Commentary
When I get sick, I don’t reach for medicine to silence whatever my body is trying to tell me. I don’t panic over a runny nose or numb inflammation with quick fixes. I try to understand why my body is reacting. If I wake up with a scratchy throat, I don’t immediately grab Tylenol—I sip broth, slow down, and pay attention. I don’t believe in treating symptoms. I believe in treating the root cause.
Just recently, one of my daughters started struggling with cavities even though she ate the same nutrient-dense foods as her siblings. I remember looking at her while the dentist showed me all the cavities, thinking, how is this possible? None of my other kids had even one sign of decay. We brushed, we ate well, we did all the things we’re told are “right.” Yet something wasn’t adding up.
It turned out she had parasites. They were quietly stealing the nutrients her body needed. No amount of brushing could fix what was happening inside. And once you witness a problem that looks like one thing but is actually caused by something deeper, you start seeing that pattern everywhere.
Women experience this constantly with chronic yeast infections. Yes, the Monistat brings relief—every woman knows the little box tucked away under the bathroom sink—but it doesn’t fix what’s feeding the yeast. Too much sugar, a disrupted microbiome, an imbalance in the entire ecosystem. Killing yeast in one spot doesn’t restore balance to the whole. Yet our medical culture is built around doing exactly that: spot-treat, suppress, numb, and send people home with no understanding of the deeper issue.
And that mindset doesn’t stop at medicine. It’s the way our entire culture operates. Some people reading this might not even understand what “root cause” really means, because we live in a world that trains us to chase symptoms. We chase the quick fix, the pill, the distraction, the political outrage cycle—anything that helps us avoid the harder work underneath.
And the results speak for themselves. America is the sickest first-world nation on Earth. Obese yet undernourished. Inflamed, exhausted, mineral-deficient, and dying from metabolic dysfunction.
But the truth is, the sickness isn’t only in our personal bodies.
The political system is also metabolically dysfunctional—and it’s dysfunctional because we are.
A nation is nothing more than millions of individuals, each one a cell in a larger body. If the cells are inflamed, disconnected, nutrient-depleted, and dysregulated, the body itself will show those same symptoms. We shouldn’t be shocked when dysfunction rises to the surface. A body reflects the health of its cells.
That’s why any one politician or personality—who may gain traction, get elected, or gather millions of followers—is not the root cause. They are symptoms. They are inflammation on the skin of a system that has been ignored, overstressed, and pushed past its limits.
Of course people are reaching for extreme ideas—many feel disenchanted, unheard, and uncertain whether the future holds anything promising for them. When people can’t imagine a meaningful future, they gravitate toward anyone who sounds certain. But most Americans don’t live on the edges. The middle is wide. I sit on the right side of that middle; plenty sit on the left. But neither group stands with extremists. They simply represent what rises to the top when a nation is out of balance.
So yes—the political system is broken. But there is a second truth we cannot ignore: We as individuals are also broken, and we make up the whole. A sick population produces sick politics. A fearful, dysregulated population produces fearful, dysregulated leaders. A nation full of symptom-chasing individuals will always create a symptom-chasing government.
The national dysfunction is not separate from our personal dysfunction. It is an extension of it.
So how do we bring our bodies back into health and bring the body of the United States back into health?
I believe it begins with radical personal responsibility. Not the kind politicians invoke as a slogan—the real kind. The kind that requires honesty, humility, and a willingness to self-correct.
We must become healthy, truthful, grounded cells in the larger body.
We must care for our own bodies, speak honestly, stay connected to the divine, and take responsibility for our choices. Because healthier people create healthier politics. Better individuals create a better system.
If each of us commits to that—not perfection, but sincerity—we rebuild the nation from the inside out.
Because if we keep treating symptoms instead of causes, America isn’t going to heal—it’s just going to get better at hiding the pain.
