With emerging research already linking metabolic health to Alzheimer's risk, a healthier population would likely see a reduction here as well, allowing us to focus on the cases that remain.

Freed from the pandemic of preventable disease, we could wage a true war on the most complex conditions, transforming them from near-certainties into treatable ailments.

Part 3: The Illusion of Complexity & The Corruption of Science

This disease-for-profit model can only survive if we believe that health is impossibly complicated. When we feel overwhelmed by conflicting headlines and arcane terminology, we outsource responsibility to "experts." This confusion is not an accident; it is manufactured and funded.

I’m not saying human biology isn’t complex—it remains one of the least understood frontiers in science. However, the principles that generate over 95% of ideal health are very well known and brutally simple.

  • Lobbying Shapes Policy: The pharmaceutical and health products industry is the top lobbying spender in the nation, outlaying a record $379 million in 2023 alone (OpenSecrets.org, 2024). This money ensures the system continues to favor profitable treatments over prevention.
  • Industry Funds the "Science": A staggering amount of medical and nutritional research is funded by the very companies that profit from the results. Studies show that industry-sponsored trials are significantly more likely to produce favorable conclusions, regardless of the data (Lundh et al., 2017). This is how we end up with sugary cereals getting "heart-healthy" labels.
  • Conflicts of Interest are Standard: Of the experts on the committee that creates the U.S. Dietary Guidelines, a staggering 95% have known conflicts of interest with Big Food or Big Pharma (U.S. Right to Know, 2022). This is how pizza gets classified as a "vegetable" in schools.

Your grandfather wasn't chugging AG1 every morning or doing daily cold plunges. Yet he was likely healthier than most of us. Why? Not because he was a superior human, but because he existed in a superior environment. His food wasn't engineered to be addictive, and his world wasn't saturated with chemicals. Health was his default.

Part 4: Reclaiming Your Natural State: A Practical Guide

The most dangerous lie is that health is found in a doctor's office. It's not. You don't need permission to be healthy. It isn't about complicated biohacking; it's about returning to the simple principles we evolved with. It's about rebuilding your own healthy environment.

  • Eat Real Food: This is the cornerstone. Avoid anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food. This means eliminating ultra-processed items engineered for addiction. Focus on meat, fish, eggs, fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seeds.
  • Move Your Body Daily: Humans were not meant to be sedentary. Just 11 minutes of moderate activity a day could prevent 1 in 10 premature deaths (CDC/JAMA, 2023). Walk, hike, lift weights, play a sport.
  • Prioritize Morning Sunlight: We've been conditioned to fear the sun, but our bodies are designed to use it. Exposure to morning sunlight within an hour of waking anchors your circadian rhythm, improving metabolism, boosting mood, and regulating melatonin for better sleep. It is one of the most powerful and free health interventions available.
  • Get Serious About Sleep: Sleep is a non-negotiable biological necessity for cleansing the brain and repairing the body. Aim for 7–9 hours of quality sleep in a completely dark, cool room.
  • Aggressively Avoid Environmental Toxins: Our modern world is saturated with endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) linked to infertility, cancer, and metabolic issues. You can significantly reduce your exposure by:
    • Filtering your drinking water.
    • Replacing plastic containers and non-stick pans with glass, stainless steel, and cast iron.
    • Choosing organic food when possible to avoid pesticides.
    • Reading labels on personal care products to avoid phthalates and parabens.

Conclusion: You Are the Doctor of the Future

When an animal is in its natural habitat, its default state is health. Our system wasn't built for an unhealthy environment; it was built to treat acute illness and return a person to a baseline of health that was once the norm.

In an era where being overweight and chronically ill is the average outcome, this model has catastrophically failed.

Health is not a service you consume. It is a state you create through your daily choices. You have the power to opt-out of the systems that profit from your sickness. Stop being a passive patient. Start being the architect of your own well-being.

It’s time to step outside the cage.

  1. My Longevity & Biohacking Routine: A Pragmatist's Guide
  2. Outlive by Peter Attia Key Concepts
  3. NMN + NR Experiment
  4. My Blood Testing Blueprint for Longevity
  5. Top Blood Markers For Longevity
  6. 7 Supplements Actually Backed by Science

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