An interview with a cardiologist named Dr. Jack Wilson popped up recently on Natural News and it was both shocking and highly encouraging.

Dr. Wilson has bucked the medical approach to health and has a lot to say about what the medical industry could do better.

He starts out by pointing out that, despite years of medical school and years in practice, he never learned–or was taught to counsel his patients–anything about preventing heart disease.

He says: “What you and I would really like to talk about is really how we prevent disease. And that’s with good nutrition, avoiding environmental toxins, getting sleep, sunshine, physical activity. But they never teach us that stuff.”

Much of this is, or should be, common knowledge. And we often read articles, even on medical-oriented websites or journals, that encourage these things. But people are less likely to take the word of an article and much more likely to listen to a person they know and trust–namely, their doctor.

And that’s when Dr. Wolfson really dropped his bomb. In response to the question of “Why don’t doctors make these sorts of recommendations and rather push statins and aspirin as a solution to heart problems?”

Dr. Wolfson at once explains why the medical industry is this way while offering his most poignant criticism of the medical industry.

Doctors are taught to push prescriptions in school. Medication is viewed by the medical industry as a panacea for health problems. Every condition is treated with a drug, or a combination of drugs. If there isn’t a drug to treat your condition, one will be developed eventually. And this is medicine’s overall mentality.

Most doctors are very intelligent people. They do understand that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. They do understand that living a healthy lifestyle is better than making up for an unhealthy lifestyle with drugs. So why don’t that talk about this?

Speaking from experience, Dr. Wolfson explains that most doctors leave medical school with hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. And when they begin practicing, they are bombarded with offers of cash kickbacks, student loan forgiveness, luxurious vacations and more from…. who? The pharmaceutical industry.

For someone with six-figure debt, that is a tempting offer. Furthermore, for anyone with a pulse, that’s a tempting offer. Who wouldn’t want money, vacations and perks?

In 2013, the 10 biggest pharmaceutical companies in America spent $88.8 BILLION dollars on marketing. A bit disturbing when compared to the $65.8 billion they spent on research & development. Where are their priorities?

But that’s not even the really shocking part. You might imagine that massive marketing budget going to all those familiar commercials you see on TV… “Ask your doctor about (insert official-sounding drug name)” followed by a long list of rather scary-sounding side effects.

But that’s only a fraction of what Big Pharma is spending on marketing. Only about one out of eight dollars spent on marketing is directed at consumers. The rest is spent on the doctors themselves. The vast majority is spent on the real decision-makers in the medical industry: individual doctors.

Healthcare in America is not geared toward making people healthy. It is geared toward making money. These two goals very often conflict, and when they do, money wins.

This is not to say that there are not good, caring doctors out there with your best interest at heart. For one, many of them don’t know any better and have been indoctrinated into this pharmaceutical-centric approach to medicine. They often view science as an infallible epistemological entity that can and will answer all questions about biology, chemistry and physics. In these doctors’ minds, these scientific discoveries have (or will) enable us to manipulate our own bodies from the outside-in, curing all disease after it arises.

Secondly, it is human nature to benefit oneself first and foremost and justify it later. It would be difficult for most people to walk away from a cash cow that keeps giving. Not that this is a good excuse…

The lesson here is ultimately that YOU need to be in charge of your health, not some bought-and-paid-for lackey of an industry designed to increase profits for shareholders at all costs–even if it’s your life.

YOU must take charge of your health. YOU must make healthy decisions. YOU must be your own doctor.

View Dr. Wolfson’s full interview below. And if you want coaching on being your own doctor, let’s talk.