Wives and Mothers as "Keepers of the Health"
blog post over at Nourishing Days
From the day their children are born mothers have a natural instinct to care for these little people that have been gifted to them. It is not only our job but our deepest desire to feed them, clothe them, bathe them, and shower them with affection, love, training and, when necessary, discipline. This has been the role of the mother since Eve.
Somewhere along the way, however, the role of wife and mother as "keeper of the health" has gone out the window. Perhaps it was when the majority of women left their home careers for a career elsewhere, or when we blindly accepted large companies as the source of our food, or maybe when we were backed into a corner of fear by the medical community.
Which ever way we got here, it is clear that we need to get back to being the "physic" for our families, as Laura Schenone writes in A Thousand Years Over a Hot Stove:
During the 17th century, food and medicine did not reside in the separate spheres they do today. Before the rise of professional medical schools (exclusively for men) during the 19th century, the job of healing, or "physic," naturally belonged to women. Most doctoring came from the kitchen and its gardens, and you were as likely to eat or drink something for your ailments as to take a specialized medicine.
Much of the knowledge that our foremothers held has sadly not been passed down. If you are like me you get married, have children and then wake up and realize that you are either too afraid or uninformed to help heal your family of even the most minor of ailments.
That needs to change.
The first step is prevention and with a nourishing diet we can give our families a head start. But there is so much more that we can do for our families, with the right knowledge and support.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Monday, October 19, 2009
Fighting off sickness with real food
I've had quite a few people ask me about the flu vaccine, winter sickness, etc. My own experience has taught me to always try natural remedies first. Soft nourishing foods, lots of purified water, herbal tea, garlic, and warm cozy socks are all I need this year to keep my family healthy. I've got a big batch of chicken broth cooking on the stove today so that I can start feeding it to my family as a preventative measure. I've got my Temp Assure herbal drops for the kids, lots of fresh garlic, and Olive Leaf Extract. As soon as I feel a warm forehead I give my kids the Temp Assure....within about an hour they are always feeling much better. Our naturopath recommended that we use nature's antibiotic, Olive Leaf Extract, at the first feelings of a bug. I also keep our lives a little more slower paced in the cold weather. This is nature's time for rest, as it is ours. Lots of books, games, puzzles, cooking, warm cups of tea with honey, and jammies.
Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat wrote this fantastic article about fighting the flu with real food. Enjoy and stay healthy this fall!
The flu, especially H1N1, is big news today. The words “Swine Flu” invoke fear and even panic.
The general focus on dealing with the flu is with vaccines and drugs. However, your body’s first line of defense against the flu, real food, is all but ignored.
Hippocrates of Cos is perhaps the most famous physician of all time. He is known as the father of medicine. He wrote the Hippocratic Oath, which used to be taken by all doctors. He is famous for his dictum, “First, do no harm.” What is not so well known is that Hippocrates advocated using food and other natural methods first, before anything else was tried. Drugs would only be used if the more natural methods failed, and surgery was used only as the last resort.
I have followed Hippocrates’ advice, and it has worked very well for me, my family, and others.
The First Line of Defense—Broth
Traditional peoples knew which foods could heal and prevent many illnesses. This knowledge was gained by observation, sometimes over thousands of years.
After much research, I have combined a number of these traditional healing foods into one broth. I call this Quadruple Healing Broth. We have found this broth to be a cold-buster and a flu-stopper.
Chicken soup is one of the most famous home remedies for colds and the flu. Recent studies have found that chicken soup has anti-viral, anti-bacterial, and anti-inflammatory qualities. The nutrients in a good chicken soup will strengthen your immune system, giving your body the nutrients it needs to heal itself.
Onions were prized by the ancient Egyptians, the ancient (and contemporary) Indians, and many other peoples for their healing qualities.
Green onions were valued by the Chinese, who often ate them daily and used them to treat colds and the flu.
Leeks were also used by the ancient Egyptians for healing all sorts of ailments, and were so loved by the Welsh that leeks became a symbol of Wales, signifying pride, strength, and health.
Garlic was used for healing by the ancient Egyptians, the Indians, the Chinese, and many other peoples. Garlic has many anti–inflammatory, anti-viral, anti-bacterial, and immune-boosting qualities.
However, it must be understood that all foods used for healing by traditional peoples were organic and were not GMO. Modern factory versions of these foods are very different and just will not work. The chicken soup was always made from scratch. You cannot pour health-giving nutrients out of a can, or extract them from a bouillon cube.
Quadruple Healing Broth is the cornerstone of our Hippocratic first line of defense. At the first sign of a cold or flu, we sip plenty of this broth, hot, not scalding. Usually, a few cups of this broth (sometimes only one or two), is enough to stop the cold or flu in its tracks.
However, sometimes you cannot sip broth because you are throwing up or coughing. This led me to develop two food-based remedies, one for vomiting and one for coughing. I came up with both of these after researching a large number of Ayurvedic remedies, and trying a few combinations.
Food-Based Vomiting Remedy
You will need the following ingredients:
1 organic onion, peeled
1 (2-inch) piece of organic fresh ginger, peeled, sliced, and crushed
Pure filtered water, (reverse osmosis water is best, but distilled water will also work)
1.Make ginger tea. Place the ginger in a small pan with two cups of filtered water, bring to a boil, and simmer uncovered for ten minutes. Remove from the heat.
2.Grate the onion into a bowl, using a hand grater. Place the grated onion in a clean, chemical-free cloth (cheese cloth works fine), and squeeze the cloth-covered onion over a bowl until no more juice drips through the cloth. You should have a tablespoon or so of juice in the bowl. Immediately place the juice in a small cup (like a shot glass), and have the sick person swallow it all at once. It goes down easier if the swallower holds their nose shut with the other hand.
This should stop the vomiting immediately.
The onion juice should be made just before using. It should be taken immediately after being made, and should not sit in a bowl.
3.10 minutes after the onion juice is taken, one tablespoon of strained ginger tea should be taken.
4.Every 15 minutes for the next hour, take one tablespoon of strained ginger tea. This will help rehydrate the body and prevent further vomiting.
5.After this hour, small sips of broth can be tried.
If vomiting reoccurs, the whole remedy should be repeated. Usually, this will not be necessary.
Recently, a teenage boy who had the swine flu was vomiting every few minutes. He stopped vomiting after he swallowed the onion juice. Several hours later he gulped down a cold drink and threw up once. He took the remedy once more and never vomited again. The next day he was almost completely well.
Food-Based Coughing Remedy
You will need the following ingredients:
Organic turmeric
Organic raw honey
This remedy could not be easier. You mix one-quarter teaspoon of organic turmeric with one teaspoon of the honey, then swallow it. It should provide immediate relief from any cough. You can repeat this every four hours, as needed.
Recently, a woman with severe immune problems caught the swine flu. She was treated with Tamiflu, but developed a constant, horrible wracking cough that was so bad she could not sleep. The cough medicine prescribed by her doctor did not help. She had tried the remedy using non-organic turmeric, and it did not help. I convinced her husband to get organic turmeric. She took the remedy again, and her cough was reduced to a very mild, occasional cough, and she was able to sleep. She never had a bad cough again. She went on to make a full recovery from the swine flu.
The Second Line of Defense—Supplements
What does a family do on the rare occasion that the broth does not kill the flu? We use a product created by Doctor Mayer Eisenstein of Homefirst Health Services. This product consists of vitamin D3 with probiotics. The web address for this product is as follows: http://store.homefirst.com/font-size4bPro-D-50-with-Probiotics/productinfo/KD50P
Doctor Eisenstein, a true Hippocratic physician, explains how to use the product at the bottom of the page.
This product, taken with the broth, has never failed us.
The Third Line of Defense—The Doctor
This would be to go to a doctor. Hopefully, a doctor who listens to his or her patients, is open to alternative remedies, and is much more than a pill pusher. I have not had to go to the third line of defense for over five years.
Real food has enabled me and my family to defeat colds and the flu for years. Unlike drugs, the only side effect is that real food improves your general health and immune system.
The following recipe for Quadruple Healing Broth is taken from my cookbook, Tender Grassfed Meat: Traditional Ways to Cook Healthy Meat.
Quadruple Healing Broth
Makes 6 to 8 quarts
4 to 6 pounds assorted free range chicken parts and bones, such as wing tips, backs, necks, carcasses from a roast chicken, legs, wings, etc.
Enough filtered water to cover the bones by 2 to 3 inches
½ cup organic, raw, unfiltered apple cider vinegar
Assorted Root Vegetables
1 large organic leek, carefully washed, and chopped
1 large or 2 medium organic onions, peeled and chopped
1 bunch organic green onions, roots trimmed off, chopped
1 bulb of organic garlic, peeled and slightly crushed
For Simmering
Several chicken giblets
½ bunch organic Italian parsley, including stems, each stalk cut in half
2 tablespoons coarse unrefined sea salt
1.Peeling and crushing a whole bulb of garlic may seem like a lot of work. It is actually quite easy with the proper technique. You need a heavy cleaver or rolling pin. Separate the garlic cloves out of the bulb. Place the clove on a wooden cutting board, and press down hard on it with a rolling pin, or the flat of a cleaver. The clove will crack, and the skin will pop off easily. You may need to make one small cut at the root end of the clove to remove the remaining skin.
2.Put the bones and scraps of meat in the pot, except for the giblets. Add the water and the vinegar. Let sit at room temperature for 1 hour.
3.Add all the vegetables. Heat the pot until the water begins a strong simmer. This will take a while due to the large volume of ingredients and water.
4.When the water is close to boiling, remove all the scum that rises to the top with a skimming spoon. This can also take a while, but is necessary.
5.Once the scum is gone, add the giblets, parsley, and the salt.
6.Cover and simmer gently for 12 to 14 hours.
7.Using a ladle, strain into jars, cover, and refrigerate once the bottles have cooled down. The fat will rise to the top, and will solidify in the refrigerator. This fat cap will help preserve the broth. The fat should be removed before the broth is reheated.
I am not a doctor, and the above is not intended to be medical advice. Quadruple Healing Broth is a food, not a medicine. By all means, see a doctor if you want medical advice. The above is just a description of how some families deal with colds and the flu.
Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat wrote this fantastic article about fighting the flu with real food. Enjoy and stay healthy this fall!
The flu, especially H1N1, is big news today. The words “Swine Flu” invoke fear and even panic.
The general focus on dealing with the flu is with vaccines and drugs. However, your body’s first line of defense against the flu, real food, is all but ignored.
Hippocrates of Cos is perhaps the most famous physician of all time. He is known as the father of medicine. He wrote the Hippocratic Oath, which used to be taken by all doctors. He is famous for his dictum, “First, do no harm.” What is not so well known is that Hippocrates advocated using food and other natural methods first, before anything else was tried. Drugs would only be used if the more natural methods failed, and surgery was used only as the last resort.
I have followed Hippocrates’ advice, and it has worked very well for me, my family, and others.
The First Line of Defense—Broth
Traditional peoples knew which foods could heal and prevent many illnesses. This knowledge was gained by observation, sometimes over thousands of years.
After much research, I have combined a number of these traditional healing foods into one broth. I call this Quadruple Healing Broth. We have found this broth to be a cold-buster and a flu-stopper.
Chicken soup is one of the most famous home remedies for colds and the flu. Recent studies have found that chicken soup has anti-viral, anti-bacterial, and anti-inflammatory qualities. The nutrients in a good chicken soup will strengthen your immune system, giving your body the nutrients it needs to heal itself.
Onions were prized by the ancient Egyptians, the ancient (and contemporary) Indians, and many other peoples for their healing qualities.
Green onions were valued by the Chinese, who often ate them daily and used them to treat colds and the flu.
Leeks were also used by the ancient Egyptians for healing all sorts of ailments, and were so loved by the Welsh that leeks became a symbol of Wales, signifying pride, strength, and health.
Garlic was used for healing by the ancient Egyptians, the Indians, the Chinese, and many other peoples. Garlic has many anti–inflammatory, anti-viral, anti-bacterial, and immune-boosting qualities.
However, it must be understood that all foods used for healing by traditional peoples were organic and were not GMO. Modern factory versions of these foods are very different and just will not work. The chicken soup was always made from scratch. You cannot pour health-giving nutrients out of a can, or extract them from a bouillon cube.
Quadruple Healing Broth is the cornerstone of our Hippocratic first line of defense. At the first sign of a cold or flu, we sip plenty of this broth, hot, not scalding. Usually, a few cups of this broth (sometimes only one or two), is enough to stop the cold or flu in its tracks.
However, sometimes you cannot sip broth because you are throwing up or coughing. This led me to develop two food-based remedies, one for vomiting and one for coughing. I came up with both of these after researching a large number of Ayurvedic remedies, and trying a few combinations.
Food-Based Vomiting Remedy
You will need the following ingredients:
1 organic onion, peeled
1 (2-inch) piece of organic fresh ginger, peeled, sliced, and crushed
Pure filtered water, (reverse osmosis water is best, but distilled water will also work)
1.Make ginger tea. Place the ginger in a small pan with two cups of filtered water, bring to a boil, and simmer uncovered for ten minutes. Remove from the heat.
2.Grate the onion into a bowl, using a hand grater. Place the grated onion in a clean, chemical-free cloth (cheese cloth works fine), and squeeze the cloth-covered onion over a bowl until no more juice drips through the cloth. You should have a tablespoon or so of juice in the bowl. Immediately place the juice in a small cup (like a shot glass), and have the sick person swallow it all at once. It goes down easier if the swallower holds their nose shut with the other hand.
This should stop the vomiting immediately.
The onion juice should be made just before using. It should be taken immediately after being made, and should not sit in a bowl.
3.10 minutes after the onion juice is taken, one tablespoon of strained ginger tea should be taken.
4.Every 15 minutes for the next hour, take one tablespoon of strained ginger tea. This will help rehydrate the body and prevent further vomiting.
5.After this hour, small sips of broth can be tried.
If vomiting reoccurs, the whole remedy should be repeated. Usually, this will not be necessary.
Recently, a teenage boy who had the swine flu was vomiting every few minutes. He stopped vomiting after he swallowed the onion juice. Several hours later he gulped down a cold drink and threw up once. He took the remedy once more and never vomited again. The next day he was almost completely well.
Food-Based Coughing Remedy
You will need the following ingredients:
Organic turmeric
Organic raw honey
This remedy could not be easier. You mix one-quarter teaspoon of organic turmeric with one teaspoon of the honey, then swallow it. It should provide immediate relief from any cough. You can repeat this every four hours, as needed.
Recently, a woman with severe immune problems caught the swine flu. She was treated with Tamiflu, but developed a constant, horrible wracking cough that was so bad she could not sleep. The cough medicine prescribed by her doctor did not help. She had tried the remedy using non-organic turmeric, and it did not help. I convinced her husband to get organic turmeric. She took the remedy again, and her cough was reduced to a very mild, occasional cough, and she was able to sleep. She never had a bad cough again. She went on to make a full recovery from the swine flu.
The Second Line of Defense—Supplements
What does a family do on the rare occasion that the broth does not kill the flu? We use a product created by Doctor Mayer Eisenstein of Homefirst Health Services. This product consists of vitamin D3 with probiotics. The web address for this product is as follows: http://store.homefirst.com/font-size4bPro-D-50-with-Probiotics/productinfo/KD50P
Doctor Eisenstein, a true Hippocratic physician, explains how to use the product at the bottom of the page.
This product, taken with the broth, has never failed us.
The Third Line of Defense—The Doctor
This would be to go to a doctor. Hopefully, a doctor who listens to his or her patients, is open to alternative remedies, and is much more than a pill pusher. I have not had to go to the third line of defense for over five years.
Real food has enabled me and my family to defeat colds and the flu for years. Unlike drugs, the only side effect is that real food improves your general health and immune system.
The following recipe for Quadruple Healing Broth is taken from my cookbook, Tender Grassfed Meat: Traditional Ways to Cook Healthy Meat.
Quadruple Healing Broth
Makes 6 to 8 quarts
4 to 6 pounds assorted free range chicken parts and bones, such as wing tips, backs, necks, carcasses from a roast chicken, legs, wings, etc.
Enough filtered water to cover the bones by 2 to 3 inches
½ cup organic, raw, unfiltered apple cider vinegar
Assorted Root Vegetables
1 large organic leek, carefully washed, and chopped
1 large or 2 medium organic onions, peeled and chopped
1 bunch organic green onions, roots trimmed off, chopped
1 bulb of organic garlic, peeled and slightly crushed
For Simmering
Several chicken giblets
½ bunch organic Italian parsley, including stems, each stalk cut in half
2 tablespoons coarse unrefined sea salt
1.Peeling and crushing a whole bulb of garlic may seem like a lot of work. It is actually quite easy with the proper technique. You need a heavy cleaver or rolling pin. Separate the garlic cloves out of the bulb. Place the clove on a wooden cutting board, and press down hard on it with a rolling pin, or the flat of a cleaver. The clove will crack, and the skin will pop off easily. You may need to make one small cut at the root end of the clove to remove the remaining skin.
2.Put the bones and scraps of meat in the pot, except for the giblets. Add the water and the vinegar. Let sit at room temperature for 1 hour.
3.Add all the vegetables. Heat the pot until the water begins a strong simmer. This will take a while due to the large volume of ingredients and water.
4.When the water is close to boiling, remove all the scum that rises to the top with a skimming spoon. This can also take a while, but is necessary.
5.Once the scum is gone, add the giblets, parsley, and the salt.
6.Cover and simmer gently for 12 to 14 hours.
7.Using a ladle, strain into jars, cover, and refrigerate once the bottles have cooled down. The fat will rise to the top, and will solidify in the refrigerator. This fat cap will help preserve the broth. The fat should be removed before the broth is reheated.
I am not a doctor, and the above is not intended to be medical advice. Quadruple Healing Broth is a food, not a medicine. By all means, see a doctor if you want medical advice. The above is just a description of how some families deal with colds and the flu.
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Your Brain on Food
Go to the bathroom, grab a snack and get cozy....it's a long one.
Your Brain on Food
William J. Walsh, PhD
& Fernando Gomez-Pinilla PhD
In 1972, William J. Walsh was working with ex-convicts, helping them return
to society. While conventional wisdom of the day held that childhood
influences were the main cause of behavior problems and mental illness, he
learned that many of his clients were raised alongside siblings who had
developed no law-breaking or criminal tendencies. In fact they were well
adjusted, normal people. Walsh couldn't understand, he says, "how some of
these people who did such horrible things came from nice families." He
suspected that criminal behavior had a lot to do with genetics. Murderers,
he suspected, likely had faulty brain chemistry. So he started testing
people who had committed violent acts, ex-cons, imprisoned serial killers
and mass murderers, including Charles Manson and Richard Speck. He tested
their blood, urine and tissues, and compared them to samples from normal
people. After many years of such research, Walsh discovered that indeed the
violent people did have distinct biochemical imbalances, compared to the
general population.
This set Walsh on his life-long quest for answers regarding brain chemistry
and its effect on behavior and mental illnesses such as autism, depression,
schizophrenia, ADHD, bipolar disorder, Alzheimer's disease, and other
illnesses. His findings have implications for most of us because nutrients
in our diets, he has found, can have a profound effects on our moods, our
capacity to learn, and many of our mental functions.
William J. Walsh is president of the newly-created Walsh Research Institute
in Naperville Illinois. He has authored more than 200 scientific articles
and reports and been invited to speak at 28 international scientific
symposiums.
In the 1980's, Walsh founded the non-profit Health Research Institute (HRI)
and its clinical arm, the Pfeiffer Treatment Center in Warrenville,
Illinois. Walsh named the center after his long-time collaborator, the late
Carl Pfeiffer, M.D., Ph.D., a physician and pharmacologist who was one of
the world's leading nutritional biochemists.
Walsh's most recent work includes: a research project on Alzheimer's disease
with Argonne National Laboratory and Louisiana State University;
collaborations with, among others, the University of Pennsylvania Medical
School, Case Western Reserve University, and Bruce Ames PhD at Children's
Hospital Oakland Research Institute.
Here, William Walsh talks to Nexus publisher Ravi Dykema about nutrients,
mental illness, genetic individuality, and the difficulty of getting
innovative research noticed my mainstream medicine.
RD: You started out studying criminals' brain chemistry. What did you
discover?
WW: We found that criminals - not all of them, but most of them - have
distinctive chemical imbalances that have a striking impact on their
behavior. We've now tested and treated more than 10,000 behavior disordered
children and adults. We've published highly successful outcome studies. The
frustration is that no one in the established field pays attention to this
kind of research. We think we have probably the best answer for reducing
crime and violence in America, yet we haven't been able to get it into the
mainstream. So now I've recently been collaborating with scientists at
universities and publishing more articles, and I'm hoping that that will get
more attention.
RD: What intervention are you using with people who have imbalances in
biochemistry?
WW: The weapons we use are strictly nutrients. Vitamins, minerals, amino
acids, and what I call natural biochemicals.
RD: Could you give us an example of what a typical regimen would look like?
WW: Let's say you are deficient in vitamin B6 because of a genetic disorder.
You need B6 in your brain because it is involved in the last synthesis step
that creates serotonin, an important neurotransmitter. If you have this
genetic disorder, you will be low in serotonin and prone to depression,
anxiety or obsessive-compulsiv e tendencies. You could take Prozac or Paxil
and get some benefits, but a more scientific approach is to simply normalize
the B6 levels. We've done this hundreds and hundreds of times with great
success.
This treatment works really well in conjunction with psychiatric medication
and counseling. It's another weapon in the arsenal of a mental health
practitioner.
I get a lot of calls from doctors, who say "I've got this patient I've been
working with for a long time. They went to your clinic, and now they're
better. Can you tell me what you did?" When I explain the testing and the
use of nutrients, about 2/3 of them lose interest. Some of them say things
like, "How can a vitamin or amino acid possibly help somebody with
schizophrenia or autism? Don't they really need a drug?"
The answer is "no." Scientists have figured out, step by step, how
neurotransmitters are formed in the brain, and they know that the raw
materials, the only ingredients for this synthesis, are nutrients: amino
acids, vitamins and minerals. Many people have genetic aberrations that
result in deficient or excessive levels of these chemical raw materials, and
it shouldn't be a surprise that they have mental health problems.
We've also learned that the greatest mischief in the brain is caused by
nutrients that are in overload. You might get a typical input from your
diet, but because of a genetic abnormality something goes wrong and you wind
up with overloads of key nutrients. That's why multiple vitamins don't work;
it's not just a matter of treating deficiencies, but also of coping with
overloads.
RD: What's one nutrient that may be in overload because of a genetic
abnormality?
WW: Copper. There's a protein in the body that has the job of getting rid of
excess copper. Imbalances in copper can cause dramatic imbalances in two key
neurotransmitters, and lead to enormous problems. For example, 68 percent of
all ADHD kids have a tendency for very high levels of copper. Excess copper
causes inattention, distractibility, anxiety and hyperactivity. It's
associated with sleep problems. This is all well known in brain science.
RD: What other problems can be caused by excess copper?
WW: We've found that nearly all women with a history of postpartum
depression have a tendency for very high copper levels in their blood. It is
especially problematic for women, because estrogen and copper are
proportionately related. If you're high in estrogen, you'll be high in
copper. Copper is also associated with an increased tendency for cancer;
that may very well be why high estrogen levels have been shown to increase
the likelihood of hormonal cancers in females.
RD: How would you treat excess copper?
WW: By normalizing a protein that removes excess copper from the body. We
slowly, gradually introduce the nutrients that stimulate the synthesis and
the functioning of that protein. People who are high in copper invariably
are zinc deficient as well, so we also slowly and gradually normalize their
zinc levels. Then the protein begins to function and, in most cases, the
copper levels return to normal. It's about a two-month procedure for most
people. If we did it very suddenly, and we gave them high doses of
everything, the excess copper would be dumped from tissues and the blood
levels would go even higher. You could see a decline in health before the
patient got better, as all the excess copper is exiting the body. So you
have to be somewhat careful with overloads.
RD: What nutrients do you use to enable the genetic synthesis of this
protein?
WW: Glutathione is helpful; also, selenium, vitamin C and vitamin E. I did
patent this therapy for autism. It seems to benefit quite a few of the
autistic kids we've seen.
RD: This is quite an involved protocol; how much would it cost a patient or
an insurance company to learn the diagnosis and undergo treatment?
WW: The cost for initial evaluation at the Pfeiffer Treatment Center is
around $1,000; it might be a couple of hundred dollars more for an autistic
patient or a schizophrenic, because there's more work involved.
There are a few places from which any doctor can order the key labs and get
them done for about $200. The challenge, however, is interpreting the lab
work, putting that together with a medical history and a review of symptoms,
and then coming up with an accurate diagnosis of the chemical imbalance and
the design of the treatment program.
But there's a tremendous amount of interest in this protocol, and more
doctors are getting trained in performing it. I was just in Australia in
April, where we trained 26 doctors, including a couple of psychiatrists.
Hundreds and hundreds of Australians are now receiving these kinds of
therapies, and I'm getting a lot of great reports. I'm scheduled to go to
Norway in November to train 30 to 35 practitioners, then to Tokyo in
January. My goal is to train 1,000 doctors in the next 10 years.
RD: Once you have the initial diagnosis, how much does the treatment regimen
cost?
WW: It varies with each person. A typical program would cost between $60 and
$100 per month, certainly a small fraction of what it would cost for typical
medications. At the high end, treatment for autistic children can be as much
as $100 to $150 per month.
RD: You said earlier that medical professionals don't seem to pay attention
to this protocol, or your results. Why?
WW: It has to do with the history of understanding and treating mental
illness in the United States. Before the 1960s, if you had clinical
depression, you would find yourself lying on a couch with a caring
psychiatrist delving into your background, trying to find out what traumatic
events or circumstances in your childhood may have caused this depression.
The feeling was, at that time, that depression was a result of life
circumstances and negative events that had happened to you.
The big revolution in mental health happened in the mid-'60s, when
scientists discovered that people with clinical depression are born with
these tendencies. It didn't take long to realize that it had to do with
brain chemistry and neurotransmitters. In the middle '70s, neuroscientists
got all excited about this, and they began focusing on neurotransmitters
like serotonin and dopamine. But if you were a psychiatrist, this was a
terrible thing. You had spent 10 years learning how to help your patients,
and then your profession comes to you and says "Sorry, everything we taught
you was wrong. These people actually have some kind of a genetically caused
chemical imbalance in their brains."
Once this was discovered, the entire medical and scientific community
shifted its focus toward drug therapy. At that time, the medications used
were things like Thorazine and Haldol and other heavy-duty drugs. Now, more
modern and effective medications with fewer side effects are available. But
the approach is still drug based, and most studies are focused on improving
drugs - finding newer and better medications.
I think a hundred years from now, people will look back on this and will
belittle the medication-based treatment approach to mental illness. The real
key to treating mentally ill people is to find out what's gone wrong,
genetically or biochemically. What's different in the molecular biology of
the brain? I think that researchers will find that, in most cases, it's a
biochemical abnormality caused by differences in genetics, and those
differences can be corrected without drugs.
We're not at that point yet, because our knowledge is not great enough. For
example, with schizophrenics, my colleagues and I urge them to stay on
medication and to also do our treatment. After 6 months or a year, most of
them say that they've been able to function far better with a combination of
the two. We have hundreds of schizophrenics who are now living normal lives,
but most of them still need some medication support, because we haven't
learned how to do it with just nutrients alone. However, other issues may be
treated by nutrients alone. For example, when we treat clinical depression,
behavior disorders, autism and ADHD, 80 percent of the families we see tell
us that they've been able to completely eliminate their medication after our
protocol.
We are not opposed to psychiatric medications; we think they're a godsend
for millions of people. However there's a more scientifically accurate and
effective way to treat people.
RD: How prevalent are some of these disorders?
WW: More than 1 percent of all Americans are schizophrenics, and 2 to 4
percent experience psychiatric psychosis episodes at least once in their
lifetime. So that's 1 out of 25 Americans right there with severe brain
chemistry imbalances. With respect to behavior disorders, the incidence of
ADHD, according to NIH, is 4.75 percent, although now they're thinking that
number may be closer to 8 percent. Roughly 1 in 12 Americans have a
biochemical brain chemistry problem called ADHD. Some studies say as many as
20 percent of all Americans suffer from clinical depression at some point in
their lifetime, and most of these cases are caused by a genetic
predisposition.
RD: What about mental illnesses that aren't caused by genetics?
WW: We've met people who have had head injuries that cause psychiatric
problems; that's not a biochemistry problem. Once in a while we've met a
person who's had such a traumatic event in their lives that they've not been
able to get over it; their chemistry is normal, yet they're depressed. One
woman we saw said she had plenty of friends, a happy marriage, a job that
she loved, and still she was horribly depressed and had been for 8 years.
Well, we found out that 8 years ago, her only child died of leukemia. That
explained why she was depressed; it was such a terrible event for her, she
couldn't get over it, even though she had normal chemistry.
But that's the exception, not the norm. I've done a lot of forensic studies
on people like Charles Manson and Richard Speck. I have data on more than
800 people in prisons, and roughly 95 percent of them suffer from
distinctive chemical imbalances that have an impact on their brain function.
This is such exciting information; I've known for so many years how to help
these people. I've given presentations in many places, to senators, to heads
of corrections departments. Everyone seems very interested and excited about
this news, but nobody ever seems to have money to pursue it. If I had a
dangerous drug that would help behavior, I think I'd have no trouble getting
support. But people have difficulty believing that nutrients can be
powerful.
RD: If nutrients have such a huge impact on our brains, perhaps the average
American diet is having an impact on behavior.
WW: That's absolutely true. For example, a person who tends toward clinical
depression may have low serotonin levels. These people would do very well on
a high-protein diet, because almost all of these people have a disposition
toward being what we call under-methylated. Methyl comes from methionine,
which is a protein in food. Methionine has a powerful effect on the amount
of serotonin that's produced in the brain. We've also learned that these
same people tend to be very low in calcium and magnesium, so a diet rich in
calcium and magnesium, as well as protein, would really help them.
Then there are people with anxiety conditions who have the opposite problem:
they have too much methyl in their systems. These people thrive on a
vegetarian diet. They're also very low in folate, so they'd do very well by
eating foods that are rich in folates, such as leafy greens and salads. Some
people have to avoid certain things; for example, a woman with a history of
postpartum depression needs to avoid any supplements containing copper,
because almost all such women have high blood levels of copper because of
genetics. They should drink bottled water, since there's an increasing
amount of copper in the water supply in the United States.
But you have to get an accurate metabolic analysis to find out what you need
to emphasize in your diet and what you need to avoid. The best diet for one
person may be the worst diet for the next person. I think that's going to be
the next major advance in nutrition and diet - formulating specialized,
individualized diets for people. You're not going to get a one-size-fits- all
diet, because of the genetic differences in human beings.
RD: We've been talking about some severe cases, like people in prison or
those with significant behavior issues. What about the average person who
may have a higher level of anxiety than is justified by their past
experiences or current lifestyle? Let's say that person is reading this and
can't get a sophisticated diagnostic process for one reason or another. Do
you have any general suggestions for a healthy diet and lifestyle?
WW: I spent a few years looking at the general population, not people who
might have a horrible problem like schizophrenia or autism. About 10 years
ago, I developed a system whereby the average person, at a cost of less than
$100, would be able to identify what their biochemical type was. Every one
of these chemical imbalances-such as methylation problems, folic acid
deficiencies or toxic metal overload - has symptoms associated with it. If
you do a careful medical history and ask the right questions, you can be
quite accurate in identifying what a person's basic biochemistry is.
We found that there were 26 sub-groups, named from A to Z. For example, I'm
a type L, which means I'm a bit obsessive/compulsiv e, and tend to be a
perfectionist; for example, when I play sports, I get overly competitive. I
was playing racquetball yesterday and in the heat of the battle, I got
whacked in the eye with a racket that left me with a big black eye. That
type L behavior is associated with under-methylation.
There are classic symptoms associated with each one of these sub-groups of
chemical imbalances. I'm hoping to include a questionnaire in my upcoming
book, so that a reader can score him or herself to get a good idea of what
nutrients he or she needs to emphasize and which ones he or she would be
better off avoiding.
RD: Let's say someone has been eating a terrible American diet of fast food
containing predominantly white flour, meat, corn, sugar and trans fats, and
switches to a really healthy diet. What changes in mental health would you
expect to see?
WW: I would expect that for people who are biochemically intact, there would
be very little change-maybe a third of the population. But another two
thirds would see a significant change after a few months.
RD: Does diet and nutrition have that kind of dramatic impact on children's
behavior?
WW: Yes, diet has a lot do to with a child's ability to learn. There's no
doubt about that. I have seen more than 6,000 children with ADD,
hyperactivity or learning disabilities, and we've seen a lot of benefit just
by straightening out their diets. Many of them also have genetic imbalances,
where they might need supplement or nutrient therapy to normalize rather
massive chemical imbalance tendencies, but the nutrition piece is critical.
And exercise and sleep are important and well, especially exercise. If you
have the right diet and you exercise, your sleep will, in most cases, be
fine. Again, there are people with genetic abnormalities who will still have
sleep problems, but for most people, many issues can be corrected by the
right balance of nutrition and exercise.
RD: So in terms of public health and treating disease, it sounds like we're
presently barking up the wrong tree.
WW: Yes, the medical system in America is allopathic. That's the number one
problem. Doctors basically sit in their offices and wait for somebody to
come to them with a problem. There's not enough preventative medicine going
on, and that's what's missing. A person shows up with a heart attack, cancer
or diabetes, and the medical profession is trained to do a beautiful job of
coping with that disaster. But they don't know how to prevent these
disorders.
Medical science has spectacularly improved outcomes in the case of physical
problems, like heart disease or broken bones. But this doesn't hold true for
mental problems; that's still a black art trying to emerge into a science.
RD: Why do you think that is? And why is it that preventive medicine and
nutrition are so foreign to our medical system?
WW: It's not how our system is set up. We have a medical system that doesn't
respect and value nutrition. Doctors today might spend two or three days in
all their years of medical training on nutrition. Research isn't focusing on
prevention; it's aimed at finding a better drug, a psychiatric medication, a
foreign molecule that can help somebody. There's nothing sinister or
collaborative in this. It's just a market-driven event. Look in any
university's medical school: where does most of their funding come from?
Where do they get their research grants? Where do they get their endowed
chairs? Most of them come from pharmaceutical companies, so they tend toward
research that would please the benefactors. Nutrient therapy is something
that might actually anger or upset their benefactors.
If you look at the medical journals, almost all of the advertising is for
pharmaceuticals, psychiatric medications. It can be hard for these editors
to accept articles that will tend to harm that industry. But eventually,
people are going to learn that nutrients and a better diet can improve their
lives.
RD: What about insurance companies? How do they factor in?
WW: Insurance companies are a natural ally of preventive medicine, and
they're getting more and more powerful in dictating what kind of medicine is
given to people. Their interest is in keeping people healthy, and not having
to pay for treating disorders or problems. So on one hand you have a very
powerful natural ally, and the other sort of a natural enemy.
RD: How does this affect the research you're doing, and your attempts to
make it public?
WW: If the work that my colleagues around the world and I are doing ever got
enough attention, if we started showing alternatives to psychiatric
medications, you can imagine what would happen to us. We're hoping to get
enough solidarity and collaborations with universities and powerful people
so they won't kill us off. I guess we haven't succeeded enough to get their
attention, but eventually, it will happen. When it does, they'll trot out
experts to say that what we're doing is hokum, because their bottom line
depends on it.
RD: They'll challenge your research.
WW: I recently developed an exploratory treatment for Alzheimer's disease.
After testing 65 people on this therapy, many of them reported part of their
memory coming back, and we have people who have stabilized for many years.
Now, there's a medication called Aricept for Alzheimer's. Alzheimer's is a
disease where your brain cells just start dying off at a rapid rate. Aricept
does nothing to stop or slow the death of brain cells. It enables whatever's
left of the surviving brain to function better for a while. So you typically
get 4 to 8 months of better functioning while the brain is dying.
When we present our Alzheimer's research at a medical meeting, if it gets
any kind of publicity, I'm sure we will be attacked by the company that
produces Aricept. So far, I have not had a problem, and I'm doing everything
I can to build partnerships in the traditional medical community, such as in
universities and medical schools.
That was the mistake I made in the past. I worked with a relatively small,
unknown organization that wasn't likely to get publicized. Once, I went to
the American Psychiatric Association and presented data on what I thought
was a key understanding for autism. A number of media people came to me
afterward; someone from Reuter's asked "What university are you associated
with?" When I told him we weren't associated with a university, he said,
"Well, I'm not going to be able to publish this. It will raise too much
hope, and we don't know who you are. We can't have confidence that your
results are really legitimate."
Now I'm doing everything I can to collaborate with well-known, widely
accepted, high-quality people. The main thing is to get this out there and
get people to pay attention.
Your Brain on Food
William J. Walsh, PhD
& Fernando Gomez-Pinilla PhD
In 1972, William J. Walsh was working with ex-convicts, helping them return
to society. While conventional wisdom of the day held that childhood
influences were the main cause of behavior problems and mental illness, he
learned that many of his clients were raised alongside siblings who had
developed no law-breaking or criminal tendencies. In fact they were well
adjusted, normal people. Walsh couldn't understand, he says, "how some of
these people who did such horrible things came from nice families." He
suspected that criminal behavior had a lot to do with genetics. Murderers,
he suspected, likely had faulty brain chemistry. So he started testing
people who had committed violent acts, ex-cons, imprisoned serial killers
and mass murderers, including Charles Manson and Richard Speck. He tested
their blood, urine and tissues, and compared them to samples from normal
people. After many years of such research, Walsh discovered that indeed the
violent people did have distinct biochemical imbalances, compared to the
general population.
This set Walsh on his life-long quest for answers regarding brain chemistry
and its effect on behavior and mental illnesses such as autism, depression,
schizophrenia, ADHD, bipolar disorder, Alzheimer's disease, and other
illnesses. His findings have implications for most of us because nutrients
in our diets, he has found, can have a profound effects on our moods, our
capacity to learn, and many of our mental functions.
William J. Walsh is president of the newly-created Walsh Research Institute
in Naperville Illinois. He has authored more than 200 scientific articles
and reports and been invited to speak at 28 international scientific
symposiums.
In the 1980's, Walsh founded the non-profit Health Research Institute (HRI)
and its clinical arm, the Pfeiffer Treatment Center in Warrenville,
Illinois. Walsh named the center after his long-time collaborator, the late
Carl Pfeiffer, M.D., Ph.D., a physician and pharmacologist who was one of
the world's leading nutritional biochemists.
Walsh's most recent work includes: a research project on Alzheimer's disease
with Argonne National Laboratory and Louisiana State University;
collaborations with, among others, the University of Pennsylvania Medical
School, Case Western Reserve University, and Bruce Ames PhD at Children's
Hospital Oakland Research Institute.
Here, William Walsh talks to Nexus publisher Ravi Dykema about nutrients,
mental illness, genetic individuality, and the difficulty of getting
innovative research noticed my mainstream medicine.
RD: You started out studying criminals' brain chemistry. What did you
discover?
WW: We found that criminals - not all of them, but most of them - have
distinctive chemical imbalances that have a striking impact on their
behavior. We've now tested and treated more than 10,000 behavior disordered
children and adults. We've published highly successful outcome studies. The
frustration is that no one in the established field pays attention to this
kind of research. We think we have probably the best answer for reducing
crime and violence in America, yet we haven't been able to get it into the
mainstream. So now I've recently been collaborating with scientists at
universities and publishing more articles, and I'm hoping that that will get
more attention.
RD: What intervention are you using with people who have imbalances in
biochemistry?
WW: The weapons we use are strictly nutrients. Vitamins, minerals, amino
acids, and what I call natural biochemicals.
RD: Could you give us an example of what a typical regimen would look like?
WW: Let's say you are deficient in vitamin B6 because of a genetic disorder.
You need B6 in your brain because it is involved in the last synthesis step
that creates serotonin, an important neurotransmitter. If you have this
genetic disorder, you will be low in serotonin and prone to depression,
anxiety or obsessive-compulsiv e tendencies. You could take Prozac or Paxil
and get some benefits, but a more scientific approach is to simply normalize
the B6 levels. We've done this hundreds and hundreds of times with great
success.
This treatment works really well in conjunction with psychiatric medication
and counseling. It's another weapon in the arsenal of a mental health
practitioner.
I get a lot of calls from doctors, who say "I've got this patient I've been
working with for a long time. They went to your clinic, and now they're
better. Can you tell me what you did?" When I explain the testing and the
use of nutrients, about 2/3 of them lose interest. Some of them say things
like, "How can a vitamin or amino acid possibly help somebody with
schizophrenia or autism? Don't they really need a drug?"
The answer is "no." Scientists have figured out, step by step, how
neurotransmitters are formed in the brain, and they know that the raw
materials, the only ingredients for this synthesis, are nutrients: amino
acids, vitamins and minerals. Many people have genetic aberrations that
result in deficient or excessive levels of these chemical raw materials, and
it shouldn't be a surprise that they have mental health problems.
We've also learned that the greatest mischief in the brain is caused by
nutrients that are in overload. You might get a typical input from your
diet, but because of a genetic abnormality something goes wrong and you wind
up with overloads of key nutrients. That's why multiple vitamins don't work;
it's not just a matter of treating deficiencies, but also of coping with
overloads.
RD: What's one nutrient that may be in overload because of a genetic
abnormality?
WW: Copper. There's a protein in the body that has the job of getting rid of
excess copper. Imbalances in copper can cause dramatic imbalances in two key
neurotransmitters, and lead to enormous problems. For example, 68 percent of
all ADHD kids have a tendency for very high levels of copper. Excess copper
causes inattention, distractibility, anxiety and hyperactivity. It's
associated with sleep problems. This is all well known in brain science.
RD: What other problems can be caused by excess copper?
WW: We've found that nearly all women with a history of postpartum
depression have a tendency for very high copper levels in their blood. It is
especially problematic for women, because estrogen and copper are
proportionately related. If you're high in estrogen, you'll be high in
copper. Copper is also associated with an increased tendency for cancer;
that may very well be why high estrogen levels have been shown to increase
the likelihood of hormonal cancers in females.
RD: How would you treat excess copper?
WW: By normalizing a protein that removes excess copper from the body. We
slowly, gradually introduce the nutrients that stimulate the synthesis and
the functioning of that protein. People who are high in copper invariably
are zinc deficient as well, so we also slowly and gradually normalize their
zinc levels. Then the protein begins to function and, in most cases, the
copper levels return to normal. It's about a two-month procedure for most
people. If we did it very suddenly, and we gave them high doses of
everything, the excess copper would be dumped from tissues and the blood
levels would go even higher. You could see a decline in health before the
patient got better, as all the excess copper is exiting the body. So you
have to be somewhat careful with overloads.
RD: What nutrients do you use to enable the genetic synthesis of this
protein?
WW: Glutathione is helpful; also, selenium, vitamin C and vitamin E. I did
patent this therapy for autism. It seems to benefit quite a few of the
autistic kids we've seen.
RD: This is quite an involved protocol; how much would it cost a patient or
an insurance company to learn the diagnosis and undergo treatment?
WW: The cost for initial evaluation at the Pfeiffer Treatment Center is
around $1,000; it might be a couple of hundred dollars more for an autistic
patient or a schizophrenic, because there's more work involved.
There are a few places from which any doctor can order the key labs and get
them done for about $200. The challenge, however, is interpreting the lab
work, putting that together with a medical history and a review of symptoms,
and then coming up with an accurate diagnosis of the chemical imbalance and
the design of the treatment program.
But there's a tremendous amount of interest in this protocol, and more
doctors are getting trained in performing it. I was just in Australia in
April, where we trained 26 doctors, including a couple of psychiatrists.
Hundreds and hundreds of Australians are now receiving these kinds of
therapies, and I'm getting a lot of great reports. I'm scheduled to go to
Norway in November to train 30 to 35 practitioners, then to Tokyo in
January. My goal is to train 1,000 doctors in the next 10 years.
RD: Once you have the initial diagnosis, how much does the treatment regimen
cost?
WW: It varies with each person. A typical program would cost between $60 and
$100 per month, certainly a small fraction of what it would cost for typical
medications. At the high end, treatment for autistic children can be as much
as $100 to $150 per month.
RD: You said earlier that medical professionals don't seem to pay attention
to this protocol, or your results. Why?
WW: It has to do with the history of understanding and treating mental
illness in the United States. Before the 1960s, if you had clinical
depression, you would find yourself lying on a couch with a caring
psychiatrist delving into your background, trying to find out what traumatic
events or circumstances in your childhood may have caused this depression.
The feeling was, at that time, that depression was a result of life
circumstances and negative events that had happened to you.
The big revolution in mental health happened in the mid-'60s, when
scientists discovered that people with clinical depression are born with
these tendencies. It didn't take long to realize that it had to do with
brain chemistry and neurotransmitters. In the middle '70s, neuroscientists
got all excited about this, and they began focusing on neurotransmitters
like serotonin and dopamine. But if you were a psychiatrist, this was a
terrible thing. You had spent 10 years learning how to help your patients,
and then your profession comes to you and says "Sorry, everything we taught
you was wrong. These people actually have some kind of a genetically caused
chemical imbalance in their brains."
Once this was discovered, the entire medical and scientific community
shifted its focus toward drug therapy. At that time, the medications used
were things like Thorazine and Haldol and other heavy-duty drugs. Now, more
modern and effective medications with fewer side effects are available. But
the approach is still drug based, and most studies are focused on improving
drugs - finding newer and better medications.
I think a hundred years from now, people will look back on this and will
belittle the medication-based treatment approach to mental illness. The real
key to treating mentally ill people is to find out what's gone wrong,
genetically or biochemically. What's different in the molecular biology of
the brain? I think that researchers will find that, in most cases, it's a
biochemical abnormality caused by differences in genetics, and those
differences can be corrected without drugs.
We're not at that point yet, because our knowledge is not great enough. For
example, with schizophrenics, my colleagues and I urge them to stay on
medication and to also do our treatment. After 6 months or a year, most of
them say that they've been able to function far better with a combination of
the two. We have hundreds of schizophrenics who are now living normal lives,
but most of them still need some medication support, because we haven't
learned how to do it with just nutrients alone. However, other issues may be
treated by nutrients alone. For example, when we treat clinical depression,
behavior disorders, autism and ADHD, 80 percent of the families we see tell
us that they've been able to completely eliminate their medication after our
protocol.
We are not opposed to psychiatric medications; we think they're a godsend
for millions of people. However there's a more scientifically accurate and
effective way to treat people.
RD: How prevalent are some of these disorders?
WW: More than 1 percent of all Americans are schizophrenics, and 2 to 4
percent experience psychiatric psychosis episodes at least once in their
lifetime. So that's 1 out of 25 Americans right there with severe brain
chemistry imbalances. With respect to behavior disorders, the incidence of
ADHD, according to NIH, is 4.75 percent, although now they're thinking that
number may be closer to 8 percent. Roughly 1 in 12 Americans have a
biochemical brain chemistry problem called ADHD. Some studies say as many as
20 percent of all Americans suffer from clinical depression at some point in
their lifetime, and most of these cases are caused by a genetic
predisposition.
RD: What about mental illnesses that aren't caused by genetics?
WW: We've met people who have had head injuries that cause psychiatric
problems; that's not a biochemistry problem. Once in a while we've met a
person who's had such a traumatic event in their lives that they've not been
able to get over it; their chemistry is normal, yet they're depressed. One
woman we saw said she had plenty of friends, a happy marriage, a job that
she loved, and still she was horribly depressed and had been for 8 years.
Well, we found out that 8 years ago, her only child died of leukemia. That
explained why she was depressed; it was such a terrible event for her, she
couldn't get over it, even though she had normal chemistry.
But that's the exception, not the norm. I've done a lot of forensic studies
on people like Charles Manson and Richard Speck. I have data on more than
800 people in prisons, and roughly 95 percent of them suffer from
distinctive chemical imbalances that have an impact on their brain function.
This is such exciting information; I've known for so many years how to help
these people. I've given presentations in many places, to senators, to heads
of corrections departments. Everyone seems very interested and excited about
this news, but nobody ever seems to have money to pursue it. If I had a
dangerous drug that would help behavior, I think I'd have no trouble getting
support. But people have difficulty believing that nutrients can be
powerful.
RD: If nutrients have such a huge impact on our brains, perhaps the average
American diet is having an impact on behavior.
WW: That's absolutely true. For example, a person who tends toward clinical
depression may have low serotonin levels. These people would do very well on
a high-protein diet, because almost all of these people have a disposition
toward being what we call under-methylated. Methyl comes from methionine,
which is a protein in food. Methionine has a powerful effect on the amount
of serotonin that's produced in the brain. We've also learned that these
same people tend to be very low in calcium and magnesium, so a diet rich in
calcium and magnesium, as well as protein, would really help them.
Then there are people with anxiety conditions who have the opposite problem:
they have too much methyl in their systems. These people thrive on a
vegetarian diet. They're also very low in folate, so they'd do very well by
eating foods that are rich in folates, such as leafy greens and salads. Some
people have to avoid certain things; for example, a woman with a history of
postpartum depression needs to avoid any supplements containing copper,
because almost all such women have high blood levels of copper because of
genetics. They should drink bottled water, since there's an increasing
amount of copper in the water supply in the United States.
But you have to get an accurate metabolic analysis to find out what you need
to emphasize in your diet and what you need to avoid. The best diet for one
person may be the worst diet for the next person. I think that's going to be
the next major advance in nutrition and diet - formulating specialized,
individualized diets for people. You're not going to get a one-size-fits- all
diet, because of the genetic differences in human beings.
RD: We've been talking about some severe cases, like people in prison or
those with significant behavior issues. What about the average person who
may have a higher level of anxiety than is justified by their past
experiences or current lifestyle? Let's say that person is reading this and
can't get a sophisticated diagnostic process for one reason or another. Do
you have any general suggestions for a healthy diet and lifestyle?
WW: I spent a few years looking at the general population, not people who
might have a horrible problem like schizophrenia or autism. About 10 years
ago, I developed a system whereby the average person, at a cost of less than
$100, would be able to identify what their biochemical type was. Every one
of these chemical imbalances-such as methylation problems, folic acid
deficiencies or toxic metal overload - has symptoms associated with it. If
you do a careful medical history and ask the right questions, you can be
quite accurate in identifying what a person's basic biochemistry is.
We found that there were 26 sub-groups, named from A to Z. For example, I'm
a type L, which means I'm a bit obsessive/compulsiv e, and tend to be a
perfectionist; for example, when I play sports, I get overly competitive. I
was playing racquetball yesterday and in the heat of the battle, I got
whacked in the eye with a racket that left me with a big black eye. That
type L behavior is associated with under-methylation.
There are classic symptoms associated with each one of these sub-groups of
chemical imbalances. I'm hoping to include a questionnaire in my upcoming
book, so that a reader can score him or herself to get a good idea of what
nutrients he or she needs to emphasize and which ones he or she would be
better off avoiding.
RD: Let's say someone has been eating a terrible American diet of fast food
containing predominantly white flour, meat, corn, sugar and trans fats, and
switches to a really healthy diet. What changes in mental health would you
expect to see?
WW: I would expect that for people who are biochemically intact, there would
be very little change-maybe a third of the population. But another two
thirds would see a significant change after a few months.
RD: Does diet and nutrition have that kind of dramatic impact on children's
behavior?
WW: Yes, diet has a lot do to with a child's ability to learn. There's no
doubt about that. I have seen more than 6,000 children with ADD,
hyperactivity or learning disabilities, and we've seen a lot of benefit just
by straightening out their diets. Many of them also have genetic imbalances,
where they might need supplement or nutrient therapy to normalize rather
massive chemical imbalance tendencies, but the nutrition piece is critical.
And exercise and sleep are important and well, especially exercise. If you
have the right diet and you exercise, your sleep will, in most cases, be
fine. Again, there are people with genetic abnormalities who will still have
sleep problems, but for most people, many issues can be corrected by the
right balance of nutrition and exercise.
RD: So in terms of public health and treating disease, it sounds like we're
presently barking up the wrong tree.
WW: Yes, the medical system in America is allopathic. That's the number one
problem. Doctors basically sit in their offices and wait for somebody to
come to them with a problem. There's not enough preventative medicine going
on, and that's what's missing. A person shows up with a heart attack, cancer
or diabetes, and the medical profession is trained to do a beautiful job of
coping with that disaster. But they don't know how to prevent these
disorders.
Medical science has spectacularly improved outcomes in the case of physical
problems, like heart disease or broken bones. But this doesn't hold true for
mental problems; that's still a black art trying to emerge into a science.
RD: Why do you think that is? And why is it that preventive medicine and
nutrition are so foreign to our medical system?
WW: It's not how our system is set up. We have a medical system that doesn't
respect and value nutrition. Doctors today might spend two or three days in
all their years of medical training on nutrition. Research isn't focusing on
prevention; it's aimed at finding a better drug, a psychiatric medication, a
foreign molecule that can help somebody. There's nothing sinister or
collaborative in this. It's just a market-driven event. Look in any
university's medical school: where does most of their funding come from?
Where do they get their research grants? Where do they get their endowed
chairs? Most of them come from pharmaceutical companies, so they tend toward
research that would please the benefactors. Nutrient therapy is something
that might actually anger or upset their benefactors.
If you look at the medical journals, almost all of the advertising is for
pharmaceuticals, psychiatric medications. It can be hard for these editors
to accept articles that will tend to harm that industry. But eventually,
people are going to learn that nutrients and a better diet can improve their
lives.
RD: What about insurance companies? How do they factor in?
WW: Insurance companies are a natural ally of preventive medicine, and
they're getting more and more powerful in dictating what kind of medicine is
given to people. Their interest is in keeping people healthy, and not having
to pay for treating disorders or problems. So on one hand you have a very
powerful natural ally, and the other sort of a natural enemy.
RD: How does this affect the research you're doing, and your attempts to
make it public?
WW: If the work that my colleagues around the world and I are doing ever got
enough attention, if we started showing alternatives to psychiatric
medications, you can imagine what would happen to us. We're hoping to get
enough solidarity and collaborations with universities and powerful people
so they won't kill us off. I guess we haven't succeeded enough to get their
attention, but eventually, it will happen. When it does, they'll trot out
experts to say that what we're doing is hokum, because their bottom line
depends on it.
RD: They'll challenge your research.
WW: I recently developed an exploratory treatment for Alzheimer's disease.
After testing 65 people on this therapy, many of them reported part of their
memory coming back, and we have people who have stabilized for many years.
Now, there's a medication called Aricept for Alzheimer's. Alzheimer's is a
disease where your brain cells just start dying off at a rapid rate. Aricept
does nothing to stop or slow the death of brain cells. It enables whatever's
left of the surviving brain to function better for a while. So you typically
get 4 to 8 months of better functioning while the brain is dying.
When we present our Alzheimer's research at a medical meeting, if it gets
any kind of publicity, I'm sure we will be attacked by the company that
produces Aricept. So far, I have not had a problem, and I'm doing everything
I can to build partnerships in the traditional medical community, such as in
universities and medical schools.
That was the mistake I made in the past. I worked with a relatively small,
unknown organization that wasn't likely to get publicized. Once, I went to
the American Psychiatric Association and presented data on what I thought
was a key understanding for autism. A number of media people came to me
afterward; someone from Reuter's asked "What university are you associated
with?" When I told him we weren't associated with a university, he said,
"Well, I'm not going to be able to publish this. It will raise too much
hope, and we don't know who you are. We can't have confidence that your
results are really legitimate."
Now I'm doing everything I can to collaborate with well-known, widely
accepted, high-quality people. The main thing is to get this out there and
get people to pay attention.
Food for Thought
Brigham Young, President of the Church, 9 October 1872
"Would you want doctors? Yes, to set bones. We should want a good surgeon for that, or to cut off a limb. But do you want doctors? For not much of anything else, let me tell you, only the traditions of the people lead them to think so; and here is a growing evil in our midst. It will be so in a little time that not a woman in all Israel will dare to have a baby unless she can have a doctor by her. I will tell you what to do, you ladies, when you find you are going to have an increase, go off into some country where you cannot call for a doctor, and see if you can keep it. I guess you will have it, and I guess it will be all right, too. Now the cry is, “Send for a doctor.” If you have a pain in the head, “Send for a doctor;” if your heel aches, “I want a doctor;” “my back aches, and I want a doctor.” The study and practice of anatomy and surgery are very good; they are mechanical, and are frequently needed. Do you not think it is necessary to give medicine sometimes? Yes, but I would rather have a wife of mine that knows what medicine to give me when I am sick, than all the professional doctors in the world. Now let me tell you about doctoring, because I am acquainted with it, and know just exactly what constitutes a good doctor in physic. It is that man or woman who, by revelation, or we may call it intuitive inspiration, is capable of administering medicine to assist the human system when it is besieged by the enemy called Disease; but if they have not that manifestation, they had better let the sick person alone. I will tell you why: I can see the faces of this congregation, but I do not see two alike: and if I could look into your nervous systems and behold the operations of disease, from the crowns of your heads to the soles of your feet, I should behold the same difference that I see in your physiognomy—there would be no two precisely alike. Doctors make experiments, and if they find a medicine that will have the desired effect on one person, they set it down that it is good for everybody, but it is not so, for upon the second person that medicine is administered to, seemingly with the same disease, it might produce death. If you do not know this, you have not had the experience that I have. I say that unless a man or woman who administers medicine to assist the human system to overcome disease, understands, and has that intuitive knowledge, by the Spirit, that such an article is good for that individual at that very time, they had better let him alone. Let the sick do without eating, take a little of something to cleanse the stomach, bowels and blood, and wait patiently, and let Nature have time to gain the advantage over the disease. . . . Ladies and gentlemen, you may take any country in the world, I do not care where you go, and if they do not employ doctors, you will find they will beat communities that employ them, all the time. Who is the real doctor? That man who knows by the Spirit of revelation what ails an individual, and by the same Spirit knows what medicine to administer. That is the real doctor, the others are quacks. [“The Order of Enoch,” reported by David W. Evans, Journal of Discourses, vol. 15 (Liverpool: Albert Carrington, 1873), pp. 225–26.]
"Would you want doctors? Yes, to set bones. We should want a good surgeon for that, or to cut off a limb. But do you want doctors? For not much of anything else, let me tell you, only the traditions of the people lead them to think so; and here is a growing evil in our midst. It will be so in a little time that not a woman in all Israel will dare to have a baby unless she can have a doctor by her. I will tell you what to do, you ladies, when you find you are going to have an increase, go off into some country where you cannot call for a doctor, and see if you can keep it. I guess you will have it, and I guess it will be all right, too. Now the cry is, “Send for a doctor.” If you have a pain in the head, “Send for a doctor;” if your heel aches, “I want a doctor;” “my back aches, and I want a doctor.” The study and practice of anatomy and surgery are very good; they are mechanical, and are frequently needed. Do you not think it is necessary to give medicine sometimes? Yes, but I would rather have a wife of mine that knows what medicine to give me when I am sick, than all the professional doctors in the world. Now let me tell you about doctoring, because I am acquainted with it, and know just exactly what constitutes a good doctor in physic. It is that man or woman who, by revelation, or we may call it intuitive inspiration, is capable of administering medicine to assist the human system when it is besieged by the enemy called Disease; but if they have not that manifestation, they had better let the sick person alone. I will tell you why: I can see the faces of this congregation, but I do not see two alike: and if I could look into your nervous systems and behold the operations of disease, from the crowns of your heads to the soles of your feet, I should behold the same difference that I see in your physiognomy—there would be no two precisely alike. Doctors make experiments, and if they find a medicine that will have the desired effect on one person, they set it down that it is good for everybody, but it is not so, for upon the second person that medicine is administered to, seemingly with the same disease, it might produce death. If you do not know this, you have not had the experience that I have. I say that unless a man or woman who administers medicine to assist the human system to overcome disease, understands, and has that intuitive knowledge, by the Spirit, that such an article is good for that individual at that very time, they had better let him alone. Let the sick do without eating, take a little of something to cleanse the stomach, bowels and blood, and wait patiently, and let Nature have time to gain the advantage over the disease. . . . Ladies and gentlemen, you may take any country in the world, I do not care where you go, and if they do not employ doctors, you will find they will beat communities that employ them, all the time. Who is the real doctor? That man who knows by the Spirit of revelation what ails an individual, and by the same Spirit knows what medicine to administer. That is the real doctor, the others are quacks. [“The Order of Enoch,” reported by David W. Evans, Journal of Discourses, vol. 15 (Liverpool: Albert Carrington, 1873), pp. 225–26.]
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Living Intentionally
"I began to understand the appeal of that old Quaker phrase "living intentionally." We were able to slow down more and more; we saw now that we didn't have to let ourselves be pushed and jostled along with the Joneses. We could take our lives into our own hands, and begin to live them meaningfully. We began to take careful stock of everything we did to see if we were doing what we really wanted to -- the kind of work we did, the parties we went to, the causes we supported, the books we read. One involvement after another fell away, replaced by something better, or not replaced at all except by a little more time, a little more peace of mind."
-Bronwen Godfrey (co-author of Laurel's Kitchen)
Living Intentionally at Homeschool Style Bites
-Bronwen Godfrey (co-author of Laurel's Kitchen)
Living Intentionally at Homeschool Style Bites
Saturday, October 3, 2009
Trip to Norfolk
The beach
The Zoo
Playing with Grandma
The best morning of Seth's life/Playing with Scott
The Zoo
Playing with Grandma
The best morning of Seth's life/Playing with Scott
Friday, October 2, 2009
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