A vegetarian diet can prevent 97% of our coronary occlusions. (JAMA,

[Guest guest]

A vegetarian diet can prevent 97% of our coronary occlusions. "

(JAMA,

Vol. 176, No. 9, June 3, 1961, p 806.)

http://www.doctoryourself.com/news/v4n9.txt

 

The DOCTOR YOURSELF NEWSLETTER (Vol. 4, No. 9 April 5, 2004)

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

 

Written and copyright 2004 by Andrew Saul, PhD, of

http://www.doctoryourself.com , which welcomes a million visitors

annually. Commercial use of the website or the contents of this

Newsletter is strictly prohibited.

 

WHOLE LOTTA BACON GOIN' ON

 

It's porcine genocide to be sure. Pigs are monthly murdered by the

millions. And there are so many of them lined up to die. Why, the

pig population in North Carolina alone is so huge that that state's

hog farms produce as much sewage as the entire human population of

New York

City. (TBS Network Earth, February 4, 1996) Now think of all the

other, and even larger, livestock all throughout the other 49

states, and breathe deep.

 

There is simply nothing cuter than a baby pig. They are pink, clean,

snuggly little characters. They are smart, affectionate and covered

with

tiny glistening silvery-toned hairs. Their miniature snouts make

them look like they are smiling, and though they wriggle a bit,

piglets are nice and warm to hold. I personally didn't raise pigs,

but some farmer friends of

mine did. For a while, anyway. They quit years ago, and profit was

never

the issue. It finally got to them that these adorable babies were

doomed to be hacked up into bacon.

 

As it sits on your kitchen counter, bacon is loaded with fat and

salt and

additives. Gentlemen, you might be interested in this: one of the

principal

chemical ingredients used to " cure " meats is sodium nitrate (NaNO3),

a compound functionally identical to potassium nitrate (KNO3),

commonly known as saltpeter.Saltpeter is a male sterilizing agent.

 

And sure enough: sodium nitrate is also known as " chile saltpeter. "

Sodium nitrite (NaNO2), which differs by a single oxygen atom, is

also

used to preserve meat.

 

That's why I usually struggle to conceal a grin when a big,

muscular, hairy

guy intones in a deep voice, " I'm a meat-and-potatoes man! "

 

Right.

 

But, all that said, here's what really did it for me.

 

WHY I STOPPED EATING BACON

 

I remember the very day. There I was, opening a package of ordinary

supermarket bacon. As I separated the slices for frying, I noticed

an odd-

looking area, about the size of a nickel, at the same relative

location on

each slice. Upon closer examination (and I have taught tissue

biology

(histology) at the college level), I saw that the funny-looking

spots were

actually neatly presliced sections of a tumor. The pig that had been

killed

for that particular one-pound bacon package, and probably a hundred

others like it, evidently had at least one tumor, and who knows how

many

more. The government should know this, but they all too obviously

never

looked: the opened bacon package I had in front of me had the " USDA

Inspected " seal prominently displayed on the front. The package

failed to

mention the nice 2 cm diameter tumor inside.

 

When I get an attack of the BLT munchies, I make it with beans,

lettuce

and tomatoes. As with dead baby cows (veal), which I walked away

from

in my youth, I will cheerfully go hungry before I ever eat bacon

again.

Tumors are bad enough to look at. There is no way we should be

eating

them.

 

THERE'S THE BEEF

 

If you liked vegetarian cattle rancher Howard Lyman's website

http://www.madcowboy.com , and my related Newsletter comments two

issues ago (http://www.doctoryourself.com/news/v4n7.txt), well, you

will

really get a kick out of the man's book, MAD COWBOY. My new review

follows below:

 

" Why should you call me to account for eating decently? " (George

Bernard

Shaw, in The Vegetarian, 15 January 1898.)

 

When I first began writing pro-vegetarian material some 25 years

ago, two

of my finest and favorite teachers volunteered to proofread for me.

As a

consequence, both stopped eating meat. What a nice compliment. But

my

writing is small 'taters compared to that of Howard Lyman. Mr.

Lyman, a

raised-to-graze, fourth-generation dairy farmer and cattle rancher,

is that

arch heretic of animal husbandry: he's a vegan. Lyman and his expert

collaborator, Glen Merzer, have written MAD COWBOY, a concise, in-

your-face book full of meat-busting facts.

 

This book really homes in on the range.

 

For example, Lyman writes that cattle are fed " ground-up dead

horses,

dogs, cats, pigs, chickens, and turkeys, as well as blood and fecal

material

of their own species. " (p 12) Then he lets us in on a little cattle-

raising

trade secret: steers are regularly fattened on chicken feces. (p 13)

 

This is gross. And wonderful reading, too.

 

Face it: the government is certainly not protecting you. (Remember

my

bacon episode, above?) Slaughterhouse quality control, such as it

is, is

simply not working. " About 80 per cent of food poisonings come from

meat, " Lyman says. (p 13) And he is no friend of Col. Sanders,

either:

" Approximately 30 percent of chicken consumed in America is

contaminated with salmonella, and 70 to 90 percent with another

deadly

pathogen, campylobacter, " which he cites as a cause of Guillain-

Barre

syndrome (1), a rapid-onset paralytic disease. (p 38)

 

Oversight and inspection by the U. S. Department of Agriculture and

the

Food and Drug Administration is so lax because they " can generally

be

counted on to behave not like public servants but like hired hands

of the

meat and dairy industries. " (p 20) Lyman says, " The government is

going

to inspect one out of every two hundred fifty thousand carcasses. "

(p 58)

 

Mr. Lyman is just warming up. " Nearly all meat in America is

contaminated

with such man-made carcinogens as dioxins, a family of chemicals

related

to Agent Orange, and DDT. " (p 21) Cattle feed is higher in

pesticides than

crops grown directly for human consumption. A New England Journal of

Medicine study (2) " found that the breast milk of vegetarian women

had

only 1 to 2 percent of the national average of pesticide

contamination. " (p

22)

 

" Meat kills, " Lyman bluntly declares, citing the all-too-familiar

coroner's

equation: fat plus cholesterol equals cardiovascular deaths. We have

all

heard this before, but we often ignore two important facts: there is

very

little fat in plant foods, and plant foods contain zero cholesterol.

Meat has

plenty of both. " It kills us just as dead as tobacco kills us, but

far more

frequently. " (p 23) " (W)e have to do all we can to keep our young

people

from getting hooked on those fat-and-cholesterol delivery systems

know

as hot dogs, hamburgers, scrambled eggs, and ice cream. " It looks to

Mr.

Lyman that, supersized or not, those McArtery meals have got to go.

To

him, Ronald McDonald must seem to be little more than a badly-

dressed

Marlboro man.

 

And he's probably right.

 

In the one hundred years since Sinclair Lewis published The Jungle

(3),

practically nothing has changed. You had best put down those chicken

fingers before reading this: " Slaughterhouses are efficient

factories for

spreading pathogens from one chicken to the next. . . covered with

feces,

bile and feed . . . (I)ndividual chicken inspectors examine about

12,000

chickens a day, each for about two seconds. " (p 38) Lyman writes

that, in

America, contaminated chicken kills over one thousand people

annually,

and sickens perhaps 80 million more.

 

He does not allow eating fish, either. In addition to citing

evidence of

bacterial contamination in seafood that would make Captain Nemo

blush

(p 39), Lyman relentlessly adds that omega-3 fatty acids, considered

to be

one of the main benefits of eating seafood, " can just as easily be

obtained "

by eating seeds, vegetable oils, wheat germ and vegetables.

Important

though those sources be, I think that for many people, fish remains

the

surest way of consuming adequate amounts of omega-3's. But on the

other hand, Mr. Lyman's relentless listing of pollutants now found

in

seafood (p 40) deserves renewed appreciation of vegetarian

alternatives.

 

Many more of the most powerful vegetarian arguments ever made are

compiled in Mad Cowboy, with supporting research ably summarized.

For

instance, studies of tens of thousands of Seventh Day

Adventists " found

the rate of heart disease mortality to be one-third as high for the

lacto-ovo

(egg and dairy) vegetarians as for the meat eaters. For the vegans,

the

rate was one-tenth as high. " The massive Cornell University China

Health

Project (4) " determined that those who eat the least animal products

have

the lowest rates of cancer, heart disease and several other

degenerative

diseases. " (p 26) Specifically, Lyman indicts osteoporosis,

diabetes,

obesity and hypertension as maladies due largely to our habitual

feasting

on dead animal muscle. And " feasting " is the correct word: Americans

eat

ten times the animal protein as do the Chinese. And the few Chinese

that

can afford to eat as much meat as we do get the same diseases as

Americans already have. (p 45)

 

Wisely, Lyman backs up his statements, citing additional studies

from

around the world, and providing unobtrusive but exact footnotes for

easy

reference. An index, recommended reading list, and several pages of

sources and bibliography complete the work.

 

Mad Cowboy is by no means the only well-written, concise book on the

rationale for a meatless lifestyle. Twenty years back, I'd read a

charmingly

illustrated yet profound little paperback called, What's Wrong with

Eating

Meat? (5). Many readers have become familiar with the best selling

Diet

for a Small Planet from 1971 (6), and others know of the century-old

vegetarian essays by Bernard Shaw or Gandhi. The writings of

physicians

such as Tilden, Jackson and Trall of the Natural Hygenic movement in

the

19th century predate the lot. (7)

 

A young Mr. Lyman knew nothing of these. Doing farm chores at age

five,

castrating calves at age ten, and paying his way through

agricultural

college on his poker winnings, he was bound and determined to make a

success of feedlot farming. And so he did, lacing his 7,000 steers'

feed

with antibiotics, diethylstilbesterol (DES) and an array of

other " suspect "

drugs purchased in quantity just before they were banned.

 

It was a rough life, especially for the cattle. " The flies can get

so thick they

actually threaten a cow's ability to breathe. . . Every morning I

would fill up

a fly fogger with insecticide and spray great clouds of it over the

whole

operation. . . (and) covering their backs with insecticide that was

absorbed

through the skin. " (p 56-57) In following such practices, dangerous

as they

are to animals, farmer and the public, Lyman's cattle operation was

not

unusual.

 

His own particular claim to fame stems from 1996 when he, along with

Oprah Winfrey, was sued for " food disparagement " by a group of Texas

cattlemen. In 1998, he won. The result was Mad Cowboy (and

www.madcowboy.com). What at first glance might pass for just another

brief celebrity turn actually delivers far more. There is not a dull

paragraph

to be found in Mad Cowboy. I absolutely loved reading it, even

though

compared to the vegan Mr. Lyman, I am merely a moderate, or what I

call

a " near vegetarian. " Unlike Mr. Lyman, I think fish and dairy

products

remain nutritionally important. Even Lyman acknowledges that Dr.

Dean

Ornish allows nonfat milk, nonfat yogurt, and egg whites in the diet

he

prescribes to reverse coronary diease. (p 30) But surely we

overconsume

protein foods in general and flesh foods in particular. And like Mr.

Lyman, I

once was a dairy farmer. I now advocate sharp reductions in meat

intake,

ones that will save human lives, along with saving literally ten

billion

animals each year, in America alone, from a walk onto the killing

floor. And

yes, ten " billion " is not a misprint. (8)

 

Of course, Mad Cowboy addresses Mad Cow disease (bovine spongiform

encephalopathy), and does so in considerable detail in Chapter Five.

Chapter Six discusses recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH),

given

to cows to force higher milk production. The chapter is an attack on

cow

abuse (and on the Monsanto Chemical Corporation) that you have to

read

to believe. When I was a dairyman, I personally milking a hundred

head

twice daily. Since then, I have presented many a college lecture on

rBGH.

Lyman knows exactly what he is talking about. The hidden (and

taxpayer-

supported) costs of the meat industry, and livestock-caused

environmental

destruction are covered in Chapter Seven. Chapter Eight presents

vegetarian diet as the ideal weight loss technique, which it is.

Lyman and

co-author Merzer literally rip into high-protein diets (such as

Atkins or " The

Zone " ) with such well-developed criticism as to show for all time

why

veggie dieting is the way to go.

 

For such a relatively short book (189 pages), Mad Cowboy contains

meat-

munching, myth-mangling facts by the trainload. But what draws you

in

most is Mr. Lyman's personal writing style. Lyman is talking

directly to you,

and he's one fine raconteur. ( " I came in with so much herbicide on

my

clothing that my mere presence killed off the houseplants. " [p 60])

I wonder

if this could serve as the chemical farmer's new twist to, " Hi,

honey, I'm

home. " Hide the phycus, dear!

 

But there is no humor to be found in Mr. Lyman's account of his ever-

increasing health problems that finally forced his reconsideration

of the

ethics and the consequences of his livelihood (Chapter Four). Even

after

serious spine surgery, a meat-fed Mr. Lyman says " I weighed 350

pounds,

my cholesterol was over 300, my blood pressure was off the charts,

and I

was getting nosebleeds " in addition to eyesight problems. His

response

was to change his entire life: he became an organic farmer, ran for

Congress in 1982 and very nearly made it, and became a vegetarian.

" Within a year of eating no meat, my health problems all started to

go

away. . . Everything revolved around the fork. " (p 80-1) Lyman

asserts,

" Since I became a vegetarian eight years ago, I have lost 130 pounds

steadily, gradually, and without trying. I never gained any of the

weight

back, and never felt hungry. I never went on a diet, never counted

my

calories. . .I simply stopped eating animal products. . . My

cholesterol

count declined from 300 to 140, my blood pressure went from

dangerously

high levels to normal ones, and my energy levels increased. " (p 167)

 

Having raised my children in an ovo-laco vegetarian household, I

have

observed and experienced many of the health benefits of which Mr.

Lyman

speaks. Though I may personally prefer near-vegetarian nutritional

reform

to vegan nutritional revolution, compromise is possible. Lyman

presents

transitional eating hints and insights in pages 174-8. They are

practical

and do-able in every way. This is a book does not require your

agreement,

just your action. From cover to cover, Mad Cowboy speaks with power,

and that is the main reason you should read it. Lyman effectively

says, to

Hades with half measures: just stop eating meat. The benefits are

many

and significant, as any sane cow would likely agree.

 

Lyman HF and Merzer G. Mad Cowboy: Plain truth from the cattle

rancher

who won't eat meat. NY: Scribner, 1998. ISBN 0-684-84516-4.

 

(By the way, I do not sell this book, but any bookseller will.

Naturally the

Mad Cowboy website carries it (http://madcowboy.com) . If you are

short on

cash, check your public library. If your library does not have it,

ask the

librarian to get it for you via interlibrary loan. But in my

opinion, this book is

a keeper and you'll want your own copy.)

 

Notes:

 

1. " (T)here is no effective treatment " for Guillain-Barre syndrome.

" Perhaps 50% of cases occur shortly after a microbial (viral or

bacterial)

infection. " Vaccination may also be a cause. http://www.guillain-

barre.com/overview.html

 

2. Hergenrather J, Hlady G, Wallace B, Savage E. Pollutants in

breast milk

of vegetarians. 1981 Mar 26;304(13):792). " Nursing infants of

vegetarian

women whose diets are low on the food chain are exposed to less

chemical pollution. "

 

3. Sinclair U. The jungle. NY: New American Library, 1960.

Originally

published 1906. Reviewed at

http://www.doctoryourself.com/news/v3n4.txt

 

4. (http://www.doctoryourself.com/news/v3n16.txt and

http://www.doctoryourself.com/news/v3n18.txt , with a comment by

study

lead author Dr. Colin Campbell of Cornell University)

 

5. Parham B. What's Wrong with Eating Meat? Denver, CO: Ananda

Marga, 1979.

 

6. http://www.dietforasmallplanet.com/about

 

7. Natural Hygiene Society (of America), The Greatest Health

Discovery,

Natural Hygiene Press, Inc., 1972. (Reviewed at

http://www.doctoryourself.com/morebooks.html)

 

8. http://www.all-creatures.org/articles/ar-anag2003.html That ten

billion

figure does not include fish, just birds and mammals.

 

ANOTHER REVIEW OF DOCTOR YOURSELF: Natural Healing that

Works

 

" Expertly written by biologist and naturopathic teacher Andrew Saul

(who

has served as a consulting specialist in natural healing for more

than

twenty-five years), Doctor Yourself: Natural Healing That Works is a

straightforward and " non-specialist reader friendly " guide to

organizing

one's diet to promote health and nutrition. Promoting nutritional

therapy as

a preventative and treatment for many diverse ailments, and offering

solid

advice for adjusting one's diet plan to better live with everything

from

Diabetes, to PMS, to Parkinson's Disease, Doctor Yourself is a very

helpful guidebook which is filled from cover to cover with gems of

information that aren't usually discussed in most other nutrition

books. It

should also be mentioned that Andrew Saul has also developed an

impressive website at DoctorYourself.com with additional information

on

the scientific studies behind the protocols referenced in his book

and offers

any interested party more than additional 4,000 references. (Midwest

Book

Review, Vol 3, No 3, March 2004.)

http://www.midwestbookreview.com/sbw/mar_04.htm#health)

 

My book " DOCTOR YOURSELF: Natural Healing that Works " is available

through all booksellers. Of course, getting your copy directly from

me

means you also get it autographed. Please go to

http://www.doctoryourself.com/saulbooks.html for more information

and

http://www.doctoryourself.com/order.html to order.)

 

WHY WATER

M. L. writes:

" I make a point to drink plenty of water every day. Recently, I have

been

told that people do NOT need to drink six to eight glasses of water

a day.

Are other readers as confused about this as I am? "

 

Likely so. Our bodies need a lot of water for several reasons. In

addition to

the fact that we lose water by sweating, speaking and even

breathing, we

also lose water every time we urinate. If that urine has any deep

color to it,

it typically means that it is overly concentrated. Although they are

quite

capable of it, it is harder for your kidneys to concentrate urine,

and easier

for them to excrete wastes when they can be diluted. An illustration

of this

would be kidney stones, which are strikingly difficult to form in

dilute, fast-

moving urine. (http://www.doctoryourself.com/kidney.html)

 

Because most Westerners eat far too much protein, they have to

excrete a

whole lot of excess nitrogen. Proteins are huge molecules. Proteins

are

made out of zillions of linked-up amino acids, and every " amino "

group is

formed out of nitrogen. High protein diets mean more nitrogenous

wastes

to get rid of, and the kidneys punch the overtime clock. More water,

once

again, makes their job easier.

 

So if you keep your mouth shut, keep your legs crossed, and don't

eat

meat, can you lower your water intake? I guess you could; a non-

talking

knock-kneed vegetarian giraffe can go over a month without drinking.

But

who'd want to?

 

As for me, I lowered my protein intake, and upped my water, and

noticed

the improvement immediately.

 

WATER HUMOR, SORT OF

A doctor on a house call was walking up the lawn to an old farmhouse

when he fell headlong into a well. When the local judge heard about

this,

he said, " Tell that doctor to tend to the sick, and leave the well

alone. "

 

Privacy Statement:

We do not sell, and we do not share, our mailing list or your email

address

with anyone. We never send out advertisements of any kind. You may

notice that there is no advertising at http://doctoryourself.com and

no

advertising in this newsletter. We have no financial connection with

the

supplement industry. We do not sell vitamins or other health

products,

except for Dr. Saul's books, which help fund these free public

services.

 

FREE SUBSCRIPTIONS FOR ALL to this newsletter are available with a

blank email to

dynews-

 

AN IMPORTANT NOTE: This newsletter is not in any way offered as

prescription, diagnosis nor treatment for any disease, illness,

infirmity or

physical condition. Any form of self-treatment or alternative health

program

necessarily must involve an individual's acceptance of some risk,

and no

one should assume otherwise. Persons needing medical care should

obtain it from a physician. Consult your doctor before making any

health

decision.

 

" DOCTOR YOURSELF " " DoctorYourself.com " and " Doctor Yourself

Newsletter " are service marks of Andrew W. Saul. All rights reserved.

 

Copyright c 2004 and prior years Andrew W. Saul

drsaul . Permission to reproduce single copies of

this

newsletter FOR NON-COMMERCIAL, PERSONAL USE ONLY is hereby

granted providing no alteration of content is made and authorship

credit is

given. Additional single copies will be sent by postal mail to a

practitioner

or patient, free of charge, upon receipt of a self addressed

envelope with

THREE first-class stamps on it (offer good in the USA only), to

Number 8

Van Buren Street, Holley, NY 14470 USA. (585) 638-5357.