A new bill in the House could finally put an end to the FDA’s regulatory sleight of hand that threatens to eliminate compounded natural desiccated thyroid (NDT) for the 1.5 million Americans who depend on it. Action Alert!

Listen to the audio version of this article:

THE TOPLINE

• The PEAT Act of 2026, introduced by Rep. Michael Rulli (R-OH) and Rep. Diana Harshbarger (R-TN), would block the FDA from classifying a product as a biologic based solely on the presence of a clinically inactive protein — the exact justification the agency has used to reclassify natural desiccated thyroid (NDT) and threaten its availability.
• The FDA’s reclassification of NDT as a biologic hinges on the presence of thyroglobulin, a protein that does not provide any therapeutic benefit — the actual active hormones in NDT are levothyroxine (T4), liothyronine (T3) and reverse triiodothyronine (rT3), small molecules that have nothing to do with biologic regulation.
• For the millions of patients who rely on compounded NDT because synthetic alternatives have failed them, this bill is a crucial piece of health freedom legislation.

For years, ANH-USA has been sounding the alarm about the FDA’s campaign to eliminate patient access to natural desiccated thyroid (NDT). Now, Congress is finally pushing back.

Representative Michael Rulli (R-OH), joined by Representative Diana Harshbarger (R-TN), has introduced the Protecting Equal Access to Thyroid (PEAT) Act of 2026. The bill is straightforward: it would amend the Public Health Service Act to prohibit the FDA from treating a product as a biological product based solely on the presence of a protein that is a clinically inactive component.

If enacted, the bill would retain consumer access to NDT and compounded NDT—a lifeline for countless patients whose lives rely on these medicines.

What the FDA Has Been Doing

As we’ve reported in depth, the FDA issued letters in August 2025 to manufacturers, importers, and distributors declaring that NDT products — including both commercial products like Armour Thyroid and compounded formulations — are unapproved biologics. The agency’s justification? The presence of thyroglobulin, a protein found in porcine thyroid tissue used to make NDT.

Here’s the kicker: thyroglobulin is an inactive ingredient. It provides no therapeutic benefit. The clinical value of NDT comes entirely from the interplay between the natural forms—derived from thyroid glands of pigs or cattle—of three well-understood hormones, T4 (levothyroxine [thyroxine]), T3 (liothyronine [triiodothyronine]) and rT3 (reverse triiodothyronine), the very same versions of the hormones produced by the human thyroid. The FDA’s own guidance has long recognized that a product containing a protein only as an inactive ingredient is not considered a “protein” for biologic classification purposes.

In doing this, the FDA is, in our view, creating a regulatory pretext to remove a medicine that competes with Big Pharma’s synthetic thyroid drugs — drugs that simply don’t work for a significant share of the over 30 million Americans with hypothyroid conditions.

Why This Matters for Patients

Synthetic T4-only drugs like levothyroxine and Synthroid are the standard of care for hypothyroidism in conventional medicine. But the human thyroid produces five hormones — T1, T2, T3, T4, and calcitonin — and for many patients, T4 alone is not enough. A significant portion of the population cannot efficiently convert T4 to T3, and without adequate T3, symptoms like debilitating fatigue, depression, weight gain, and brain fog persist even when labs look “normal.”

Compounded NDT can fill these gaps. Compounding pharmacies can tailor doses, delivery mechanisms, and hormone ratios to match what individual patients need. This is the whole point of compounding — it exists precisely because one-size-fits-all commercial products don’t work for everyone.

If the FDA’s biologic reclassification stands, that option disappears. Biologics cannot be compounded by traditional compounding pharmacies. Patients who have finally found something that works for them would be forced back to drugs that don’t, with no path to the individualized care their condition requires.

What You Can Do

Getting the PEAT Act out of committee and to the floor requires sustained pressure from constituents who make clear to their representatives that this issue matters.

If you or someone you love depends on compounded NDT, your voice carries weight here. Contact your representative and ask them to cosponsor the PEAT Act. Tell them what compounded NDT has meant for your health. Tell them that the FDA’s biologic reclassification is a regulatory maneuver that would harm real patients without any corresponding benefit to public safety.

Action Alert!

The post Support New Congressional Bill to Protect Your Access to Natural Thyroid Medicine first appeared on Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health.

A current FDA review of the definition of “dietary substance” could dramatically restrict supplements, limit consumer choice, and reshape the future of natural health in the U.S.

Listen to the audio version of this article:

THE TOPLINE

• The FDA has made its own case and is interpreting “dietary substance” narrowly—limiting supplements to what’s already in the typical American diet—despite Congress intentionally defining supplements broadly in the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994.
• This approach could exclude a wide range of traditional, global, and innovative health products while reinforcing a regulatory system that favors pharmaceuticals and restricts what supplement companies can say about health benefits.
• While being dressed up like a safety measure, this shift is really about control that would reduce access and diversity of supplement products, stifle innovation, and align U.S. policy with more restrictive international standards.

When most people think about regulation, they picture inspections, raids, enforcement actions, or product bans. But one of the most powerful tools regulators have operates quietly in the background: definitions.

Right now, the FDA is deciding how to interpret the phrase “a dietary substance for use by man to supplement the diet by increasing the total dietary intake” that makes up a part of the definition of a dietary supplement. We gave a brief overview of this issue last week, but given it’s so important we felt it necessary to go into more detail this week because the outcome of this debate could reshape the entire supplement landscape. We need to make sure that good sense and science, not the anti-supplement agenda of FDA’s paymasters, win the day.

The Power of a Definition

Under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FDCA), dietary supplements are defined as products containing one or more “dietary ingredients” (such as vitamins, minerals, herbs or other botanicals, or amino acids). Congress intentionally wrote this definition broadly in the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA) of 1994 to preserve consumer access to a wide range of health-supporting products.

One key part of that definition—in “clause (E)”—adds that a “supplement” is also:

“a dietary substance for use by man to supplement the diet by increasing the total dietary intake.”

This is clearly expansive. It reflects a common-sense idea: supplements exist to add to the diet, not merely replicate what is already commonly consumed. But the FDA has taken a very different view.

Freezing the “Diet” in Time

In the agency’s guidance, the FDA has stated that a “dietary substance” must be limited to foods and food components that humans already eat as part of their “usual diet”. In other words, if something isn’t already part of the typical American diet, it may not qualify.

There are significant problems with this interpretation. As ANH founder and Executive Director Rob Verkerk, PhD, stated in ANH’s comments to FDA on this issue, “The American diet is highly variable, increasingly globalized, and in many respects nutritionally poor. Making the modern ‘usual diet’ the limiting benchmark would perversely treat dietary inadequacy and market convention as regulatory boundaries.”

Human diets are diverse and evolving. A legitimate understanding of “dietary substance” must include:

• Foods and practices from other cultures and traditional diets
• Fermented foods, medicinal foods, and food-as-medicine traditions
• Botanicals, fungi, algae, and microbial ingredients
• Nutrients and bioactive compounds present in foods but used in concentrated forms
• Substances that are chemically equivalent to dietary components, even if produced using modern methods

The relevant question isn’t whether a substance appears in the average American grocery store. It’s whether it has a relationship to the human diet—through tradition, composition, or function. With FDA’s planned narrowing of the scope of the definition, thousands of plant, fungi-, and algal-derived ingredients from tropical regions, from the East, from Central and South America, and from the African continent, would be excluded.  

In this move, FDA would drift away from the expansive view of dietary supplements that was the will of Congress in 1994, and towards a view that is central to European regulators: that supplements are there only to maintain levels of micronutrients and have no role to play in warding off, let along remedying, any kind of chronic or acute disease. The subtext that is never stated is that FDA views supplements as competition for drugs and therefore its market must be kept in check.

A Broader Strategy to Restrict Consumer Choice

This debate over “dietary substance” isn’t happening in isolation. It’s part of a broader push to establish control over our health.

The FDA has a vested interest in restricting medicines that aren’t drugs because drug company user fees fund a substantial portion of the agency’s budget. It isn’t a coincidence that natural medicines over which the agency exercises less authority—supplements, homeopathy, and compounded medicines, for example—are frequent targets of FDA attack.

The result? Fewer products, less innovation, and reduced consumer choice.

The Legal Trap: Why Supplements Can’t Be “Medicine”

Zoom out, and an even bigger issue comes into focus.

Under U.S. law, a product becomes a “drug” if it is intended to diagnose, treat, mitigate, or prevent disease. That means a supplement company cannot legally tell you what the science says about how its product affects health—if that effect relates to disease.

This creates a paradox. You can buy supplements like curcumin, omega-3s, or vitamin D, but companies can’t tell you how they may help with inflammation, heart health, or immune function if those claims even hint at crossing into disease territory.

Why? Because making those statements would trigger drug classification—and with it, a regulatory process that can cost upwards of $1 billion and take a decade.

For natural substances that cannot be patented, that pathway is a dead end.

So companies stay silent. Consumers stay uninformed. And healthcare remains dominated by pharmaceutical interventions—not because they are always superior, but because they are the only legally recognized option for treating disease. (This is why we’re preparing a petition to the FDA to change that).

The Global Angle: Regulatory Harmonization

There’s also an international dimension to consider.

The United States has long been an outlier in allowing relatively broad access to dietary supplements. In contrast, the European Union imposes stricter limits on ingredient types and dosages.

Efforts like the FDA’s current interpretation of “dietary substance,” combined with its pre-approval framework for “new” supplements and Sen. Durbin’s bill for mandatory product listing, can be understood as steps toward harmonization—aligning U.S. rules with more restrictive standards from other countries.

For large multinational corporations, this makes business easier: one set of rules across multiple markets. For consumers, it means fewer choices and less access.

A Better Path Forward

ANH-USA is not arguing for a regulatory free-for-all. Safety and transparency matter. The FDA already has the authority to remove unsafe products from the market—and it should use that authority where appropriate.

But redefining “dietary substance” in a way that excludes legitimate, diet-related ingredients is less about safety and more about control.

A better approach would:

• Respect the broad definition Congress enacted in DSHEA
• Recognize the diversity and evolution of human diets
• Allow for innovation in how dietary ingredients are developed and delivered
• Focus regulatory efforts on safety—not arbitrary categorical restrictions

What’s at Stake

At a time when chronic disease is at historic highs, restricting access to safe, health-supporting tools is the wrong direction.

Definitions may seem technical. But in this case, they determine what products you can access, what information you can receive, and ultimately, what options you have to support your health.

If the FDA succeeds in narrowing the meaning of “dietary substance,” it could change the future of natural health in America. And that’s something we can’t afford to ignore.

Please share this widely among your network and help support our work to defend access to supplements with a donation.

The post FDA’s War of Words on Supplements first appeared on Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health.

The FDA is signaling a narrower definition of “dietary supplement” that could sideline innovative natural products and limit consumer choice—unless it’s challenged.

Listen to the audio version of this article:

THE TOPLINE

• The FDA is considering a narrow interpretation of “dietary substance” that could exclude many natural, traditional, and innovative ingredients from qualifying as dietary supplements.
• This shift could push a wide range of products into regulatory limbo or the costly drug approval pipeline, reducing access and favoring pharmaceutical pathways.
• ANH is urging the FDA to follow the law as written, prioritize safety over restriction, and preserve consumer access to a broad range of health-supporting products.

What if the FDA could quietly redefine supplements in a way that puts many of your go-to health products out of reach?

At a time when Americans are facing a chronic disease crisis of historic proportions, you’d think federal regulators would be doing everything possible to expand access to safe, health-promoting tools. Instead, the FDA is moving in the opposite direction—quietly advancing an interpretation of the law that could restrict access to a wide range of dietary supplements.

That’s why ANH-USA has stepped in.

In a recent regulatory submission, ANH urged the FDA to stick to the law as written and reject efforts to narrow what qualifies as a “dietary supplement.” At stake is your ability to access innovative, natural products that can support your health.

What’s the Fight About?

The issue centers on how the FDA defines a “dietary substance”—a key part of the legal definition of a dietary supplement. Congress intentionally wrote this definition broadly in the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA) of 1994 to ensure consumers would have access to a wide variety of safe products.

Section 201(ff)(1) defines a “dietary supplement” as a product, other than tobacco, intended to supplement the diet and bearing or containing one or more dietary ingredients, including vitamins, minerals, herbs or other botanicals, amino acids, “a dietary substance for use by man to supplement the diet by increasing the total dietary intake,” or a concentrate, metabolite, constituent, extract, or combination of such ingredients.

The FDA is signaling it may interpret the “dietary substance” portion of the definition (bolded above) narrowly—essentially limiting it to substances already commonly consumed in the typical American diet.

Why This Matters

If the FDA adopts this narrow view, it could shut the door on a huge range of beneficial ingredients, including:

• Compounds used in traditional diets from around the world
• Concentrated forms of naturally occurring nutrients
• Innovative ingredients produced through modern, safe technologies
• Emerging natural compounds that support health but aren’t part of the standard American diet

In other words, many of the most promising tools for improving health could be pushed out of the supplement category altogether and into a regulatory limbo—or worse, into the drug approval pipeline, where costs and barriers are so high that only pharmaceutical companies can compete.

The Bigger Picture

Why is the FDA doing this – especially now, while HHS Secretary Kennedy and FDA Commissioner Makary are ostensibly in charge? Dietary supplements are overwhelmingly safe. Serious adverse events are extremely rare—especially compared to pharmaceuticals. Yet the FDA stance appears unchanged under Kennedy and Makary’s leadership, the agency consistently adopting an aggressive posture towards supplements with the goal of not just limiting access, but creating the impression that supplements are not a legitimate way to maintain health. That’s what drugs are for!

A Better Approach

ANH is not arguing for a free-for-all. Safety and transparency matter. Bad products should be removed from the market.

But the law already gives the FDA the tools it needs to do that.

What ANH is advocating for is simple:

• Follow the statute: Congress deliberately created a broad definition that isn’t limited to constituents of the standard American diet.
• Focus on safety, not restriction: Evaluate whether products are safe, rather than excluding them outright.
• Allow innovation: New technologies and ingredients should be judged on their merits, not dismissed because they’re new.
• Protect consumer choice: People should have access to a wide range of safe options to support their health.
• Preserve our Constitutional rights: First Amendment protections should enable consumers to have full access to relevant health information about natural health products to allow them to make informed choices.

Why Now?

We are living through a surge in chronic illness—conditions like obesity, diabetes, and heart disease that are often preventable or manageable with better nutrition and lifestyle choices.

Dietary supplements can play a critical role in that effort. They’re not a cure-all, but they are an important part of a broader strategy to stay healthy and reduce reliance on drugs.

Restricting access to these tools at this moment is misguided and counterproductive.

The Bottom Line

This debate may sound technical, but its impact is very real.

A narrow definition of “dietary substance” means fewer choices, less innovation, and more barriers between you and the tools you use to stay healthy.

ANH is pushing back to ensure that doesn’t happen. In a country struggling with chronic disease, the last thing we need is less access to safe, effective, natural health solutions.

Please share this article widely in your network.

The post FDA Tries to Redefine Supplements—And Limit Your Access to Them first appeared on Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health.

A new national declaration headed by ANH-USA calls for rethinking how we prevent and treat chronic illness that affects 3 in every 4 US adults. Add your name to support reform. Take Action – Co-Sign the Declaration Now!

Listen to the audio version of this article:

THE TOPLINE

• On February 10–11, 2026, we convened a summit comprised of healthcare, legal, scientific, and policy leaders in Scottsdale, Arizona, which culminated in the drafting of a declaration calling for structural reform of how America addresses chronic disease that is at risk of crippling society and breaking health systems.
• The Arizona Statement outlines legal, regulatory, and economic barriers that can limit access to preventive and non-pharmaceutical approaches—and proposes a path forward.
• This is a growing national effort that was among RJK Jr.’s key priorities when appointed HHS Secretary. He can’t do it alone. Add your name to help demonstrate public support for change.

The Arizona Statement has been released today!

>>> Read Press Release

The United States spends more on healthcare per capita than any country in the world—yet continues to struggle with high rates of chronic disease.

Conditions like diabetes, heart disease, and obesity now affect a majority of American adults. At the same time, many researchers and public health experts agree that a significant share of this burden is linked to diet, lifestyle, and other modifiable factors.

So why does prevention so often take a back seat?

The answer is complex. But many clinicians, researchers, and policy experts point to a common theme: the way our healthcare system is structured can make it harder to prioritize prevention and early intervention.

Natural and preventive approaches to health are at the margins of healthcare through the deliberate structure of legal definitions, regulatory enforcement, and professional gatekeeping that has been constructed—and defended—over decades.

That’s the challenge at the heart of the Arizona Statement on Reversing America’s Chronic Disease Epidemic, developed by ANH-USA with the help of a cross-disciplinary group of experts who met in February 2026 and have collaborated since. Now, we’re asking grassroots activists to help build momentum behind these ideas.

While an Executive Order established the Make America Health Again (MAHA) Commission in February 2025 and a 120-initiative strategy was launched in September 2025, to date the focus has been primarily on children’s health; the structural problems that impact informed choice and health freedom relevant to America’s 277 million adults has largely been avoided. Not only that, the chronic disease epidemic cannot be fixed by top-down government policy alone. It requires all layers of society to be involved and the removal of structural barriers that have accumulated over decades that work to protect Big Pharma and Big Food—with US citizens paying the price both in health and economic terms.

What the Arizona Statement Argues

The Statement does not reject modern medicine or the role of pharmaceuticals. Instead, it argues that the current system often underutilizes lower-cost, lower-risk approaches—including nutrition, lifestyle interventions, sanitation, and natural products—due to a combination of regulatory constraints and economic incentives.

Among the issues it raises:

• Individual liberty and informed choice. Every person has the right to receive truthful information about nutrition, lifestyle, and lawful health options—and to choose among them on the basis of fully informed consent. That right is currently being violated by a regulatory regime that decides what you’re allowed to know and what medicines you can access.
• Modern, science-based definitions. The legal definitions of “food” and “drug” that govern what can be said and sold in the American marketplace were not written with 21st-century nutritional science in mind. The Statement calls for modernizing these definitions so that foods, botanicals, and dietary ingredients with demonstrated therapeutic effects can be researched, discussed, and recommended without being classified as unapproved drugs.
• Prevention, root-cause care. America’s great gains in life expectancy over the 20th century were built on sanitation, nutrition, hygiene, and public health — not on pharmaceuticals. The Statement calls for restoring prevention and root-cause medicine to their rightful place at the center of health policy.
• Barriers to access and reimbursement. Many preventive or root-cause approaches are not covered by insurance programs, making them less accessible—even when they may reduce long-term health costs.

These ideas are not about replacing conventional medicine, but about broadening the toolkit available to patients and practitioners.

Why This Matters in Practice

For many Americans, this debate is not abstract. It can mean the difference between having insurance cover a medication that brings side effects, but not a safer nutrition-based intervention. It’s the difference between treating symptoms rather than the underlying or root causes. It’s about having the right to be informed about, and to choose, non-drug approaches to health.

The Arizona Statement argues that a more balanced system could improve outcomes, expand choice, and reduce long-term costs.

A Growing Coalition—And a Chance to Add Your Voice

The Statement has already been signed by a number of clinicians, researchers, attorneys, nonprofit leaders, and health advocates. The goal now is to demonstrate that these concerns extend beyond professional circles.

Your signature helps show policymakers, regulators, and the media that there is broader public support for rethinking how we approach chronic disease.

This list of signatories will support ongoing legal, regulatory, and legislative efforts aimed at expanding access to preventive and integrative approaches.

Add Your Name to the Arizona Statement…

• If you believe prevention should play a larger role in healthcare…
• If you support greater access to information and a wider range of options…
• If you think the system can do more to address the root causes of chronic disease…

Add your name to the Arizona Statement TODAY.

Once you’ve done this – please forward this email or share the URL arizonastatement.org. Help build the momentum for a more balanced, prevention-focused approach to health.

You can also find out more by tuning in to the Robert Scott Bell Show today at 3 pm ET (noon PT) and listen to our General Counsel Jonathan Emord and Executive & Scientific Director Rob Verkerk, the key authors of the Arizona Statement.

The post Sign the Arizona Statement: Join the Bottom-Up Movement to Reverse Chronic Disease first appeared on Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health.

Patients relying on natural thyroid therapies face renewed uncertainty as the agency doubles down on its impending ban. Action Alert!

Listen to the audio version of this article:

THE TOPLINE

• The FDA’s March announcement makes clear that natural desiccated thyroid (NDT) is not eligible for compounding, escalating the threat to patient access.
• The agency plans to issue formal compliance guidance by August 2026, giving a clearer timeline for enforcement.
• The FDA’s reasoning is scientifically and legally inconsistent, and is advancing a strategy to protect access through regulatory, legal, and legislative pathways.

In a late-March statement, the FDA doubled down on its plans to restrict access to natural thyroid treatments. This includes commercial products like Armour Thyroid as well as compounded NDT medicines. The move is a blatant betrayal of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement that will leave millions of patients who rely on NDT in the lurch.

The FDA’s position is that NDT products are biologics, not drugs, under the Public Health Service Act, and thus require an approved Biologics License Application (BLA); no commercial NDT products are currently marketed under an approved BLA. By law, biologics cannot be compounded by traditional compounding pharmacies. The FDA has indicated it intends to issue formal compliance guidance by August 2026.

We must band together to protect patient access to compounded NDT.

A Direct Threat to Compounded Care

As we noted last year, FDA Commissioner Makary provided positive signals for FDA approval of a commercial NDT product, pending clinical trial results.

But even if some commercial NDT products eventually win FDA approval, compounded thyroid therapies are still on the chopping block. For many patients, compounded NDT is essential. Thyroid disorders are highly individualized, and patients often require customized dosing, specific T3/T4 ratios, and/or alternative delivery forms. These needs cannot be met by one-size-fits-all, mass-produced drugs—should they ever get approved.

If the FDA’s position stands, practitioners will lose the ability to tailor care, and patients who do not respond well to synthetic drugs will be left without viable options.

FDA’s Biologics Argument—And a Key Inconsistency

The FDA’s classification of NDT as a biologic rests in part on the presence of thyroglobulin, a protein found in animal thyroid tissue used to make NDT. But this argument raises serious questions.

In desiccated thyroid products, thyroglobulin is an inactive component. The primary therapeutic agents, typically standardized in specific ratios, are actually the thyroid hormones thyroxine (T4) and tri-iodothyronine (T3). Natural porcine or bovine NDT typically also contain small amounts of monoiodothyronine (T1), diiodothyronine (T2) and traces of reverse T3.

The FDA’s own guidance has previously acknowledged that a product containing a protein only as an inactive ingredient is not considered a “protein” for purposes of biologic classification. By asserting that the mere presence of thyroglobulin makes NDT a biologic, the agency is departing from its own precedent. These and other arguments were raised in a Citizen Petition filed by the Alliance for Pharmacy Compounding, a trade group for compounding pharmacists.

ANH-USA’s Strategy

In response to this dire threat to patient autonomy, ANH-USA has developed a comprehensive advocacy strategy outlined in a position paper we released in September 2025. The basic contours of the plan are as follows:

Short-term: Press the FDA and HHS to reclassify NDT as a drug, restoring legal pathways for compounding.

Medium-term: Secure enforcement discretion for high-quality, GMP-manufactured NDT products.

Long-term: Advance federal legislation creating a durable carveout to protect both compounded and commercial thyroid therapies.

We believe this plan provides the best chance to retain access to compounded NDT.

The Bigger Picture

The threat to compounded thyroid treatments is part and parcel of a broader regulatory trend in which the FDA increasingly applies drug (or biologic) frameworks to natural and individualized therapies, regardless of their long history of safe use.

The result is a system that limits physician flexibility, reduces patient choice, and favors standardized, patentable products.

For patients with individualized needs, these constraints can have real and lasting health consequences.

What Comes Next

With formal FDA guidance expected by August 2026, the window to influence policy is narrowing.

With your help, ANH-USA will continue to apply grassroots pressure on decision-makers to make compounded NDT available to patients.

Action Alert!

The post FDA’s Anti-MAHA Stance on Natural Thyroid first appeared on Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health.

What if the information you need to manage or recover from a health condition already exists—but that information is deliberately being concealed from you?

Listen to the audio version of this story:

THE TOPLINE

• U.S. regulations classify foods and supplements as “drugs” if they’re linked to disease claims—preventing companies from sharing vast amounts of high-quality scientific evidence about their benefits and leaving consumers uninformed.
• Because natural substances can’t be patented and FDA approval is prohibitively expensive, the framework reinforces a drug-first healthcare model despite poor national health outcomes.
• Regulatory barriers discourage the funding of research on nutrient-disease interactions and limit public access to findings, creating a structural problem that undermines prevention and consumer empowerment.

Right now, you can walk into a store and buy supplements like curcumin, omega-3s, or vitamin D. But the companies selling these—and hundreds of other supplements—are legally barred from telling you what the science actually says about how they may help restore your body to health. This isn’t because the evidence is weak—it’s because the law says they can’t.

This isn’t just a technicality. The United States spends more on healthcare than any other nation, yet delivers the worst outcomes in the industrialized world with healthy life expectancy currently ranking 80^th globally, with a predicted drop to 108^th by 2050. At the heart of this is a legal framework that effectively writes into law that food cannot be considered medicine. Yes, the statement “Let Thy Food Be Thy Medicine”, often misattributed to Hippocrates, is illegal if associated with an “article” of food or a dietary supplement (i.e., a commercial product).

Speaking to this dilemma, Rob Verkerk, Ph.D., ANH-USA’s executive & scientific director said, “This categorization currently works in favor of both Big Food and Big Pharma, but against the public interest. Big Food gets to make and sell products that generate disease; Big Pharma then gets to maintain its monopoly on the products that can be used to treat the condition or disease. All good if Big Pharma’s products delivered the best outcomes, but the science tells a different story.”

Until these laws can be modernized using the totality of science available in the 21^st century, thousands or even millions of Americans will miss out on treatment or prevention approaches that offer the best trade off between effectiveness and risk.

The Legal Trap

Under U.S. law, a product becomes a “drug” if it’s said to diagnose, treat, or prevent disease. That means if a company tells you curcumin helps with inflammation, that simple statement of fact turns the product into an unapproved drug that can then be removed from the market. This is, by way of example, precisely what happened to cherry and walnut growers who linked to peer-reviewed studies describing the health benefits of those products.

In order to say a food or supplement can treat or prevent a disease, you would need to go through FDA drug approval. For natural substances that can’t be patented, that process, which typically costs in the order of $1 billion and takes a decade, is just not feasible. So companies stay silent, and consumers—and even many physicians and other health practitioners—remain in the dark about how foods and supplements can help people recover their health without using licensed drugs. This classification also prevents nutrients from being reimbursable through insurance, or being prescribed through Medicare or Medicaid. Put simply, it’s a deliberate stitch up.

These laws allow pharmaceutical companies to monopolize healthcare, both in legal terms and in the minds of most citizens and physicians. This is why drugs are our first line of defense even though they are recognized as the third leading cause of death in the US and Europe.

The Research Bottleneck

The system also makes it harder to even study natural substances.

Rules designed for new synthetic drugs are being applied to everyday nutrients. Researchers studying something as simple as probiotics or vitamin D may have to go through the same process as a company developing a brand-new pharmaceutical if the research involves how a natural product can treat or prevent a disease.

Many scientists simply can’t get the funding to pursue this research because it’s too costly and time-consuming—especially early-career researchers. Funders know they won’t be able to get sufficient a return on investment because they know they’ll never be able to use the fruits of the research when linked to specific products.

That means fewer studies and less evidence about how we can use food as medicine.

Editor’s note: In 2022, the FDA issued a proposed rule that would, in certain circumstances, exempt researchers evaluating nutrients or food components from the IND requirement. This is a significant step forward that ANH-USA played a key role in achieving. However, it remains a proposed rule only — it has not yet been finalized. The previous IND requirement remains in effect until a final rule is published.

A Structural Problem—Not a Personal One

We’re often told that chronic disease is the result of personal choices, but that framing overlooks these deeper, structural problems. People cannot make informed decisions when they’re denied access to information in the first place. At the same time, scientists struggle to build the evidence needed to guide better health outcomes when research is blocked or discouraged.

How ANH is Working to Change the Rules

We won’t solve the chronic disease crisis by telling people to “make better choices” while denying them access to truthful, science-based information about the products that may help prevent, manage, or recover from disease. 

Real progress requires three things: scientists must be free to study nutrients and other natural substances without drug-style barriers; companies must be allowed to communicate lawful, evidence-based information about their products; and patients and practitioners must be able to access lower-risk natural options that are affordable and clinically relevant.

That is why ANH is advancing a coordinated reform agenda: modernizing outdated legal definitions, expanding appropriate use of medical foods and compounded medicines, protecting nutrition research from drug-style restrictions, and advancing a genuine right to try for patients and practitioners alike.

This is not just about market access. It is about restoring scientific integrity, informed choice, and a health system that serves people instead of protecting entrenched commercial interests. ANH is working to change that system—and with enough public pressure, it can be changed.

Please share this story widely in your networks, and consider donating to support our work.

The post The Drug Definition Trap: Why US Law Blocks Truthful Information That Could Help You Recover Your Health first appeared on Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health.

After years of restriction driven by theoretical risks, momentum is building in Washington to restore access to peptides. Action Alert!

Listen to the audio version of this article:

THE TOPLINE

• Signals from RFK Jr. suggest federal regulators could ease restrictions on injectable peptides that FDA have restricted from compounding pharmacies, which have shown significant therapeutic promise, including lifespan extension.
• The agency has limited access to many of these peptides based on theoretical risks and limited data, despite a lack of clear evidence of real-world harm.
• Tight regulation has pushed demand into unregulated online markets. ANH believes that peptides are being steered by the FDA toward patented, pharmaceutical-only pathways at the expense of consumer access.

After years of increasing suppression under the FDA, access to peptide bioregulators may finally be opening up. Signals from RFK Jr. suggest that regulators are preparing to ease restrictions on peptides, which have been caught in a regulatory gray zone for years.

While details remain vague, even the possibility of opening up access is welcome news given the remarkable healing effects that have been demonstrated: therapeutic and bioactive peptides, typically delivered by subcutaneous injection, sometimes also as a sublingual tablet or oral capsule, have been shown to have wide ranging benefits, with an excellent safety profile. For example, thymosin alpha-1 has four decades of evidence on its effect on enhancing the immune response (including to protect against cancer), BPC-157 reduces inflammation and promotes healing from bone and muscular injuries, and peptide bioregulators have been shown to increase lifespan by as much as 40 percent in animal studies. And that’s just a taste of what these short-chain peptides can do.

The Problem: Restriction Without Evidence of Harm

Late in 2023, the FDA released guidance prohibiting the compounding of a group of peptides, including many comprised of essential and conditionally-essential amino acids, like BPC-157, epitalon, LL-37, thymosin alpha-1 (Ta1), Kisspeptin-10, and more.

The FDA has justified this restrictive stance on peptides by pointing to potential risks—impurities, immunogenicity, or theoretical long-term effects. But as we’ve repeatedly highlighted, these concerns are largely speculative. In many cases, regulators have failed to produce clear evidence of real-world harm, even going as far as acknowledging the relatively strong safety profiles for certain peptides in clinical use.

The agency often points to a lack of data as a reason to ban peptides, but as we’ve repeatedly said, lack of data is not evidence of a lack of safety. It increasingly became clear to us that the FDA was simply looking for a pretense to ban these medicines and reserve them for Big Pharma.

The Inevitable Consequence: The Rise of the Gray Market

When regulators restrict access to substances that patients and clinicians believe are beneficial, those substances don’t disappear—they’re pushed into the shadows where unscrupulous actors thrive.

That’s exactly what has happened with peptides. As compounding pharmacies faced mounting restrictions, a sprawling gray market emerged. Products labeled “for research use only” are widely available online, often of questionable quality and without medical oversight. This was predictable. FDA policy has driven consumers away from licensed compounding pharmacies with quality controls and good manufacturing practices to the grey market where anything goes.

A Familiar Pattern: Regulatory Capture and Market Control

The peptide debate also fits into a broader and troubling pattern. We believe the FDA’s broader objective is to reserve these and other valuable natural peptides for pharmaceutical development—while eliminating competition from compounding pharmacies.

Peptides are particularly attractive drug candidates. They are the building blocks of proteins, central to countless biological processes, and increasingly important in precision medicine. The global market is projected to grow rapidly, driven in part by the success of GLP-1 drugs. A search of the government’s clinical trials database shows dozens of trials looking at how these peptides can address a wide range of conditions.

What the FDA wants is for peptides to become patented, monopoly drugs. Big Pharma makes a killing selling them, and the FDA collects its user fees. It’s a win-win, except if you’re a health consumer.

Bottom Line

Patients deserve better than a system that withholds promising therapies based on uncertainty, only to drive them into unregulated markets.

If we are serious about advancing health freedom and innovation, widening access to peptides—responsibly and transparently—is a step in the right direction.

Action Alert!

The post Compounded Peptides at a Crossroads: Will Regulators Finally Get Out of the Way? first appeared on Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health.

America cannot drug its way out of the chronic disease epidemic. The crisis is costing lives, shortening healthy lifespan, draining family and public finances, and exposing the failure of a system built primarily around late-stage intervention.

The Arizona Statement is a roadmap for change—restoring truthful health information, removing barriers to prevention, expanding access to lower-risk personalized options, and modernizing regulation so health can be built, not merely managed after it is lost.

>>> Read the Press Release

Rob Verkerk Ph.D.

Executive & Scientific Director

“Federal and state governments censor truthful health information, prevent the exercise of independent clinical judgment, and block safe, effective, nutrition- and nature-based interventions. They advance the economic interests of Big Pharma and Big Food at the expense of individual health. The Arizona Statement charts a course to restore freedom of informed choice, professional autonomy, and scientific integrity. We call on citizens, practitioners, innovators, and leaders to join us in restoring competition and freedom of informed choice.”

Jonathan W. Emord, Esq.

ANH-USA General Counsel

"The United States spends more per capita on health care than any other nation on Earth. Despite that, Americans have among the worst health outcomes in the industrialized world. The barriers that impede efforts to improve this situation are imposed by government in service to special interests. If the reforms discussed in the Arizona Statement are achieved, the United States will experience a remarkable transformation. Americans will live healthier, longer, and more productive lives for the betterment of each and for the welfare of the nation."

The post Arizona Statement first appeared on Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health.

A federal court in Boston has temporarily halted several of RFK JR.’s vaccine policies, setting up a legal and political clash over who gets to shape U.S. immunization policy—and how.

Listen to the audio version of this article:

THE TOPLINE

• A federal judge in Boston has temporarily blocked Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s overhaul of the CDC’s vaccine advisory committee, pausing new appointments, policy changes, and an upcoming meeting.
• A key aspect of the ruling concerns whether the restructured ACIP met standards for expertise, but the court may have overstepped by substituting its judgment for the executive branch and reinforcing an entrenched, closed network that has long shaped vaccine policy.
• Beyond the immediate legal fight, the case highlights deeper tensions over scientific authority, transparency, and evidence gaps in the childhood vaccine schedule—raising broader questions about who controls vaccine policy and how decisions affecting millions are made.

What Happened

U.S. District Judge Brian E. Murphy issued a ruling that pauses multiple actions taken by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), the body that advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on vaccine recommendations. The decision blocks ACIP from holding its scheduled March meeting and suspends both the appointment of 13 newly named committee members and recent changes to the CDC’s recommended childhood immunization schedule made under Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. 

The ruling stems from a lawsuit brought by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and other medical organizations. They challenged Kennedy’s overhaul of ACIP, including his decision to dismiss prior members and appoint new ones, as well as policy changes affecting COVID-19 vaccines and the broader childhood schedule. Rather than issuing a full injunction, the court imposed a “stay.” For now, federal vaccine policies revert to those that were in place before RFK Jr. took office.

ACIP recommendations directly shape which vaccines are covered by insurance, purchased by the federal government, and required in practice for school attendance.

Speaking to this ruling, ANH General Counsel Jonathan Emord said, “The decision rests on a misapplication of the Administrative Procedure Act. The actions enjoined are well within the discretion of the HHS Secretary and do not constitute final agency rules under the APA.

“Moreover,” Emord continued, “even if they were subject to the APA’s prohibition on arbitrary and capricious agency action, they were decisions backed by sound science and reasonable exercise of discretion, thus not constituting the kind of dereliction required to prove that relevant factors were not taken into account and weighed. 

“From a broader public policy perspective,” Emord added, “the Judge has invaded a sphere of political discretion in the executive branch that is a form of activism that violates the separation of powers. Judges are not to decide the prudence of policy decisions but their legality and, in doing so, are to base their decisions on the plain and intended meaning of the statutory law, not on what they fancy the law ought to be. Judge Murphy failed to perform his proper role and invaded the province of the executive branch.”

Pictured left: Jonathan Emord, Esq., ANH-USA General Counsel

A Court Stepping into Scientific Governance

Central to the judge’s ruling is the idea that the reconstituted ACIP does meet statutory requirements for expertise and balance. But in reaching that conclusion, the court effectively substituted its own judgment for that of the HHS Secretary—deciding which credentials and perspectives count as “relevant” to vaccine policy.

The court’s dismissal of Robert Malone, MD, is a case in point. The judge’s ruling states that, although Dr. Malone and several other ACIP members have “some experience arguably relevant to ACIP’s function, [they] appear to lack the qualifications and experience to constitute expertise in vaccines and immunization.”

A pioneer of mRNA vaccine technology, Dr. Malone holds early patents underlying today’s COVID-19 vaccines and has spent decades working on vaccine development, clinical trials, and infectious disease response. Over the past three decades, he has remained continuously engaged in vaccine and infectious disease research, development, and oversight. His résumé includes leadership roles in influenza vaccine development, work on Ebola and Zika countermeasures, and participation in dozens of clinical trials across all phases.

Pictured left: Robert Malone, MD.
Photo credit: Gage Skidmore

He has advised the World Health Organization, chaired and reviewed vaccine-focused NIH study sections, and contributed to approximately 100 peer-reviewed publications spanning vaccine technology, immunology, and emerging infectious diseases.

Dr. Malone brings both foundational scientific insight and decades of hands-on experience in vaccine development—more than enough to qualify for ACIP.

What seems to trouble the court is not a lack of expertise, but a lack of alignment. For decades, vaccine policy has been shaped by a relatively closed network of agencies, academics, and organizations with ties to pharmaceutical interests. That system has coincided with a steadily expanding childhood vaccine schedule.

Kennedy’s reforms sought to open that system to broader perspectives. You don’t have to agree with every change to see the value in that goal—unless you believe those connected to vaccine makers should exclusively shape vaccine policy.

By freezing these reforms, the court preserves the status quo. And in a system where recommended vaccines carry liability protections, that status quo comes with powerful incentives—ones that may not always align with our health.

“Controversial” Votes?

It’s also worth looking at the changes made to ACIP’s recommendations that are part of the subject of this lawsuit.  

The three votes made by the new ACIP committee were as follows:

• June 2025: Recommended removing thimerosal from flu vaccines for children, pregnant women, and adults. Thimerosal is a mercury-based compound. There is no safe level of exposure to mercury, which has been linked to severe neurological and cardiovascular issues.
• 2025: Shifted COVID-19 vaccines from routine recommendation to “shared clinical decision-making.”
• December 2025: Recommended individualized decision-making for the hepatitis B vaccine (including the birth dose) for low-risk infants.

None of these changes ban vaccines or prevent those who want them from getting them. Instead, they introduce a greater role for clinical judgment and patient choice.

Reasonable people can debate these changes. But characterizing them as an assault on science is quite a stretch. If anything, they represent modest efforts to reform vaccine policy in light of uncertainty, risk tolerance, and the need for informed consent—principles that should be at the heart of any medical decision-making framework.

The Bigger Issue: Evidence Gaps and Public Trust

This case brings up an uncomfortable truth: the evidentiary foundation for the full childhood vaccine schedule remains incomplete.

As ANH-USA has long emphasized, the cumulative schedule—now encompassing dozens of doses across numerous vaccines—has never been studied as a whole for long-term safety or efficacy. This is not a fringe claim; it reflects findings acknowledged by government advisory bodies, including the National Academies of Sciences. In a 2013 report, the Academy concluded, “Key elements of the schedule—the number, frequency, timing, order, and age at administration of vaccines—have not been systematically examined in research studies.” 

Yet for years, ACIP has rubber stamped new vaccine requirements that function as de facto mandates. In most states, children must follow the CDC schedule to attend school, with limited exemptions. Policies with sweeping real-world consequences are built on a patchwork of evidence that does not fully address how the entire schedule performs in practice.

Where This Goes Next

The court’s ruling is not the final word. Appeals are likely, and the legal battle over ACIP’s composition and authority will continue. But the broader debate over vaccine policy will not be easily resolved.

At its core, this is a contest over who controls the framework of vaccine policy in the United States—and whether that framework is open to meaningful scrutiny and reform.

If there is a path forward, it lies not in entrenching one side or the other, but in committing to higher standards of evidence, greater transparency, and genuinely balanced oversight. For policies that affect millions of children and families, anything less is not good enough.

The post Court Halts Vaccine Policy Overhaul, Leaving Bigger Questions Unanswered first appeared on Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health.

By Chimnonso Onyekwelu LLB and Rob Verkerk PhD (edited by Michael Ames-Sikora)

Despite leading the world in natural health innovation, America spends trillions on a failing system while sidelining proven alternatives. Discover the six major factors—from regulatory capture to media manipulation—that keep natural therapies on the margins. It’s time to reclaim true health freedom.

Listen to the audio version of this article:

THE TOPLINE

• Despite massive healthcare spending producing poor health outcomes, entrenched special interests keep preventive, non-drug approaches marginalized in favor of pharmaceutical-driven care.
• ANH identifies six major forces constraining natural health, including regulatory control over health claims, financial and market incentives favoring drugs, strict definitions of “standard care,” media and information gatekeeping, weaponized law and regulations, and cultural conditioning toward symptom-based treatment.
• Meaningful reform requires addressing these structural forces simultaneously—expanding evidence standards, transparency, and consumer choice to integrate natural health into mainstream care rather than keeping it on the margins.

America is the R&D capital of natural health. The range of dietary supplements and other natural health products available on the US market dwarfs that in many other global markets, especially the European Union that has long used regulation as a tool to remove products that compete with drugs.

But anyone with keen eyes on the US market will recognize that the diversity of products on the US market has flatlined in recent years, especially when compared with the boom that followed the passage of the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA).

Why has innovation declined? Why has natural health not assumed its rightful place as the mainstay of health care, as distinct from disease management?

In this article, we investigate the intricate, multi-factorial manner by which special interests work to keep natural health at the margins of health care.

America’s health crisis

The United States spends more on healthcare than any country in the world by a wide margin. In 2024 alone, spending reached an estimated $5.3 trillion, about 18% of GDP, averaging over $15,000 per person. Yet despite this extraordinary investment, the US consistently ranks near the bottom of high-income nations for life expectancy, chronic disease burden, and preventable deaths. Put simply, the industrialized country that spends the most on healthcare is also the least healthy.

Prescription drugs are the go-to treatments for chronic disease, yet they’re also now recognized as the third leading cause of death in industrialized countries.

At the same time, research suggests up to 80% of chronic disease could be prevented or reduced through nutrition, lifestyle changes, supplements, and other low-cost interventions. So why aren’t these approaches central to care?

The answer lies in how our health system is structured. Health outcomes are shaped by who sets the rules, who controls the market, and who defines “misinformation.” When information is filtered and the role of foods and nutrients in prevention can’t be legally communicated, truly informed health choices become far more difficult.

We pointed several AI engines at ANH’s library of information to come up with what the major obstacles to health freedom are. From a long laundry list of items, we’ve distilled it down to six interconnected macro-drivers that work to constrain natural health in the US.

The ‘Big 6’ Macro-Drivers Constraining Natural Health

1. Who Writes the Rules?

Beyond genetics, health is largely shaped by how and where we live, how we move, what we ingest and inhale, how we work and recreate, and other aspects of our behavior and choices. But choices, especially as they related to health, are greatly affected by the information we receive from the various channels to which we are exposed. Whoever writes the rules decides what counts as “food”, as “food ingredients’, or what gets labelled a “drug.” These classifications control what can and cannot be communicated to us about the benefits of these products.

A blueberry can be packed with antioxidants that can reduce your risk of heart disease, phytosterols may support heart or hormonal health, chia seeds metabolic health, and compounds like curcumin or berberine show incredible therapeutic promise. Yet any claim that suggests these and the thousands of other natural products out there can be used to treat or prevent disease are illegal. Such claims are the sole domain of drugs—a regulatory architecture that has been crafted over decades by Big Pharma.

Consumers may indeed be urged by public health authorities to choose what they eat or consume wisely, yet they are denied a complete picture of what is known scientifically about natural products, especially where these are natural alternatives to drugs.

When rules, language, and evidence thresholds are written this way, natural health is constrained, not by science, but by those who write the rules and set the narrative around human health care.

2. Who Controls the Money and Markets?

Natural health is constrained at the level of evidence, where money determines what qualifies as “science.” In 1991, about 80% of industry-funded clinical trials were conducted in academic medical centers; by 2004, that figure had fallen to 26%, replaced by for-profit research organizations contracted by drug companies. This shift has untold impact: study designs, publications, regulations, and medical education reflect pharmaceutical interests, leaving natural therapies– without comparable capital– unable to produce the forms of evidence regulators, insurers, and clinicians are structurally conditioned to demand.

Markets then reinforce this imbalance. Just four retailers control around 65% of grocery sales, while seeds, meat, and grain trading are 60–90% concentrated. Online gatekeepers such as Amazon and Walmart determine visibility, pricing pressure, and data access. Natural brands must pay for shelf space, surrender customer data, and risk rapid imitation, while pharmaceutical and ultra-processed products benefit from scale, marketing budgets, and preferential placement across supply chains and pharmacies.

Finally, the squeeze extends into innovation and medical culture. Following the Myriad case, naturally occurring substances are largely excluded from patent protection, leaving high research costs with little legal protection. Without IP protection, investors see little upside, research dries up, and innovation slows. Combined with regulatory capture and heavy pharmaceutical lobbying, control of money and markets systematically prioritizes pharmaceutical over natural health and substances long before consumers are offered a real choice.

3. Who Decides “Standard Care”?

Natural health is further squeezed by who defines “standard care.” Evidence-based medicine has elevated randomized controlled trials (RCTs) to a near-exclusive gold standard, despite clear limits. One analysis found 36% of highly cited RCTs were later contradicted or shown to have weaker effects, while RCTs routinely exclude older, multi-morbid, and real-world patients. Because industry funds most large trials, the hierarchy is skewed: 69% of industry studies focus on drugs, while a mere 1.5% examine behavioral changes. When RCTs are treated as the only valid evidence, therapies without patent-driven funding struggle to generate the evidence required to be recognized as “standard care.”

Professional policing then locks these standards in place. In 2024 alone, the pharmaceutical industry spent $294 million on lobbying, while industry funding now covers about 70% of doctor training. Guidelines built on this evidence base are enforced through reimbursement rules and medical boards that determine acceptable practice. During the pandemic, clinicians prioritizing nutrition, prevention, or off-guideline approaches were suspended or barred from practice, signaling that deviation carries real risk. By controlling the evidence, the education, and the licenses, the system ensures that “standard care” remains drug-centered while systematically marginalizing natural health.

4. Who Controls What You’re Allowed to Hear?

Natural health is constrained not only by evidence rules, but by visibility itself. As the saying goes, “he who pays the piper dictates the tune.” Legacy media is structurally dependent on pharmaceutical advertising: between January and October 2024, pharma brands spent $7.9 billion on ads, with over $5.3 billion going to national and local TV, accounting for roughly 10–12% of all TV ad revenue. Prescription drug ads alone drove 11.6% of national linear TV spend. This dependence creates incentives to avoid narratives that challenge drug-centered models while marginalizing alternatives that do not buy airtime.

Beyond commercials, the flow of information is constrained through biased “fact-checking” and algorithmic suppression. Platforms including Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter use downranking, demonetisation, shadow banning, and deplatforming to suppress health content that diverges from “authoritative sources.”

By framing natural health as “unproven” and using coordinated reporting campaigns to stigmatize non-drug interventions, the system ensures that what the public hears is not the full scientific truth, but a carefully curated pharmaceutical narrative.

5. How Risk and Law is Weaponized

Legal and liability pressures have become another mechanism through which natural health is squeezed. Regulators increasingly rely on a “risk-based” enforcement framework that magnifies isolated incidents to justify broader restrictions on entire categories of natural products.

A clear example in the US relates to FDA’s 2019 withdrawal of Compliance Policy Guide (CPG) 400.400, which for more than three decades allowed homeopathic products to be lawfully marketed. Removing that policy exposed traditional remedies to the same “new drug” approval standards applied to pharmaceuticals– an impossible threshold for non-patentable substances that cannot recover the roughly $2.6 billion cost of modern drug development. The disparity is striking: conventional pharmaceuticals account for more than 99% of adverse drug events reported to the FDA, while homeopathic products represent only a minute fraction of one percent. That’s why we’re engaged in a lawsuit to correct this wrong that is, otherwise, likely to eliminate an entire modality of alternative medicine.

Regulatory scrutiny is further reinforced through a steady stream of investigations into products marketed as natural. State Attorney General actions frequently target categories such as foods and dietary supplements, weight-loss and wellness products sold online, and CBD or cannabis-derived supplements. Of course, oversight of adulterated or misbranded products is a legitimate consumer-protection function. However, enforcement often concentrates disproportionately on natural health categories, with highly publicized investigations and warning campaigns that shape public perception even when issue stem from isolated violations. The result is selective pressure: the entire sector face reputational damage, regulatory uncertainty, and the high cost of compliance or litigation.

Meanwhile, pharmaceutical drugs, including prescription and over-the-counter medicines, are responsible for nearly 2 million emergency-department visits annually in the United States. Despite this significant safety burden, pharmaceuticals continue to be framed as the default “safe” option. The resulting asymmetry is clear: natural health products face heightened scrutiny and legal exposure, while pharmaceutical interventions retain institutional credibility and market dominance.

6. How Our Minds Are Manipulated

Natural health is also squeezed at the level of mindset, through cultural conditioning that reshapes what people consider “normal” health. When the average American develops a headache, the instinct is often to reach for paracetamol [acetaminophen] (Tylenol) or ibuprofen (Advil). Rarely is the first question: Am I dehydrated? Did I sleep poorly? Is stress, posture, or diet contributing to my problem? This reflex reflects a shift from addressing causes to suppressing symptoms. Over time, it narrows the solutions people consider, pushing nutrition, lifestyle change, and other preventive approaches to the margins before they are explored.

We see this also in the rise of polypharmacy, those who take five or more prescription medications. What might once have signaled systemic health failure is increasingly treated as simply part of modern life.

At the same time, key drivers of poor health are normalized. Ultra-processed foods now make up about 60% of daily calories in the US, while studies show nutrient levels in some vegetables have declined since the mid-20th century. The result is a population that is often overfed yet micronutrient deficient. Rather than addressing these underlying causes, the dominant response remains pharmaceutical management. The cycle reinforces itself: unhealthy environments produce chronic illness, illness fuels drug dependence, while natural health is pushed to the background.

The Future

The future of natural health in the US—as well as in other parts of the world with elaborate, Big Pharm and Big Food controlled regulatory systems—will not be decided by science alone. All six of these macro-drivers must be tackled simultaneously if we’re to restore balance, allowing nature to be reinstated as the most important influence on our health, an interaction that is the product of our co-evolution with natural systems over millennia.

This matters because the current health trajectory is unsustainable and millions are destined to suffer and receive substandard support of their health. With aging populations and spiraling rates of chronic disease that now affect the majority of adults, together with ever growing costs of healthcare that fails to address the underlying causes of disease, prevention can no longer remain peripheral.

The goal is not to replace modern medicine but to remove the prejudices against natural medicine and offer choice. A future where natural health is protected, researched, and accessible would not only expand choice, it would help move healthcare from a system built around managing disease through largely synthetic, chemical interventions, to one capable of sustaining human health because natural systems tend to work in concert with our bodies and minds, not against them.

ANH Action Plan in the US

Since leading US constitutional attorney Jonathan Emord (who has been gifted the moniker the “FDA Dragon Slayer” given he holds the record for lawsuit wins against the FDA) joined ANH-USA as General Counsel in mid-2024, we have embarked on a radical plan involving over 30 distinct legal and regulatory initiatives to combat the problems we describe in this article. We are unfolding this plan by way of an array of lawsuits, other legal initiatives, campaigns, and political Action Alerts about which you can find out more on our website.

You can sign up to our free weekly newsletter and be kept abreast of our implementation of this unique plan, which centers on bringing in natural health from the margins, and embracing it at the heart of human health care. We are also very grateful for any donations to help support this work.

Please circulate this article widely among your networks to help address the censorship that affects the communication of our work.

The post The Big Six Barriers: The Hidden Forces Suppressing Natural Health in America first appeared on Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health.