In the video above, Dr. Bruce Lipton explains what he calls the “shocking truth about the pharmaceutical industry:” the science called epigenetics. Loosely defined, epigenetics is the belief that you can alter your genetics by modifying your behavior – not by taking medications.

The concept of people being able to heal themselves without drugs defies the mission of big pharmaceutical companies, driven by profit margins and ever larger sales figures. But according to Dr. Lipton, “A minimum of one third of all medical intervention is a placebo effect. That’s the result of positive thinking,” and not of drugs.

The flip side to the placebo effect is negative thinking, or the nocebo effect. “It’s equally powerful in regard to affecting your biology as is positive thinking, but it works in the opposite direction.”

Dr. Lipton explains that there is great resistance from the pharmaceutical company against this idea. Epigenetics requires a healing of the consciousness – and that is something the drug companies cannot sell for any price. The influence of the pharmaceutical companies is enormous, and so their refusal to accept epigenetics is a main reason many people have not heard of it, implies Dr. Lipton. In fact, the drug companies even determine the curriculum in medical schools.

Dr. Lipton goes on to explain that medications may not even be as helpful as we are led to believe: “drugs like Prozac, in a laboratory test, are no better than a sugar pill,” and “statin drugs help less than 3% of the people that take them; and, in fact, they cause side effects that are dangerous in about 23%.” On top of that, pharmaceuticals kill about 300,000 people a year.

The question, then, is whether you need to take a medication in order to reap its intended benefit. The answer, according to Dr Lipton, is no. “You have to change your consciousness because you already manufacture every equivalent of a drug right now.”