What does ‘health freedom’ mean to you? The movement has roots back to the 1800s but has been supercharged since the COVID-19 pandemic. We take a look at what it means to us in 2025 as we battle to ensure medical autonomy with access to information, therapeutic nutrition, a wide range of natural and holistic therapies, and a clean environment—all in the face of a powerful medico-industrial complex.
Listen to the audio version of this article:
THE TOPLINE
- With 76% of adults living with at least one chronic disease, the medico-industrial complex has gone to extraordinary lengths to limit our access to information, natural ingredients and products, and holistic therapies.
- At the same time more and more of our food, water and air is contaminated or polluted in ways that seriously impact our health and quality of life.
- From lawsuits against censorship and FDA overreach to campaigns protecting supplements, medical foods, homeopathy, and regenerative agriculture, ANH is working to advance health freedom on multiple fronts.
- Expanding access to knowledge, nutrition, holistic therapies, and safe environments is essential to improving health outcomes and defending medical autonomy and health sovereignty in 2025.
America faces a health crisis unlike any other. More than three quarters (76%) of US adults have at least one chronic health condition; 50% have more than one chronic condition.
The root causes are complex, but a major factor is the systematic restriction of health freedom by the medico-industrial complex. This system controls what medicines we can access, the information we receive, the foods we eat, the ingredients we can buy, the therapies we can pursue, the quality of environments in which we live, and ultimately, our very autonomy over decisions about our own health.
If we hope to turn things around, we cannot focus on a single front. The struggle for health freedom in 2025 demands action across multiple areas of the “access continuum”—whether on the supply side or the consumption or exposure side—from knowledge to nutrition, therapies, and environmental protection. Only a multi-pronged approach can produce tangible, measurable improvements in health outcomes, helping to drag America up from the disastrous 80th position in the global ranking of healthy life expectancy.
1. Access to Information
Information is power. Yet in today’s world, powerful Big Tech giants and government health agencies can control what we see. Censorship, restrictions on medical claims, and social media algorithms and shadowbanning all limit the ability to share knowledge—and serve to buttress the medico-industrial complex’s narrative on health-related issues.
What we’re doing:
- Petitioning the FDA to allow passage of 118 government-backed nutrient-disease claims that should have been permitted under the FDA Modernization Act of 1997.
- Launched a lawsuit challenging FTC censorship of advertising claims.
- Challenging social media censorship to ensure open discussion of natural health solutions.
2. Access to Products (Natural Therapeutics)
Many natural substances proven safe and effective are effectively banned because the government maintains that only drugs can treat disease. This limits choice and makes it harder for us to use food as medicine.
What we’re doing:
- Stopping Big Pharma from turning supplements (like NMN, CBD, and P5P) into drugs via the “drug preclusion clause.”
- Advocating to protect access to quality supplements, particularly in opposing key threats in the new dietary ingredient guidance and anti-supplement bills like Senator Dick Durbin’s (D-IL) mandatory product listing policy.
- Working to expand access to medical foods (next week we’ll be launching a white paper on the subject).
- Challenging European authorities to defend access to natural products like black cohosh, vinpocetine, berberine, kava, gingko biloba, valerian, St John’s wort, and high-dose vitamins.
3. Access to Ingredients
Even when natural products are legal, the ingredients themselves are under threat. Glandular extracts, high-dose vitamins, and other key ingredients are increasingly controlled by a few major suppliers. Synthetic additives, such as pharmaceutical-grade silicon dioxide, are replacing biocompatible versions and harming the gut microbiome.
Similarly, our food system is increasingly being corrupted by new genetic engineering technologies (like precision fermentation), while chemical-intensive agriculture and monocropping reduces the nutritional density and diversity of our food.
What we’re doing:
- Campaigning to prevent FDA’s proposed ban on natural desiccated thyroid (NDT) in the U.S.
- Educating and advocating around the dangers of precision fermentation, synbio foods, and GMO 2.0.
- Advocating for regenerative agriculture solutions to provide access to clean, healthy food.
- Educating the public about risks associated with synthetic additives, including ongoing GRAS-related advocacy.
- Protecting access to organ meat extracts in European markets.
4. Access to Therapies and Health Services
Natural, regenerative, and holistic modalities are marginalized, often excluded from research priorities and insurance coverage while getting bashed in pharma-funded media. Homeopathy has faced especially aggressive attacks worldwide.
What we’re doing:
- Launched a lawsuit to avert the FDA ban on homeopathy imposed in December 2022 and we’re flat out fighting our case in the courts as we write this.
- Campaigning to protect compounded medicines, including bioidentical hormones and peptides.
- State-level advocacy to protect access to integrative practitioners like naturopaths and naturopathic doctors as well as Certified Nutrition Specialists.
- We’re active in European campaigns defending homeopathy, anthroposophical medicine, Ayurveda, and other modalities and systems of medicine.
5. Access to a Clean Environment
Environmental exposures—from pesticides and endocrine disruptors to EMFs—undermine health, yet agencies tasked with protection often prioritize industry interests over public safety. Health freedom means the ability to live in an environment that doesn’t compromise well-being.
What we’re doing:
- Advocating against chemical industry protections from pesticide liability and for stricter PFAS regulations.
- Campaigning for safer 5G implementation and expanded testing on EMF health impacts.
6. Health Sovereignty
Ultimately, health freedom is about the fundamental rights of the individual, medical autonomy, and health sovereignty: the ability to make informed choices about your own body. Decision-making in conjunction with independent physicians and other practitioners, within the sanctity and confidentiality of the therapeutic relationship. Emergency measures during the COVID pandemic demonstrated how quickly our rights can be eroded when global authorities are empowered over national or individual autonomy.
What we’re doing:
- Challenging censorship and defending our right to free speech.
- Advocating against amendments to international law that would give the WHO greater authority over pandemics and individual health decisions.
- State-level advocacy to promote vaccine choice.
The Path Forward
Health freedom in 2025 is not a single issue—it is a continuum. From knowledge and nutrition to therapies, ingredients, environment, and sovereignty, every link in the chain matters. The medico-industrial complex has spent decades erecting barriers, but together we can dismantle them.
If we act decisively across these fronts, we can shift the trajectory of American health—away from chronic disease and dependency, toward resilience, autonomy, and vitality. Success will not be measured by how many pills are prescribed or how much is spent on healthcare, but by whether we as a society live longer, healthier, and freer lives.
Health freedom is the foundation for true health reform. With collective action, persistence, and courage, we can reclaim it.
