Healthy Homes Asia

Experts who carried out one of the largest diet and heart studies conducted, found the potent mixture of these everyday foods can have a major impact on long-term health. (Click here to read the full story) 

For a detailed investigation into this and other methods to help correct different forms of cardiovascular disease, see Phillip Day's comprehensive online seminar, AFFAIRS OF THE HEART. Have you seen Mike Anderson's excellent "Eating" DVD yet? A must for all your family and friends!

 by Phillip Day

WONDER DIET CURES HEART DISEASE:  Experts who carried out one of the largest diet and heart studies conducted, found the potent mixture of these everyday foods can have a major impact on long-term health. This study is a welcome but not unexpected confirmation of hundreds of previous studies showing the same effects. The key here is in the therapeutic use of food to fix disease, somnething the medical establishment has long denied and railed against.
For a detailed investigation into this and other methods to help correct different forms of cardiovascular disease, see my comprehensive online seminar, Affairs of the Heart.

by Phillip Day

‘There must be something to acupuncture – after all, you never see any sick porcupines.’ – Bob Goddard

Unnecessary surgeries, drug-prescribing, unneeded tests and dangerous treatments all contribute to a frightening toll wrought by doctors around the world today. My book Health Wars documents the phenomenon of ‘death by doctoring’ in detail and reveals the reasons why, while medicine has made great advances in certain areas, (infant survival, A & E trauma medicine, wound surgery, etc) and should justifiably receive the credit, it has failed miserably in others, most notably, ‘mental health’ and the treatment of disease. These failures are largely due to the belief that treating symptoms with drugs is the same thing as curing the disease itself, which it isn’t.

Examples:

·         Painkillers to treat hangovers, which are a dehydration issue 

·         The removal of tumours in the belief this will cure cancer

·         The treatment of behavioural ‘disorders’ using drugs to mask hyperactivity symptoms

·         Hysterectomies to cure menopausal woes

·         Electroshock treatment (ECT) to cure mental illness

Most diseases such as cancer, heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, are metabolic (systemic) conditions related to diet and lifestyle, yet doctors are not trained in nutrition. Doctors are instead compelled to swallow the most extraordinary paradox that food is apparently good enough to keep you alive but not good enough to fix you when you’re sick. Many I’ve interviewed over the years are fed up to the back teeth with this crummy state of affairs and wish to see things changed. They did not go into medicine not to heal people. Most conventional doctors, if they’re honest, will admit they can’t heal their patients’ diseases with drugs, they only treat the symptoms.[1]

Facts

·         You are what you eat

·         Food can change your mood

·         Every cell in your body comes from what you ingest

·         A New You is produced approximately every seven years after all your old cells have died out and been replaced with new ones. The quality of the New You and how well it will function will be down to diet and lifestyle, with genetics playing an adjunctive role

Bad diets in hospitals only contribute to the difficulties patients experience in overcoming illness. MRSA and other infections strike patients who have compromised immunity. What we should do is fire the hospital dieticians, retool the kitchens to produce tasty, raw, nutritious whole-foods, train our doctors and nurses in nutrition, and do all we can to boost patients’ immunity with adequate hydration, hope and mental stimulation. Not drug them up and leave them sitting in front of Paul O’Grady on the TV with their bread and milk.

The current, drug-based, medical approach to disease:

·         Is failing and dangerous

·         Pays no heed to prevention

·         Lacks proper nutrition support completely

·         Prefers the bullish use of surgical or chemical intervention

·         Does not consider stress as a factor in illness

·         Views illness as a collection of localised symptoms to be treated with drugs/surgery rather than banishing the underlying causation with lifestyle and dietary changes  

Viz:

ISRAELI DOCTORS GO ON STRIKE AND DEATH RATES PLUMMET

‘Death rates in Israel have dropped considerably since physicians in public hospitals implemented a program of sanctions three months ago, according to a survey of burial societies.

The Israel Medical Association (IMA) began the action in March to protest against the government's proposed imposition of a new four-year wage contract for doctors. Since then, hundreds of thousands of visits to outpatient clinics have been canceled or postponed along with tens of thousands of elective operations. Emergency rooms, dialysis units, oncology departments, obstetric and neonatal departments, and other vital facilities have been working normally during the action.

The Jerusalem Post surveyed non-profit burial societies, which perform funerals for the vast majority of Israelis, and found that the number of funerals has fallen drastically.

According to one funeral parlor manager the same thing occurred in 1983, during a similar action by the IMA, which lasted 4 and a half months.

The only area of Israel which was found to not have a reduction in its death rate was the city of Netanya. It also just so happens that all of the doctors at the only hospital in this city have "no-strike" clauses in their contracts and are therefore unaffected by the action.’ [2]

In Short

No-one’s suggesting you don’t need a doctor. I am suggesting you might exercise reasonable caution before swallowing everything Nurse shoves down your throat. When assessing your needs for a doctor, fall back on those good old bastions of reason, logic and common sense:

·         Prevention is the best cure

·         Better not to get sick in the first place

·         Change your attitude, diet and lifestyle

·         Just do it!

·         Ensure the family is well fed with a varied intake of wholesome, nutritious, organic foods

·         Reduce stress

·         Be happy

·         Consult a doctor who gives advice on lifestyle and diet

Fact: Correct drug prescribing is the largest sub-sector of iatrogenic (doctor-induced) deaths in most First World countries.[3]

Notes [1] Hammond, Phil Trust Me, I’m a Doctor, Metro Books, 1999

[2] www.mercola.com; British Medical Journal 2000;320:1561

[3] Day, Phillip Health Wars, op. cit.

by Phillip Day

"Intensive research ... has convinced me that the human organism can protect itself against infection virtually completely by proper nutrition." - Dr B P Sandler

Essential nutrient

Vitamin C is an essential nutrient for the human body. Science describes it chemically as 2-oxo-L-threo-hexono-1,4-lactone-2,3-enediol, or L-ascorbic acid, L-ascorbate or C6H8O6 - take your pick. It has a molecular mass of 176.14 grams and is so named for its active properties in fighting scurvy (a meaning ‘no' and scorbutus ‘scurvy').

Vitamin C is a form of sugar acid that appears white to yellow in a crystal or powder form and is water-soluble. It is found most famously in citrus fruits but also in leafy greens, a staple ingredient used to fortify foods, and is familiar to many as a childhood vitamin supplement, one of the most important for your continued wellbeing.

Humans cannot generate vitamin C

It is unfortunate then, that while it is synthesised internally by all but a few mammals, humans suffer from a genetic deficiency which prevents us from generating vitamin C in our bodies. Whereas most mammals can synthesise this vital nutrient with glucose produced from glycogen by enzymes in the liver,[1] our only hope of getting C is through our diet. An associate of Pauling's, Dr Matthias Rath, comments:

"Animals don't get heart attacks because they produce vitamin C in their bodies, which protects their blood vessel walls. In humans, unable to produce vitamin C (a condition known as hypoascorbemia), dietary vitamin deficiency weakens these walls. Cardiovascular disease is an early form of scurvy. Clinical studies document that optimum daily intakes of vitamins and other essential nutrients halt and reverse coronary heart disease naturally.

The single most important difference between the metabolism of human beings and most other living species is the dramatic difference in the body pool of vitamin C. The body reservoir of vitamin C in people is on average 10 to 100 times lower than the vitamin C levels in animals."[2]

Humans absorb C Lucky for us, the human body is an astounding system with a remarkable capacity for self-regulation and correction. DNA itself is a three-out-of-four, error-correcting digital code with stop and start bits to parse the assembly instructions of every protein of an organism.

Unlike the 4,000 or so species of mammal which produce vitamin C internally, the human genetic code compensates for our defect by having red blood cells specifically designed for increased absorption of C. Haemoglobin is able to absorb the oxidised version of the nutrient, deoxidise it in the cell, then transport the active ‘antioxidant' to where it is most needed.[3]

Red blood cells ensure our bodies are kept adequately supplied, and are even able to recycle the nutrient to some degree. There's just one hitch. We've got to eat or drink vitamin C to get it into the system in the first place. What a disappointment, then, that our peers don't do more to ensure everyone is fully briefed.

Cooking kills it

When was the last time someone told you on TV that cooking destroys vitamin C? Never.

How many times on TV has a ‘celebrity' chef shown you more inventive ways to murder your food with heat? Five times a night, and they swear at you for getting it wrong.

So what percentage of see-no-evil, hear-no-evil humanity goes through an entire British, American and Australian winter cooking everything and ending up sicker than Gordon Ramsey's dog? The vast majority.

How many are destined to end up dying of a disease not even their livestock are dying from? The vast majority.

How many will be talked into taking ‘life-saving' drugs and other redundant nostrums before they finally expire? The vast majority.

Room for a little improvement, wouldn't you say?

Not just an acid

Dr Tim O'Shea writes:

"Most sources equate vitamin C with ascorbic acid, as though they were the same thing. They're not. Ascorbic acid is an isolate, a fraction, a distillate of naturally occurring vitamin C. In addition to ascorbic acid, vitamin C must include rutin, bioflavonoids, Factor K, Factor J, Factor P, Tyrosinase, Ascorbinogen, In addition, mineral co-factors must be available in proper amounts. If any of these parts are missing, there is no vitamin C, no vitamin activity. When some of them are present, the body will draw on its own stores to make up the differences, so that the whole vitamin may be present. Only then will vitamin activity take place, provided that all other conditions and co-factors are present. Ascorbic acid is described merely as the "antioxidant wrapper" portion of vitamin C; ascorbic acid protects the functional parts of the vitamin from rapid oxidation or breakdown."[4]

It's a complex

So vitamin C is a complex. The ascorbic acid and ascorbate (an ion of ascorbic acid) are required for a variety of essential metabolic functions. They help metabolise fats and proteins and aid recovery from wounds. In addition to vitamin E and two amino acids, lysine and proline, vitamin C is vital for the creation of collagen, the chief protein in soft and connective tissue throughout the body.

Vitamin C, therefore, helps provide us with skin, hair, corneas, tendons, muscles, ligaments, bones, organs, cartilage, and the basis for the very structure of our cells. Without it we simply fall apart, which is scurvy.

Last but not least, vitamin C strengthens the piping of our cardiovascular system, and its deficiency is one of the chief factors in the leading cause of disease death today, heart disease, which destroys one in every two and half of us (if you can picture such a creature).

And in 50% of those deaths, Andrew Saul reminds us, the first symptom is death.[5] An adequate level of vitamin C in the diet, therefore, is vital over the long-term. Failure to do this gets you dead. Badly.

What is it good for?

Like a good Toyota, you get your mileage with vitamin C. It's a powerful antihistamine, antiviral, antitoxin, and Halle Berry uses the powdered stuff mixed with water to exfoliate her First Division visage. And, as if all that's not good enough, vitamin C acts as a particularly effective antioxidant, neutralising cell-damaging free radicals or oxidative elements in the body.

As we age, we slowly oxidise (biologically ‘rust'). An antioxidant is a type of molecule able to slow down or prevent this oxidation process. Oxidation itself is a chemical reaction crucial to life, but one that can be damaging too.

The body employs various reducing agents and enzymes in order to control this vital but potentially harmful system. If not properly controlled, oxidation releases adverse levels of peroxides and free radicals which damage the cell and its DNA. Antioxidants like vitamin C stop these reactions by removing the free radicals and becoming oxidised themselves.

If there are more free radicals than the antioxidants and enzymes can control, the body suffers oxidative stress, which can induce diabetes, cardiovascular disease, hypertension, and chronic inflammatory diseases. Vitamin C is a major player in preventing this from occurring.

Linus Pauling PhD, often known as the ‘Father of Vitamin C' and twice awarded the Nobel Prize, declared that large intakes of up to 10 g of vitamin C each day aids anti-cancer activity within the body. It also assists in repairing damaged arteries and removing arterial plaque for heart disease sufferers. Pauling was largely derided for making these statements, and we'll examine the controversies in a minute, yet he lived into his nineties.

Today, much higher doses of C complex are used by many practitioners for cancer/heart/stroke patients in nutritional therapy who believe Pauling was right, and that the popular nutrient is indispensable to the body in its fight to regain health.

Dietary sources of vitamin C - fruit and veg

Vitamin C is found in abundance in fruits and vegetables, and also in some meats. Rose hips, blackcurrant, peppers, kiwi, guava, broccoli, and nature's most maligned Christmas treat, the Brussels sprout, are all high in vitamin C.

Not only are these foods packed with nutrients in their organic form (unlike meat), they are low in fat and do not need to be cooked to be eaten. If you wish to destroy all the nutrients, enzymes and vitamin C that make fruit and vegetables healthy in the first place, simply fire up the pan and cook ‘em.

Bioflavonoids

Dr Albert Szent-Gyorgi, 1937 Nobel laureate for his isolation of vitamin C, later found other factors intrinsic to the action of C. Originally believed to be a single nutrient, Vitamin C became the subject of further testing by Szent-Gyorgi, who fought long and hard to have the co-factor (bio)flavonoids included.

Bioflavonoids are derived from plant pigments known as flavonols and flavones and are found in many of the same fruits and vegetables rich in vitamin C. Szent-Gyorgi argued that they were essential to human health and coined the new bioflavonoids ‘Vitamin P'. Though they are widely accepted today for their health benefits and are available in hydroxylated and methoxylated forms, the term ‘Vitamin P' was less well received by our medical czars.

Bioflavonoids have great antioxidant properties but in a different way to C. While the body welcomes ascorbic acid and the ascorbates, it recognises bioflavonoids as a foreign compound and acts quickly to flush them from the system. This increases levels of uric acid and serves to expel excess free radicals and other toxins from the body, aiding in the antioxidant process.

While different kinds of bioflavonoid help the body in different ways, all are extremely useful. Those found in citrus fruits increase the absorption of vitamin C in our cells, aid blood vessel permeability and blood flow, and exhibit anti-allergy, anti-inflammatory, anti-microbial and anti-cancer properties.

In a nutshell? Bioflavonoids are seriously good for you.

Meat

Certain meats also contain vitamin C. This is because some animals have high internal levels of C which build up in certain tissues. Liver is the best source of meat for C, but loses up to 100% of its C content when cooked. Unfortunately, the muscles that make up the bulk of western carnivorous diets also happen to be the cuts of meat with the lowest concentrations of vitamin C. We don't like to eat meat raw. Carnivores do.

In 1928, the Arctic anthropologist Vilhjalmur Stefansson emulated the Inuit diet to test a theory. Despite having almost no plant material in their diet, the native people avoided scurvy while European explorers suffered heavily. Both ate meat-based diets. Living exclusively on only lightly cooked meat for a year without any ill-effects, Stefansson was able to prove that cooking the meat destroyed specific nutrients within, later discovered to be vitamin C.

Milk

Human milk also contains useful amounts of C for breast-feeding babies. Mums who have good levels in their own bodies produce milk twice as fortified with the nutrient than found in raw cow's or goat's milk. Once pasteurised, milk loses most of its C content.

Although baby formulas boast that they are fortified with vitamins and just as good as breast milk, the heating and storage that goes with such products wrecks the vitamin C content. Formula well fortified with vitamin C might well contain very little after transit, storage and heating. Nature knows best.

Supplements

Diets being what they are these days, not everyone chooses to get their vitamin C through eating raw fruit and veg, nor chomping lightly cooked slivers of liver. Many choose the world's most popular vitamin supplement instead - you guessed it, vitamin C. Available in caplets, powders, capsules, multivitamin and antioxidant formulations, C supplements are many and varied. If you choose to take a vitamin C supplement, ensure your intake is spread throughout the day to maximise absorption and that the supplement contains bioflavonoids to aid vitamin C metabolism. Steven Hickey PhD writes:

"An individual who wanted protection from, say, the common cold by taking vitamin C, would raise their blood levels more effectively by taking divided doses or slow-release formulations.... If a single dose of vitamin C raises blood levels for about six hours or one quarter of the day, the subject is unprotected for the other three quarters of the time.... The biochemical data supports Pauling's hypothesis that, for a large proportion of the population, the optimal dose of vitamin C is several grams a day.... A single megadose tablet will only raise blood levels for a short period and is likely to be therapeutically ineffective. The aim is to raise plasma levels consistently and this requires either multiple tablets taken at short intervals throughout the day, or the use of slow-release formulations." [6]

Conclusion

Although the levels of vitamin C in food depend on the type of plant, the soil it grew in, freshness, how it was stored or prepared, etc., the following guidelines will ensure a good dietary intake of vitamin C can be achieved.

Raw food rocks! Cooking and heating destroys many of the active components of vitamin C. If you boil a saucepan of vegetables for too long you risk having more vitamin C in the pan water than the food. Copper cooking vessels also reduce the C content of your food.

Fresh is best! As food is stored, the vitamin C content gradually decomposes. An orange in your lounge fruit bowl will lose 50% of its vitamin C content in two weeks. The fresher the food, the more vitamin C it will retain. Correct storage in a cool place, such as a refrigerator, also helps maintain vitamin C content.

Fruit and veg! A diet comprising 80% plant-based, organic fruits and vegetables with 60%-plus consumed raw is the way to go. Vegetable juices are highly recommended - more so than fruit juices, which contain concentrated sugar and acid. Patients recovering from serious illness would do well to keep their raw food ratio high, and vegetable juices enable them to achieve this quickly and effortlessly.

Resources

The Essential Guide to Vitamin C by Phillip Day and Nick Cockayne

Vitamin C Complex plus Bioflavonoids (400 g tub)

Footnotes [1] Bánhegyi G, Mándl J "The hepatic glycogenoreticular system", Pathol Oncol Res 7 (2): 2001, pp.107-110

[2] Rath, M Why Animals Don't Get Heart Attacks - But People Do! MR Publishing, 2000, p.10

[3] How Humans Make Up For An 'Inborn' Vitamin C Deficiency.

www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/03/080320120726.htm

[4] www.thedoctorwithin.com

[5] www.orthomolecular.org

[6] Hickey S and H Roberts Ascorbate, Lulu, 2004

[7] The New England Journal of Medicine, 7th February 1991

by Phillip Day

The short bottom line?

• 130 years ago people died from the conditions in which they lived; the majority of deaths were from environmental/pathogen diseases such as cholera, smallpox, diphtheria, tuberculosis, gastrointestinal disorders and typhus.
  
  
• Today, 80 per cent of 'westernised' popluations die of cancer or heart disease
  
  
• Science shows us that cancer and heart disease are related closely to what we eat
  
  
• So why does the medical establishment not talk about this? Has food become the new smoking?
  
  
• Good news: you do have a choice; educate yourself and change your diet.
  

If you'd prefer to die of old age rather than cancer or heart disease, give this a go. For the next month, remove all meats, eggs, milk and fish from your plate and switch to a 100 per cent plant-based, organic diet, the vast majority eaten raw. Within a week you'll notice the difference, we promise.

Death is still the only condition which has a 100 per cent hit rate. There's no escaping it (unless you know something we don't). So you choose: how will you go? Read the full article to learn more.

What are we dying of today?

So here's the picture: today, half of us will die of a cardiovascular-related disease. Add to that cancer and stroke and you're up over 80 per cent of any given ‘western-styled' population.

The rest of us will variously succumb to diabetes, lung disease, Alzheimers, suicide and death by doctoring.

Of course, everyone has to die of something, but when was the last time you heard of anyone who just conked out from old age? Rare, isn't it? It's very telling.

More to the point, if everyone has to die of something, what do you choose? It doesn't have to be chemo or open heart surgery.

What about 130 years ago?

Part of my job as a health author/researcher is to study trends. A surprising one is that 130 years ago, people weren't dying from what they were eating, they were dying from the conditions in which they lived.

The majority of deaths were from the environmental/pathogen diseases such as cholera, smallpox, diphtheria, tuberculosis, gastrointestinal disorders and typhus. In other words, polluted water, air choked with smoke from factories and immune system disorders such as pneumonia and influenza. One university study states:

If infections were the killers of reckless 19th century urbanization, cardiovascular diseases were the killers of 20th century modernization. While avoiding the subway in your auto may have reduced the chance of influenza, it increased the risk of heart disease. Traditionally populations fatten when they change to a modern lifestyle. When Samoans migrate to Hawaii and San Francisco or live a relatively affluent life in American Samoa, they gain between 10 and 30 kg... Since the 1950s, however, cardiovascular disease has steadily lost ground to a more indefatigable terminator, cancer...

Though cancer trailed cardiovascular in 1997 by 41 to 23 percent, cancer should take over as the nation's #1 killer by 2015, if long-run dynamics continue as usual. The main reasons are not environmental. Doll and Peto estimate that only about 5 percent of U.S. cancer deaths are attributable to environmental pollution and geophysical factors such as background radiation and sunlight.[1] (our emphasis).

So runs a report out of Rockefeller University, motto Science for the Benefit of Humanity. It's interesting that in their summary of death trends in modern society, wherein they correctly cite that cancer will eventually succeed CVD as chief terminator, they are more coy as to the causes.

Clearly sunlight wasn't killing people in a statistical fashion prior to 1900, although no-one disputes that if you barbecue yourself there'll be trouble. Vaccination advocates like to claim credit for ‘conquering' smallpox and the rest of the dirt diseases but city development programs and environmental clean-ups after 1850 were responsible for spelling the steady decline of these scourges.

At the same time, citizens in the developed nations became wealthier and society changed as a result, not only in how people lived but in what they ate and slapped on their skin.

'A pack a day keeps lung cancer away'...?

Of course, social trends like smoking have skewed the statistics. Today, as the world comes to grips with getting those little white sticks out of our feverish fingers, it's worth remembering that sixty years ago, doctors were actually encouraging people to smoke, even pregnant women.

Smoking adverts appeared such as, "For digestion's sake, smoke Camels." "More athletes smoke Luckies all day long with no harmful effects to wind or physical condition." "More doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette!" And my favourite, "Not a cough in a carload" from Old Gold.

The establishment got it wrong and they knew it. While it was common gossip that smokes were doing us in, we watched bemused as expert after expert not only denied tobacco was harmful but that it could actually improve our health.

It's no secret today that the medical establishment of the time was in bed with the tobacco mafia. Two health spokesmen in America, Dr Ian MacDonald and Dr Henry Garland, defended cigarette smoking as a harmless pastime unrelated to cancer in the 1950s. MacDonald, a prominent cancer surgeon listed in Who's Who, even coined the phrase, "A pack a day keeps lung cancer away." [2]

But scientific reality about cigarettes was to tell a different story and these men were, of course, tragically wrong in their beliefs. Both doctors were later charged with accepting money under the table from the tobacco industry and perished because of their error.

MacDonald was burned to death in his bed a few years later when it was believed the cigarette he had been smoking set his bedclothes on fire. Garland, who bragged that he had chain-smoked from childhood and that cigarettes were just an innocent pastime, died of lung cancer.

Food: the new tobacco?

Today, the medical establishment is wrong again and making the same mistake over diet.

Today our medical peers have conflicted interests with the drug and food industry. Results? We are now dying from what we eat and are prescribed by doctors, not from where we live.

It is beyond scientific dispute that our changed diets and medical abuse are at the heart of what's killing us[3].

Today the medical establishment persists in calling these facts ‘debatable', just as they did with their (now laughably bizarre) denials 50 years ago that smoking was bad for our health.

So the majority of people are now dying from their diets. Yet they are not offered nutrional advice (doctors receive almost no formal training in nutrition so that's no real surprise) and are instead prescribed pills, surgery, ex-chemical warfare agents and radiation in an attempt to cure them.

You have a choice

If you would like to avoid needless suffering and a pointless death, you can. Simply, take charge. The three areas of concern with diet are:

1. the extent to which our food is cooked, thereby destroying nutrients,
   
   
2. the extent of animal-based foods consumed and
   
   
3. the extent of processed junk palmed off on the public as 'food'.
   
   

The studies are conclusive. Processed, animal-based diets kill, organic plant-based diets heal,[4] and you're hearing this from someone who is not a strict vegetarian.

I received a few emails from outraged meat-scarfers and milk-moustachers the other day who were ticked off at my recent articles. Firstly, get a sense of humour.

Secondly, ‘my forthright, extreme position' offends you? I'll tell you what's extreme: heart disease, cancer and stroke killing 80 per cent of the population is extreme. Following government-mandated guidelines on diet and the out-dated food pyramid will prematurely kill 80 per cent-plus of the population; I'd say that's extreme.

If 1 in every 2 of us and 1 in 3 are dying from heart disease and cancer respectively, this follows we are doing something fundamentally wrong as a society.

Let me put it this way. The No. 1 cause of unassisted suicide in Britain, the US and Australia is what you'll put on your dinner plate tonight.

So who's talking about this?

Not many. No-one in the media dares talk about the real food because of all the drug advertising in their newspapers.

So let me lay out the real extreme position: Doctors have no problem believing every cell in your body comes from what you eat, and food is necessary to keep you alive. But they have a big problem believing food can fix you when you're sick. And most of them are not stupid people.

Conclusion? You're responsible for your own health. You deal with it.

Environmental destruction & economic madness

There are other ramifications to our runaway love affair with the modern die-eat.

People deplore the destruction of the Amazon rainforest without realising that 250 million acres have been trashed by the Brazilian government and big business, not to yield wood for industry(!) or even build towns and cities for their burgeoning populations(!!), but to provide grazing land to raise animals to eat and agriculture to farm crops to feed the animals we eat.

Why waste farmland to raise crops for direct human consumption when you can make millions from the subsidies poured into the animal industry by government politicians in return for campaign contributions?

Mike Harrison reports that farm animals consume 80 per cent of American-grown corn, 80 per cent of America's grain and 95 per cent of the oats, yet cows are not physiologically designed to eat grains. Much of this is stuffed into them during the 100-day fattening period prior to slaughter at high-density feed lots such as Harris Ranch, just off I-5 in central California, up the road from where I used to live.

Notwithstanding the appalling conditions cattle have to tolerate at such places, it's simply unhygienic and complete madness from an economic and health standpoint.

One-third of raw materials and fuels are consumed raising animals to eat. 87 per cent of America's total agricultural land - almost half the entire land mass - is used to raise the animals we eat, either grazing them or raising feed. New York Times writes:

The world's total meat supply was 71 million tons in 1961. In 2007, it was estimated to be 284 million tons. Per capita consumption has more than doubled over that period. (In the developing world, it rose twice as fast, doubling in the last 20 years.) World meat consumption is expected to double again by 2050, which one expert, Henning Steinfeld of the United Nations, says is resulting in a "relentless growth in livestock production."[5]

Effect on our health?

What effects have these changes in diet had on our health? You be the judge. Drinking three glasses of milk provides approximately the same cholesterol as 21 slices of bacon 1 pint of ice cream? 24 slices of bacon.

Add to that the heart attack on a plate for breakfast, followed by burgers, steaks, chicken, fish, pizzas, eggs and don't forget those hot-dogs on 4th July, and you might as well take your teddy and throw yourself on the bonfire now.

Is chicken better? Hardly. Jacked up with diethylstilbesterol, hormone-accelerated skinless farmed chicken comes in marginally less in the cholesterol stakes, but only just. The natural alternatives are hardly better but come without the hormones, antibiotics, arsenic and mercury.

With well over 50 per cent of the average western diet derived from artery-clogging transfats, not to mention all the sugar and processed starches, Big Business is both clogging you and having you artificially unclogged, and sticking their kids through private school at your expense.

Without state subsidies, steak would be $90/lb and we'd be back to the old days when only the wealthy could glue themselves up. Go figure. Anyway, I could go on and on and I've frequently been known to.

What does this mean to YOU?

It means that one of the most stunning things you can do with your life is to find out what it actually feels like to clear out the rubbish, have bags of energy into your old age, remove the fear of some apocalyptic illness, save a huge amount of money on killer foods, and not die on a gurney stuck in a cupboard in some out of the way hospital.

Since writing about all this in Health Wars ten years ago, numerous studies have emerged confirming how a 100 per cent plant-based, organic diet reverses serious illness, clears out your arteries, prevents and cures cancer, prevents and helps cure stroke, increases heart-rate variability, prevents and cures diabetes, prevents and cures arthritis and gives you the body of a Greek god(dess) with thunderbolts to match.

It's your choice whether you try it or not. I'm not going to come round and do it for you. You have to do it. That's part of the repentance - ah, sorry, therapy.

Affairs of the Heart - educate yourself free

In the next two weeks, I'm going to launch my new online seminar/film/presentation entitled Affairs of the Heart, which deals with our No.1 disease killer.

This will be free to watch for anyone who registers and has a broadband connection. In it, I will cover the science behind why we're dying unnecessarily on these heavy, animal-based diets and what we do about it.

You will learn about Drs Dean Ornish, Joel Fuhrman and others who have been reversing serious metabolic disease, even in its final stages, for years.

Bad news, good news

For all those out there who are overweight, overfed, bloated, constipated, with high blood pressure, high cholesterol, arrhythmia, diabetic, arthritic, cancerous, osteoporotic, under-exercised, over-drugged and under-appreciated, the bad news is, no pill or surgery will cure you.

The good news is that you already have a cure for these problems. It's called a maximised immune system operating in an optimally nourished and de-stressed body. Yours for the taking, only you have to do something.

Ah-ha! Easier to pop a pill than change your ways. And much more profitable for Big Business; enough said.

Deciding to change your diet and lifestyle is a commitment you make not only to yourself but to your friends and family. It's saying, "I'm going to be around for a while and in peak, physical condition, so watch out!"

If Grandma continues to shovel steaks onto your plate, she probably wants you gone. Switching to a 100 per cent plant-based diet is not as hard as it sounds provided you carry out a little preparation and research beforehand.

You will reap enormous benefits right from the get-go, a fact not often appreciated by those who grudgingly consider the change.

If you're not willing to change, then DON'T. But you will suffer what you must suffer. If you do want to change, try an experiment.

Try this - clean it out

For the next month, remove all meats, eggs, milk and fish from your plate and switch to a 100 per cent plant-based, organic diet, the vast majority eaten raw. Within the first week, your body will feel wonderfully and completely different. As you progress:

• bloating will go
  
  
• insulin levels will tumble
  
  
• high blood pressure starts to drop
  
  
• blood cholesterol levels and deposits begin to clear out
  
  
• bones begin to strengthen because they are getting the correct calcium (fine calcium) from vegetable sources
  
  
• you'll have three to five bowel movements a day depending how much junk you need to move
  
  
• weight will drop off
  
  

You can eat an unlimited amount of raw, plant-based wholefoods with health-enhancing effects.

A heavy animal-based diet will eventually kill you. Plant-based foods are the only foods that strengthen the immune system and contain cancer-fighting phyto-nutrients which is why the most successful clinics in the world use them.

Your immune system is the only way to cure metabolic disease. Richard Cutler MD states: "The amount of antioxidants you maintain in your body is directly proportional to how long you will live."

He's right. A whole spread of raw, organic plant dietary ingested daily for a period of several months will undo decades of culinary abuse. And you'll feel the good it's doing you even while you are recovering.

Death by delusion? Your choice

Don't give yourself a hard time over this. If you really object to what I'm saying, then don't do it, but let's not fall out about it. The science is in whether you like it or not.

If you want to get more details and really make the change, pick up a copy of Health Wars, watch Food Matters (available in this week's Credence Special) and have a look at Mike Harrison's www.ravediet.com site.

My book, Food for Thought, provides a whole host of transitional recipes to bring you and your family over from where you are now to where you need to be.

I see this way of eating and living bringing untold joy to families around the world whose loved ones recover from serious illness, lose weight and enjoy vitality well into old age.

Imagine how empowered you'll become when you discover that the measures to recover from a disease that was trying to destroy you are in your own hands and you can start right now without your doctor's ‘help'.

There are enough problems in the world to occupy us without ignorance. Don't let death by delusion be the one that does you and your family in.

Footnotes

[1] Jesse H Ausubel, Perrin S Meyer, Iddo KWernick "Death and the Human Environment: The United States in the 20th Century", Technology in Society 23(2):131-146 (2001)

[2] US News & World Report, "Here's Another View: Tobacco May Be Harmless," 2nd August 1957, pp.85-86

[3] www.wcrf.org

[4] www.ravediet.com/refs.htm

[5] New York Times, 27th January 2008