The Truth About Medicine You Weren’t Meant To Know

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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, “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 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 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.

For most of history, healing was guided by direct observation, traditional wisdom, and a blend of natural therapies drawn from plants, minerals, and food.

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.

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) Installed As 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

Today, 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.

Journals Captured By Drug Industry Advertising

Scientific journals, increasingly reliant on drug company advertising and sponsorship, skew publication in favor of products with commercial potential. Research that challenges dominant drug narratives are buried, while favorable studies, regardless of quality, are widely promoted.

Insurance systems today 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.

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.

Regular blood donation significantly lowers the risk of heart attack and stroke, with outcomes surpassing what statins offer, yet they’re rarely promoted because they can’t be patented or monetized.

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.

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 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.

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.

Despite decades of dependency, censorship, and regulatory control, the most potent force in medicine remains your body’s ability to repair, regulate, and recover.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The film documents how clinicians who promote natural healing are often discredited, censored, or removed. Therapies that bypass pharmaceutical dependence are dismissed because they threaten the medical business model. Reclaiming your health means seeking out what the system tries hardest to hide.

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 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.

This article was excerpted from the complete version brought to you by Dr. Mercola, a New York Times bestselling author, on  his website. For more helpful articles, please visit Mercola.com.

Sources and References

^{1, 2, 3, 5,} YouTube, “The Big Secret – Full Medical Documentary” January 31, 2022

⁴ StatPearls [Internet], Biochemistry, Cholesterol

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