As a doctor with decades of experience watching, treating, and learning from patients, I’ve grown to appreciate how central physical health is to everything else in life.

Over those decades I’ve observed a decline in the overall health in America; we’re more obese, autoimmune diseases are more common, cancer is on the rise, mental health problems are ubiquitous, and autism impacts more and more families.

What’s happening? Can we figure this out?

I believe the answers are available, the problem is we’re a bunch of frogs being boiled.

Do you know how to boil a live frog? You don’t throw him into a kettle of boiling water. If you did that, he’d immediately jump out. You put him in a kettle of water at a comfortable temperature, and then you slowly turn up the heat. He doesn’t notice the temperature rising, so he stays in the pot until it’s too late. That’s how you boil a frog and that’s what’s happening to us. We tolerate more pollution, more drugs, more chemicals, and more processing of our food.

No one denies the declining health trends, but if you propose a solution that calls attention to who may be turning up the heat, your intellect will be challenged, and you may be censored. Why? Because any idea that threatens the status quo, or weakens the grip that the pharmaceutical, chemical, and food industries have around our necks is portrayed as domestic terrorism. So, like frogs in a kettle, we tolerate deteriorating health, believing it’s just the way things are, expecting relief from those who are responsible for the problem.

However, the solution to our health crisis isn’t to find a bogey man to blame, the problem is more complex than that. The solution is to prioritize the health of our children. We need policies that make human health the priority, rather than the health of corporations whose hands are on the gas, turning up the heat.