THE THREE CIRCLES OF HEALTH

I was particularly struck by an article in a Canadian magazine by Inge Hanle “Why are Pharmaceutical ‘psycho-drugs’ mandated- and Orthomolecular Remediation shunned and even outlawed”? She put her finger on it by saying that “Health is not the driving engine of ‘health care. Money is and money talks. I have failed in laboring against this ignominious fact for years after my eyes were opened to the truth. The fact is, however, that we cannot ever give up”. Then what is the truth? I was told by a friend that he could not understand my previous posts. They were “too technical” so I am going to try to put all of them in a “nutshell” and say that all I am trying to do is to deliver a message. Each of the earlier posts actually depend on understanding the principles outlined here. This blog is not for entertainment, it is trying to educate the public, based on 64 years of medical practice. Neither does it cost a dime to read. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. It seems that few people ever give the slightest thought to why we breathe and what we do with the oxygen that we inhale. It is likely that when the use of oxygen (oxidation) in the body goes haywire, even fewer people associate it with illness. So let me make it as clear as I can in supporting the words of Inge Hanle. “Orthomolecular remediation” means that every cell in the animal body, including humans, requires fuel (calorie producing nutrients).Naturally occurring food includes a whole series of nutritional substances (orthomolecular) that must “ignite” (oxidation is a form of chemical combustion) to create energy. It applies to every one of the 70 to 100 trillion units (cells) that are stuck together to make a human body. Each cell has a special function that contributes to the enormously complex activities of the whole brain/body union. “Remediation” implies that this complement of nutrients is not being met by modern diet and must be provided for normal health, or even its retrieval. When a person has been consuming high calorie foods that do not have enough vitamin content, the cellular machinery begins to decline. The symptoms generated are so common that they are either ignored by family and physician or given the label “psychosomatic”, or “functional”. At this stage it only requires simple recognition of dietary error as the cause. If it continues for years, however, the damage gradually becomes irreversible and results in classic diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, ulcerative colitis, many different brain diseases in adults, and autism from bad nutrition in pregnancy. As we all know now, there are genetically determined diseases, but we will show shortly that such a handicap can be helped by nutrition and lifestyle--------a new science called epigenetics. The brain and the heart use more energy than any other tissue in the body. That is why the high calorie intake of white rice (fuel) without vitamin B (spark plug) caused thousands of years of terrible neurological and heart disease in millions. This disease, known as beriberi, is one of the classical vitamin deficiency diseases. White rice (the grain without the vitamin containing husks) is starch and was the staple food for the peasants in China. This is broken down to glucose in the body and is the primary fuel for our cells, particularly the brain. The high concentration of carbohydrate yielding calories without vitamin B caused the disease. The “fuel” was not being efficiently oxidized, resulting in lack of sufficient energy for the affected cells to function properly. It is a perfect example of high calorie malnutrition. Because modern diet is believed to have adequate vitamin enrichment, beriberi is considered to be only of historical interest. But starch is a carbohydrate and in our present culture sugar in ALL its different forms substitutes for white rice. Thus high carbohydrate calorie malnutrition Is common. The effect of this , known from experimental studies in human subjects in 1942, is to make the brain more irritable, producing “psychosomatic” symptoms. Examples are; heart palpitations, an intermittent form of relatively mild chest pain, IBS, PMS, excessive sweating, pins and needles or numbness, recurrent nausea and vomiting, fibromyalgia, sudden bursts of emotional reactions such as might follow a trivial incident and even allergic manifestations from food or external influence such as a mosquito bite. The brain/body is always alert to defend us from hostile aspects of nature. If, however, it has been made too responsive by high calorie malnutrition, it fires excessive signals that provide discomfort in the form of these symptoms. A full belly is not necessarily good nutrition. I have repeatedly referred to “high calorie malnutrition” in previous posts. It has been said that any complexity must be reduced to simplicity to be of general use. So I have provided an hypothesis to show how the complexity of modern medicine can be reduced to relative simplicity. By drawing three interlocking circles you can easily understand the mechanisms of health and disease. They all interlock at the center. Circle 1: Genetics. Modern medicine is looking deeper and deeper into our genetic mechanisms. They are trying, I believe falsely, to explain every disease on genetic grounds alone. It is true that genes come into our individualized construction and our DNA is never perfect. But many of the “mistakes” are minor and fortunately, by themselves, make little clinical difference. Some form of stress may initiate their action. Even major mistakes in DNA can often be helped b y the science of epigenetics. This is based on the discovery that our genes are indeed influenced by diet and lifestyle. Circle 2: Stress Stress is defined as “pressure or tension or compulsion (times of s.when much energy is needed)”. It is the part in italics that matters in the interpretation of its effect on health. People fail to be aware of the slow health deterioration that they can suffer both mentally and physically as a result of prolonged stress from all the complexities of modern lifestyle. They often fail to realize the energy consumption required for recovery from an infection or surgery. Because we have to adapt constantly to both physical and mental stress, the energy consumption can be enormous. If the energy producing biochemical mechanisms fail to keep up with the increased expenditure, cellular energy deficiency results in dysfunction that depends on locality and the aggregate number of affected cells. Circle 3: Nutrition. If a car gets the fuel for which it has not been designed, its performance is either reduced or it ceases. That is also true for us and so it behooves us to study the nature of the right fuel. Since we would not have survived as a species if the food had not been present when we arrived on Earth, it is obvious that naturally occurring food is the fuel that fits our design. Any substitute is essentially wrong, even though our “engines” are remarkably adaptable and many people “get away with it”. It should be obvious that the highest power car engines require the fuel most closely suited to its design and I have come to realize that the most superior people are in greater danger from poor nutrition. The observations made over many years indicate that the greatest danger is in high intelligence brains. I will give an illustration of the necessary interaction between these three circles from the history of beriberi , now accepted by all as an excess of simple carbohydrate without vitamin B 1. Its cause from dietary deficiency has been known for less than one hundred years. The peasants in China, where beriberi affected thousands, worked in factories made up of ranks of buildings, separated by relatively narrow corridors. In the early spring/summer months, the workers would take their lunch in the corridors. At first they would be in the shade but after a short while the sun would shine onto them. Some of the workers would develop their first symptoms of beriberi as they continued to sit in the sun. It was this kind of phenomenon that made the doctors think that the disease was due to infection since a few individuals succumbed at the same time. Now that the cause of this disease is an open book, the explanation is quite different. Why, for example, would only a few workers succumb? They were all eating the same diet. Genetic risk always comes into the picture in health and disease because we are all uniquely different in detail. Sunlight is stressful to the body. That is why we tan because it is a form of defense against the physical stress of sunlight. Granted that the nutrition circle was (and still is) the most important circle but sunlight initiated symptoms in those who were either more at risk genetically or diet wise. I imagine the workers most at risk were “sitting on the edge of a metabolic cliff”. The “stress factor” knocked them off the “cliff”. If we think this way, it becomes much easier to understand why a disease like diabetes can make its first appearance after a simple infection, a business crisis or a divorce. Geneticists have never been able to fit this disease into the classic concepts of genetics because that is only one circle in “The Three Circles of Health”