Concise Directions on the Nature of our Common Food so far as it tends to Promote or Injure Health

[Guest guest]

“He who lives by rule and wholesome diet is a physician to himself.”

 

Concise Directions on the Nature of our Common Food so far as it tends

to Promote or Injure Health. (Published by Swords of London: 1790, p 7)

 

The DOCTOR YOURSELF (SM) NEWSLETTER Vol 1, No 17

June 24, 2001 " Free of charge, free of advertising, and free of the A.M.A. "

Written by Andrew Saul, PhD. of http://www.doctoryourself.com , a free online

library of more than 200 natural healing articles with over 3,000 scientific

references.

 

HEARD ANYTHING BAD ABOUT VITAMIN C LATELY?

 

If you haven’t, you’ve been away visiting your relatives on Neptune for

too long. For nearly three decades, I have seen that, like all other

fashions, vitamin-bashing goes “in” and “out” of style. Lately it has

(again) been open season on Linus Pauling, the world’s most qualified,

and most vocal, critic of our scorbutic (vitamin C deficient) medical

system. Pauling’s two unshared Nobel prizes (he is the only person in

history with that distinction) are no protection from ignorant critics

who slam vitamin C without considering some basic biochemistry first.

 

 

May I offer the following C-boosting facts:

 

1. Medical and nutritional authorities have always said that there is

no difference whatsoever between natural and synthetic vitamin C. But

the recent junk-science reports study panning vitamin C invariably

include the comment that only vitamin C supplements are the problem,

not vitamin C from foods. You can’t have it both ways.

 

2. Vitamin C is the body’s most important water-soluble antioxidant.

It protects our cells from cancer-causing free-radical damage.

In our stress- and pollution-filled environment, why are

people being warned off the very substance that they need most?

 

3. If vitamin C “harms” DNA, why do most animals make (not eat, but

MAKE) between 2,000 and 10,000 milligrams of vitamin C per human

equivalent body weight per day? Evolution would never so favor

anything that harms vital genetic material. White blood cells and

male reproductive fluids contain unusually high quantities of

ascorbate. Living, reproducing systems LOVE vitamin C.

 

4. Why all the flurry of anti-vitamin reporting? Easy: 100 MILLION

Americans take vitamin C every day. This is therefore primarily a

political issue, not a scientific issue. What would happen if

everybody took ample supplements of all the vitamins? Doctors

and hospital administrators and pharmaceutical salespeople would

all be lining up for their unemployment checks, that’s what.

 

I listed TEN WAYS TO SPOT ANTI-VITAMIN BIAS IN A SCIENTIFIC STUDY

in my Doctor Yourself Newsletter EXTRA sent out on June 15 (This

article is posted at http://www.doctoryourself.com/antivitamin.html ).

Linus Pauling’s complete vitamin and nutrition bibliography is posted

at http://doctoryourself.com/biblio_pauling/html

 

VITAMIN C: WHO NEEDS IT?

 

Our national disease-care system (for it is certainly not a HEALTH care

system) depends on sickness. This is neither a new problem nor an

uniquely American problem, for even the ancient Vedas say that

“the carpenter desires timber; the physician, disease.”

 

More recent critics come from within the medical profession itself.

One is Dr. Emanuel Cheraskin (formerly Chairman of the Department of Oral

Medicine, University of Alabama Medical School). My favorite saying of

his is, “Health is the biggest failing business in America.” Dr.

Cheraskin has a lot to say about the safety and effectiveness of

large doses of ascorbate in The Vitamin C Connection (reviewed in a

previous Newsletter) and now in Vitamin C: Who Needs It?, the most

complete recent summation of vitamin C’s role in medicine that I have seen.

 

When a long-time professor, holding doctorates in both dentistry and

medicine, speaks up on the value of vitamin C megadoses, you know

that it is time to tell the world. Dr. Cheraskin has been

researching vitamin C for fifty years. He has hundreds of scientific

publications to his credit (the complete bibliography is posted at

http://doctoryourself.com/biblio_cheraskin.html ) Dr. Cheraskin

elegantly but insistently challenges not only our altogether-inadequate

US RDAs, but also our national obsession with the germ theory.

“It is time to lay to rest the notion that germs jump into people and

cause diseases,” he writes (p 71). Here is a physician who fully

appreciates the value of vitamins. Truly adequate nutrition prevents,

and cures, real illnesses.

 

One of his strengths as an author is that he can walk you through

study after study without boring you in the least. Dr. Cheraskin

writes directly to you. It is both his sense of humor and exemplary

competence in the field of therapeutic nutrition that make Dr.

Cheraskin’s books so interesting, and important, to readers.

 

How important? Vitamin C: Who Needs It concisely reviews dozens

of medical studies in under 200 pages. 22 pages of references are

provided. Vitamin C’s role on diabetes, oral health, fertility,

cancer, cardiovascular disease and life extension receive special

emphasis. I am yet to meet a vitamin critic that shows any evidence

of having read this research. Well, they can start now.

 

Next time someone tries to tell you that you are “harming” your

body or “wasting” your money on extra vitamin C, tell them that

Doctor Cheraskin sent you.

 

Vitamin C: Who Needs It by Emanuel Cheraskin, M.D., D.M.D.

Birmingham, AL: Arlington Press,1993

ISBN: 0-944353-04-5 (195 pages plus glossary, index, and references)

 

 

READER’S QUESTION:

“Is honey safe for little children? I am especially concerned about

bacterial contamination.”

 

I raised my kids on raw, unprocessed honey. I think the pasteurized,

filtered, see-right-through-them store varieties are not worth

buying.

 

Commercially processed honey sometimes has a thin layer

of water under the lid, on top of the product. This can support

bacterial growth. I have never found this with raw honey, though.

It stays naturally fresh and pure, just the way the bees made it.

Honey from the comb is better still. I am told that untouched comb

honey found in Egyptian tombs was still fresh and edible after over

two thousand years.

 

YOU CAN BE YOUR OWN DOCTOR

 

The purpose of this newsletter is to help you towards becoming your

own doctor. This is neither impossible nor illegal, and is more

and more essential all the time. It's not impossible, for you can

go to any book or paper in print, read it, apply it, and draw

practical conclusions from it. What you will read is just what

any physician reads. In fact, you may discover material that your

doctor never saw, or did see and never investigated. With a good

bibliography, an inquiring mind, and gradual experience, there is

no reason why you cannot become fully competent to treat yourself

and your immediate family in the vast majority of instances.

 

How can one say this? Aren't doctors the ones for this duty; isn't

it their special province to be the formally educated authorities

on health? Commonly, yes: but a doctor's authority in America

often exceeds his or her knowledge. Whole bodies of knowledge in

healing are ignored because they are unorthodox and non-medical.

A doctor's education seems exhaustive, yet M.D.’s study so much of

drugs and surgery, and so little of nutrition, fasting, herbal

remedies, spinal manipulation, massage, vitamin and mineral therapy,

homeopathic remedies and more that we realize their qualifications

are only partial.

 

This takes nothing away from their dedication as

individuals, but being individuals they are prone to following

certain theories over other theories,

particular practices over other alternatives, and holding opinions

as well as facts. This is true with any person, certainly, but it

is our responsibility to cover all possible ground in our efforts

to cure and prevent illness. If we learn more than the doctor in

areas of value to our health, it is our duty to apply this

knowledge to the betterment of ourselves and our family. We need

total health more than medically approved health. Our wellness

should not be limited to our doctor's experience, but enhanced by

our own experience.

 

Indeed, whose judgment is final for your health and life? Why not

have you decide? This seems an awesome responsibility, yet we do

it every day. Any mother or father, adult or child constantly

makes the most immediate health decisions as the occasion arises.

The cut, the cold, the fever, the ache: all these and the serious

emergencies too are in our hands first.

 

This is the pivotal point: major traumatic injury aside, it is not

generally necessary for us to turn over the responsibility for our

wellness to another. The pioneers in this country couldn't, and

evidence is mounting that we, today, shouldn't

 

" Over a million patients are injured in hospitals each year, and

approximately 280,000 die annually as a result of these injuries.

Therefore, the iatrogenic (doctor-caused) injury rate dwarfs the

annual automobile accident mortality of 45,000 and accounts for

more deaths than all other accidents combined. " (JAMA, July 5,

1995, 274:29-34.)

 

You can picture this death rate: it is about equal to three

loaded jumbo jets crashing and killing everyone aboard every two

days.

 

Can we do better? Quite possibly. It is becoming increasingly

obvious that medical emergencies such as strokes and heart attacks

do not just happen, but are mostly the result of unhealthful,

long-term lifestyle choices. Almost all health providers agree

that good preventive care must start at home. The dispute arises

over where to draw the self-care line. It is a big jump from eating

less fat to, say, curing pneumonia with 20,000 milligrams of vitamin

C an hour, but both can be done.

 

Editor’s Addenda to Last Issue:

The correct spelling is Dr. Hans Nieper. I forgot the “I before E,

except after C” rule again. Send your donations of dictionaries

and spell checkers to me at the address at the bottom of this

Newsletter.

 

And, that why-not-use-a-placebo reference from last issue is:

About 90% of the patients who visit doctors have conditions that

will either improve on their own or that are out of reach of modern

medicine's ability to solve. (New England Journal of Medicine,

Feb 7, 1991)

 

HOW TO BE (MORE OF) A VEGETARIAN

 

Try overkill, or what in our house we call “the power of wretched

excess.” If your child wants to eat meat, prepare some… and

overcook it. If your child wants to eat hot dogs, buy the cheapest

ones you can find… and let the kid eat them to the point of nausea.

 

(Remember your first job in a bakery or ice cream parlor, and the

owner said you can have all you want? Heh, heh!) Relentlessly serve

nothing but meats for dinner, and lunch, and snacks, and breakfast.

Take your child shopping, and pick out tripe, liver and tongue.

Let them listen to a live lobster being steamed. Tour the meat

packing room at your local supermarket. You probably won’t be

allowed to tour a slaughterhouse, but that would be the consummate

therapeutic trauma.

 

These are coarse techniques to be sure, but

killing animals by the millions every day has got to stop. If our

future is our children, let’s tell them straight: meat means dead

animals, and there is nothing pretty about it.

 

The Doctor Yourself Award for STEALTH FOOD Manufacturer of the

Week goes to

 

GENERAL MILLS, INC.

 

Good ol’ CHEERIOS. I ate them when I was a kid, and you did too,

I’ll bet. Today, regular Cheerios are even better, as they are

lower in sugar than in the old days. Of course they contain

a lot more salt, but pobody’s nerfect. And the other flavors

of Cheerios (so-called “Honey” Nut, and “Apple” Cinnamon) have lots

of sugar. And precious little honey or apple.

 

But FLEA POWDER CHEERIOS are the flavor you probably have not heard about… even

though you may have already tasted them back in 1994.

 

Yes, FLEA POWDER. The chemical chloro-pyrifos-ethyl (which also

kills ticks and termites) was sprayed on oats used to make no less

than 16 different General Mills, Inc. cereals. Not 16 boxes,

but 16 varieties, amounting to 160 MILLION BOXES, including TRIX,

BOOBERRY and LUCKY CHARMS

 

(“Ooh, now look at what they ‘ave in

wit’ me Lucky Charms: pink dead fleas, yellow dead ticks, and

blue dead termites!”)

 

Of course there are precious few insects in General Mills’ cereals,

because they check for them. But in 1994 General Mills (with

annual sales of about 9 BILLION dollars) did NOT check for

pesticide residues. L. Robert Lake, director of policy and

planning in the Food Safety division of the FDA) said, “One of

the things bothering us about the General Mills incident is it

went on for an extended period of time, and they didn’t know.

It means they didn’t have a good system for checking oats.”

(The Washington Post, August 21, 1994)

 

The Post continues, “By the time the company found out about

the illegal spraying, 110 million boxes were on the shelves in

grocery stores and consumers’ homes.” “People had already fed it

to their children,” said FDA’s Mr. Lake.

 

So what happened next? A massive product recall? A series of

Saturday morning cartoon-time TV announcements to not buy, and

not eat Cheerios that you already bought? No such luck.

“We didn’t want to raise an alarm for no good reason and scare

people, but we didn’t want to fail to warn them either.” said

Dr. Lynn Goodman, assistant administrator for pesticides and

toxic substances at the Environmental Protection Agency.

Well, certainly no one was alarmed, for there was no recall

at all. The Post continues, ”The two government agencies

decided not to press the company to recall the cereal.

‘We were concerned that a recall would have been very

disturbing to parents… We did not want to cause a public

panic.’ ”

 

Well, THAT certainly makes me feel better!

 

General Mills now checks for pesticides. Good. But who

checks General Mills? If a company can sell 110 million

boxes of contaminated cereal, and nothing at all happens,

what does this say about our government’s real interest

in food safety?

 

(The full text Washington Post article, expertly written

by Sharon Walsh, appeared August 21, 1994. Your public

librarian can get you a photocopy through interlibrary

loan.

 

COMING NEXT ISSUE:

Okay! Okay! My New THYROID ARTICLE will be included, by

readers’ very insistent popular request.

 

PLUS:

A First Aid Alternative to Stitches

 

Readers ask about Vitamin C and Arteries

 

(AND MORE, OF COURSE!)

 

Newsletter Ideas?

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me at drsaul

 

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