And where have you seen those articles? Your description sounds like the articles come from quack websites that are trying to sell "natural supplements" that don't do anything except enrich those who sell them.
In addition to that, it appears to me that a large amount of medical care in the form of prescribed medications is aimed at treating symptoms instead of addressing the underlying causes of those symptoms.
Actually, treating the symptoms is a very valid form of healthcare and saves many lives. For example, I currently oversee epilepsy research. Some forms of epilepsy result from brain damage, which causes seizures. We cannot do anything about the underlying brain damage, but we do know that if we stop the seizures, we can give the brain time to heal and perhaps avoid the development of epilepsy. Our goal is to stop the seizures--the symptom--as quickly as possible.
And so on; I could list many other examples. The entire rationale of treating symptoms (aka palliative care) is to stop the damage that the symptoms cause and allow the body to devote its regenerative resources towards recovering from the underlying condition.
The medical industry is programmed to dismiss those lifestyle changes, including reducing consumption of highly-processed food that is low in nutrition, as nothing more than quackery.
The medical industry is in the business of trying to prevent and mitigate disease. If we were truly in the business of subtly encouraging people to get sick, in the way that conspiracy theorists claim, then there would be no vaccines, no antibiotics, no efforts to teach people to eat healthy, etc. It is far more costly to send someone to the hospital with a preventable disease than it is to prevent it. Furthermore, it takes a lot of hands-on human labor to treat those people. And since we already have a shortage of providers, tying them up with providing expensive care is hardly an effective use of human resources. Plus, in that scenario, only a few people would get treatment because there simply would not be the personnel available to treat more.
Maybe it would be better for people to learn how to develop and maintain a healthy immune system than to get in the habit of running off to the doctor for a pill or a shot when they get sick because of a compromised immune system.
You either have a functional immune system or you don't. Are you getting adequate nutrition? Are you free of genetic anomalies that impair the function of your immune system? Are you older than 18 and younger than 65? If you answer yes to all of those questions, then there is not much more you can do to maintain a healthy immune system. However, pathogens do not care about how healthy your immune system is. They constantly evolve to bypass your immunity, so your best bet to prevent infectious disease is to train your immune system to recognize pathogens. There are only two ways to do that--one, by getting the disease, which can be extremely dangerous, or two, by getting a vaccine, which your immune system recognizes and responds to exactly as if it were the pathogen.
A Johns Hopkins University study: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2016/05/03/researchers-medical-errors-now-third-leading-cause-of-death-in-united-states/?utm_term=.765ee6211a91
No doubt you discount that as some sort of quack institution though.
Actually, treating the symptoms is a very valid form of healthcare and saves many lives.
I'm completely in agreement with you on this one, when the symptoms become life-threatening. For example, extremely high blood pressure will cause fatal strokes, among other problems. However, the medical industry focuses too often just on treating the SYMPTOM of high blood pressure, instead of what is happening in the body that is CAUSING the high blood pressure in the first place.
There are plenty of other examples... cholesterol levels, insulin levels, etc.
The entire rationale of treating symptoms (aka palliative care) is to stop the damage that the symptoms cause and allow the body to devote its regenerative resources towards recovering from the underlying condition.
When the symptoms become acute, there is absolutely a need to address those problems with medical treatment. But I see too many instances where that is where the treatment plan ends. There is little to no plan for addressing WHY the systems in the body got out of whack. And if those underlying issues aren't addressed, there can BE no regeneration.
You either have a functional immune system or you don't.
Nonsense. IMO, you should read a book or two by Raymond Francis. He gets so shrill in his presentation that it seems easy to discount him as a wild-eyed kook, but his claims in his books seem to be backed up by well-sourced studies. There are a lot of ways that the immune system can be compromised. Using a statement like "getting adequate nutrition" is a LONG way from getting down to the specifics of what nutritional choices lead to either good health or poor health. Just as with the immune system, the same applies for the body's ability to keep it's blood pressure in the proper range, keep it's blood chemistry (lipids, etc) in a status to maintain good health, avoid cancer and even kill existing cancer cells. However, most of those ways to maintain good health are not things the medical industry can make money on. The industry chooses to leave it up to their patients to discover those methods on their own. At most, MDs usually limit that end of things to recommending some lifestyle changes in passing. It's understandable though. They're just like every other industry. They focus on what they do for a living.
The medical industry is in the business of trying to prevent and mitigate disease.
I don't see much evidence that prevention is a high priority, unless it takes the form of some sort of concoction that they can make money on.