Let me begin by saying, I think western medicine is ideal for acute diseases. I know this is a dogmatic statement to lead with, but I believe this to be true. And those diseases are the ones that shortened our lifespans most in the first half of the 20th century. Most people I talk with always want to know why I think medicine has missed the boat with respect to chronic diseases? I have thought long and hard about this one and I think I have arrived at my reason. Healthcare, up until the 1940′s, was done anecdotally and by empiric observation. In the 1940′s, the government saw some statistics that showed close to 40{a7b724a0454d92c70890dedf5ec22a026af4df067c7b55aa6009b4d34d5da3c6} of the deaths in the US were caused by heart disease or stroke. It also appeared that the numbers were accelerating and not slowing down. The real reason they became interested is that no one knew why this was happening. So they decided to study this problem with a long term observational population study that began in 1948. That study was the Framingham Heart study. The bible has the book of Genesis, and physics has Einstein’s theory of relativity and Framingham is medicine’s raison d’etre.