Health Care?, Diabetes Rising, Closing the GAPS

So many thoughts swirling, that it’s hard to know where to begin. With the recent events in Egypt and the Middle East, I’ve been prompted toward a metaphor. Thinking of the popular revolution in Egypt as a symbol for taking charge of one’s destiny, we can see parallels in individual journeys toward personal health. The relationship many have with the conventional medical system echoes how the population in an autocratic country like Egypt relates to its ruling class.  The autocracy says, “We know what is best for you, we’ll take care of you. All you need do is what we say and all will be well.” The docile population (patient) acquiesces until the day comes when they realize that the ruling class (medical establishment) doesn’t know best. And a revolution results. It may not lead to instant healing, but the population (patient) is now in control of their own destiny. Right or wrong, the decisions belong to them and the days of victimhood are in the past.

This trend toward personal empowerment in health is a rising tsunami across the planet. But there is so much more that is to come. A couple of threads are weaving through today’s blog, brought on by real time events around me.

In today’s morning paper was an article about a local man, a member of the military who recently made the news when he returned from Afghanistan to surprise his daughter at a staged event at her school assembly. But the warm feelings from this heartwarming event soon turned sour when this man, who had long suffered from ulcerative colitis, died only a few weeks later at age 43, succumbing to a little understood condition of the lower digestive tract. Admittedly, UC is a complicated disorder, primarily characterized by acute and intense inflammation of the colon or large intestine. But common sense tells us that this condition is intimately tied to dietary factors, even though the Crohn’s and Colitis Society flatly states that no evidence exists to support the direct connection to diet! Hello? Is the intestine not a conduit for everything that we put into our mouth? Of all the conditions for which modern medicine persistently denies a dietary connection, this one has to be undeniably caused or at least influenced by our diet. Our contemporary diet is replete with unidentifiable, food-like by products of the industrial food supply. An infinite number of uber-new processed substances, when passed through our guts, wreak untold havoc to the delicate linings of our digestive system. And how about the number one offender of all: gluten! This anti-nutrient, so prevalent in our grain-happy food system, has been pinpointed as causing or contributing to virtually every debilitating condition known to mankind. The destruction left in gluten’s wake makes the plague of the Middle Ages look like the latest sniffles that made the rounds at the schoolhouse. And if gluten, which is so much a natural part of a common plant used for millennia for sustenance can be so destructive, what about some of the freakish products of the nutritional mad scientists’ labs like GMO corn and its endless permutations and “buy” products? Or even pasteurized and homogenized cow’s milk? This misguided practice, which dates back to the 19th century, has taken an excellent and nutrient-dense food and turned it into a prescription for health care disaster. The hospital beds are filled with conditions, syndromes, and complex disorders that were completely unknown only a generation or two ago. What has gone so terribly awry that today we call the broken and incestuous system “health care,” when it is simply a holding tank for debilitated and confused people and doctors?

Another thread comes from a book Aimee’s been reading aloud over the last week. It’s called Diabetes Rising, written by Dan Hurley, and chronicles the history of diabetes as it has gone from a rare disease to a worldwide pandemic. Hurley, himself a Type 1 diabetic, a science writer, and journalist, attempts to bring an investigative reporter’s high perch to his observations. But his humanity, especially that part of him that struggles with the challenges of diabetes, keeps him teetering on the edge of editorialism throughout the book. To his credit, he does his very best to bring in all sides to the picture. But like virtually anyone who looks to science for guidance, his book is crippled by a huge blind spot common to virtually all researchers and science writers. So while he and those he writes about carom about looking for “cures” and simple culprits and scapegoats, the identifiable trends in nutrition and lifestyle that have characterized all that is modern culture and society go completely unnoticed. By the way, has science ever cured any disease? Ever? I challenge you to name a single major or obscure disease that the application of science and its children, like technology and pharmacy, has truly “cured.” Yet every disease foundation is always holding walks, runs, marathons, bake sales, etc., to raise money for the “cure.” Where has this misguided trust in science and medicine come from, since it has never shown itself to be effective at anything except to perpetuate diseases and the industries that flow from them. This brings up the cure vs. healing dichotomy. Those in the “cure” camp say, “I want this disease to go away. It causes me nothing but misery.” The belief is: “Today I have the disease, tomorrow it’s gone. No change necessary on my part.” Those in the “healing” camp say, “This disease serves a purpose in my life. It’s a signal that I need to change physically, mentally, or spiritually. It’s an opportunity to learn something about myself and my relationship with others.” The changes that result are PERMANENT changes and are beneficial for all concerned. This is a much higher viewpoint, but one that completely escapes the science/technology/medical/pharmaceutical block. But I digress .

Mr. Hurley enumerates the many hypotheses that have been put forth in attempting to explain the disturbing and meteoric rise in the incidence of diabetes of either type. But he—as well as all the other writers and researchers—have completely ignored the following explicit and documentable trends that coincide exactly with the timeline of “diabetes rising.” They are:

1. The nearly complete abandonment of traditional diets in favor of highly processed, industrialized foods;
2. The movement of entire populations away from agrarian, family-centered lives toward polluted, over-crowded cities;
3. A wholesale adoption of a lowfat, plant-based diet as recommended by the USDA which emphasizes grains, vegetable oils, lean meats, margarines, with most calories coming from carbohydrates;
4. The rise to prominence of the immunization/inoculation protocol over the organic development of the human immune system. Immunization, which literally punctures the body’s natural defenses with toxic organisms accompanied by questionable or even certifiably toxic compounds (like mercury, for pete’s sake!), likely scrambles the immune system;
5. The one near-target factor he and others point to is the prevalence of POP’s, persistent organic pollutants that act directly on the human nervous system and endocrine system. Behind this scenario is the dominant industrial food system which produces gargantuan quantities of meat, eggs, and dairy from tortured animals which are caged or corralled in their own feces and fed diets derived from a deranged, grain-producing, corporate monolith that has a chokehold on the entire food chain, including holding patents on genetically-modified seeds that force genuine farmers into compliance or face court-ordered jail or worse;
6. The first use of amalgam (mercury-containing) dental fillings was in mid-19th Century France. The first reported incidence of Multiple Sclerosis was reported in France in 1860. Coincidence? Many researchers have drawn a direct connection between the incidence of autoimmune diseases and the increased use of amalgam fillings and root canals. The dentist and researcher Hal Huggins (http://www.hugginsappliedhealing.com/) is perhaps the best source for this info.

These are six obvious trends that could easily explain radical changes in virtually any disease. Yet these have all been invisible to the science-geeks that perpetually look for technological, pharmaceutical, “silver-bullet” solutions to health and disease. I would love to hear Mr. Hurley’s take on these trends and their relationship to diabetes, and the plethora of chronic diseases that are all “rising” at a light-speed rates.

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Just heard the most amazing interview with Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride on www.oneradionetwork.com. She’s the one who invented the GAPS diet. (GAPS stands for Gut and Psychology Syndrome.) Her contention is that many conditions and diseases, even ones that appear to be psychological or psychiatric in nature, have their origin in the delicate bacterial balance of the gut. I don’t want to give it all away, but she said so many things that resonate. How about this: 90% of the genetic material of the human body is comprised of gut bacteria. The other 10% is the skeletal frame that carries this colony around! No wonder our health is so dependent on a pristine and secure intestine.

She also had the very best explanation of the whole cholesterol/heart disease relationship and how the myth about cholesterol came about. I’ve come up with my own description/analogy/metaphor. It goes like this:

Imagine a busy “artery” cutting a swath through a major metropolis. Normally traffic, although heavy, moves constantly in both directions along this thoroughfare. When one driver, who is momentarily distracted trying to answer a text, plows into the back of a car in front, a snarl develops. With injuries in the cars as a result, the EMT’s are called to the scene. But before they arrive, several more cars plow into the disabled cars and the snarl widens. More EMT’s are called. By now the artery begins to “clog.” More cars careen into the pile and more EMT’s are called. By the time the police arrive on the scene, the entire artery is at a complete standstill. There’s carnage everywhere and EMT’s, in bright yellow jackets, are swarming the scene, attempting to pull the victims from the wreckage and administer emergency medical help. When the police arrive and survey the scene, they come to the conclusion that with this many EMT’s present, they must have been the cause of the crisis. They call in the wreckers, cut through the wreckage, and clear the scene. Traffic begins to return to normal, and the artery is flowing smoothly for now—until the next inattentive driver plows into the car ahead and the whole thing starts over.

The analogy may or may not be obvious. In a human artery, an obstruction develops when inflammation (the initial crash) damages the walls of the artery. This inflammation is caused by insulin circulating in an attempt to maintain a safe blood glucose level following a meal of high carbohydrate content. So the liver releases a dosage of cholesterol (EMT’s) in order to soothe the inflammation. But before the inflammation subsides, more carbohydrates are ingested, the inflammation is increased, so more cholesterol is sent to the scene. This cycle continues as the cholesterol, in a vain (or is it “vein”) attempt to secure and heal the wound, begins to pile up, reducing blood flow and ultimately creating an obstruction. The artery is blocked and the crisis is out of control, causing the doctors (the police) to intervene. When they arrive at the scene and witness the cholesterol that’s piled up in the artery, they conclude that the cholesterol is the cause of the obstruction. They cut away the blockage and smugly conclude that they’ve solved the problem, for now. The patient is advised to reduce their animal fat intake and eat a low fat, high carbohydrate diet in order to prevent a recurrence. A complete misunderstanding of the body and its processes leads to this incident being replayed at an ever escalating rate. An entire population of humans have fallen prey to the Cholesterol Myth and is now at an extremely high risk of arterial heart disease as a result. As described by Dr. Campbell-McBride and others, the formula for heart health is simple. Eat lots of animal fat from animals that have been pastured eating their natural diet, and greatly limit or altogether eliminate high-carbohydrate foods. These include pasta, pastry, wheat, corn, sugar, potatoes, grains, even some root vegetables and fruit. Bone broths and meat stocks made from meat cuts that are rich in bone, marrow, and joint cartilage, and even fish stocks that include the whole fish, are highly recommended. Lots of lactobacillus fermented foods like yogurt, kefir, and sauerkraut are also included. When eating dairy, be sure the animal is grass fed and is a heritage breed animal. Just like humans that develop an imbalance in gut bacteria when eating high carbohydrate foods, cows will develop an extreme imbalance in the bacterial content of the rumen (digestive organ), with a cascade of disease conditions the result. That’s why corn-fed animals require antibiotics in order to simply survive. It’s the same process in humans. High carbs equal high disease. Simple.

That’s all for now. Thanks for stopping by.