|
ENZYMES: THE KEY TO LONGEVITY |
|
"The joy of life depends on a
sound stomach whereas bad digestion inclines one to skepticism, incredulity,
breeds black fancies, and thoughts of death."
- Joseph Conrad
Why do we die? Why do we age? Why
do things wear out? Do we just live our lives and then all of a sudden out of
the blue a disease bug comes floating in from who knows where and causes an
illness that kills us? Unless of course the right drug can be found to
"kill the bug."
Do you believe this? The majority of
people in America actually do, but their numbers are shrinking steadily.
People are now becoming aware that lifestyle has everything to do with
susceptibility to disease. Lifestyle: you know - diet, stress level, mental
outlook, daily physical movement, or lack thereof. Non-bug issues.
Many of us today are becoming
disconsolate about seeing our parents die of the same diseases our
grandparents died of. Despite all the "breakthroughs" we're
constantly reading about in the popular press, our health as a nation is not
improving in the least.
In Chapter One
(www.thedoctorwithin.com) we saw the 10 major
killers of Americans:
Heart Disease ......... 726,000
Cancer .................... 539,000 Stroke ................. 159,000 COPD .................... 109,000 Accidents ............... 95,000 Pneumonia/Flu ........ 24,000 Diabetes ............... 62,000 Suicide ................ 30,000 Kidney Disease ....... 25,000 Liver Disease ....... 25,000
-
National Vital Statistics, 2001
Except for accidents and suicide, these
illnesses are largely preventable, in the sense that they are caused or
aggravated by years of bad dietary habits. These diseases don't just fly in
on the night air and invade our pure, innocent bodies. Loading up on
indigestible, devitalized foods slowly kills the body's cells and tissues,
week by week, month by month. Whichever particular organ gives out first -
that's what we say someone died of: he had a bad heart, he had a bad liver,
he had a bad stomach, he was a lung-er, etc.
NAME YER POISON
Incontrovertible evidence that has been
around for 75 years is now being brought forth and substantiated that the determining
factor of health and long life may correspond to one simple condition: blood toxicity. Toxicity means poison.
You may think of poisons as things like
arsenic, or cyanide, or rat poison, or things that secret agents in James
Bond movies bite in capsules just before they're captured. As every good
ninja knows, there are many levels and types of poisons. The best ones kill
you the slowest and are undetectable. So let's consider the slowest poisons
of all: the food we eat.
Most modern food which the American
diet comprises, is poison. Why do I say that? A good poison will:
1. block the flow of blood, 2. decrease the amount of oxygen to the tissues 3. interfere with one or more major systems of the body, 4. actually cause addiction to the poison itself 5. eventually kill the subject without ever being detected
No poison in history has achieved these
goals on the scale that processed food has.
ACTION OF ENZYMES
So what are enzymes? We are surrounded by examples of
enzyme activity every day. Take a banana. A green one. Put it on a windowsill
for a couple days. It turns yellow and ripens. That's enzymes working.
An alligator kills you in a swamp. But
he doesn't eat you right away. Instead he drags you off to some pile of brush
and lets you rot for a few weeks. Then when you're seasoned enough, you
become an entree. What made the change? Enzymes.
A dog buries a bone. It was too hard.
Two weeks later he digs it up. Nice and soft. Yum-yum. That's enzymes at
work.
"Without enzymes, seeds would not sprout, fruit would not ripen, leaves would not change color, and you would not exist." - d'Raye, p.3
Very simply, enzymes are properties of
all living cells that bring about changes. Enzymes are specific proteins that
are active in every cell of your body every second. Enzymes change things
into usable forms.
As Dr. Royal Lee said long ago, enzymes
"...
are the most important unit in the human body, because every chemical change
that takes place to repair tissue or to assimilate food involves the activity
of enzymes. Without enzyme activity there is no life. No plant or animal can
live without the activity of its enzymes."
- Conversations, 1955
Biologically, we are nothing more than
collections of living cells. What happens to our cells happens to us. Life
functions of cells are mediated by enzymes.
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ENZYMES AND
ENZYME ACTIVITY
The car sitting in your garage is
useless til you put some gas in it and start driving. Same with enzymes. By
themselves enzymes are just pieces to the puzzle. For enzymes to actually
perform the thousands of tasks they do, helpers are necessary. Doctors call
these helpers co-factors. Most co-factors
are vitamins and minerals. The enzyme and
the co-factors orchestrate themselves in an ultrasophisticated biochemical
symphony called a complex. It is the enzyme complex that brings about enzyme
activity - without all the players, the game doesn't happen.
"Nutrients
cannot work in isolation ....Absence of any one of these essential nutrients
is enough to destroy our health."
- Erasmus, p 73
An enzyme supplement should contain
these co-factors. If it doesn't, the body itself must provide the missing
nutrients. If the patient is vitamin or mineral deficient, taking an isolated
enzyme supplement won't have much beneficial effect. Enzyme activity is a
major team effort.
"An
enzyme is a functioning mechanism, not a chemical..... an enzyme itself is a
living principle."
- Conversations in Nutrition
The vitamins we're talking about here
are not the synthetic ones you usually see in the grocery store. Only natural
whole food vitamins can collaborate with enzymes. As Dr. Lee wrote almost 50
years ago:
"When
you take a vitamin out of this group and crystallize it and put it in a
bottle, it becomes a ... chemical. It is no longer part of the living
substance. It is no longer a part of the living mechanism we call an
enzyme."
For more on whole food vs. synthetic
vitamins, see Chapter 11 - Ascorbic Acid Is Not Vitamin C
The big idea here is that vitamins,
minerals, and enzymes need each other, like the three legs of a stool. In the
wacky marketplace of today's food supplements, it's like we're assaulted on
all sides by people screaming Vitamins!, others yelling Minerals!, and others
hollering Enzymes! as though each one alone were the Magic Bullet that can
cure anything. The real ideas are cooperation, synergy, and co-factoring.
Nothing exists in isolation in the body. An enzyme without co-factors has no
enzyme activity.
SPECIFIC SHAPES
Enzymes are known to have very specific
jobs to do. Their activity is compared to keys that must fit certain locks.
Enzymes are long-chain proteins held together in very specific shapes by
hydrogen bonds. Think of a ball of string which is held in a very weird shape
by tiny strips of Velcro. If anything happens to the Velcro-like bonds, the
enzyme protein unravels, losing its shape. Without the shape, the key can no
longer fit the lock. Then it's no longer an enzyme - just another foreign
protein. And what do foreign proteins cause in our body? Right -
inflammation. Immune response. And that's exactly the meaning of auto-immune. The body now attacks itself
because it senses there's an alien on board. Self has become not-self.
If the bonds are broken, the enzyme
collapses, and can no longer do its specific job. Such a collapsed enzyme is
said to be denatured. Several things
cause an enzyme to become denatured:
COOKED VS. RAW
Edward Howell MD, world authority on
enzymes and human nutrition, talks about how enzymes are denatured above
118?F. Since water boils at 212?, you can see how cooking is detrimental to
most foods. That's why when it comes to vegetables, steaming is much better
than overcooking. Overcooking destroys enzymes and vitamins.
Another expert in this area was Dr. Francis Pottenger. His famous experiments
with cats in the 1930s are just as relevant today as ever. He took two groups
of cats and for years personally supervised their feeding. One group was
given exclusively raw, uncooked food. The other was given only cooked food.
Results were overwhelmingly clear: the raw food cats all lived a long,
disease-free life. Cooked food cats became sick and died much younger.
(Bieler, p 192)
Also notable was that cats who became
sick on a long-term all-cooked diet could not regain their health even when
placed on a raw foods diet. Irreversible damage. Cooked food cats produced
only two sickly generations, the second of which was invariably sterile.
Natural selection.
Fad diet recommendations that ignore
this basic premise are all the more flawed. Raw foods before cooked, steamed
veggies before boiled, poached before hard-boiled, rare meats before
well-done: the more intact enzymes still in the food, the less we tax the
body's own enzyme stores.
SAVINGS ACCOUNT
We have two main types of enzymes in
our bodies. Dr. Edward Howellin his
masterwork Enzyme Nutrition, tells us
it's as though we are given a bank account of enzyme energy at the beginning
of our lives. The bank account contains two types of enzyme currency:
- metabolic enzymes - digestive enzymes
The more of that bank account we have
to use for digestion, the less is left over for the thousands of other tasks
which the metabolic enzymes have to perform in our bodies. Minor details like
thinking, breathing, walking, seeing, cell life, etc. - all depend on
enzymes. So think of people grossly overweight. Do they perform all these
other functions well, or do they seem impaired? Obvious. Reason: they have to
expend too much of their enzyme bank account trying to digest all the heaps
of indigestible food that keeps coming down the hatch. So there's not much
left over for basic life functions.
METABOLIC ENZYMES
Metabolic means having to do with
operating the body's specific systems. Cell life, nerve transmission, brain
signals, hormone distribution, oxygen exchange, liver function, acid-base
balance in the blood, stuff like that. All these jobs require specific
enzymes in order to happen, on a second-by-second basis. Metabolic enzymes
are the worker protein molecules that keep this whole biochemical circus
going all day long.
Metabolic enzymes are what actually
utilizes the nutrients that have been broken down by the digestive enzymes,
provided that normal digestion has taken place. So the direct
interrelationship between the two types of enzymes - digestive and metabolic
- is not really a big subject for debate.
DIGESTIVE ENZYMES
The class of enzymes you're probably
most familiar with is the one that involves digestion. The mouth, the
stomach, the pancreas, the liver, and the intestine produce various enzymes
whose job is to break down any food we eat into usable components. No matter
how greasy, no matter how much extra cheese, or how much white sugar, how
many chemicals, no matter how indigestible a food is, your body will try to
break it down by means of enzymes. Now some foods are very easy on the body.
Turns out, those are the ones which contain within them all the enzymes
necessary for complete digestion. Examples: apples, corn, watermelon, green
peppers, pears, celery, etc. Raw fruits and vegetables. These foods don't require
that the body waste energy producing a lot of powerful digestive juices in
order to change them into a usable form.
THREE FOODS
We all know that human food comes in
three varieties:
Each is a large molecule made of
smaller units. Since the body prefers the smaller units, these large fat,
protein, and carbohydrate chains must be broken down. Fats are broken down to
fatty acids; proteins are broken down to amino acids; carbohydrates are broken down to glucose molecules. The process of breakdown is
called digestion.
Each food type has a special enzyme to
make this breakdown happen:
Now many doctors and others with no background
in nutrition will say that we can eat anything we want because the body's
digestive enzymes are designed to break the food down. This would be true if
we were eating an 80% natural diet. By that I mean a diet in which most foods
contain within them the enzymes necessary for complete breakdown. The natural
diet leaves behind no residue from the digestive activity. That is normal
digestion.
But we don't have a natural diet. Most
of us have a SAD diet - the Standard American Diet. You know - burgers,
fries, pizza, beer, chips, donuts, coke, etc. These are non-foods, new to the
human species in the past century. Our digestive systems were never designed
to break these chemical bizzarros down. So the stuff doesn't get digested -
it just sits there, rotting. Abnormal diet = abnormal digestion.
TOXEMIA AND VICARIOUS ELIMINATION
Toxemia means blood poisoning. Way back in 1926, a famous
Colorado healer, JH Tilden MD, wrote a
book which was the culmination of a lifetime of clinical experience, Toxemia Explained. Dr. Tilden was radical. He
didn't believe drugs cured disease. He had one simple thesis:
"...
every so-called disease is a crisis of toxemia, which means that toxin
has accumulated in the blood above the toleration point. ... the crisis, the
so-called disease - call it cold, flu, pneumonia, headache, or typhoid fever
- is a vicarious elimination. Nature is endeavoring to rid the body of
toxin."
Toxemia Explained p. 49
A disease is named for where the toxins
accumulate so much that that body part starts failing.
This concept of disease, known as vicarious elimination, has never been
disproven. What happens is, the normal avenues for expelling waste - liver,
kidneys, colon - are overwhelmed by the amount of poisons being accumulated.
As a survival instinct, various other organs of the body which were not
designed for elimination of toxins become enlisted to help get rid of wastes.
They try desperate measures to expel the indigestible, rotting poisons, often
becoming inflamed or diseased themselves in the attempt.
One obvious example of this idea is acne. Acne is not a skin problem. It is a
vicarious elimination: the blood and the colon are so backed up with poisons
that are accumulating faster than they can escape that the body tries an
extreme solution: expel the poisons through the body's largest organ: the
skin. An alternative escape route. As the poisons leave, they irritate the
normal skin and cause rash, redness, or pustulated eruptions, like pimples or
boils. This is why skin creams and lotions don't work in such a scenario.
It's not a skin problem. It's a problem of chronic blood poisoning by means
of an indigestible diet. Third World people rarely get acne. Acne is a
disease of excess, a consequence of the fast food lifestyle.
Chronic "incurable" eczema
and psoriasis often fall into the same category. People suffer needlessly for
years with these diseases, under the direction of their well-intentioned but
clueless dermatologist who has convinced them that their only hope is to find
the right medication for their "skin disease."
Same with the kidneys. Their original job was simply to
maintain water and electrolyte balance within the blood. But with the advent
of modern foods of commerce, suddenly the kidneys find themselves spending
all their energy trying to filter out these new manmade chemicals from the
blood - a function for which they were never designed. Result: kidney disease today is the #9 cause of death in the
US. (Historical Statistics)
Dr. Henry Bieler offers another example
of vicarious elimination: the lungs take over for the kidneys. When the level
of toxins in the blood exceeds the kidneys' capacity to eliminate them via
the urine, the lungs try to take up some of the slack. The lungs secrete some
of the blood's toxins through their mucous membranes. Such toxicity irritates
and inflames the delicate lung membranes, and can be the initial cause of
pneumonia, bronchitis, asthma, edema or virtually any other lung problem. (p
164)
Same with a cold. A cold is simply the body's way of saying
that the level of toxicity has now surpassed the body's ability to get rid of
wastes through the normal avenues: colon, kidneys, and liver. So it will try
alternative or vicarious routes: nose, mouth, throat, eyes, lungs.
Bieler uses this same model to explain
dysmenorrhea and pelvic inflammatory disease: irritation of female organs
when they are used as alternate routes of toxin removal from the blood, every
month. At menopause, when this avenue of detox falls into disuse, various new
problems may occur as a result. ( p. 172) Vicarious elimination: an organ of
reproduction being used as an emergency organ of detoxification.
Again, Tilden's theory of vicarious
elimination is that many diseases are really just an organ's emergency
attempt to discharge excess poisons because the primary avenues are
overloaded. If that body part is overwhelmed in the process, it becomes
diseased and we pretend that that organ, in isolation from the rest of the
body, is the problem.
Such thinking is more than just
simplistic and disingenuous; if medical decisions are based on false
perceptions characterizing the diseased organ as the disease, the results can
range from ineffective to fatal.
Dr. Tilden felt that undigested food in
the intestines and in the blood was the primary cause of all disease. His
ideas are now being substantiated in most gastroenterology journals, which
explore in great detail the 'modern' phenomenon of
LEAKY GUT SYNDROME
The reason the food remains undigested
is lack of enzymes.
Here's what happens: We eat trashy
food. We can't digest it. It remains in our intestines in a rotting form for
weeks on end. Eventually the protective intestinal lining weakens and allows
some of the rotting, undigested food to enter the bloodstream. Once in the
blood, the toxic debris can settle just about anywhere. As a foreign protein,
the debris can then initiate an inflammatory reaction at the particular
location where it happens to end up. The snap diagnosis is that we have a
problem at the site of the inflammation ? the joints, the muscles, the liver,
the kidneys, the intestines, the stomach, whatever.
Then we are given drugs to cover up the
symptoms. Doctors pretend they can treat that single 'problem' part in
isolation from the rest of the body. That's why it doesn't work. According to
Dr. Tilden, these types of chronic, mysterious illnesses almost always have
toxemia as the underlying cause.
Dr. Tilden was ahead of his time. His
ideas are far superior to modern drug remedies. In most chronic disease
situations, especially one that has baffled all the medical geniuses,
Tilden's approach should be tried first, if one is to have any hope at all of
a complete, permanent recovery.
Thomas Sydenham, the most famous
English physician of the 17th century, long ago supported Tilden:
"Disease
is nothing else than an attempt on the part of the body to rid itself of
morbific matter."
- Bieler , p 40
Morbific - that means dead and rotting.
For more on the colon:
www.thedoctorwithin.com: Journey to the Center
of Your Colon
THE SHELF-LIFE BUSINESS
Let's talk about processed foods. How
did all these artificial, devitalized foods become the main components of the
American diet in the first place?
Long story. In 1910 Harvey Wiley, MD
was the first head of the original FDA. Dr. Wiley was a big critic of food
adulteration. He was against bleached flour, refined sugar, and the sale of
adulterated, devitalized foods. He once tried to prevent the Coca Cola
company from shipping Coke across interstate lines because it had white sugar
in it, which Dr. Wiley correctly described as an adulterated food. Then Wiley
actually began seizing shipments of bleached flour. A legal battle ensued and
went all the way to the Supreme Court in 1913. Wiley won. Bleach was proven
to be an empty filler whose main purpose was to kill bugs and bulk up the
flour. This law has never been enforced, or reversed either. Soon thereafter
the huge financial interests controlling food processing banded together and
got Wiley thrown out of office. Ever since we have had white flour, which has
no food value whatsoever - no vitamins, no minerals, no enzymes, and which
often contains large amounts of bleach - (Bealle, Royal Lee) That's what
bread labels even today are talking about when they state "unbleached
flour." Like it's some hot selling point that the bread doesn't have
bug-killer in it.
Food processing has only been around
for about the last 90 years or so. Food processing came about mainly during
wartime when we had to figure out how to transport large quantities of food
to the WWI soldiers without spoiling on the way. Scientists found out that
the more efficient were the methods of removing enzymes from foods, the
better it transported and the longer it lasted. After the war, the techniques
that had been learned were applied to the grocery business. The supermarket
industry soon found out that profits could be greatly increased if foods can
be made to last longer without spoiling. If that meant that they were also
removing most or all of the nutrition from the food along with the enzymes,
hey, too bad. The manufacturers weren't in the health business; this was the
Shelf-Life business.
Scientific methods of enzyme removal
and food preservation then became more and more sophisticated continuing to
the present day. In addition, chemical additives came in, which do nothing to
nourish the body ? it's just about the money. And now the two new buzzwords
are irradiation and genetic engineering. Do you think any of these methods
has anything to do with increasing the nutritive value of foods? Dream on.
This is big business, driven by one motive only.
GOOD LIVER - GOOD LIFE
One of the first organs to be
overwhelmed by the constant deluge of toxic fast foods is the liver, the most
important organ of the body. Bieler feels that if the liver were able to keep
up with cleansing the blood of all the indigestible debris we shove down our
throats, we would live more or less indefinitely. (Bieler, p63) Before it
gets into general circulation, digested food from the intestine goes first
through the liver via the portal vein. The liver is then supposed to choose
what to do with the digested food
i. make new
body tissues
ii. release energy iii. store nutrients for future use
Unfortunately in an enzymeless diet
that consists of 80% hard fats and refined sugars, the liver hardly has time
to get around to these standard life functions. Instead it wastes most of its
energy and power just trying to tread water in a sewer of chemicals. Liver
cells die, cirrhosis results, and this is today the #10 cause of death in the
US. (Historical
Statistics)
The human liver evolved from 60 million
years of animal liver evolution. For all but the last 100 years of man's
200,000 years, the human diet was simple fruits and vegetables, with a little
animal protein. Thus was the liver allowed to develop normally and
concentrate on its main tasks, which did not involve toxic waste breakdown.
Modern processed foods are a shock to evolution.( Food Is Your Best Medicine, p 183)
Bieler explains the idiocy of trying to
force the liver and kidneys to work harder by falsely whipping them into
action by adrenal-stimulating steroid and diuretic drugs, which is the
standard medical approach. This is a short-term solution and will ultimately
result in organ destruction. The simple fact is, the liver and kidneys were
never meant to work this hard, spending all their metabolic energy trying to
deal with enzymeless processed food chemicals from our horrible diet.
(Bieler, p 142)
WESTON A. PRICE
Once there
was a dentist named Dr. Weston A. Price. In the 1930s, he and his wife went
around the world, gathering data from dozens of countries. He was looking for
the healthiest people on earth. That is, the ones with the longest lifespan,
no degenerative disease, no tooth decay, the strongest bones, and best
physiques.
Everywhere he went, Dr. Price would check the bones and teeth of various tribes and civilizations, including:
What Price found was startling and
undeniable: across the board, those primitive civilizations and cultures
enjoyed sound teeth, strong bones, and lives generally free from degenerative
disease, provided there was adequate natural food and a mineral-rich water
supply. Then invariably, as soon as the enzymeless foods of commerce became
available to these simple people, within a few years, their teeth would be
rotten, their bones would soften, and they would experience the onset of
epidemic degenerative diseases, just like the ones that prevail in America
today. Like Royal Lee and JH Tilden, Price is talking about white flour,
white sugar, and processed, devitalized adulterated foods.
The common factor in the new foods
which infiltrated and corrupted the diets of these primitive societies,
again, was lack of enzymes.
Dr. Price also examined ancient skulls
from the burial grounds of many of these civilizations. He was looking to
correlate the amount of tooth decay with the formation of the dental arches,
as well as the formation of the facial bones and the nostrils. Location after
location, Price's findings were overwhelmingly consistent: when the isolated
people had a primitive diet consisting of fish, whole grains, raw dairy, and
a mineral-rich environment, the people enjoyed perfect teeth, and a very low
incidence of infectious and degenerative disease. Price correlated beyond a
doubt the exposure of primitive people to white flour and white sugar with
all the following:
Price shows
how physical degeneration of a group of people who may have enjoyed nearly
perfect health for centuries - how this situation can be destroyed within a
few years of being exposed to the foods of
commerce - white sugar, white flour, and processed devitalized
products.
Dr. Price's
book is called Nutrition and Physical
Degeneration, and is still in print. No nutritionist or dietician can
claim to be well-informed without a thorough understanding of this landmark
work. Remember, nutritionists and dieticians are the ones who design hospital
food, airline cuisine, and school lunches.
THE IDIOCY
OF THE HIGH PROTEIN DIET
Because of
advertising, and "soft" advertising in which scripted information
is made to look like hard news, food fads are as rampant today as ever. Eat
for your blood type, eat for your body type, eat for your horoscope, eat for
your recovered memories, eat what your muscle testing says, eat according to
your ethnicity, eat according to the results of your hair analysis - junk
science is at its zenith in America today. Not the least unscientific of
these is the currently popular high protein diet.
Riding high
on the cholesterol/ heart disease myth, and the Dangers of Carbos spectre,
the high protein diet is the new messiah - the ultimate healthy diet. Nothing
could be farther from the truth. Obviously if someone is pounding fries and
ice cream and coke all day long, and suddenly he trades up to the high
protein diet, there are going to be some immediate improvements in the way
the patient feels. But the same effect would probably have been obtained by
an all citrus diet, or Price's diet of raw milk and rye cakes. A long-term
high protein diet exclusive of good fats and natural carbohydrates is very
detrimental to the kidneys, the liver, and the blood.
The
breakdown products of processed artificial protein are highly acidifying to the blood. This sets in motion
the whole calcium buffering program in which the pH of the blood is saved
from all this dangerous acidification by pulling calcium out of the bones and
teeth. The body's next effort is uric acid crystal deposition in joints and
organs, osteoporosis, and total disruption of kidney and adrenal function
which further try to regulate blood pH. Too much protein in the diet
putrefies in the digestive tract, setting up blockage, leaky gut syndrome,
and a whole host of intestinal disorders. Excess nitrogen in the system from
all those excess amino acids further stresses the blood.
The food
advertisers pretend that we need more protein and less fat. The more protein
and the less fat, the better. The truth is, Americans average 125 g of protein per day, while only requiring 25 g. (McDougall) We are not protein deficient
in this country. That only happens in Third World starvation countries. The
reason for this Protein Religion is simple economics: high protein foods are
expensive. It's a sales job. At stake are billion$ in foods and billion$ in
advertising.
The high
protein diet is of course aggressively promoted by the entire soy-pandering
contingent. Having perpetrated the lie that soy
is a complete, safe protein, far superior to those fat-laden animal proteins,
the soy sellers are enjoying huge success by means of consistent and
ubiquitous persuasion methods in all media. This concept is just as false and
as dangerous as the high protein diet itself. For the whole story please see
The Magic Bean
Food
faddists like to complicate things, deriving rules and patterns out of thin
air. Usually for the end purpose of book or supplement or food sales. A
reasonable proportion of fats, protein, and carbohydrates is just common
sense. Less important than the proportion of fats, protein, and carbohydrates
is the form in which each is presented. Digestible or indigestible? Natural
or processed? Raw or cooked? Sprayed or organic? Cleanse or clog? With or
without enzymes? These are the real issues that determine the value of a food.
These are the questions we should be asking.
The other
major misconception is the fat - free
phobia that has taken hold in this country. Controlled by advertising from
huge food interests, false information is everywhere about the dangers of fat
and cholesterol and how this causes heart disease, etc. The solution?
Processed soy, a toxic indigestible non-food containing the the worst
possible type of fat: altered fats. The
irony is that Americans are now actually fat deficient, having been tricked
into thinking that all fats are bad. We need good fats, essential fatty
acids, and we're not getting them. (Erasmus)
MILK - A
DEVITALIZED ENZYMELESS FOOD
Here's an
example: The absence of enzymes in modern dairy products exists by
definition: milk is pronounced 'pasteurized' only when all the enzymes have
been removed by heating. From pasteurized milk we then get butter, ice cream,
cheese, yoghurt, and milk chocolate. Problem is, all these foods can't be
digested. Undigested food goes all over the body and causes chronic low-grade
inflammation. And blockages. That is why holistic nutritionists generally
agree that milk is the #1 cause of allergies. Don't believe it? Take away all
dairy for 60 days from the allergy or asthmatic patient. The operative word
here is all. See what happens to the
allergies. ( The Threshold of Reactivity
www.thedoctorwithin.com)
Yes I know
what you're thinking - where will we get our calcium from then? Big surprise:
milk is not a good source of calcium because the enzyme phosphatase, which is necessary to absorb
calcium, was destroyed by pasteurization! (Douglass) The only reason we think
we need milk for calcium is that we've heard it all our lives - on TV, in
school nutrition programs, from dieticians. But guess who paid for all that advertising
and promotion?
Starting way
back in the 1950s, the American Dairy Association spent millions providing
'educational' materials for American grade schools in which dairy products
are presented as one of the Four Food Groups. This never had anything to do
with science - this is marketing. There's no such thing as the four food
groups. They made it up! (McDougall)
So, as for
the calcium requirements of children:
" ... pasteurized milk is incapable of rebuilding or maintaining bones and teeth." - Royal Lee, 1955
And as for
digestion:
" commercially modified milk and baby foods are all foreign to the baby's liver digestion and may produce diarrhea, milk allergies, and constipation." - H. Bieler, 1965
It is not
just Africans who have lactose intolerance
- all humans have lactose intolerance when it comes to pasteurized milk. But
it's still a word game: lactose is milk sugar. We're not allergic to milk
sugar; we're allergic to milk. No enzymes = junk food. (Twogood) Milk is a
junkfood. Think your baby needs it? Think again. Pasteurized cow's milk is
sensitizing your baby to an unnatural non-food allergenic protein. Consider
this:
For the
whole story on milk, read Twogood's No Milk
and Dr Ron Schmid's' The Untold Story of Milk .
Also the pediatrician chapter on the website - www.thedoctorwithin.com
Milk is a
very common example of an artificial, manmade food about which a century of
advertising has created the illusion of a healthy staple.
The same ideas apply to other processed foods. That means one that has been devitalized by the food industry by removing all the enzymes. Problem is, only the enzymes made it a living complex in the first place. The above comments about milk refer only to pasteurized milk. Raw milk from cows living in a natural mineral-rich environment is another story. Dr. Price thoroughly documents the health of Swiss Alpine villagers, isolated from processed foods. Some of these healthy people lived on a diet centered around raw butter and raw cheese, from cows and goats. Their health was far better than most of ours today. The point is that natural, unprocessed, unpasteurized dairy products could be a superlative nutritional staple, because it is loaded with the fat soluble vitamins A, D, and E, minerals and enzymes.
What
destroys milk is civilization: killing the enzymes by heat, adding
antibiotics and hormones to the cows' diet, keeping the cows in a mineral
deficient environment, and artificially preparing it for long periods of
storage. (Price)
EATING IN
AMERICA: A CONDITIONED RESPONSE
Let's talk
about the food we eat. Now most of us know what we should eat. But when it
actually comes down to it, which it does several times a day, many of us
simply eat food that "we're hungry for." We can't really be blamed
for this, right? Billions of dollars are spent conditioning us about what we
should feel hungry for. Look at TV, billboards, radio, newspapers - what are
we constantly assaulted with? Images of burgers, fries, ice cream, chips,
Pepsi, candy, donuts, milk, cheese, MGD, etc. Just hearing these words makes
our Pavlovian mouths water. These are the best poisons ever made. Not only do
they contain little or no nutrient content; even if they did there's almost
no chance of our getting to it because these foods have no enzymes in them.
All those were taken out during processing. Therefore the entire burden of
digestion is placed on our body's own enzymes. Foods are being broken down
only partially, or not at all, by our own digestive enzymes, because many
foods are so foreign, so processed, have so many chemicals and preservatives,
and are so new to the human race that they overstress our body's ability to
metabolize them.
Natural and
raw foods contain nutrients, such as vitamins, minerals, and enzymes.
Processed food can be described as devitalized
- not much in there we can use. The 'foods of commerce' are made to be sold,
to last on the shelf a long time. This has nothing to do with human
nutrition.
GARBAGE
IN, GARBAGE IN
So what
happens to all this undigested food? Where does it go? Well, what happens is,
a lot goes in, but never comes out. A little vague? The average 35 year old
has between 4-22 lbs of undigested food in the intestine alone, even according
to the FDA. (Anderson) John Wayne on a utopsy was found to have closer to 44
lbs. of it! Elvis had more than 20 lbs.
As noted
above, this rotting debris doesn't just stay in the intestine, but can make
its way intact into the bloodstream, to be deposited in practically any
location of the body. Such food is foreign and may cause inflammation in any
area where it becomes lodged. Gastroenterologists call the condition Leaky Gut Syndrome. It can be the mechanism for
just about any -itis you can think of: arthritis, gastritis, colitis,
hepatitis, nephritis, myositis, bursitis, etc. As well as allergies. Such
floating debris triggers the immune response. If it's always there, the
body's always reacting to it. Symptoms of that reaction are:
ALLERGIES!
Reaction to
undigested food has been implicated as the cause of over 90% of allergies.
(See Chapter 8 - The Threshold of Reactivity--www.thedoctorwithin.com)
All these conditions usually don't just pop up for no reason, or because of
some genetic tendency. People pretend they're allergic to dust, pollen, dog
hair, cat fur, horse feathers, phases of the moon But why look for an exotic
cause when the obvious is staring you in the face? Years of eating food that
cannot be broken down has predictable and definite physical consequences.
Diet does not affect your health; diet determines
your health.
Know anyone
taking allergy shots and pills for years who still has allergies every year?
Why would the allergist cure them? Job security, Vern. Ten to one the missing
piece of the puzzle is enzymes. Try the
60 Day Program.
ENZYMES
AND AGING
A very clear
chain of events connects enzyme depletion with the aging process: undigested
food clogs the digestive tract. The stuck food rots there, and creates toxins
and free radicals. Free radicals destroy cells, causing premature aging of
tissues. Free radicals attack the cell membrane causing them to shrivel up
and dehydrate, and subjecting the DNA to alteration from outside forces.
Large undigested molecules seep into the bloodstream from the intestine,
gumming up the blood, blocking normal oxygen distribution to the body. Cells
are starved, causing premature cell death. This is not even controversial -
any pathology text documents Leaky Gut Syndrome, hypertension, and
chronically blocked circulation as the result of undigested fats.
Worse yet,
much of the immune system depends on circulating white cells. When the blood
gets all backed up with undigested sludge, these cells can't circulate.
Result: depressed immune function. Aging.
Fifty years
ago embalmers at funeral homes had to prepare the corpse immediately after
death because it would soon rot. Today there's not such a hurry. After a
lifetime of preservatives, spices, artificial additives, hydrogenated oils,
and hard fats the modern corpse can sit out for a few days without going bad.
It's pickled. As Bieler says, we have effected the mummification of the living. (p 220)
SICK
ANIMALS
Dr. Howell
makes the observation that humans are the only animals who, in their natural
environment, live their lives with disease. Think about it: how many human
diseases are there in the pathology textbooks? 1000? What other animal in
nature gets even 5 diseases? Why? Dr. Howell explains that humans are the
only animals that eat processed foods, the only animals who subsist on
enzyme-less food:
"All wild creatures get their enzyme supplements in the raw food itself." - Enzyme Nutrition p7
The saliva
of horses and cattle doesn't even contain enzymes, like ours does. The work
of digestion is largely aided by the enzymes in the grass or hay they eat. A
whale that had 32 seals in its stomach was found to secrete no digestive
enzymes! (Howell) Digestion took place by means of enzymes contained within
the seals themselves. Think of the burden this removes from the whale's
digestive system during his lifetime. Or more accurately, since we're the
exception, think of the burden enzymeless food places on our systems. We must
expend great quantities of energy producing and maintaining digestive enzymes
that Dr. Howell describes as "pathologically rich." What a waste of
energy. At what a price.
Over 60
years ago, France's finest surgeon noted the ill effects of commercial foods
given to pedigreed dogs:
"In
successive generations of purebred dogs, nervousness is often observed to
increase. This phenomenon occurs in subjects brought up under artificial
conditions, living in comfortable kennels, and provided with choice food
quite different from that of their ancestors, the shepherds, who fought and
defeated the wolves.."
- Alexis Carrel, p 106
BLOOD:
THE INTERNAL MILIEU
Going back
to the blood now, and the idea of toxicity, remember that the blood was the
carrier which deposited all the undigested food debris in various locations
throughout the body. But this type of debris also has observable effects on
the red blood cells themselves. Undigested fats and protein in the diet
commonly cause a condition known as erythrocyte
aggregation, which is simply clumping of the red cells. This causes
circulation problems and may be the primary cause of chronic fatigue. It
stands to reason - if the blood cells are all stuck together like globs of
motor oil, they cannot flow very easily through the blood vessels.
Circulation is the only way that the body's cells can obtain oxygen, which
they need every second. Clumping of red cells graphically decreases the
amount of oxygen that is being carried to the tissues. We're not just talking
about fatigue any more; lack of oxygen spells tissue degeneration, premature
aging, and early death.
Just think
of the stress that clumped up red blood cells put on the heart. Red cells are
supposed to be free and separate so they can circulate eaily. What is the #1
cause of death in the US?
Almost 100
years ago Alexis Carrel demonstrated how the longevity of cells is largely
determined by two things: their ability to take in oxygen and nutrients and
expel wastes. That's it. Longevity of cells obviously determines longevity of
the body. Clumping of red cells from daily processed foods diet prevents both
oxygen in and waste out. It's not rocket science.
OXYGEN
AND CHOLESTEROL
Those
shooting pains down the legs or arms are sometimes simply the result of
muscles being forced to operate without sufficient oxygen, screaming in
protest. Again, lack of available oxygen can cause degeneration and
dysfunction of any organ or system of the entire body: arteries, heart,
lungs, skin, kidneys, digestion, you name it. The cholesterol crystals that
precipitate out of solution in the blood because of dangerously high levels
of blood cholesterol - these crystals classically lodge in joints and
muscles, and cause gallstones, gout, fibromyalgia, and arthritis. These and
many other problems started out with a diet that lacked enzymes - a
devitalized, processed diet that remained unchanged for years. How many of us
in our 40s still eat the same way we did when we were teenagers? It's the
road to ruin. We're just flesh and blood after all.
CHRONIC
FATIGUE
Ever get
food poisoning? Or maybe you know someone. Every single day in America
200,000 people get food poisoning, 900 of them are hospitalized, and 14 die.
(Schlosser) Usually we think of food poisoning as being violently ill,
throwing up, and being incapacitated for a few days, because of having gotten
some bad food at a restaurant. But there's another type of food poisoning
that is much more common, in fact, epidemic. This is the type of disorder the
doctors and hospitals just can't quite put their finger on. The tests are all
negative. But the problem just goes on and on: no energy, intermittent sharp
pains in the stomach area, bad skin, bad breath, chronic low-grade allergies,
constant feeling of impending disaster - like things are just 'not right.'
The catch-all diagnosis isChronic Fatigue Syndrome.
This type of
food poisoning results from years of eating a diet deficient in enzymes,
vitamins, and minerals. All those snacks and fast food and dairy simply can't
be broken down. The body is starving from lack of nutrients. Holistic doctors
call this phenomenon malnutrition of the
affluent. Funny to think how someone 70 or 80 lbs. overweight can be
starving, but that's exactly what's going on. Their constant hunger is a never-fulfilled
craving, always hoping that some real nutrients will actually come down the
hatch. But instead, pattern eating takes over - the sweet, soft foods,
hydrogenated fats and oils, seasoned to taste with a ton of white sugar and
salt. Yum-yum. Comfort foods. And that is why obese people can't lose weight
? if they cut down their eating the body actually thinks that it is starving
and tries to conserve as much of everything as possible because it's in
Survival Mode.
CHRONIC
INDIGESTION - TAPING THE OIL LIGHT
Gas,
bloating, heartburn, stomach ache, feeling full when beginning to eat,
abdominal cramping, unsatisfied hunger - these are common symptoms of enzyme
deficiency. But most doctors treat such problems as though they were signs of
drug deficiency! Perfect examples are Tagamet and Prilosec
- standard drugs given for indigestion and heartburn. Now the main
reason there is pain is simple: blockage. All that pizza and fries and tacos
and yoghurt is devitalized food: no enzymes. As a result, once in the
stomach, it just sits there. The stomach produces more and more acids and
digestive enzymes trying to break down this overcooked, chemical-laden sludge
we mistakenly refer to as food. But it can't do it. All that digestive juice
sitting there unable to do its work is uncomfortable. It burns the stomach.
On swallowing, the acid splashes back into the esophagus causing a painful
condition known as reflux esophagitis, or
heartburn, or for the really clueless - hiatal hernia.
So first the
geniuses try Tagamet, with the idea that
all the excess acid needs to be absorbed. When that doesn't work, enter Prilosec. The shrewd rationale behind this
brain-child is to stop all digestion by halting further production of
digestive juices! Short-term, the discomfort is postponed, but what about the
underlying cause - the sludge sitting there in the stomach? It now begins to
rot (go rancid, putrefy, or ferment, depending on whether it is fat, protein
or carbohydrate). Then we have intestinal blockage, which promotes diseases
like peptic ulcer, Irritable Bowel Syndrome,
Crohn's Disease, chronic colitis, Leaky Gut Syndrome, and colon cancer. This is how anti-digestive drugs
like Prilosec can set the stage for a condition doctors call auto-intoxication. (See Chapter 9: Journey to the Center of Your Colon---www.thedoctorwithin.com)
FADS AND
TRENDS
Dieticians
and nutritionists go to all this trouble categorizing foods according to
content, telling you that this food has so many mg. of calcium, that one has
so much protein, or they talk about calories, or food combining, or Carbs, or
eating for your blood type, or body type, or some Zone, or any number of
trendy notions. But it actually matters much less what's in the food as it
does how much of the nutrients eventually ends up in your cells.
Don't get
caught up in the Milligram Game. Or the Calorie Game. Start with the basics.
If the food was never broken down in the digestive tract, well then, it went
right through you. Or worse, it's still in there. It doesn't matter what we eat; it only matters what we
digest.
HOW FAT
WAS SHE?
Had to go
through a revolving door in two trips? High school picture an aerial
photograph? Hog farmers learned long ago that hogs get fat twice as fast if
they are fed cooked food. Cooking destroys what? Right. Enzymes.
Only two
years ago, statistics on obesity indicated that about one in eight Americans
was obese. The definition of obese is that a person weighs 30% more than his normal weight. The Centers
for Disease Control in Atlanta now says: one in
three Americans is obese! For anyone who doubts these figures,
empirical verification may help: go to the mall and sit on a bench in the
concourse for half an hour.
People get
fat because they eat cooked and processed foods - enzymeless foods which
cannot be broken down.
THE
BIGGIE NATION
Even more
than the quality of food, it's the quantity
that makes fat Americans.
Consider
this: for normal nutrition, humans need about 25
grams of protein per day. Our average intake is 125 grams! (McDougall) As for white sugar, we
consume an average of 160 pounds per
person per year. How much do we need? Zero! White sugar has no food value. (Sugar: The Sweet Thief of Life-
www.thedoctorwithin.com)
As for fats, that's a whole story in itself. The body
requires essential fat for optimum health, but only natural fats - like in
avocadoes, raw nuts, flaxseed, cocoanut, and fish. These foods contain the
fat enzyme lipase - which breaks them
down. But that's not what we eat. The fats we load up on are artificial,
manmade fats like in chips, fries, and margarine. These artificial fats are
non-foods, indigestible, and are bioaccumulative.
Manmade hard fats make for clogged arteries, cellulite, and spare tireage;
once in the body they become rancid trans fatty acids. Rancid trans fatty
acids are a major producer of free radicals. And that means aging, cell
breakdown, and DNA mutation - confirmed reservations for an eventual all
expense paid vacation in sunny ICU.
Then look at
the quantity of hard fats we take in. Maybe you've noticed in the past couple
of years the push toward eating more and more. In fast food restaurants the
customer is offered a regular portion of fries that is indigestible by
itself. But for an extra 25?, you can get a hog-size portion, which
guarantees overconsumption, and obesity. Same with soft drink sizes - white
sugar overload turns to more fat. People are pushed into buying these
ridiculous portions because they think they're getting a better deal. We've
forgotten the universal principle: trash at a better price is still trash.
One of the
worst experiences reported by the survivors of the Bataan Death March at the
end of WWII was when the American doctors would not believe the starving
prisoners when they told the doctors what they had been eating in order to
survive. Just to survive, we actually need very little food. For good health,
obviously we need considerably more, but the point is - most of our health
problems in this country result from an excess
of food coupled with an a lack of nutrients.
Most sick
animals refuse all food until the healing power of nature (vis medicatrix naturae) has the opportunity
to excrete the poisons. Often the greater part of the poison is undigested,
rotting food which has somehow become blocked in the digestive tract. To eat
in such a situation is only compounding the problem. Nature knows better. So
forget about the old saw Feed a cold; Starve a fever. Starve both until the
patient is hungry. Listen to the innate wisdom of the body; it's usually
right.
PUT IT
BACK!
So what's
the solution? Same as the problem: enzymes.
Either eat a 80% natural foods diet full of natural enzymes, or else put back
into the food the enzymes that were taken out by food processing. Put back
into the body the enzymes that can detox the blood and the tissues, where all
this half-digested residue has taken up residence. Want to detox the system?
That's your choice: whole foods or whole food
enzymes.
Natural
whole food enzyme supplements take away nothing from the body and require
that no energy be expended by the body to get rid of them after they've done
their job. Natural whole-food supplements contain within them exactly what a
perfect food should contain: all the enzymes necessary for complete breakdown
and absorption by the body, with nothing left over.
Three
capsules three times a day for 60 days. What could be simpler?
ENZYMES:
MODERN BIOMEDICINE
Only in the
last ten years have powerful whole-food enzymes been available. Dr. Howell
himself, having died in 1988, would certainly have welcomed a supplement as
clean and powerful as the natural whole-food enzymes available today, which
can be taken along with meals and can serve to help replace the enzymes
removed in food processing.
Enzyme
supplements are such a simple solution to a whole spectrum of health
challenges, many of which are life-threatening, that they are generally not
considered by mainstream practitioners. Most MDs are taught to look for the
dramatic rescue, the quick-acting drug, the heroic procedure that can snatch
the patient from the jaws of death, or whatever. That's more sexy; it's
"real medicine." The first problem is that most medical doctors
don't even know of the existence of whole-food enzymes, because such
supplements are too inexpensive to be sold by the pharmaceutical companies.
Yet.
The second
problem is that medical doctors have a very limited exposure to enzymes in
medical school. The only concept they usually have is what is found in
Guyton's Physiology,
the standard text. They learn that enzymes are "catalysts," which
means substances that cause things to happen but are themselves unchanged in
the process. Dr. Howell, who was himself an MD, proved not only was this idea
inaccurate, but that there was a grand and dynamic interchange between the
enzymes of digestion and the enzymes of all the other life functions, which
are called enzymes of metabolism.
Less than 20
digestive enzymes have been discovered; but there may be as many as 5000
metabolic enzymes. Enzymes are in a constant state of flux and
re-organization. If this were not the case, many of us would have been dead
long ago, because we wouldn't have been able to borrow from our metabolic
enzymes to help out our overwhelmed digestive enzymes. Interlocking
adaptation: survival.
There are
several high quality enzyme supplements on the market today. There are also
many mediocre or worthless enzymes available. How do you tell the difference?
THE BEST
WHOLE FOOD ENZYMES
The oldest
and largest producer of enzyme supplements in the US is the National Enzyme
Company. This was Dr. Howell's company. Today they produce enzymes for some
400 supplement companies. Scientists found out decades ago that Aspergillus-derived enzymes were the best
supplements for humans because they were broad spectrum, and could operate in
the whole range of pH which exists in the human digestive tract. Broad
spectrum means the enzymes can digest fats, proteins, and carbohydrates. The
best companies also add cellulase. This is the fiber-digesting enzyme,
which allows the vitamins and minerals within fiber to be set free and made
available to the bloodstream.
The
esophagus, the stomach, the sections of the small intestine, and the colon
define a wide range of pH. That means an acid/alkaline range. Aspergillus- derived enzymes work well in all
these environments.
The best
enzymes supplements contain all the necessary vitamins and minerals necessary
as cofactors for enzyme activity to take place, as explained above. Without
these cofactors being included, the necessary vitamins and minerals will be
drawn from the body's reserves, thereby causing an overall negative effect.
Remember, by themselves enzymes, vitamins, and minerals are worthless. The
only way they function is in each other's presence.
The final
feature - bioavailability - is only
emphasized by one company that I am aware of (Infinity - 1 800 572 6204).
This company has included in the formula molecules which make sure that the
enzyme complexes can be absorbed at the cellular
level, with no resulting metabolic residue. So not only is the food
able to make it from the digestive tract into the bloodstream; it also has
been broken down to simple units that can be used completely by the cells.
This is what is known as a clean product
- nothing left over in the blood after it does its work. Complete digestion.
ENZYME
THERAPY
So once
more, unless the patient will eat an 80% raw foods diet, he must take enzyme
supplements in order to insure complete breakdown of foods and unclumped red
blood cells. The trick is to find an enzyme supplement that will
Holistic
nutritionists have found that there are two obvious benefits to beginning a
simple program of enzyme therapy:
digestion blood detox
When enzyme
supplements are taken with a meal, most of the enzyme energy is expended in
digesting that food. When enzyme supplements are taken on an empty stomach,
they are absorbed into the bloodstream and work to break down undigested
debris in the bloodstream.
Both these
functions are vital to optimum health. The body is the same as the cells -
when wastes can't be removed, aging and breakdown occur.
NAME OF
THE GAME
With no
background in nutrition, the family physician may not be the best source of
information when it comes to whole food enzymes. Why? Because the patient is
taking the first step in the dangerous direction known as I Can Be
Responsible for My Own Health. As Dr. Mendelsohn explained, most doctors
don't support this idea, because it tends to take away their control of
things. And if you don't think the name of the whole game is Control, just
observe any TV channel with a stopwatch and tell me how long you can sit
there without someone telling you to take some type of medication. Five
minutes? Ten? Your job is to need as many drugs as possible between now and
the day you die. Their job is to sell them to you. Does this have anything to
do with health? Rarely. This has to do with pharmaceutical economics. Health
is an entirely different topic altogether (www.thedoctorwithin.com).
Most medical
doctors tell patients that diet has very little to do with their particular
disease. Ever hear of a medical doctor doing a thorough analysis of a
patient's diet before diagnosing him as a diabetic and putting him on insulin
for life? Of course not. This is sales and marketing. Occasionally doctors
might say that diet may have contributed to a disease, but almost never will
they say that diet can cure a disease. Curing disease comes from only one
thing: drugs.
GLOWING
HEALTH OR MERE SURVIVAL?
A human
being is not a static mass of cells, but a living process. Each day we have a
chance either to improve overall health, or else just to survive for another
24 hours. Each day, each meal, is an opportunity to strengthen the immune
system, to shore up the body's reserves through nutritional choices. At any
given moment in time, our health is simply the cumulative result of all these
past choices.
Three
opposing forces are constantly at work, trying to control our food selection
:
Eating when
we're not hungry, or else just enough to get through the day, choosing the
most conveniently available foods, the ones with that quick jolt of sugar, or
processed fat ? this will allow us to survive.
But there's
another option available to us - choosing foods that will detox the body,
build our immunity, unclog our blood, and optimize the quality of life. Our ability to make rational
choices based on the body's real needs rather than on the programmed urges
from the food industry - this ability will determine our total health
potential.
Look around
you. Go shopping, or to the mall. How often do you see an example of this
Glowing Health, even among young people? Where is it? Or rather do you see
bloated, slovenly, unhappy people with bad skin and blocked colons? Processed
foods become our cells. We become processed food. Never underestimate the
forces at work 24 hours a day to make us consume as much processed dairy,
hydrogenated soybean oil, white sugar, and white flour as possible.
We are
addicted to the things that poison us.
40/20 If you've hit 40 and are still eating the way you did at 20,
chances are you're aging much faster than necessary. You're wearing out,
filling up. The body has exhausted its efforts to break down all those
chemicals, all those preservatives, all that hydrogenated oil. Since you
still take it in, it has to end up somewhere. It does - inside you. With rare
exceptions, at 40 you simply can't eat the way you did at 20. Not if you're
going to be healthy enough to avoid doctors and hospitals. Comfort foods? You
need your comfort foods? Poor baby, baby, baby. How comfortable will you be
in ICU?
THE MASTER KEY
The best
course of action would be to eat a diet consisting of more than 80%
enzyme-rich raw foods. No arguments there. But most of us simply can't resist
all that conditioning and advertising, and we rationalize to ourselves how
"life was meant to be lived and the hell with the rest," etc. And
that line of reasoning brings most of us to processed foods. Luckily, today
we have a way at least to minimize the clogging, toxifying residues of
undigested food.
Everything
we put in our mouths is a decision, even if it's an unconscious one. Each
food choice poses two questions:
- will this nourish the body? or - will this clog the body?
The
cumulative effect of these decisions determines whether we are toxifying or
detoxifying day by day ? whether we are getting sicker or better, building
our immune reserves or using them up, promoting degeneration or slowing it
down, moving toward life or toward death.. Aging or anti-aging.
ONE
SIMPLE STEP
Whole food
enzyme supplements can be the key to health, without changing one single
other thing. Detox the blood. What's the alternative? The toxins accumulate
in the blood. Result: allergies, autoimmune stuff, arthritis, or any type of
disease that starts with a chronic low-grade inflammation of something or
other. Almost sounds too simple. But that's the hallmark of the classic cure
- simplicity.
We're not
adding anything new. We're simply replacing something that has been
artificially removed by food processing: enzymes. We allow the body to find
its normal equilibrium. Mainly that just means stop poisoning it.
Unless we
take in sufficient enzymes to completely break our food down, we eat too
much. Year by year, we balloon up - check out the mall! Even for those of us
who are not overweight, we still have a decision to make. If we insist on
sticking with the modern American processed food diet, our only salvation
from "digging our graves with our teeth" is this: whole food
enzymes.
The
importance of this chapter can scarcely be overemphasized. No mattter what
the diet, no matter what the drug program, no matter what condition the body
is in, if this issue of enzyme intake is not meticulously addressed on a
daily basis, you're wasting your time. And you're really not serious about
getting better. Which actually is very common -- so many people use illness
or the trappings of illness as a power base, a means of getting
love/attention/sympathy. Unable to fill these needs as a normal individual,
they find their niche, their angle, their leverage in sickness. The more
dramatic and life threatening, the better. With any illness or chronic
degeneration, a program of enzymes is the starting point, the minimum, the
foundation of any healing regimen that has the slightest hope of success. Not
vitamins, not soy, not drugs, not Zango or algae or grocery store
multivitamins - just simple whole food enzymes.
Order this Chapter on Audio CD To order please call 408 298 1800 ?Copyright MMV - Dr Tim O'Shea |
REFERENCES
CDC---- National Vital Statistics ---
1999.
Schlosser,
E---- Fast Food Nation -- 2001
Naisbitt,
J----- Megatrends 2000 --- Harpe 1991.
Douglass, WC,
MD -- The Milk Book 1984.
D'Raye, T ----
Food Enzymes --- Avieca 1997.
Howell, Edward,
MD ---- Enzyme Nutrition ---Avery 1988
Bieler, H MD
---- Food Is Your Best Medicine--- Random House, 1965.
Price, W,
DDS---- Nutrition and Physical Degeneration ---1939 Keats
Tilden, JH, MD
---- Toxemia Explained --- Kessinger 1926.
Lee, RoyaL,
DDS ---- Conversations in Nutrition ---
Standard Process 1955.
Standard Process 1955.
Wiley, H MD
---- The Foods and Their Adulterations --- 1930.
Guyton, AC, MD
---- Medical Physiology --- Saunders 1996.
Twogood, D
---- No Milk --- Wilhelmina 1991.
Whittaker, J,
MD---- Best and Worst of Today's Supplements
Carrel, Alexis
MD---- Man, The Unknown --- 1935 MacFadden
Jensen,
Bernard ---- Empty Harvest --- Avery 1990
Anderson R
---- Cleanse and Purify --- 1998
Mendelsohn R,
MD ---- Confessions of a Medical Heretic
"How Safe
is Soy?"
Newlife Magazine May 1996.
Newlife Magazine May 1996.
O'Shea T---- The Magic Bean? Soy-tainly Not!---
www.thedoctorwithin.com 2001.
www.thedoctorwithin.com 2001.
No comments:
Post a Comment