INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION

S

o why another "diet book"? Does the world really need one? Aren't there enough diet books out there already to thoroughly confuse the motivated individual seeking optimal nutrition? Cer­tainly, in sheer numbers, diet books are among the most common of books today. And, yes, in spite of the amount of information avail­able, getting scientifically accurate information on optimal nutrition is a most confusing and difficult task for most seekers. It is precisely because there are so many diet books out there that this book has been written. Most diet books contain a handful of good facts and a lot of self-serving fiction relating to the authors' personal experi­ences and preferences. Very few such books even attempt to be true to the physiological realities of how the human body works. This book describes the most important aspects of nutrition for main­taining (or regaining) a healthy body, including the natural reduc­tion of excess fat.

In fact, this book is not intended to be another "diet book." Rather, it became apparent over time that the foods and nutrients that made sick people clinically better and less toxic also helped these people to normalize their body weights. Obese individuals would lose weight, and abnormally thin individuals would tend to gain some weight. The subtleties of just how food is digested and processed in the digestive system in the attainment of optimal

xvi Introduction

nutrition also appeared to be directly related to how effectively fat was deposited into or mobilized from the body's tissues. Losing weight is the natural outgrowth of optimal nutrition. Similarly, eat­ing habits that support optimal nutrition result in better absorption of nutrients and weight gain in those who are underweight. When you eat properly and digest properly, you need not count calories in order to achieve your proper body size. In fact, if you follow the principles of nutrition outlined in this book, you can achieve a healthy weight loss without ever having to feel hungry at all. To be sure, some foods will have to be completely avoided, but hunger will not have to be an additional burden.

Is everything in this book the gospel truth? That is certainly the intent. However, education and awareness are lifelong, evolving processes, and I continue to discover new facts every day. More im­portantly, I continue to discover new ways that both old and new facts can be integrated into both traditional and nontraditional ways of thinking scientifically. When armed with a unique enough perspective, even the scientific conclusions of "mainstream" med­ical and scientific researchers will often mesh well with many of the "radical" conclusions asserted in this book. Everything you read in this book will challenge you to think both logically and intuitively. As far as possible, every statement in this book is supported either by clear logic, by common sense, or by a source reference in the sci­entific literature. You are never asked just to believe my conclusions and follow my recommendations blindly. Rather, you are presented with the evidence and asked to reach your own conclusions. Only when you realize that nutrition is really a very scientific process that follows specific and fairly rigid laws of nature will you likely be mo­tivated to follow the recommendations outlined in this book. And when you then begin to enjoy a healthier and less toxic life, you will be motivated to follow those recommendations as a permanent lifestyle. At the very least, you will have some important additional information to better understand why you might not be as healthy

Introduction xvii

as you would like when you end up eventually ignoring or only minimally following some of the most important recommendations in this book.

Let me tell you what led me to write this book. Over the past seven years, I have had a unique opportunity to observe, question, and follow up a large number of individuals who have undergone what is termed a Total Dental Revision. This process usually involved the following:

1. replacement of mercury amalgam fillings with composite
fillings tested to be as biocompatible as possible with the
immune system,

2. replacement of crowns with more immunologically biocom­
patible materials,

3. proper extraction of root canal-treated teeth,

4. proper removal of dental implants,

5. proper cleaning of all jawbone cavitations, and

6. elimination of the infective toxicity of periodontal disease.

These patients had come to the clinic of Hal A. Huggins, D.D.S., M.S., in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Typically, these patients were all significantly Ш, with multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's disease, Lou Gehrig's disease, and Alzheimer's disease assuming a dispropor­tionately large percentage. Nearly all had some degree of depres­sion, fatigue, irritability, brain fog, or other seemingly "nonspecific" departure from good health. Typically, the ages of the patients ranged from the late thirties to the early forties.

It is my belief and that of Dr. Huggins that toxicity from dental infections and dental materials is the source of most of the toxic ex­posure that most people face on a daily basis. Most of the patients who came through the clinic would consistently show clinical and laboratory test improvements promptly after their two-week treat­ments had concluded. It was in this context, along with subsequent

xviii Introduction

telephone follow-up, that I repeatedly witnessed what supported the clinical recovery of these patients, as well as what consistently compromised that recovery Repeatedly, specific nutritional inter­ventions would improve the clinical status of these patients. Just as repeatedly, especially when the patients felt they had recovered enough to start "sinning" again, specific nutritional choices would clinically crash their immune systems and sometimes return them to where they had started, or occasionally allow them to drop down to clinical states that were even worse than where they had started. Furthermore, the results of blood, hair, and urine testing repeatedly documented that specific laboratory abnormalities typically accom­panied these crashes. And it was repeatedly observed that these lab­oratory abnormalities, if followed carefully enough, would nearly always precede the clinical crashes.

The consistent conclusion that I drew from all of these observa­tions was that every individual's nutritional choices—and espe­cially the choices of one who is sick—cause almost immediate changes in laboratory test results and clinical well-being. Good nu­tritional practices help, and poor nutritional practices hurt. Follow­ing the book that I coauthored with Dr. Huggjns, Uninformed Consent: The Hidden Dangers of Dental Care, this book seemed to be the next natural step to take in attempting to guide the interested public in finding the best ways to live the healthiest possible lives by finding ways to cope more effectively with ever-increasing amounts of toxic exposure, much of which is largely unavoidable. Optimal nutrition, in combination with optimal supplementation, remains the single best way to deal with the presence of otherwise unavoidable toxicity in the body, regardless of its source.

Much of the information in this book, then, results from the direct and repeated observations that one food may improve blood chemistries and make a patient feel better, and another food may have just the opposite effect. The bottom line is that the recommen­dations in this book are not made on the basis of what I want to be

Introduction xix

true, but on the basis of what I have repeatedly observed to cause clinical improvement in a given patient, typically accompanied by consistent improvements in different laboratory tests. Few other au­thors of "diet books" have had the privilege of having their recom­mendations and conclusions so clearly tested and reconfirmed on an almost daily basis.

Many approaches to nutrition seem more to be systems of belief and passion than proper programs of eating and supplementation based on sound physiological principles. For example, one diet that has gained a very large following has been the one that advises dif­ferent foods depending upon one's blood type. In my opinion, this concept cannot be supported scientifically, although the uniqueness and simplicity of the diet appears to make it very compelling. Sim­plicity sells, even if the concept involved is incorrect. Except for the individual who has a legitimate allergy to a food or a food compo­nent, everyone, regardless of their blood type, should achieve good nutrition when the principles in this book are followed.

The vast majority of the population eats based on ancestral pat­terns, cultural norms, family customs, and lifelong habits. There are definitely genetic reasons for the predisposition to obesity and ill­ness, but shared patterns of poor nutrition are probably the most important factors for shared poor health among family members. You don't have to just accept that you will be overweight and die of a heart attack at a young age because that was your father's fate. When any family shares the same chronically poor nutritional prac­tices, that family will typically share a similar body type and health profile.

Another concept that emerged from this wealth of clinical infor­mation was that toxins are probably the primary factors that initiate or worsen most illnesses today. Whether from a dental source or elsewhere, toxins of all varieties act as continuous stressors on the immune system. As long as the immune system withstands the challenge, clinical health is preserved. However, when the toxic

xx Introduction

challenges finally overwhelm the immune system, disease will in­evitably result. Furthermore, such a disease will also tend to become rapidly entrenched and chronic, since the compromised immune system rarely gets an opportunity to favorably respond to the prac­tice of optimal nutrition along with the removal of toxicity. Rather, such an immune system is usually asked to recover in the face of unchanged toxicity and chronically poor nutrition. This is why so many people who become sick between their late thirties and their early fifties never again become completely well. They may survive, but they never again prosper. Too many people, along with their physicians, think that having their symptoms suppressed with pre­scription drugs is the equivalent of actually being healthy.

Nutrition is the primary way for our bodies to neutralize or oth­erwise deal with whatever toxins we face on a daily basis. And if you don't deal well with your toxins, you will not feel well or be well. No machine runs well on poor fuel, and our bodies are no different.

At first, you may feel overwhelmed by the amount of informa­tion in this book. Much of it will direct you to do the exact opposite of what you may be doing now. Furthermore, this book discredits much of the traditional nutritional advice given by other health care providers and nutritionists—a fact that may be difficult for you to accept. However, don't feel that if you cannot follow all of the rec­ommendations in this book, there is no point in following any of them. The detail is provided so that you can be completely in­formed, and so that any compromises you choose to make will be your own choices.

I wish you well in your pursuit of good health and normal body weight through optimal nutrition and the minimization of daily toxicity.

2 Optimal Nutrition for Optimal Health

on how to properly digest that food can actually be harmful to their health. At the very least, such advice misleads well-motivated peo­ple into thinking that only choosing the right foods ends their per­sonal responsibilities in their pursuit of optimal nourishment for their bodies.

Lef s now take a practical tour of the digestive system, focusing on how different food components are processed.

Introduction

the American Psychiatric Association in 1992 with the following words, words that still are apropos:

Misdiagnosis almost inevitably results in mistreatment. But that is hardly the end of it, because mistreatment or inadequate treatment can occur in the face of a correct diagnosis. Indeed, my concern with misdiagnosis is relatively minor. A far greater problem, to my mind, has been the vast amount of mistreatment of patients with a correct primary diagnosis by virtue of psychiatry's neglect of and antipathy for spiritual issues. This kind of mistreatment generally falls into one or more of five categories: failure to listen, denigration of the patient's humanity, failure to encourage healthy spirituality, failure to combat unhealthy spirituality or false theology, and failure to comprehend important aspects of the patient's life. (1993, p. 246)

With Peck's five categories in mind, we begin our investigation.

Introduction

mystical experience as symptomatic of ego regression, borderline psychosis, a psychotic episode, or temporal lobe dysfunction. As well, "dark night of the soul" experiences have been equated to clinical depression. While introduction of the V-code represents a significant first step toward explicit delineation of religious and spiritual clinical foci, it is a modest accommodation of religious and spiritual domains of functioning in diagnostic categories. One limitation is the tendency to compartmentalize clinical focus on religious or spiritual issues, versus viewing them as interwoven among all other areas of functioning. If psychiatrists were to view religion in a holistic perspective, religion might be understood as a significant domain of adaptive functioning, which may be adversely impacted by psychopathology (Scott, Garver, Richards, and Hathaway, 2003).

On average, psychiatrists hold far fewer religious beliefs than either their parents or their patients, and little if any attempt is made to explore the relevance of faith to illness or health. Moreover, despite the importance of religion and spirituality to most patients' lives, psychiatrists are not given adequate training to deal with issues arising from disturbances in these realms. С Jung's work on the importance of recognizing the "shadow" in healing of minds and souls has contributed a great deal to cementing productive relationships between patient and therapist, priest and counselor (Foskett, 1996).

Disorders of the mind raise questions about the meaning of life, the presence of evil, and the possibility that forces beyond the senses are influencing one's life. Contemporary psychiatry and religion can be viewed as parallel and complementary frames of reference for understanding and describing human experience and behavior. Thus, while they place different degrees of emphasis on body, mind, and spirit, integration is possible to achieve comprehensive patient care (Boehnlein, 2000). The interaction of contemporary psychiatry and religion can take place at several levels: patients may have religious beliefs that need to be taken into consideration when planning treatment, and patient's values may affect acceptance of treatment (Lukoff and Turner, 1998).

Only recently have theory and research addressed religion and mental health issues in a systematic and rigorous manner. In large part, results from studies have been consistent in indicating a salutary relationship between religious involvement and health status. The consistency of findings, despite diversity of samples, designs, methodologies, religious measures, health outcomes and population characteristics, serves to strengthen the positive association between religion and health. For several decades, empirical research findings and literature reviews have reported strong positive associations between measures of religious involvement and mental health outcomes. A beneficial impact of religious involvement was observed for outcomes such as suicide, drug use, alcohol abuse, delinquent behavior, marital satisfaction, psychological distress, certain functional psychiatric diagnoses, and depression. A next logical step for research on religion and mental health would be to explore possible explanations for this mostly positive religious effect. A variety of potential factors have already been identified. Social cohesiveness, the impact of internal locus of control beliefs, religious commitment, and faith

Introduction

Fundamental controversies between science and religion laid the groundwork for the modern origin of the antagonism between psychiatry and religion. Concerning psychiatry, a number of prejudices have stood in the way of a closer relationship with religion: the view that religions attract the mentally unstable, that religions may have their origins in madness, that religious experience is phenomenologically similar to psychopathology, that paranormal experiences are a product of definable patterns of brain functioning, that religions are harmful - inducing guilt - or that religious belief is ineffective. Research has proven these prejudices false (Fulford, 1996).

Deeper reasons for the separation between psychiatry and religion have to do with the identification of psychiatry with the "medical" model. As a science, psychiatry is assumed to be based on observation and experiment and in principle open to objective testing. Religion, on the other hand, is said to be "revealed." Psychiatry employs an essentially deterministic model, whereas religion assumes freedom of action. Yet the separation between science and religion is perhaps a peculiarly Western phenomenon (Fulford, 1996). During the early years of the twentieth century, psychiatry in the United States and Europe underwent a number of changes, most notable an increasing focus on social progress and general societal welfare. In addition to an evolving body of literature on psychoanalysis, other forces that shaped the field included new religious movements such as New Thought, Christian Science, theosophy, and spiritualism, as well as the growing social marginalization of fundamentalism. Moreover, in terms of diagnosis psychiatry began moving away from classifications based on course and prognosis of disease. Specifically, "religious insanity" or "religious mania" - diagnoses based on the content of a delusion - became irrelevant to classification and treatment (Thielman, 1998).

Although the notion of religious insanity faded with the coming of twentieth-century psychiatry, it lived on in some form in the ideas of Sigmund Freud. Freud challenged the notion that truth can be found in religion, viewing religious faith as based in the illusion that an idealized Father God can replace the lost earthly father to provide needed comfort and security. Freud viewed religion as a "universal obsessional neurosis." A goal of psychoanalysis was to trust in the scientific method as a source of truth concerning the nature of one's being and the world.

Since Freud, modern psychiatry and psychology make claims to have supplanted a number of religious concepts central to understanding human nature. Among these are notions of a soul, of sin, and of morality. Soul and sin have been replaced by notions of human consciousness and psychological and social pathologies. Deficiencies in morality are understood as products of inadequate socialization processes, thus obviating the need for confession and redemption. Religious teachings traditionally promoted the view that unhappiness, despair and other physical and mental suffering are meaningful events. While Western religious conceptions of illness recognize it to have a purpose within a grander design and emphasize the spiritual meaning of suffering, conservative psychiatry maintains a materialistic and mechanistic orientation. Thus, the two disciplines