31 Jan The Cause of Disease: Understanding Toxic Overload and Its Impact on Health

If prevention can be accomplished, then cures will not be needed. –Dr. J.H. Tilden

Since 1938, over 1,453 drugs have gained FDA approval all in the name of curing people of their various illnesses. Yet not one of these drugs has even cured the simplest ailment, the common cold. The failures of modern medicine are due largely in part to its reductionist approach to healing the human body. The reductionist philosophy believes that by addressing the part of the whole that is experiencing the greatest effect (symptom), a treatment can be developed. This ‘divide and conquer’ approach directly impacts how we diagnose and treat disease. Most of the science of diagnosis comes from studying disease either in dead bodies or on Petri dishes. This is why I say we don’t have a health care system; what we have is sick care. It’s only designed to treat the sick and dying. While healthy individuals are sent home until they can join the party. We take this same approach when it comes to vitamin and mineral deficiencies. The doctor will attempt to treat individual deficiencies with corresponding vitamins and minerals. The majority of nutritional supplements are synthetic, but in nature, nutrients are provided in perfect divine ratios to each other, not in single servings. We often see failures of this philosophy with patients. If a patient is anemic as a result of vitamin B12 deficiency but is misdiagnosed and then given folic acid as treatment, the laboratory results will show increased blood cell formation, and you will appear to be cured. Meanwhile, the vitamin B12 deficiency goes unnoticed; it can lead to nerve degeneration and potentially paralysis. Both vitamin B12 and folate are part of the B-complex vitamins, which can be found in plant-based whole foods to act as a form of prevention and remedy to this patient. The healthcare system approach to healing rarely addresses the underlying cause, so by default, it can never cure the disease. Cures only become necessary when we fail to take the proper prevention. But then again, prevention is only possible when you know the cause. So let’s get to the root cause.
The use of whole foods to cure disease isn’t some new age trendy concept; it’s a return to the original standard. From as far back as ancient Egypt, there are 3,000-year-old medical texts that document the use of plant-based foods to heal the same ailments we suffer from today. And just like modern humans, subsequent societies embraced advancement over nature, and their well-being suffered as a result.

The Power of Natural Vitamin C

There have been many fortuitous discoveries in establishing the connection between disease and nutrition, such as in 1497, when Vasco de Gama’s crew discovered that “when life gives you scurvy, make lemonade.” This was at a time when scurvy was the leading killer of men who took to the seas, and citrus fruits became their savior.

Now we know the active ingredient in citrus fruits that cured scurvy was natural vitamin C.

Did you know that most vitamins made today, whether they are fortified into cereals or encapsulated in supplements, are created in a laboratory? These synthetic versions are structurally identical to the vitamins present in whole foods, but their activity in the body is not. Even vitamins that are labeled ‘natural’ only require that 10% originate from plant-based foods. The other 90% is left up to the supplement manufacturer’s discretion. With the exception of monkeys, guinea pigs, and humans, most animals are capable of making their own endogenous vitamin C by making a few alterations to glucose. Humans, unfortunately, don’t synthesize certain enzymes, so we’re required to get vitamin C from dietary sources.

Virtually all vitamin C sold today is in the form of ascorbic acid. Here’s a rude awakening: Ascorbic acid is not vitamin C. It is an extracted isolate of vitamin C most often made with genetically modified high fructose corn syrup and other harsh chemicals.Vitamin C is a complex that includes ascorbinogen, bioflavonoids, factors (J, K, P), rutin, and tyrosinase. Vitamin C also requires mineral co-factors in proper ratios. If any of these supporting factors are absent, then there will be no biological activity. The benefits of vitamin C—including immune boosting, wound healing, collagen formation, iron absorption, and tissue repairing—can only be received when we consume it in its whole form from plant-based foods. This was confirmed in 1937 by Nobel Prize Laureate Dr. Albert Szent-Georgi, who discovered the chemical structure for vitamin C. The conclusion of his research demonstrated that while scurvy could not be cured with isolated ascorbic acid, consuming it as a whole food had a success record much like the 1996 Chicago Bulls with Michael Jordan. Instead of making the clear connection between disease and nutrition, medical science continues to round up its unusual suspects and place the blame on innocent accomplices like inherited genetics. Genetics Are a Predisposition, Not a Predetermination Since the completion of the Human Genome Project in 2003, we now know that genetics play a very small role in the development and progression of disease. What has a larger impact is the internal environment created by the foods we eat, beverages we drink, stress, and lack of physical activity. These factors create an environment that will either be conducive to health or the feeding ground for disease. A toxic internal environment caused by processed foods, dairy, meat, hormones, refined sugars, dyes, preservatives, artificial colors, heavy metals, stress, and a sedentary lifestyle flips the switch on for genes that code for disease. The idea that heredity and genes are major determinants of chronic diseases is probably one of the most overstated myths about health. It creates a victim’s mind-state as it relates to our well-being instead of the empowered understanding of just how potent our body’s healing mechanisms are. When we look at the top killers of Americans, there is no study, physician, or patient who can attest that they have been cured when taking the traditional medicine route. Yes, there are many patients who receive symptom relief, but most often the relief they experience is because the disease has run its course and the body has an innate ability to heal itself. Because modern medicine has been a study of disease instead of healing,naturally more disease has been created. Listening to a drug commercial, even the healthiest person in the world will begin to feel as though they’re sick. Today traditional physicians now have a hypochondriac’s urge to diagnose and a linebacker’s aggression to prescribe. Take a trip to the doctor’s office, and you’re bound to get diagnosed with anything ranging from restless legs to Alice in Wonderland syndrome (a real diagnosis by the way). Diagnoses are created, and treatments are developed to address all the symptoms; meanwhile, the disease grows progressively worse. Pretty soon, you’ll have conditions for your conditions that need to be treated.

The Cascade of Prescription Drugs

It is a well-known practice in the medical field to use drugs to treat the side effects of other previously prescribed drugs. Diabetes is a perfect example of the failures of medicine. This
disease doesn’t get nearly the amount of attention heart disease or breast cancer does because it’s not as sexy as the aforementioned. Most people are completely unaware that they are either pre-diabetic
or diabetic, but that’s no surprise considering 70% of diabetics also have America’s ‘silent killer,’ hypertension. As sweet as the disease sounds, it doesn’t just impact your blood sugars. Diabetes increases
the risk of stroke and heart disease up to four-fold, is the leading cause of blindness, accounts for over 60% of all lower limb amputations, 70% of diabetics will suffer mild to severe nerve damage, and it’s the leading cause of end-stage kidney disease.For men, often the canary in the mine (so to speak) is erectile dysfunction. This is the first sign that shows us circulation has been compromised and nerve damage is on its way. At first, it starts off quite simple: metformin (for blood sugar control) and a little HCTZ (‘water pill’ for blood pressure), and the patient thinks no harm, no foul. But blood pressure can never be regulated by urination for very long because it also leaves the body in a dehydrated state, so two or three additional medications are eventually added because vascular disease will worsen when the cause goes unaddressed. Blood sugar levels will begin to skyrocket due to increased insulin resistance, so additional oral medications are added on. Type 2 diabetes slowly begins to transition towards type 1 (insulin required). And because all excess sugar in the body is converted into fat, you now have a cholesterol issue (if you didn’t have one before), and so a statin drug is added on. At some point, diabetes becomes the sniper in the tower, picking you off piece by piece. Next, there’s gum disease and tooth decay, followed by degeneration of nerves, so gabapentin is added to your medication bank, and then you begin to lose the sensation in your feet altogether. This is followed by gangrene due to a lack of circulation and increased toxicity. This is why diabetics are at a high risk for amputations. It is not uncommon to see diabetic patients with as many as 20 medications on their profile and leaving the pharmacy with a grocery bag filled with prescriptions. Does this sound like the traditional model for ‘treatment is working’? Of course not, but as you can see, diabetics are the perfect customers for bottom lines. I can remember being a pharmacy manager, reading through our quarterly profit statements, and diabetic patients were always the pharmacy’s top revenue patients. Yet there are numerous studies, patient cases, and testimonies that can be easily referenced to show thousands of patients have been cured of diabetes by returning to nature’s
prescription. I can attest personally to this natural prescription because it most certainly saved me from myself. Considering my father had experienced the majority of those progressions, his mother passed as a result of them, along with my mother’s father. With my family history, I could have easily just tossed in the towel and embraced the belief that genetics superseded my ability to heal. Even my physicians had told me that my family history made it a certainty that I should prepare myself for the same diseases. But what they saw as a genetic precursor, I saw as inherited habits passed down in the form of poor nutrition and lifestyle.

The Truth About Your Genes

For a moment, let’s suspend the scientific mumbo-jumbo and take a trip to common sense land. If the same DNA is passed on to me from my grandparents and parents containing the same genetic material as all my brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts, uncles, and children, why are these genes linked to disease choosing to express themselves in some but not all family members? Now we often hear of dangerous cancer genes that are passed on and put you at high risk; however, the truth is, genes do not self-activate. A gene cannot turn itself on or off. Genes are turned on or off by a process known as gene regulation. It is an essential part of normal cell development. Gene regulation can occur at any point but most often occurs at the level of transcription (when information in a gene’s DNA is transferred to messenger RNA to make proteins). This process is initiated by either signals from the environment or from transcription factors, which are proteins. Regulation of transcription is the most common form of gene control. When these proteins (transcription factors) are not available to respond to the environmental signal, conventional belief is that a random mutation occurs (unpredictable outcome).This poses a great contradiction to current medical science: hereditary genes are expressing disease selectively, yet the mutation is random. A more likely model was presented by John Cairns Adaptive mutations, which states that genes don’t change randomly; it is an environmentally directed mutation as a result of the internal environment created by the patient. The idea that genetics has predetermined a patient’s health is old medical science that must be retired because we now know that genes only cause 5% or less of all disease. In addition, modern science has proven that 95% of all cancer has no hereditary linkage. Quite the contrary, 95% of cancer is the result of your rewriting normal genes into cancerous genes as a result of the internal environment you create through lifestyle choices. The expression of disease is not based solely on a genetic predisposition in chronic diseases but the acidic and toxic environment that turns on these genes that express disease. So the question becomes, what factors can determine a patient’s internal environment? That would be what he or she ingests nutritionally, physically, mentally, and spiritually. Anything that we consume that isn’t natural and nourishing is a toxin.

If It’s Not a Whole Food, It’s a Toxin

Anything we eat that cannot be metabolized, absorbed, assimilated, and its remaining by-products eliminated from the system, becomes a toxin.Modern processed foods are devoid of fiber and saturated with toxic chemicals that accumulate in your colon as rotting fermenting feces. These toxins produce by-products that leach out into the bloodstream and wreak havoc on your blood vessels, tissues, and organs. Ultimately, some of this waste material will be stored in adipose tissue, creating unwanted belly fat. In very much the same way we can intoxicate ourselves with alcohol, we do the same with modern foods. As we continue to auto intoxicate ourselves with these food-like products, our bowels will become obstructed, leading to chronic constipation. This vicious cycle is the seat of disease that is digging an early grave for modern people.

You Have to Be a Scientist and Nutritionist Just to Read Food Labels!

We dig our own graves with spoons and forks when we chose to eat out of boxes, cans, jars, and anything that requires a food label. Being a chemist, pharmacist, and nutritionist gives me a unique perspective on food labels and drug ingredients. On the one hand, I find it fascinating how both organic and inorganic chemistry creates this beautiful symphony we call life and food. But on the other hand, chemicals used in foods today look more reminiscent of the pharmaceutical industry than agriculture. The vast majority of grocery stores are filled with endless aisles of shelf items with expiration dates that will outlive some of their purchasers. We rarely stop to think how these boxed, bagged, canned, and jarred items remain ‘fresh’ for so long. In order to understand the labels on these ‘Franken-foods,’ (named after the crudely assembled monster in the horror novel Frankenstein), you would have to be a chemist and nutritionist. Luckily for you, I just so happen to be both. The food industry goes to great lengths to ensure that processed foods maintain their color, texture, taste, and especially shelf life. This is how a food product that should contain only two or three ingredients ends up with a laundry list of chemical names you can barely pronounce. Everything from preservatives, dyes, artificial colors, flavor enhancers, and refined sugars are added to hi-jack your taste buds and increase company bottom lines. The meat industry is worst because packaged meats don’t require ingredient labels when they most definitely should. Hormones, antibiotics, and genetically modified organisms are fed to livestock, which subsequently ends up in all animal products, including the dairy products you feed your family. Often these animals are ridden with disease because of the poor living conditions they’re subjected to, and these diseases will also end upon your plate.

The Toxins Accumulate

To add fuel to the fire, we layer ourselves with toxic hygienic and cosmetic products that seep into our skins and get into our bloodstream. This is how we intoxicate ourselves literally to death with daily doses of seemingly harmless products that steal away hours, days, and years of our lives in such a gradual fashion they remain undetected. Our liver and kidneys become saturated with chemicals, and our guts are constipated with backed up sewage. Our health is vitally connected to our ability to eliminate waste from our bodies. Even if we consumed the healthiest foods in the world, chronic constipation would cause those foods to rot and become toxic. Once the body reaches its toxic threshold, disease will most certainly appear. If the toxins accumulate in the knees and joints, then we call it rheumatoid arthritis. Accumulation in the colon, we call it colitis, and in the kidneys, we call it nephritis. All of these signal the initial signs of disease, which is inflammation. The inflammation is directly correlated to an inflammatory and toxic diet. This unchecked toxicity will eventually destroy the tissue beyond repair, as is the case with type 1 diabetes and the pancreas.

The great news is that as long as the tissue has not been significantly compromised, the body’s healing mechanisms are capable of reversing the disease when the offending toxins are removed from the diet. But even if that weren’t the case, it’s never too late to enjoy the fruits of the labor from embracing a whole foods, plant-based lifestyle. Despite the overwhelming evidence to support the benefits of going green, our willingness to hold on to myths about unhealthy foods is why we continue to be the sickest and most obese country in the world.

CURATED BY OZZIE SMALL