HOME HYGIENE LIBRARY CATALOG CHAPTER 22
Lipotoxemia, the condition which leads to heart disease and cancer, is responsible also for the other so-called diseases of degeneration. There are many of these, each one designated a scientific name and each one requiring specific diagnosis before medical treatment is prescribed.
If, as I have demonstrated with heart disease and cancer and can demonstrate with all the rest, all of these conditions have the same underlying cause, why is painstaking diagnosis of each condition so important? The answer is that diagnosis is really not important at all, because, apart from temporary heroic measures which may occasionally be required to avert imminent death, the method of treatment required is the same in all cases, namely the elimination of toxemia.
Louis Kuhne of Germany, one hundred years ago, explained this simple concept in his book The New Science of Healing. Summarizing, he concluded: "From the foregoing exposition we must draw the momentous conclusion: There is only one cause of disease and there is only one disease, which shows itself under different forms".
The question might be asked, why don't all degenerated people display the same disease conditions? Generally speaking they do--lowered resistance to infection, a touch of arthritis, the need for reading glasses, increased blood pressure and so on--the "trivial" complaints which are the forerunners of heart disease, stroke, diabetes, kidney failure, liver failure and cancer.
Thus the many so-called diseases are in fact symptoms of the one underlying constitutional condition of lipotoxemia, manifested in varying ways and degrees according to variable dietary and other lifestyle factors.
Not the least of these factors is stress, which is capable of triggering or exacerbating the entire "Pandora's box" of disease symptoms. The emotional condition is so powerful a factor in disease it has often been assumed to be in some cases the only cause of an illness such as tuberculosis or cancer. People were described as having a "tuberculosis personality" or a "cancer personality" and their complaints regarded to be to a great extent psychosomatic. This of course, is not the case, and in all illness it should be borne in mind the importance not only of diet and stress, but also rest, sunshine and exercise. It is more likely that a depressed personality is a symptom of body degeneration in the first place, and will change for the better when health is restored.
Multiple Sclerosis
MS is a disease of the nervous system where the protective sheaths of nerve fibers suffer local damage, resulting in a wide variety of physical symptoms. Muscle co-ordination is affected throughout the body and can show up as temporary blindness, double vision, speech impediment, loss of balance, unco-ordinated movement of hands or limbs and so on. Symptoms may commence in youth or later and become progressively worse.
The initial signs may be only such things as tingling sensations, aches, fatigue, dizziness or headaches. Note that these are symptoms of high blood viscosity and impaired oxygen transport associated with high blood fat levels.
The myelin nerve sheaths suffer damage in locations where circulation is sparsest, which is where the tiny venules of the white matter of the brain and spinal cord receive the blood flow from the capillaries on its way back to the heart. Where damage occurs, tiny plaques grow, and around these plaques are found lymphocytes from the blood. Some researchers are of the opinion that the lymphocytes have caused the damage, thus making MS an auto-immune disease. On the other hand, it is more likely that the damage is caused by lack of oxygen to the cells and that the lymphocytes have proceeded there as a consequence. Lymphocytes do not normally leave the bloodstream of the brain and nervous system to patrol among the tissue cells as they do elsewhere in the body., but apparently can do so if called upon. Should the lymphocytes at MS locations themselves perish for lack of oxygen, it is possible that damage to the nerve sheaths is caused by their liberated digestive juices in a manner similar to the joint damage of arthritis.
The same geographic distribution around the world as applies to heart disease, cancer and other degenerative diseases prevails again with MS. It is a disease of civilization. In short, people relatively free of stress, living on primitive unrefined diets, are free of MS, and populations whose lifestyles incorporate stress and the Western diet show an incidence of MS proportional to their intake of fat and refined carbohydrate and their exposure to stress.
There is a low incidence of MS in the tropics which has nothing to do with the temperature except perhaps that life in the tropics is reasonably placid. Not one case has been observed among six million Bantus in South Africa but it appears there among the whites along with cancer and heart disease.
Although MS occurs in all Westernized countries with the highest incidence in the cities (as with cancer), the highest incidence in the world is in the Orkney and Shetland Islands of Northern Scotland. In this area of Scotland the incidence of MS is three times greater than that of the rest of the UK and three times that of New York City, which areas have the next highest rates in the world. It is significant that the per capita intake of fat in Northern Scotland is 19% greater than that of the UK generally, just as their colon cancer rate is 19% higher. It is also significant that Scotland has a very high rate of alcoholism.
Dr R. L. Swank, the eminent specialist whose studies of blood fats have been immeasurably valuable to heart disease research, in 1950 correlated the incidence of MS with fat in the diet. This was reported at the time in the American Journal of Medical Sciences.
Blood fats are elevated not only by dietary fat but by the intake of refined carbohydrate (predominantly sugar and alcohol) which forms a substantial proportion of the Western diet. Another big factor causing elevation of blood fats is stress, and stress is strongly implicated with MS just as it is with cancer.
Not only do we know that stress increases blood fat and cholesterol levels, but also it causes debilitation of the thymus gland and the operation of the body's immune system. Medical tests show that MS patients display abnormal immune reactions with high levels of certain antibodies and at the same time, low levels of lymphocytes which are debilitated in function.
Fifty years ago the death rate among MS sufferers was extremely high, 30% of patients dying in 2-4 years, with only 8% lasting twenty years or more. They almost invariably died of "complications"--1927, 58% of MS deaths were from pneumonia, 36% from sepsis due to bed sores and urinary infections and many from tuberculosis.
Thus it is obvious that impairment of the immune system is a dangerous feature of MS as it is with other forms of disease, but since 1927 the mortality from infection has greatly diminished due no doubt to the generous use of antibiotics.
Further indicative of MS being a metabolic disease of degeneration is the frequent concurrence of other chronic disorders such as thrombosis, cardiovascular disease, cerebrovascular disease, transient ischemic hypertension, emphysema, kidney stones, kidney failure, polyarthritis, spondylosis, arthrosis, nerve root syndromes, osteoporosis, diabetes mellitus, neuropathies, gynecological disorders, prostate gland hypertrophy, glaucoma and neoplasias, which occur in MS patients with about the same frequency as in the general population.
It has been observed that any form of stress, either emotional or physical, will increase the degree of MS symptoms. And by the same token, the placebo effect of encouragement and hope, according to one specialist, works to relieve symptoms in MS patients more frequently than in any other patients.
In age distribution MS occurs most commonly between 18 and 45, usually among people in the middle to upper income class. Both of these facts point directly to stress because it is within the middle to upper income group where the pressure and responsibility start at age 18 and peter out after about 45.
The incidence of MS among women is twice that of men, and it is significant that the onset of stress-related rheumatoid arthritis has also a far higher incidence among women of high intelligence. Such women, deprived of equal opportunity by society, suffer frustration and stress.
As mentioned, in area distribution MS incidence is higher in cities and so is the incidence of cancer and heart attacks. Once again the finger points to stress.
However, it is evident that the high intake of dietary fat and cholesterol predominates as the major MS factor in most cases because the MS incidence in North Scotland relates directly to high dietary fat and apparently not so much to environmental stress. Another significant thing is that the incidence of alcoholism in Scotland is very high. The rate of hospital admissions for this disease is seven times higher for men and five times higher from women that in the rest of the United Kingdom. The point here is that it is well known that alcohol has the same effect on the body as stress, causing nervous and hormonal disturbances and elevating blood fats, at the same time immobilizing certain oxygen-processing enzymes. Perhaps some general form of stress affects the Scots as a race, and causes them to drink excessively.
What could be considered as a possible factor in MS is the role played by natural body cholesterol. Cholesterol is an essential component in the brain and nervous system and it is in these organs of the body that the highest levels of cholesterol are naturally found. This cholesterol, manufactured by the body, is distinct from cholesterol eaten as part of the diet. It is significant that when stress is imposed on a person there is an instant increase in the body's production of cholesterol, and blood cholesterol increases significantly. It is possible that inhibition of the function of this natural cholesterol in the presence of high blood fat levels may in some way influence the onset of MS.
Corrective measures
Be that as it may, the corrective measures for MS are precisely those described for cancer, arthritis, etc.
It should be noted that although many cancer remissions have been achieved in days or weeks, MS may not be so easy--because of damage to the nerve sheaths. It has been believed in the past that nerve fibers do not regenerate, but as recoveries have been made from MS then positive thinking accepts that possibly they can.
For years, researchers have noted the correlation of MS to dietary fat but have been thrown off the track, as were the heart disease researcher, by misunderstanding and confusion about polyunsaturated fats. Many diets were tried and found ineffectual, including diets in which polyunsaturated fat was substituted for saturated fat.
Two recoveries achieved by dietary means have been described by Prevention magazine (March 1975 and July 1977). Once again there was confusion about fats but errors made in this regard were not severe enough to prevent good results.
The recoveries were that of English playwright Robert MacDougall from complete paralysis and blindness, and of Leslie Clarke, also of England, with lesser symptoms. MacDougall designed the diet used in both cases and it is referred to as the "gluten-free" diet because he thought that gluten was the dietary culprit responsible for MS. His theory was that gluten, in combination with dairy products and refined sugar, was the root cause of all degenerative diseases. Gluten is contained in wheat, barley and oats and these foods he eliminated from the diet. But he also eliminated animal fats and refined sugar.
Potatoes and unpolished rice were used liberally. Although Macdougall's diet wrongly included vegetable oil, Leslie Clarke's weight reduced from 180 lbs to 147 lbs which indicates that he rectified some mighty big mistakes in other dietary areas.
W. Ritchie Russell, formerly Professor of Clinical Neurology, Oxford, specialized in the treatment of MS for many years. He retired in 1970 but has since followed up the progress of many MS patients whose case histories dated back to 1960. The information which follows is from his book Multiple Sclerosis, Control of the Disease (Pergamon Press, 1976).
At no time does Professor Russell mention blood fats, and in his brief reference to diet he excludes it as an MS factor. However he may err in that regard, every single statement he makes is entirely supportive of what I have already said, even though he is unaware of their direct connection to blood fats. Notwithstanding, Professor Russell achieved practically total success with all those patients who permanently followed his recommendations. Success in treating MS means--
Professor Russell did not treat his patients. He realized that MS was related to the lifestyle factors of stress, overwork and fatigue and to a low level of physical fitness, and that the only remedial action was for the patients themselves to correct these factors.
He observed that MS is a problem primarily concerning the circulation and that it was significant that MS is common in countries with a high incidence of coronary heart disease. He also observed that migraine was common among MS patients. To quote from his book:
"All students will agree that serious relapses in MS are often associated with periods of physical and emotional strain and also apparently with inoculations, illnesses and injuries. MS occurs more frequently among the upper social classes in whom the special demands, the weight of responsibility and authority, as well as the so-called rat-race type of living may lead to stress and fatigue.
"In our experience, athletes in full training are virtually protected, and athletes who have abandoned training owing to pressures of business etc, may become vulnerable.
"The laborer or bricklayer or factory heavy assembly- line worker who is working about forty hours per week seldom, if ever, contracts MS."
In the early 1960s Professor Russell was working at Stoke Mandeville Hospital, and noted that the exercise program devised for MS patients with spinal injuries, favorably affected their general MS symptoms. So a rest-exercise program (REP) was instituted for all MS patients and this was immediately successful.
The exercise consisted of "short periods of quite violent exercise designed to accelerate the heartbeat and make the subject short of breath, These are built up gradually to develop an athletic type circulation which is subject to strain at least once a day".
Rest, lying down, was to be taken not less than once every six hours, and fatigue was to be avoided.
As you might guess, most of the patients, as soon as they felt cured, gave up the program and of course most of them eventually suffered relapses, whereupon they would again resume the REP. This is understandable, but Dr Russell warns that eventually damage may be sustained which will be permanent. Not one of the patients who persisted with the REP over a period of 15 years, ever had a relapse.
It is a pity that Dr Russell was unaware of the connection of stress and exercise with levels of fat in the blood. Had he realized the implication of fat with MS, he would have further realized the importance of diet, the most important factor of all.
Hyperbaric therapy
That MS is an oxygen deficiency disease caused by lipotoxemia, high blood viscosity and low blood oxygen there can be no doubt because MS patients respond instantly to improved blood oxygen content as achieved by hyperbaric therapy (see Chapter 5). Drs R. M. Parker and J. T. Taylor of Amarillo, Texas, in a paper titled, "Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy for Multiple Sclerosis" (Journal of Orthomolecular Psychiatry, Vol 9, No 4, 1980) describe the treatment of 20 patients of which 15 achieved excellent results and five slight, which were sustained indefinitely except for a few who required repeat therapy. Treatment included a modified diet which excluded cereals, dairy products and caffeine, low in fat and emphasizing raw fruit and vegetables.
Similar success is reported by Dr Philip James of Dundee University, UK, a specialist in diving medicine who recognized the similarity between MS patients and divers with the "bends". Dr James believes that MS is caused by fat globules trapped in small blood vessels of the brain, cutting off the blood supply. He used a diver's pressure chamber for the treatment. No mention in the report was made about diet.
Author's comments
Hyperbaric therapy is obviously unnecessary for MS patients because their blood can be better oxygenated by dietary means.
We have established in the previous chapters that the three main lifestyle factors responsible for degenerative/metabolic diseases are: bad diet, stress and lack of exercise, by virtue of the resultant high levels of blood fats, together with debilitation of the body's immune system. Professor Russell's REP, properly followed, effectively corrected two of the factors. Reducing stress alone drastically lowers blood fats and allows the immune system to pick up, and we know that aerobic exercise enhances the metabolism of blood fats as well as alleviating the effects of stress.
Considering that diet is the primary factor involved in lipotoxemia, it becomes clear that if that factor, too, is corrected, then MS (like cancer, heart disease and so on) just cannot eventuate.*
*The MS Society in Sydney recommends a high protein diet, "to provide energy", A Manual an MS, which they use as a reference, recommends a diet composed of (total calories) 50% carbohydrate, 30% fat, and 20% protein with cholesterol limited to 300 mg a day and no restriction on fruit. This is bad advice, and if the MS society achieves any improvement with it, think how well patients would respond with the correct diet.
Unfortunately, if Professor Russell's contention that badly scarred nerve tissue remains permanently impaired, then full recovery from advanced MS may be impossible.
In the light of what is now known, it would be strongly advisable for MS sufferers to adopt a strict low-fat vegetarian diet and the rest of the procedures recommended for cancer patients in the preceding chapter.
The author has observed a number of "dramatic" recoveries from MS achieved by correcting diet, one of which is described in Chapter 2. Another good example is the reversal of MS in three children of one family. On the Western diet and with great stress due to a violent alcoholic father, all three children displayed MS symptoms ranging from incapacitation in a wheelchair with the 16-year-old daughter, stumbling and loss of co-ordination with the second daughter and slight symptoms in the son who was the youngest. The eldest girl was not expected to live another year. The family moved to the country, the father changed his ways, and the family adopted the Pritikin diet in September 1980. The two youngest children were free of symptoms in two weeks and the eldest, instead of dying, has recovered to the extent of walking without assistance and riding a bicycle. This story was publicized in 1981 by the Sydney Daily Mirror under the heading of "PRITIKIN'S MIRACLES".
Rejected by the doctor at the MS Society in Sydney, the author approached the Society President, Sir John Maddern, proposing changes in treatment for MS patients. Sir John's reply was very encouraging and in his letter he requested a meeting for when he returned home from having some medical treatment for a problem of his own.
Not long after that I was returning from the USA, and out of Honolulu started reading the latest Sydney newspapers put aboard there. There was the headline "Sir John Maddern Dead". He had died of heart disease, and with him had died any chance for MS patients for who knows how long.
Depression
"Health, Wealth and Happiness" is a universal toast to those we wish well. It is commonly known however, that wealth in the form of money cannot buy happiness, and that rich people are often miserable. Real wealth begins with high self-esteem and the love and respect of others, and money, although perhaps desirable, is not a major factor.
Many people ask the question "What is the purpose of Life?" It is a question that no one can answer to everyone's satisfaction. Religion provides an answer to many because life's imperfections and strife can be accepted as a temporary inconvenience on the way to eternal happiness. To others driven by curiosity and ambition, hard work keeps them so busy that they never stop to think about it. Indeed, few people stop to think about it and face each day as it comes.
The only reason for living really is to be happy, and even if a person is in the midst of calamity, just a glimmer of hope for eventual happiness is sufficient to keep them going.
The people who often do evaluate the purpose of their lives are those who are depressed, and some of these who can see no hope terminate their lives by suicide. Many such people have their lives terminated by some disease to which they easily succumb. It is Nature's way of protecting them from distress and "purposelessness"
Depression, therefore, is a state of disease which causes physical debilitation, leading inevitably to body degeneration and proneness to all manner of infection. As has been discussed in the chapter on stress and elsewhere, constant depression produces premature aging at best, and at worst, death by cancer.
There are possibly thousands of reasons for depression and reading this book will do little to remove most of them, but I would like to make a singular observation. The happiest people in the world, regardless of their background, are those in love, and the unhappiest are those with a broken love affair or marriage. The worst form of depression, or emotional distress, as we have seen, derives from the death of a spouse, then followed by divorce and marital separation.
In the discussion on hypoglycemia which follows shortly it is shown that this disease is accountable for a very high proportion of marriage breakups. This is easily understandable. Is an active, trim, attractive woman supposed to live indefinitely with a fat, lazy and impotent husband? Or is an active virile man supposed to remain forever faithful to a perpetually "indisposed" and overweight wife? So the point of this entire discussion now becomes evident--the condition of happiness relies on a myriad of factors, many of which are beyond our control. However, the prime essential factor--vigorous health--is very much subject to our control, and before lamenting and reaching for more valium, it might be a good idea to go to the kitchen, throw out all the junk, and walk vigorously down to see your greengrocer.
Diabetes
Diabetes is the number three cause of death and number one cause of blindness in the USA and is estimated to cost the nation over 20 billion dollars a year (1982). Once thought to be hereditary, diabetes is now clearly established to be caused by faulty diet and exacerbated by stress.
It is a metabolic disease characterized by the body's inability to metabolize the normally produced blood sugar (glucose). The blood sugar level rises as a result. It is caused in most cases by high blood fat levels which inhibit the interaction of the glucose with the hormone insulin produced by the pancreas. As people get older and gradually degenerate, their capability to metabolize fat reduces, which explains why diabetes most often appears in adults, in which case it is called adult-onset diabetes.
As already explained, the main cause of high blood fat levels is a diet high in fat. Excess protein in the diet, and refined carbohydrate worsen the condition. Another strong factor in elevating blood fats is stress, and when a borderline condition exists, stress will exacerbate the diabetic condition.
The body's metabolism of glucose is controlled by insulin which is released in the required amounts from the gland called the pancreas. As well as taking part in the processing of the glucose, the insulin limits the liver's release of glucose into the bloodstream once the desired level has been reached. The insulin also controls the release of fatty acids and glycerol from body tissue storage. In short, insulin is necessary for the metabolism of glucose and at the same time maintains the correct level of fuel supplies in the bloodstream.
For many years it has been accepted that diabetes results from inadequate insulin production due to a defective pancreas. This was "proven" when it was demonstrated that when animals had their pancreas removed they became diabetic, but the condition could be reversed by the injection of insulin. When it was further demonstrated that regular, carefully measured doses of insulin enabled the body to metabolize the desired amount of blood sugar, the sugar level was said to be "controlled", and this became the standard treatment for diabetics. The insulin was first obtained from the pancreas of animals but was later synthesized. While this treatment is effective in allowing the patient a reasonably normal life, diabetics still suffer from a wide range or circulatory complications.
In the 1960s it was discovered (again)* that most diabetics actually have more natural insulin in their blood than non-diabetics, in fact, in some cases, two or three times as much, showing that the pancreas was doing its job well and was not defective at all. It was also discovered that the effectiveness of insulin decreased as the level of blood fats increased.
*Medical tests a hundred years ago in USA and Europe showed that most diabetics possessed a perfectly normal pancreas and that in most cases, diabetes could be eliminated by a low fat, vegetarian diet. However, the direct implication of fat was not explained until 1923, although it was clear that meat exacerbated the disease.
As it was well known that diabetics always displayed high blood fat levels, the real cause of diabetes became clear. It is caused by the effect of blood fats inhibiting the normal reaction between the blood sugar and insulin, but can be overcome by the addition of sufficient extra insulin injected into the patient.
In other words, the patient's blood sugar production is normal, and the insulin production is normal all the time, but prevented from reacting together by the high levels of fat. No wonder diabetes and heart disease frequently occur together!
It is also understandable that, in the USA, 95% of amputations because of gangrene are performed on diabetic people. Diabetics suffer 75% of all strokes, and make up the majority of the blind, diabetic retinopathy being caused by blood platelet aggregation due to high blood fats.
Diabetes is unknown in populations whose diet is low in fats, protein and sugar. Remember the distinction between refined carbohydrates, which are harmful, and natural carbohydrates, which are definitely required. Experiments have shown that a normal person can, however, ingest high levels of dietary sugar * and still show a normal glucose tolerance test. The same person after a short time on a high fat diet will, when given a glucose tolerance test, show positive diabetic symptoms. J. P. Felber induced diabetic symptoms in five normal young men simply by giving them lipid infusion which raised their fatty acid level 40% above normal. In two hours the glucose tolerance test was diabetic. (Me. Exp. 10:1536, 1964 [Basal]). This effect can be reversed by artificially chemically lowering free fatty acids.
*For further information on sugar vs diabetes see Hypoglycemia.
H. S. Sweeney studied diet effects on groups of medical students:
First group--very high protein diet.
Second group--very high fat diet.
Third group--no food.
Fourth group--very high carbohydrate diet.
In two days the first group tested borderline diabetic. Both the high fat and fasting groups were quite diabetic with post glucose values exceeding 170 mg% (should drop back to 115 or less). The fourth group tested normal. (Arch. Inst. Med. 40:818-30, 1927).
Other more prolonged tests in the 1920s-30s and 1950s-60s, showed that diabetes is reversed on low fat, high carbohydrate diets. Somehow or other these achievements were ignored by the rest of the medical profession including the main US diabetic clinic in Boston. The "standard" diet for diabetics, to this very day, excludes sugar but permits fat, the main culprit!
It is known that cereals, particularly wheat products, can exacerbate diabetes and arthritis. It is significant that, second only to eggs, (33%), wheat excites the greatest response (30%) in all tests for food allergies. As an allergy response indicates stress on the body, it may be in this way that diabetes is exacerbated.
Juvenile diabetes: In juvenile diabetes the production of insulin by the pancreas is inadequate due in most cases to damage caused by improper diet, and the patient may become insulin dependent for life if the diet is not quickly rectified. Scientists in Denmark have reported a dramatic fall in the incidence of diabetes in children since breast-feeding has come back into vogue. If a person is insulin dependent, the dependency can be greatly lessened by a low fat, vegetarian diet.
In his book The Healing Factor, Irwin Stone quotes eight medical research papers produced in the 1940s by Dr S. Banerjee of India, describing the importance of Vitamin C in carbohydrate metabolism. In many tests Dr Banerjee noted that in scorbutic guinea pigs the insulin content of the pancreas was reduced to one-eighth of normal.
It is suspected that pancreatic damage may sometimes be caused by viruses. It was reported by Dr D. Gamble, West Park Hospital, Epsom, England, that frequently within six months prior to the onset of juvenile diabetes, patients had suffered mumps. Similarly suspect were chicken pox and asthma.
The term "juvenile diabetes" is a misnomer because the condition may arise at any stage in life.
Danger of oral drugs: In a test conducted in the 1960s, 20,000 diabetics, all on the American Diabetic Association diet (low carbohydrate, high fat!) were divided into three groups, one group given placebo (containing nothing at all), one group insulin, and one group oral drugs. The result, released in 1970, showed that the placebo group, even though their glucose was out of the desired range, had no, more than the usual rate of coronary deaths. The insulin group, their glucose kept within range, fared the same. But the group on oral drugs, even though their glucose had been kept within limits, had 2.5 times the death rate from heart disease. A British study showed a 2 to 1 ratio. Nevertheless, it was revealed that in New Jersey in 1980, 90% of physicians still prescribed oral drugs!
Referring to the Pritikin Longevity Center's diet and exercise program, Dr James Anderson of the University of Kentucky Medical Center said, "with this kind of approach, diet only, 80% of the diabetics in this country could be normal in 30 to 90 days".
In a report made public before the American Chemical Society, Dr Michael Somogyi of the Jewish Hospital of St Lexies, pointed out that a study of 4,000 diabetic cases conducted by him and his associates over a period of 14 years, revealed that virtually all adult victims of diabetes can be restored to normal health without insulin injections, and that even the less than one per cent of the adult diabetics who still require insulin can get along on 20 units a day or less, instead of 50-150 units.
Hypoglycemia
Hypoglycemia means a state of low blood sugar. A vigorously fit, well-nourished person never experiences this condition as the liver constantly provides blood sugar as required to maintain proper levels.
With low blood sugar, people feel tired, lethargic and depressed. That's what a hangover is. A severe condition of hypoglycemia leads to a variety of neurological and psychiatric disorders such as giddiness, slurred speech, blurred vision, confusion, bizarre behavior, coma and apparent epilepsy.
Low blood sugar may result from long periods without food, and the hunger pangs which occur are a genuine distress signal to eat some food. In modern society, however, hypoglycemia is usually caused not by the absence of food but by excesses of it.
The condition is very prevalent and is caused mainly by the intake of refined carbohydrates such as processed and sweetened breakfast cereals, sugar --white, brown or raw--sweets, chocolate, health food sugar substitutes, soft drinks, alcohol etc. These are composed of simple molecule carbohydrate and as such are not digested in the normal way. They enter the bloodstream too rapidly and upset the sugar balance. The body's control system goes into action and the pancreas pumps out insulin to reduce the sugar by converting it to fat. However, because this is an unnatural condition, the pancreas over-responds, excess insulin is released, and this results in too low a blood sugar level which is hypoglycemia. A sugary pep drink or an "energy bar" will quickly lift the blood sugar again and the person is refreshed--but only briefly until the confused body repeats the process.
In addition to the foodstuffs already mentioned, other unsuspected foods have been found also to rapidly raise blood sugar levels. Dr David Jenkins, of the University of Toronto, in 1983 rated various foods on a "glycemic scale" of zero to 100, with glucose, the most rapidly absorbed raiser of blood sugar being rated at 100. Surprisingly, cooked carrots rated 92, wholewheat bread 72, and pasta 50, compared to honey 87, table sugar 59, orange juice 46 and ice cream 36. Thus once again the cooking process stands condemned. Interestingly enough, in a paper entitled "Health Research" (July 1936) Dr Edward Howell of Chicago (see Enzymes ) described the rapid increase in blood sugar after eating wholewheat bread and in another paper, "More About Food Enzymes" (1941) said: "Many sufferers from diabetes sacrifice the admirable nutritional qualities of fresh fruit juices because of an exaggerated fear of the sugar content. They mistakenly place fruit sugar in the same low category as ordinary table sugar. The fact of the matter is that the sugars in fresh fruit juices are tolerated by the diabetic organism far better than cooked starches or sucrose. Research findings of medical authorities indicate that raw potato starch does not elevate the blood sugar appreciably, while the same starch, cooked, increases the blood sugar level markedly. Diabetics may take comfort in these facts and expect an improvement in health".
Hypoglycemia has also been linked with fluoridated water, inasmuch as fluoride has the effect of blocking aconitase which is a key enzyme in the metabolism of sugar for energy. Thus, as with diabetes, the symptoms of hypoglycemia may exist in the presence of high blood sugar levels simply because the body cannot utilize the sugar. Hypoglycemia can also be caused by excess insulin levels resulting from eating excess protein. Excess insulin levels in the blood is called hyperinsulinemia. Quoting from the Longevity Research paper on the subject:
"Rabinowitz tested eight normal women using three different meals. The high protein meal consisting of 27% protein, 31% fat and 42% carbohydrate produced a peak insulin level 200% higher than a 100 gm glucose drink. Such a meal is not unlike the high protein recommendations for hypoglycemic diets. Grasso confirmed Rabinowitz' results in tests using glucose and amino acids with premature infants, obtaining peak insulin levels 400% higher on a 50% amino acid--50% glucose infusion than on glucose alone.
"Hyperinsulinemia can readily bring glucose levels down to hypoglycemic levels, but even more catastrophic, in Stout's animal tests, elevated levels of insulin have stimulated cholesterol synthesis in the arterial wall, and have resulted in the formation of atherosclerotic plaques" '
Similar findings on the relationship of high insulin levels to hypoglycemia have recently been published by Drs J. Best, D. Chisholm and F. Alford of St Vincent's Hospital, Melbourne. They call the condition insulinoma but apparently do not know the reason for its occurrence. In an article they wrote on the subject the doctors said they were disturbed that the condition was frequently incorrectly diagnosed. They described two specific cases in which women suffered from years of coma, epilepsy etc, while being treated unsuccessfully with drugs.
There must be countless people suffering in varying degrees of hypoglycemia, being miserable and causing unhappiness to others for whole lifetimes. All because of a diet high in protein and refined carbohydrates.
Dr Mary Jane Hungerford, director of the Santa Barbara (California) branch of the American Institute of Family Relations reported:
"Nutrition is involved in 99% of my cases and in 75% of them it is the major . or factor. Almost all of my patients complain of fatigue, and fatigue is one of the first signs of poor nutrition. It certainly is the basis of a great many fights."
Dr David Hawkins, director of psychiatric research at Brunswick Psychiatric Hospital, Amityville, New York, estimates that 50% of couples applying for marriage counselling have serious nutritional problems. "All the couples were amazed at the fantastic difference a simple change in diet made to their lives, often in just a week," he said. The most common disorder was hypoglycemia, causing apathy, irritability, leading to arguments and resentment and displays of temper and poor sex life. He blamed primarily sugary foods and refined carbohydrates.
Arthritis
Like other metabolic disease, arthritis is the product primarily of poor diet, but exacerbated by stress, smoking, lack of exercise and lack of sunshine. Many tests since 1940 have shown that arthritics display low blood serum levels of ascorbic acid (Vitamin C) and that in many cases their condition was improved or eliminated by large doses of Vitamin C. This does not mean that Vitamin C deficiency is by itself the cause of arthritis, but that it is often a factor involved along with other malnutrition factors.
Gouty Arthritis: Gouty arthritis is associated with high uric acid levels and high levels of blood fats. High uric acid levels are caused by:
Yeast contains 40% nucleic acid, and 5 mg per day for 15 days has been shown to raise the uric acid level from 4.9 mg% to 9.4 mg%. The causes of high blood fats have been discussed earlier.
When uric acid levels are high, the blood can no longer contain it all in solution and the uric acid forms tiny sharp crystals. The lymphocytes, the white blood cells whose job it is to destroy invading foreign matter, attack the crystals. However, the lymphocytes are not capable of digesting the crystals and are instead killed by them, whereupon the cells' highly corrosive digestive juices are released, and it is these juices which attack the joints and cause the damage which is arthritis.
Rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis: Poor circulation due to high fat levels causes edema (tissues swell with fluid), and the already poor oxygen supply in the joints is further inhibited. Deprived of oxygen, the white blood cells swell and finally burst and again the destructive juices attack the joints. A blow to the joint can trigger edema and induce arthritis but will only do so in association with high fat levels. "Housemaid's Knee" is an example, and men working with hydraulic jack hammers have their fingers affected. Tight gloves can have the same effect.
Dr K. Lund-Oleson in 1970 reported that when the synovial fluid from the knees of rheumatoid arthritis patients was examined, the fluid samples contained on the average, only 30% of normal oxygen levels. Those with only 25% or less could not bear weight on their joints.
Emotional stress is often a major factor in rheumatoid arthritis as it is in many other diseases, by its disruptive effect on the hormonal system and its effect of elevating blood fats. Dr Stephen Black in his book Mind and Body (William Kimber, London, 1969), states that the incidence of this disease is seven times greater among women than among men, and described how in the majority of cases the women are the intelligent active type frustrated by the role in life in which they find themselves, and unhappy in their relationships with men.
Osteoarthritis occurs when the damage takes place to cartilage.
If an arthritic person is placed in a pressure oxygen chamber, his pain is relieved because oxygen is forced through to the white cells.
Stress can induce arthritis because adrenalin causes a rapid rise in free fatty acids in the blood as described in Heart Attack. Refined carbohydrates, deficient in vitamins, produce an effect on the body the same as stress and when eaten are often responsible for triggering an attack of arthritis. White bread is bad, even wholegrain bread and other acid-forming cereal foods are conducive to arthritis. Salt and oral contraceptives adversely affect the blood and can induce edema with consequential arthritis.
The relationship between mental stress and various inflammatory ailments, such as skin rashes and arthritis, is being investigated by Dr Loris Chahl at Queensland University. She said her research was "getting somewhere" and that if a connection was proved, it would help to explain a lot of clinical problems. "Many people unsuccessfully sought treatment for skin complaints, such as soreness and redness, which appeared at times of stress," she said. The connection that Dr Chahl seeks to prove has already been explained and it is unfortunate that in this computer age duplication of research is still unavoidable.
In particular, deficiencies of vitamins of the B complex, C, E and B12 in the diet inhibit oxygen transport in the bloodstream. Such deficiencies are conducive to arthritis. On poor oxygen transport--to quote again from Dr Dintenfas:
"It would be worthwhile to note that osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis are associated with an elevation of plasma viscosity (Houston et al, 1949--Gasen et al, 1970) and an elevation of the degree of aggregation of red cells (Laine and Zilliacus 1950, Redioch et al, 1970). High blood viscosity always leads to a slow-down of circulation and to reduced oxygenation of tissues."
That the heart attack which killed Pope Paul was preceded by an attack of arthritis was no coincidence but a clear demonstration of impaired oxygen transport. As with many heart attacks, it is significant that attacks of arthritis frequently occur in the middle of the night, after a hearty dinner which has elevated the victim's blood fats.
Medical treatment for arthritis is quite useless. In gouty arthritis sometimes gold salts are injected as treatment. The white cells which envelop the gold particles instead of uric acid crystals, cannot digest them either and so are immobilized, but do not burst. In some cases relief maybe felt by the patient.
Cortizone will destroy white blood cells and perhaps relieve some symptoms but is other-wise harmful. The body vitally needs white cells. Aspirin may relieve arthritis too, by its effect on suppressing the white blood cells. X-rays can also kill white cells. With inactive white cells, colds and infections will persist.
On the other hand, the adoption of correct diet reverses arthritis. There was a case at the Pritikin Center of a young man, a professional skier who, having injured his hip, was crippled with arthritis and eventually his femur (the large thigh bone) deteriorated and was apparently dead. He was given no alternative but to have an artificial hip joint but decided against it. When he arrived at the center, he looked lean and fit but his blood test showed the highest fat level they had ever recorded. It was because he used to eat only one meal a day, that being a 16 oz steak, no complex carbohydrate, followed by sweets. On the center's diet, for three weeks he could walk only 100 feet with pain. After five weeks he increased to half a mile, then a mile, without pain, and after six weeks progressed to three miles and straight away walked a whole 20 miles with no pain! An x-ray showed that the femur had regenerated with new bone tissue!
Jean Halewyn, 52, of Avalon Beach (Sydney), was a sad girl back in March 1979. She had arthritis throughout her body and could not bend her ankles or knees. She was in constant pain and had not been able to wear shoes for two years. Her own story appears in Chapter 2.
It was thrilling to see her in July, after about four months on the Pritikin diet and a gradually increased walking program, wearing shoes and gleefully dancing a little jig. It should be noted that the Pritikin diet encourages the too liberal intake of grain products which in many cases actually exacerbates arthritis. Jean Halewyn's recovery was due to her towered intake of fat and protein.
Thus the cure for arthritis lies, as with other metabolic diseases, in--
Prostate malfunction
The prostate is an organ, partly glandular, partly muscular, involved in male sexual and urinary functions.
Along with the degeneration of the rest of the body which starts becoming apparent in middle-aged men in our society, the prostate too declines in function and eventually becomes diseased. It has been estimated that at least 70% of men over 50 suffer from prostate trouble to some degree, and almost all men over 70. In many cases, cancer eventuates.
Early evidence of prostate trouble is increased frequency of urinating, sometimes with discomfort, difficulty in urinating, and lessening of sexual drive, these sometimes accompanied by aches and pains around the groin and lower back. Feelings of depression which sometimes also accompany these symptoms are, of course, another indication of body degeneration.
Whereas (as with other degenerative conditions) vitamin therapy alone has been shown to achieve alleviation of prostate problems, Dr Herbert Shelton, the famous nutritionist, has been for many years successfully treating patients by natural hygiene methods, which are based on a diet of raw fruit and vegetables, except that he recommends fasting in some cases. The elimination of stress, overwork, alcohol, coffee, tea etc. is important.
Enlarged prostates, he reported, are normalized in size and function in as short a time as seven days.
For best results it seems advisable to eliminate or at least reduce the amount of cereals in the diet. As I mentioned earlier, I know of one case in which two years on the Pritikin regression diet failed to correct the man's prostate trouble but when he stopped eating cereals the problem was eliminated in about two weeks.
Uterine fibroid tumors
As middle-aged men dutifully follow the "civilized" pattern of prostate disease, so too do middle-aged women with their menopauses and other associated complaints. As simply avoidable as men's problems, benign fibroid tumors instead generate an enormous demand for hysterectomies, these days considered almost a natural event for middle-aged women.
Kidney disease (Nephritis or Bright's Disease)
The main cause of chronic renal (kidney) failure is vascular disease, the same disease that eventuates in heart attacks, strokes etc. A renal infarction is similar to a myocardial infarction (heart attack) and the causes are the same.
Kidney disease is very prevalent in countries where excess protein and fat is commonly consumed. Another reason for the prevalence of kidney disease is the enormous consumption of headache powders and other analgesic drugs. Cooked meat is the worst food substance, and its implication with kidney disease has been known for hundreds of years. Constipation, which is the norm with the Western diet, causes further overload to the kidneys because toxins absorbed from the colon must also be excreted via the kidneys.
In his study of blood viscosity, Dr Dintenfas points out "that elevation of red cell rigidity, increased concentration of red cells and proteins, is known to lead to kidney failure".
Kidney failure is also caused by overloading them with other toxins from food. Dr J. R. Johnson, nephrologist at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, Sydney and Dr G. Holmes, a surgeon at Lautoka Hospital, Fiji, reported their study on Fijian Indians in the Australian Medical Journal. They postulate that "Curry Kidney" is akin to "Worcestershire Sauce Kidney", as described by researchers in England and Australia and which promotes susceptibility to kidney stones. Pepper, mustard, drugs, even black tea and radishes are harmful. The preventive measures are of course to adopt proper dietary habits.
Dr Mackenzie Walser, a Johns Hopkins Clinic Physician, has evolved therapy for kidney disease patients which almost eliminates toxic wastes. Practically all protein foods are eliminated and replaced by vegetables and fruit. Protein is supplemented by synthetic derivatives and amino acids called keto acids. Renal dialysis (kidney machine) he thinks can be avoided if kidney function is only 2% or better.
Kidney stones
Kidney stones are usually composed of oxalic acid and calcium. Some are called urate stones and are caused by excessive uric acid formation.
They are all a result of faulty diet, and as with gallstones, will gradually dissolve and be eliminated when the diet is corrected.
Gallstones
The body makes cholesterol sufficient for its needs, and a special supply of it is contained in the liver for the purpose of making bile acids. Excess cholesterol taken in the diet and not eliminated from the body is stored all through the body among the tissues. Fat causes a greater amount to lodge in the liver--polyunsaturated fat twice as much as does butterfat.
Cholesterol only dissolves in the presence of lecithin and certain salts, but in high concentrations it forms into crystals, and it is a concentration of 95% cholesterol crystals and 5% other impurities that form gallstones.
If the gall bladder is removed, the formation will still occur and the stones form in the tube between the liver and the intestine. When cancer of the gall bladder occurs it is usually in the presence of gallstones. The incidence in USA of gallstones is one in every seven adults, one in every five people autopsied, and one in every three people over 60.
The Pima Indians of Arizona who now eat a diet of 50-55% fat content have the highest rates in the USA of diabetes, arthritis and gallstones: one in seven in the 15-24 year age group and three out of four in the 25-34 year age group.
On a "regression" diet containing no cholesterol, the stones are gradually reabsorbed.
Dr R. A. Sturdevant, New England Journal of Medicine, 288:24, 1973, reported a significant increase in gallstones in men on a diet rich in safflower oil. Dr T. Osuga, Gastroenterology, 63:122, 1972, showed that corn oil alone without cholesterol produced gallstones in monkeys.
Hearing loss
It is the same story, as deterioration advances in the vessels feeding the hearing sensors, so does hearing deteriorate. The greatest sensitivity is required for the high frequencies, and in this range hearing first reduces. The average Western standard comparing age with high frequency capability is:
10 years--18,000 cycles per second
20 years--16,000 cycles per second
35 years--12,000 cycles per second
50 years--11,000 cycles per second
60 years--8,500 cycles per second
Just as heart disease relates directly to blood cholesterol, so does hearing loss.
African natives on low-fat/cholesterol diets were compared with people in Wisconsin, USA. Wisconsin is the dairy center of USA. Natives of 79 years had the hearing of Wisconsin 30-year-olds. Natives aged 59 were the equal of Wisconsin boys of 10.
Autopsies have confirmed that poor hearing is synonymous with closed arteries. Smokers suffered a greater loss than nonsmokers. Partially deaf people experience marked improvement in hearing, some completely, when subjected to oxygen under pressure.
Honolulu is the "Jogging Center of the World" and medical people are becoming more interested there now in prevention of heart disease. They arranged what they called "Heartbeat Day" and a thousand people attended the center for a check-up. With so many people the nurses were asked to help with the tests and they found that the nurses, using stethoscopes, detected three times as many high frequency "murmurs" as did the doctors. When they switched about in order to check the nurses' techniques they found the same disparity.
It was realized that the nurses, who were aged in their twenties, could hear better than the doctors, who were in their forties.
Hernia, hiatus hernia
Hernia and hiatus hernia are actual physical damage caused by excess pressure and strain by abdominal muscles when sitting on the toilet. On a proper diet such pressure and strain is not required and hernia does not occur. Bowel evacuation is much easier in the squatting position as used in the Asian countries.
Eye disorders
Good eyesight, like all other functions, relies on the supply of healthy oxygen-rich blood.
As people on Western diets get older their eyesight deteriorates because of poorer circulation caused by atherosclerosis and fatty blood. The visual field of a 20-year-old which may be reduced to 95%, is at 70 usually reduced to 75%.
The visual field of a healthy young man can be reduced on restricted oxygen in 10 minutes. Smokers, their oxygen constantly depleted by carbon monoxide, after two weeks of stopping smoking, can increase their limited visual field by 36%.
A middle-aged woman after two weeks at the Longevity Center thought the dining room had been changed to a different, large room one day when her peripheral vision returned.
Over a period of a year or two on the "regression diet", eyesight, hearing etc. further improves as the blood vessels clear out. After 20 years, Nathan Pritikin, at 69 had the eyesight and hearing of a boy.
Glaucoma: Glaucoma is caused by increased pressure of the fluid in the eyeball. The pressure is supplied by clear fluid from the bloodstream carrying oxygen as well, and by correct regulation of the pressure, the eyeball maintains correct shape. The pressure is regulated by the amount of outflow from tiny exit apertures.
On a high fat diet these apertures tend to block and so the pressure in the eye increases. Now the blood pressure in the tiny vessels supplying the eye is one-third that of the person's diastolic pressure, so when the pressure in the eye causes the eye to swell and apply a "pinching" force on a vessel, the blood supply from that vessel shuts off. This results in partial blindness, and can progress to total blindness.
The higher the diastolic pressure, the harder the eyeball must press to pinch the vessel before blood supply is reduced. The pressure in the eye can be measured with delicate equipment which does not even touch the eyeball. The reading is made in millimeters of mercury, the same scale as blood pressure. Depending on the blood pressure, glaucoma occurs above about 24 mm of pressure in the eyeball.
Glaucoma may not be constant and sometimes will be induced by an increase of fatty acids in the blood.
Surgical methods to relieve glaucoma are to slit the exit aperture to drain off fluid; sometimes a tiny hole is made in the eyeball. Surgery is totally unnecessary of course, because proper diet and exercise will correct the cause, and the condition will no longer exist.
Cataracts: Cataracts are a condition where the lens of the eye gradually loses transparency, and are due to deposits of cholesterol crystals. When glaucoma is present and drugs or surgery are used, the incidence of cataracts becomes much higher.
Arcus Senilus: Arcus senilus is where a pale whitish ring appears around the outer section of the iris and again is caused by cholesterol and fat in the cornea. As the name implies, it denotes senility, as once it appeared mainly in old people, but nowadays it appears commonly in young people too, particularly heavy meat eaters.
Detachment of the retina: This too is caused by poor oxygen supply due to lipotoxemia, and to a large extent is repairable by proper diet.
None of these eyesight malfunctions occur when a person uses a lowfat, low cholesterol diet. In his book The Healing Factor, Irwin Stone recounts many medical research papers too numerous to repeat here which described the association of low Vitamin C levels with all of the eye problems mentioned. Also described were cases of dramatic reversals of these conditions by large doses of Vitamin C taken orally or intravenously. However I mention this not to encourage the adoption of the synthetic vitamin habit but more to encourage the adoption of proper dietary habits.
In the USA in 1979 about 112 million people--51% of the entire population --wore glasses or contact lenses, according to the US Federal Trade Commission. Corrective lenses are used by 88% of the population over the age of 45 and by 93% over 65.
Mr Frank Smith of Punchbowl, Sydney, once showed me his collection of antique bottles. Some of them still had labels on them and he could read without glasses, in artificial light, the small print on them. This surprised me, because Frank was 73 at the time. I checked him out on some other fine print and he could easily read it. He did not have glasses. He did very little physical exercise lately, he told me, but his diet was almost vegetarian and he ate a great deal of cole-slaw. After three years on an improved diet, my wife could read again without glasses.
Asthma, bronchitis, pneumonia,
pleurisy, emphysema
These are conditions which occur in breathing tubes and lungs of physically run-down people with high blood fats, particularly smokers.
They are quickly rectified by improved nutrition and exercise.
Emphysema, the condition where a lung is over-inflated and ventilates (expands) only partially, will respond to both aerobic exercise and improved nutrition, and the Pritikin Center counts on restoring function in three to four weeks. On a more severe diet based on raw fruit and vegetables results are even better.
Asthma
Asthma is the restriction of breathing caused by the swelling of the bronchial tubes through which air is inhaled into the lungs and carbon dioxide exhaled. The swelling is due to a toxic bloodstream and is exacerbated by emotional stress in the same way as other disease conditions are exacerbated when excessive fat enters the bloodstream. Irritation by airborne particles such as pollen may also worsen the situation, but like stress, is not the primary cause of the disease.
Asthma quickly clears soon after a very low fat diet is adopted to clear the blood of lipotoxemia, which benefit is often achievable by regular exercise alone, but most effective of course is it to rectify all factors together.
Osteoporosis
Osteoporosis is a condition of degeneration, usually associated with elderly people, in which the bones become light and porous and weak. In some cases the bones in the leg may be so weak that one will break, causing the person to fall. Frequently it is thought that the fall caused the break, but it is the other way around.
It is commonly thought that the condition is caused primarily by a deficiency of dietary calcium, but this is not so. There are two main causes:
The process, gradual over the years, is accelerated by smoking.
Acne, pimples, lupus, dandruff
and other skin disorders
Acne, pimples and other skin disorders are usually associated with diets similar to those causing hypoglycemia, but can also be caused by other dietary deficiencies which are simple to rectify.
Whereas lipotoxemia is the main factor, the effect of stress causes further deterioration of the blood circulation and can precipitate skin rashes in addition to other body malfunctions.
Lupus, still considered incurable (like all the others), quickly responds (like all the others) to correct dietary procedures.
Gastric ulcers
Gastric ulcers are caused by excess acidity in the stomach stimulated by digestive difficulties associated with high levels of fat and cooked protein. They are exacerbated by stress, poor circulation and lack of exercise.
An operation involving cutting a branch of the vagus nerve is often used to moderate the flow of acid to the stomach and allow the ulcer to heal.
There is a drug, Ametidine, which stops the acid flow; it must be taken five times a day for life. Other drugs merely neutralize the acid. Ulcer sufferers are frequently put on a diet of milk and soft foods containing a lot of milk so as not to aggravate the ulcer. Eventually these people acquire a high degree of cardiovascular disease.
On the other hand, just by improving body metabolism with diet and regulated exercise frequently will regulate the cause of the ulcer and it will heal.
Tests on guinea pigs (See Vitamin C, Chapter 15), demonstrate that ulcers developed in 26% of the animals when their diet was deficient in Vitamin C, but of 80 animals fed the same diet supplemented with ascorbic acid (Vitamin C only one developed ulcers.
A properly constructed diet avoids the necessity of taking supplementary vitamins but as discussed in Chapter 15, Vitamin C may not always be easy to get in the food available.
Varicose veins, hemorrhoids and thrombosis
These are veins in which the flow of blood has stagnated, the veins swell and are blue in color, due to the blue-colored stagnated blood.
As mentioned earlier, blood flow returning to the heart is assisted by muscular movement, the calves of the legs can provide one-third of the pumping effort required when walking. Thus, standing motionless and being generally sedentary will allow varicose veins to occur. People on low fiber diets are susceptible to varicose veins. Pressure in the large intestine caused by slow moving hard waste matter, exerted in the pelvic region of the body, can impede the return blood flow from the legs and help to cause varicose veins.
The word phlebo means vein, and when stagnant blood forms a clot (thrombo), you have the condition of phlebothrombosis.
If the veins then become inflamed the condition is called thrombophlebitis or phlebitis. Should the clot break free and move along the bloodstream it is then called an embolism which in Greek means "plug" and indeed if it reaches the lungs it may plug the pulmonary artery and cause sudden death--sometimes mistaken as a heart attack. This condition is called pulmonary embolism. Excess pressure from the large intestine retards the returning blood from the veins in the rectum causing them to stretch and swell, becoming hemorrhoids or "piles".
Regardless of dietary habits, none of these conditions occur in people who follow a proper exercise program, preferably walking, jogging or running. Adopting such a program and correcting the diet will gradually cure such conditions.
Analgesic addiction
Dr Geoffrey Duggin, a renal physician at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, Sydney, writing in New Doctor, April 1977, called his article "The Australian Disease--Analgesic Abuse". He said that at 40 gm of phenacetin per capita per annum in 1967, it meant that for every man, woman and child in Australia, approximately 200 headache powders each were consumed. Even though phenacetin has been replaced by paracetamol and salicylamide, the consumption of analgesics continues unabated.
Australia's nearest rivals, the Swiss, run a very poor second with only 22 gm each per annum. The Swedes previously were close contenders of the Swiss, but have declined in consumption since the government banned the sale of phenacetin-containing analgesics, and restricted sales of analgesics. The USA consumption per capita was only 7 gm.
Diseases resulting from analgesic abuse are kidney (renal) disease or nephritis, peptic ulcers, gastrointestinal bleeding, anemia and iron deficiency, and cancer of the kidneys and urinary tract. Increased perinatal mortality and low birth weight of babies occur when women consume analgesics during pregnancy.
Dr Duggin said that approximately 300 patients per year in Australia enter chronic hemodialysis and renal transplant programs as a result of analgesic nephropathy.
Because of the high intake of pain-killing drugs, Australian women have the world's highest incidence of kidney cancer. Clinicians at Westmead Hospital, NSW, and the NSW Cancer Registry revealed this fact in 1981. Among women who took these drugs regularly, the incidence of kidney cancer was ten times the average incidence.
Analgesics do not cure anything, they merely suppress symptoms. Aspirin will bring relief but affects and inhibits the action of the white protective blood cells and allows infection to persist. Taking aspirin will cause a cold to hang on. The Australian Kidney Foundation says the most common cause of kidney failure in Australia is abuse of pain-killing tablets and powders. Aspirin is the leading cause of poison deaths in little children.
The majority of aspirin takers are women.
Caffeine addiction
Caffeine is an addictive drug which causes stimulation of the nervous system. Such artificial stimulation is harmful and upsets the natural levels of blood fats, blood glucose and acid secretion in the body. Increased blood fats adversely affect the circulation, and it has been observed that erratic heartbeats and fibrillation can follow ingestion of caffeine. These effects are particularly dangerous to people with cardiovascular problems.
Dr Charles Kovan of Hollywood, California, quoted in the Medical Journal of Australia, said that caffeine addiction was one of the most subtle abuses in the world. Caffeine is contained, not only in coffee, but in tea, cocoa, cola drinks and chocolate. One cup of coffee contains 100-150 mg of caffeine which has an effect on the nervous system equal to 2 mg of amphetamine. Decaffeinated coffee contains up to 6 mg of caffeine, tea up to 100 mg, cocoa up to 50 mg and cola drinks between 15 and 40 mg.
Dr Kovan said many people's dependence on tranquilizers and sleeping pills was due to caffeine. He associated caffeine with symptoms of anxiety, headache, tremors, gastritis, irritability, agitation, dyspnea, tachycardia, insomnia and cardiac failure. In the USA the Food and Drug Administration is investigating if the high intake of cola drinks is causing development disorders among children. The sugar content alone is dangerous enough.
Caffeine has been shown to cause lump formation in women's breasts and is considered to be a contributory cause of cancer.
Smoking
There is so much publicity on the damaging effects of smoking that further discussion here would be superfluous. The official statement, "smoking may be dangerous to your health" and "smoking is a health hazard" would infer that if you are lucky, smoking won't hurt you. Don't kid yourself.
All records show that smokers 35-54 years old have four to five times the mortality rate of nonsmokers. This is because smoking drastically compounds other adverse factors generally present. Cancer of the bladder is prevalent in smokers as well as cancer of the lung.
Looking at many men it is obvious it is not much good appealing to their vanity, they have not got a great deal. Anyway, women generally have. The Los Angeles Times, December 29, 1977 reported that "Two major studies in the Boston Collaborative Drug Surveillance Program, covering 5,500 women in the US and six other countries found a direct link between smoking and early menopause".
This means that apart from cancer and heart disease which you cannot see, smokers plainly get older quicker, they wrinkle and look older.
Do not be misled by claims about low tar or low nicotine, filters etc. Tar and nicotine are bad news but it is now recognized that the most lethal factor in smoking is the carbon monoxide, and with filter cigarettes, smokers inhale more carbon monoxide.
Alcoholism
In an article in the Weekend Australian, February 25, 1978, The Australian Foundation of Alcoholism and Drug Dependence produced records which associate alcohol with:
One in every two road deaths.
One in every five hospital admissions.
One in five child bashings.
Two in five divorces and separations.
Three in four criminal assaults.
In comparing alcoholism with heart disease and cancer it should be taken into account that the incidence of heart disease and cancer is directly increased by alcohol and it is clear that alcohol contributes to the overall death rate more than is generally suspected. The president of the NSW branch of the AMA, Dr C. Reed, said there was ample medical proof that alcohol presented the greatest drug problem in Australia (The Australian, January 16, 1979).
Nutritional deficiencies in a person's diet have been shown to predispose them towards alcoholism.
Alcohol causes more mental and physical damage to women than it does to men, according to observations by British doctors. Dr Marsha Morgan of London's Royal Free Hospital said that allowing for the amount of alcohol compared to body weight, women suffer much greater liver and brain damage.
A tragedy arising from alcoholism, known as "fetal alcohol syndrome" (FAS) was described by Dr Edith Collins of the Children's Medical Research Foundation. Pregnant women who drank as little as three or four drinks a day gave birth to babies averaging 150 gm less than babies of nondrinkers. Babies can be affected not only by regular drinking but by "binge" drinking, particularly in the first three months of pregnancy and in later stages when the brain was developing. Growth retardation continued after birth.
Babies affected by FAS display abnormal facial features such as narrow forehead, narrow eye openings, short upturned nose and low bridge, wide mouth, receding chin. Other abnormalities were faulty spine, extra toes, heart valve defects, and varying degrees of mental retardation.
Dr Jim Rankin of the NSW Health Commission said in 1978 that Australians spend a constant 6.4% of their income on alcohol. "Consumption has gone up 50% in the last 10 years because people have more money and alcohol is relatively cheaper than what it was. The safe level of drinking may be a lot lower than people think."
Menstrual problems
Up to ninety per cent of women suffer needlessly from pre-menstrual tension during their child-bearing years, according to Dr Niels Laverson, Associate Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Cornell University. "But simply by giving up or severely restricting the amount of salt in their diet, many of them can cut out the aggravating feeling of moodiness, depression and bloatedness."
Dr Laverson, co-author of It's Your Body--A Women's Guide to Gynecology, explained:
"The week before a woman has her period, there is a build-up in her body of two hormones--progesterone and estrogen. Estrogen binds salt to the body and salt binds water. The result is a build-up of water which causes pre-menstrual tension, excess fluid in the brain causes headaches. Fluid in other parts of the body causes fatigue."
Dr Lot Page, Professor of Medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston, made a similar statement in complete agreement with Dr Laverson.
It has already been mentioned that estrogen levels become excessive on a high fat typical American diet.
Women who cat a vegetarian diet containing mostly raw food experience only brief periods, scarcely noticeable, with hardly any loss of blood. Dr H. G. Beiler* in his book, The Natural Way to Sexual Health, explains that women experience troublesome periods only because of the toxic condition of their blood brought about by the high fat and protein Western diet.
*Also the author of Food is Your Best Medicine (Vintage Books, NY).
An excellent article in the National Health Federation Bulletin (Australia), June 1980, by Diane Watkin on this subject, confirmed Dr Bieler's contention with descriptive information from 12 different doctors and from a number of women relating their own experience.
Mental disorders
If all organs of the body can be hampered and indeed injured by faulty chemistry caused by faulty nutrition it is a wonder mental diseases are not more severe.
Particularly when you consider that the brain, with its fantastically delicate complexity, having the capability of a room full of computers miniaturized in a small bundle within your head, depends upon a pure rich blood supply to function.
Nathan Pritikin described how children whose diets were changed from the typical Western high-fat diet to a diet low in fat, could perform simple mental tasks 20% faster and with greater accuracy once their blood cleared of fat. If children are so handicapped--and it has been shown that so too are senile old people--what then about everybody in between? Does our entire population struggle along at about 75% of their mental capacity? Is this why our television programs are so infantile? It would be interesting to observe the progress of the Western nations if suddenly their addiction to the Western diet was broken.
In earlier chapters it has been described how subtle incapacitation of mental processes can be caused by oxygen deprivation, how people become more composed after becoming vegetarian, and how hyperactivity can be induced in some people by artificial coloring and flavoring in food.
Alcohol can produce mental elation, aberration, criminal tendencies, depression and violence. Refined sugar can cause hypoglycemia and similar effects to those of alcohol. Smoking causes nicotine to affect the central nervous system and carbon monoxide to affect brain efficiency. Smoking "pot" has weird or wonderful effects on the mind.
The effects of caffeine and analgesics have been described and how they create further dependency on tranquilizers and sleeping pills. Other drugs are legion and cause frightening processes in the brain. Eating certain mushrooms and herbs can cause hallucinations.
Consider now, besides all that, that several thousand chemicals are used in various combinations, to preserve, color and flavor food which is already of doubtful value. Add now large quantities of sugar and fat. Is it surprising that these problems of aggression, mental aberrations, hyperactivity, dullness, sluggish reactions, hallucinations, depression, migraine, insomnia, violence and premature senility occur?
In previous chapters, it was described how mental aberrations and senility are associated with cardiovascular disease. Once again I would like to quote Dr Dintenfas:
"A hypothesis by Walsh (1968) is that presenile dementia is a result of arterial insufficiency of the brain consequent to thrombotic processes in the arteries supplying the brain. This hypothesis is reinforced by the findings of Alvarez (1966) that senile and presenile dementia is often preceded by 'little' strokes. Walsh (1969) showed that presenile and senile dementia can be prevented by anticoagulant therapy, thus substantiating the fact that mental disorders might be a direct result of occlusive circulatory disorders."
At least one case from the Pritikin Longevity Center demonstrates this to be true. Quoting from their newsletter No 3 (April 1976): Senility--an 83-year-old male with increasing senility in the last year so that he was unable to communicate, walk by himself, and maintain toilet control. By the end of the session (4 weeks) he had completely regained his mental faculties and could carry on a spirited conversation. His ability to walk by himself returned and he experienced a substantial return of other lost functions.
Even depressive or schizoid anxiety can be related to an elevation of blood viscosity factors. A comparison with normal values (Dintenfas and Zador, 1974-5) showed a significant elevation of blood viscosity factors in 52 patients studied. And further Dr Dintenfas says:
"Tests have shown similar association of psychosomatic pain. This can happen in any part of the body. Pain syndrome without physical findings, but exhibiting abnormal blood viscosity and protein patterns, was observed in neurotics and psychotics as well. It is therefore likely that the pain is real."
As increasing blood viscosity leads to reduced oxygenation of the tissues it becomes obvious that the pain is real and results from tissue distress because of oxygen deprivation.
Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (cot deaths)
In the month of June, 1978, publicity was given in the press to the work of Dr Archie Kalokerinos of Sydney, and his demonstration of the use of Vitamin C in preventing SIDS (Sudden Infant Death syndrome).
Dr Kalokerinos has been trying to convince the medical establishment for over forty years. His book, Every Second Child, describes how he demonstrated that lack of Vitamin C was responsible for the dreadful mortality rate among infants in the country town of Collarenebri, NSW, back in 1957. The townspeople's diet was generally deficient in Vitamin C, particularly the Aborigines whose infants suffered the most. For the next 10 years that he was there, there were no further deaths of infants from this syndrome. A further description of his work is given in The Scientific Australian, June 1978.
In addition, Dr Kalokerinos described in his book how Vitamin B deficiency in pregnant women and babies may be responsible for SIDS. Later research by Professor David Read of Sydney University substantiated this belief. The Vitamin B1 deficiency was caused by the intake of sugar and other refined carbohydrate.
Particular note should be made of another report from Chicago. In a large-scale enquiry by the Infant Welfare Center of Chicago, 20,061 infants attending the center were closely followed up for the first nine months of their lives. Of these infants 48.5% were wholly breast-fed, 43% partially breast-fed and 8.5% wholly artificially. The artificial feeding was done to a definite plan, and all infants -artificially fed or otherwise--were attended by official s of the center. The mortality rates of these infants were:
No. of infants Total Deaths Death Rate Wholly breast-fed 9,749 15 0.15% Partially breast-fed 8,605 59 0.7% Artificially fed 1,707 144 8.4%
"It will be seen that the death rate among the artificially fed infants is 56 times greater than among the breast-fed. Whereas only four of the 9,749 breast-fed infants died of respiratory infections, 82 of the 1,707 artificially-fed infants died from this cause."
That enquiry took five years, from 1924 to 1929. 1 wonder if it ever made the headlines. I wonder what the survivors are like today? I was born in 1924 and spent the next forty years in blissful ignorance of nutrition.
The disadvantages of feeding cows' milk to children have already been discussed, and I repeat--whereas mothers' breast milk contains adequate Vitamin C, cows' milk is essentially devoid of it. In addition, cows' milk presents a problem of excess protein and sodium, and it lacks entirely the substances contained in mother's milk which provide immunity to infections. Babies secrete few enzymes; they rely heavily on the natural enzymes (35+) in their mothers' milk, not only for digestion but for other life-sustaining functions as well. Bottle milk, formula or canned food contain no enzymes at all.
The dangers of excessive protein consumption have been discussed at length. Hara Marano, editor of the magazine, Medical World News (USA) writes:
"But the greatest protein hazard is probably among infants. Cows' milk--the basis of most formulas--contains twice the protein of human milk. Given the tendency to over-feed bottle-fed infants and the early feeding of solid foods, the protein intake of many infants in the USA is so high as to leave them at the threshold of hypernatremic dehydration--a condition caused by water lost in flushing out a large waste load.
"Hypernatremic dehydration is four times more deadly than the water loss that accompanies diarrhea in infants, and can lead to brain damage, shutdown of the kidneys, and death within hours."
Alzheimer's disease
Senile dementia can be caused by arterio-sclerotic degeneration of the brain and also by atrophy of the brain when there is no evidence of atherosclerosis. The latter condition is called Alzheimer's disease and no doubt in many cases the causes of both exist together producing the same symptoms anyway, the results being additive.
Researchers have for years suspected that aluminum taken into the body in food cooked in aluminum utensils or contained in aluminum foil or cans is a causative factor in Alzheimer's disease. A test at the University of Toronto showed that even visible aluminum particles emitted from air conditioning units were sufficient to kill human cells in laboratory cultures.
Recently, Dr Daniel Perl of the University of Vermont reported finding high levels of aluminum and low levels of calcium and magnesium in the soil and water supply in areas of Guam and New Guinea and that similar imbalance of these minerals were found in the brains of natives of these areas who had died from degenerative disease of the nervous system. Populations of natives drinking water high in aluminum suffered a correspondingly high incidence of dementia. In 1980 a Yale University study showed that elderly people with high aluminum levels had a higher incidence of nervous disease, including failing memory and impaired visual-motor co-ordination.
Animal tests have shown that similar effects occur to animals when aluminum is injected into them.
There is no doubt that aluminum is a toxic metal just as are copper, mercury, cadmium and lead. It should be noted that aluminum is used also as an ingredient in various cake mixes, salad dressings, pickles, baking powders, processed cheese, antacid medicines and aspirins. Many lipsticks, skin creams and lotions also contain aluminum. In some areas drinking water supplies are purified with chemicals containing aluminum.
Dr Arthur Furman at the Health Conference at the Sheraton Hotel Washington in 1984 described how, at the University of Maryland, he once used to demonstrate the toxicity of aluminum. At the beginning of his lectures he placed two goldfish each in a separate bowl, one containing water which had previously been boiled in an aluminum saucepan. By the finish of the one hour lecture, he said the second goldfish would be dead.
The accumulation of aluminum in the brain is a very slow process of course just as is the atherosclerotic process so often accompanying it. Both processes can be arrested simply by cutting out the causes.
Dr Richard Casdorph, MD, PhD, of Long Beach, California and Dr Donald McLachlan of the University of Toronto have both used chelation therapy (see Chapter 12) with Alzheimer's disease patients and have reported positive results.
The writer has good reason to accept the foregoing information. Having lost my father (aged 74) with a stroke, and having later discovered the benefits of the Pritikin diet, I felt confident I could preserve my mother who was alert and receptive, on the Pritikin program. Having met Mrs Eula Weaver (picture Chapter 2), 1 felt certain my mother, starting younger and in better shape, could easily make 100. I was wrong.
Her diet was very low in fat, cholesterol and salt, but she did not relish raw food, and so her diet contained a fair amount of wholewheat bread, cooked rice and vegetables, with little fruit. She walked several miles vigorously each day. Notwithstanding, from about age 80 she went into steady mental decline and finally exhibited the classic symptoms of Alzheimer's disease and died at 85.
Why did she decline when Mrs Weaver did so well?
A number of things possibly explain my mother's decline. She was fond of sweets (but did not eat a lot of them), she cooked most of her food, her diet contained a high proportion of cooked cereal and was low in Vitamin C, she drank a few cups of very weak tea each day (unsweetened) and--significantly -her cooking utensils were aluminum.
Subtle fluoride poisoning
Fluoride, which is added to our water supplies to "prevent tooth decay" is recognized, worldwide, as one of the worst industrial pollutants, as an effective rat poison and a destroyer of moulds and fungi. Poisons work because they inhibit the actions of enzymes, without which no life exists, and even in minute trace quantities fluoride is harmful, as like lead and mercury, it accumulates in the body.
Even at the level of one part in a million which is the level put in the water supplies, the activity of enzymes is greatly inhibited. Information has been published by the US National Academy of Sciences and the World Health Organization showing that at this level (1 ppm) certain enzymes were inhibited by 50-100%
The effects of fluoride poisoning, described by Dr John Yiamouyiannis in his book Fluoride, The Aging Factor range from impairment of the immune system, calcified ligaments, tendons, and muscles, arthritis, irregular bone growth, osteoporosis, weakened skin collagen, scleroderma, wrinkling, and premature senility. The United States Pharmacopeia (guide to drug information) lists some of the side-effects possible on an intake of only. one to two pints of fluoridated water per day: pain and aching bones, weakness, brown teeth, stiffness, loss of appetite. These symptoms are universal in the village of Kizilcaoren, Turkey, where the soil contains so much fluoride the level in the drinking water is about five parts per million. In Kizilcaoren the people are generally prematurely aged at 30 and most do not live past 50.
Examining the cancer death rates in California, Dr Donald Austin of the California Tumor Registry found the cancer death rate in fluoridated water areas was 40% higher than in unfluoridated areas. In Canada, Dr Victor Cecitioni, comparing various Canadian cities found a similar differential of 15-20%. A general comparison of cancer death rates for 1970 of all cities in USA with populations greater than 250,000, showed a 4% higher rate for fluoridated cities.
In Europe, fluoridation is banned in Sweden, Denmark and Holland, it has been abandoned in Belgium and West Germany and it has never been used at all in France, Italy and Norway.
The US Center for Disease Control and the British Ministry of Health both admit that no laboratory study has ever shown that fluoridated water is effective in reducing tooth decay. They also admit that there are no epidemiological studies on humans showing fluoridation reduces tooth decay that meet the requirements of scientific objectivity.
A study made in Holland reported in Science News, September 9, 1979 showed there was no reduction in dental caries by the use of fluoride tablets or toothpaste.
What has been overlooked by fluoride supporters when they point to the significant reduction in tooth decay over the past twenty years is that the same reduction has occurred in unfluoridated areas as well.
Back in September 1943, the Journal of the American Medical Association (Sept 18) pointed out: "Distribution of the element fluorine is so widespread throughout nature that a small intake of the element is practically unavoidable. Fluorides are general protoplasmic poisons, probably because of their capacity to modify the metabolism of cells by changing the permeability of the cell membrane and by inhibiting certain enzyme systems. The exact mechanism of such actions is obscure. The sources of fluorine intoxication are drinking water containing one part per million or more of fluorine, fluorine compounds used as insecticidal sprays on fruits and vegetables and the mining and conversion of phosphate rock to superphosphate, which is used as a fertilizer". The JAMA went on to describe how further intoxication was caused by fluoride emitted into the atmosphere as a result of this fertilizer manufacture as well as with the smelting of steel and aluminum, and the production of glass, enamel and bricks.
In October 1944, the following statement was made by the American Dental Association: 'We do know that the use of drinking water containing as little as 1.2 to 3.0 parts per million of fluorine will cause such developmental disturbances in bones as osteosclerosis, spondylosis and osteopetrosis, as well as goiter, and we cannot afford to run the risk of reproducing such systemic disturbances in applying what is at present a doubtful procedure intended to prevent development of dental disfigurements among children . . .
"In the light of our present knowledge or lack of knowledge of the chemistry of the subject, the potentialities for harm far outweigh those for good."
Fluoridation was carried out in many areas despite these warnings and despite the fact that no proper tests or studies have been done. There has been bitter controversy over the issue ever since. Dr Yiamouyiannis has led the fight against fluoridation and was strongly supported by Dr Dean Burk, formerly Chief of Cytochemistry, National Cancer Institute USA.
In the USA in recent years, three major courts have ruled that fluoridation is dangerous to health: Judge Flaherty, Pittsburg, November 1978; Judge Niemann, Illinois, February 1982, and Judge Farris, Houston, May 1982.
According to Dr Brian Dementi, Chief Toxicologist of the Virginia Department of Health: "It appears that Drs Yiamouyiannis and Burk have correctly approached the problem and that their findings stand successfully unrefuted".
Mercury poisoning from teeth fillings
Gradual poisoning from the mercury contained in teeth fillings has long been suspected as a cause of various chronic disease conditions.
Dr H. Schwarzkopf of Germany has reported many cases of over the past thirty years where chronically sick patients have been restored to health after having their amalgam fillings removed and replaced with gold or more recently developed inert substances. Diseases which have been eliminated by this procedure, Dr Schwarzkopf reports, are cancer, erratic heartbeats, pancreas weakness, erratic menstruation, headaches, Thyrotoxicosis, endocarditis, hyperthyroidism, neuralgia, muscular pains and rheumatism.
According to Dr Richard Kunin in his book Meganutrition, there have been numerous reported cases of central nervous system problems in dentists and dental assistants as a result of handling amalgam. Dentists have over a long period of time developed gait problems, irritability, nervousness and occasional episodes of vertigo.
Some people have found that by having their amalgam fillings removed and replaced with gold or other inert substances they have improved immensely in health. Once instance is the case reported in 1983 of a woman, Mrs Gun Thoresson of Burea Sweden, who had been gradually going blind together with dizziness and myositis (inflamed muscles). After the removal of the silver fillings she at first experienced fits of anguish and burning sensations in her eyes, and in six months she had recovered 90% vision again.
Researchers have found that weak electric currents may be generated by the galvanic action between different metals such as copper, tin, zinc and mercury of which the amalgam filling is made. Sometimes a gold crown may be put on top of an amalgam filling. These electric currents, it has been claimed, are capable of disturbing the neurochemistry of the body and causing chronic distressing symptoms.
Homosexuality
Significant findings at the Brigham Young University in the USA indicate that stress during pregnancy can result in homosexual offspring. Dr D. E. Fleming and Dr R. W. Rhees, in experiments, subjected pregnant rats to psychological, nutritional, and hormonal stress and then measured the behavioral characteristics of their male offspring. The results were compared to "normal" offspring of unstressed rats.
"We found demasculinization and feminization tendencies," reported Dr Fleming. "Demasculinization, in that the test rats were not as active sexually in the male role; feminization was found where the males exhibited female-type behavior when placed with other males who were sexually aggressive. We are exploring possibilities that may have relevance to humans," Dr Fleming explained.
The researchers observed that a definite correlation exists between the endocrinal systems of rats and humans.
The predisposition towards homosexuality of male rats of the stressed mothers occurs because when the mother is under stress her body produces hormones that suppress production of androgen, necessary for the development of maleness in a male, although the male physical make-up appears normal. This occurs in the critical third trimester of the development of the fetus.
The defect can be corrected by environmental influences--feminized male rats, when placed for long periods of time with females, will begin to exhibit normal male behavior.
Three groups of mother rats were each subjected to a different form of stress, and in each group 50% of the male offspring were affected.
Other scientists, at Temple University, reported that when stress was applied late in pregnancies, the female offspring, when grown, have significantly more trouble in becoming pregnant and giving birth to viable young.
In the discussion on the merits of raw food in Chapter 15, mention was made of the tendency to homosexuality among the offspring of cats fed a defective diet.
The hypothesis of these scientists is that maternal response to stress, involving complex hormonal variation, may interfere with the process of sexual differentiation in the developing fetus.
Migraine
As already described in preceding chapters, migraine is usually caused by poor circulation associated with high viscosity and the toxic effects of salt, fat, caffeine and so on. The Gerson diet was originally developed in 1920 because Dr Gerson himself had been a migraine sufferer and thereafter none of his patients failed to rid themselves of migraine, and as he later discovered, all their other problems too. Had Dr Gerson read his countryman, Louis Kuhne's, book The New Science of Healing, written some thirty years previously, he would have been saved a lot of experimentation and a lot of headaches.
In September 1984 the British medical journal, Lancet, described medical research conducted in a number of London hospitals which showed "conclusively" that allergies, particularly allergies to milk, wheat and eggs, were a direct cause (but not the only cause) of migraine.
AIDS
It is clear that AIDS is just another indication of the decline of modern civilization. AIDS sufferers, whether they be homosexuals or low socioeconomic groups, all display backgrounds of poor nutrition, abnormal or depressed mental states, and often other debilitating lifestyle habits as well such as the frequent, regular use of "recreational" drugs, alcohol, antibiotic and other medical drugs. It is not surprising that Kaposi's sarcoma, a type of skin cancer, is often associated with AIDS.
Cancer patients display in their tissues and cells a type of virus which some doctors in the past have suspected to be the actual cause of cancer, but it is known that the same virus is carried by all people and proliferates in chronic degeneration, even when cancer is not evident (see Chapter 20). It has been shown that the "AIDS virus" (HIV) is not really the cause of AIDS at all, but rather just an indication of chronic degeneration of the entire constitution, which accounts for the breakdown of the immune system. As with other degenerative diseases the solution to the AIDS problem obviously lies in improved diet and other lifestyle factors.
As with cancer and the rest, the general health of the patient must be improved along lines already described. This subject is discussed in detail in the book Health & Survival in the 21st Century. [by Ross Horne--soilandhealth]
Random items of interest
The British Law Commission's report of 1974 by Britain's top doctors and lawyers disclosed that 1,000 handicapped children are born weekly in Britain suffering the effects of drugs and medical treatment during the mother's pregnancy. Dr R. Bellingham said that in Australia, one in very 50 children born had major abnormalities.
A Michigan State University study covered a group of women, the case histories of whom were watched from 1948 to 1972. Of the surviving women the study team found that those who looked younger than their years ate fewer calories and substantially less fat of all types, but at the same time more vitamins than those women who appeared older.
The Pill: The Pill has been shown to increase the risk of blood clotting leading to thromboembolism (lung clots) and strokes (New England Journal of Medicine, May, 1973).
Due to side effects far more serious than previously thought, the Pill would be banned in Australia within two years, so the Royal Commission Into Human Relationships (1975) was told by Dr J. Billings, head of St Vincent's Hospital's Neurology Department. (It has not been.)
Effects included deformation of babies, cancer of the vagina, gallstones, vomiting, abdominal cramps, breakthrough bleeding, breast changes, changes in menstruation, cervical erosion, jaundice, allergy rashes, headaches, dizziness, drowsiness and appetite changes.
Supporting evidence comes from Russia, UK, the Kentucky University, USA, the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, USA.
Medical Drugs: Dr M. Silverman, a Professor of Pharmacology, University of California, said: "There are about 30,000 deaths each year in the USA from adverse reactions to drugs. Our figures also show approximately 4.5 million hospital admissions annually due to such adverse reactions, cost of which (in 1973) assess at $3,600,000,000," he said. "The problem stems not only from the patients, but from the pharmacists, doctors and the hospitals. These figures included 24,000 deaths and 3,600,000 hospital admissions due to wrongly-prescribed drugs."
Finger-lickin' what?
From the supplier of chicken feed: "Huntmill Broiler feeds contain the antibiotics, penicillin 3 ppm, bacetracin 4 ppm (as zinc bacitracin) and the growth promoter, 3 nitre 4 hydroxy phenyl arsenic acid 44 ppm. Also, coccidiostats are added to your order and the feed could therefore contain any of the following products, depending on your requirements:
Pancoxin Amprolium 100 ppm
Ethopabata 5 ppm
Sulphaquinoxaline 60 ppm
Elancoban (Monensin) 100 ppm
Zoamix (3-5 Dinetro-Toluamide) 125 ppm
Nicarertson 100 ppm
Then you fry the chicken!
New York psychiatrist, Dr H. L. Newbold, is convinced that as many as 75% of all troubled marriages could be helped by dietary change.
Dr Emanual Cheraskin of the University of Alabama, a famous authority on nutrition, stated flatly, "There is no question that there is a relationship between food and marriage success and failures--diet does play a role in marital strife".
Dr John Knox, Professor and Chairman of the Department of Dermatology, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas, says the public have been brainwashed into a phobia of cleanliness. He said dermatologists in private practice see more disease resulting from excessive cleanliness than from lack of cleanliness. The natural surface oil in the skin is removed, dehydration occurs and protection against bacteria lost.
Professor Curtis Shears, organizer of Big Brothers of America, a rehabilitation center specializing in improved nutrition, says right diet can help stop delinquent children from turning into hardened criminals. Since its beginning in 1949, the organization has been 93% successful. Professor Shears, a former flagship Captain in the US 8th Fleet in World War II was Attorney General of the USA after the war, at which time he suffered a massive heart attack. His doctor told him frankly to go home to die as nothing more could be done and the hospital needed his bed. It was then that he cured himself with strict diet and set off around the world to study nutrition. He visited Hunza and Georgia (USSR), before founding Big Brothers. He founded the Nutritional Science Research Institute in Gloucester, England, and at 77 had two young children aged 9 and 13.
Professor Shears says cancer, kidney disease, heart disease and many others can be cured if detected early enough and the correct diet followed. He lists salt, refined sugar, canned foods, and pasteurized cows' milk as the main causes of disease in modern man.
Finally and sadly, this information from Scotland just about sums it all up.
If you feel pity for Scotland, pause a moment and think again, because our own record of self-destruction is almost as bad.