“In our last posting, Curmudge, you suggested that we had
learned a few things about alternative medicine worth sharing. How do you propose that we proceed?”
“This may be a bit presumptuous, Julie, but we are going to
provide a blog’s worth of guidance for a selection of people with various
degrees of health. We’ll start at
the healthy end of the spectrum—with young people who are healthy and want to
stay that way. Their simplest path
forward is good nutrition.”
“Nutrition!
Here we go again, discussing something about which we know absolutely
nothing.”
“As of a few weeks ago, I knew at least a little bit. Here are my rules of thumb:
(a) Everything
that tastes really good is probably bad for you.
(b) An
apple a day would have kept the doctor away many years ago when doctors made
house calls.
(c) If
you are healthy and happy with your diet, don’t change it.
‘If it ain’t broke don’t fix
it.’ Of course, you might die
tomorrow.
(d) If
you are 79 years old, you must have been eating some of the right foods for the
past 79 years. But don’t make big
plans for ten years from now.
(e) If
you are obese and don’t want to stay that way, change your diet and
lifestyle. There are a million
sources of advice out there. If
you decide to remain obese, move to Mississippi, the fattest state in the
nation. You’ll have lots of
company down there.”
“Curmudge, some of your rules sound rather unkind, but it’s
hard to argue against them. And
you suggested that you have learned more about nutrition in the past few
weeks. You must have been reading
the right books; it can’t be from your exemplary eating habits.”
“I grew up as a meat-and-potatoes kid. During the Second World War the meat
was sometimes Spam®, and we raised potatoes in our victory garden. Nationally, every week we celebrated
‘Meatless Tuesday.’ The objective
of a meal was to get over the feeling of hunger, and that has continued until
recently. If we look around, we
see most people still eating that way; and in the U.S. they eat too much. Regrettably, in some parts of the world
people never get over feeling hungry.”
“In the past many years since your youth, Professor,
scientists have learned that the real purpose of eating is to nourish the
biochemical systems that run one’s body.
Paraphrasing Blaylock’s comment about nutrition and cancer, ‘New
techniques for measuring biochemical events on a molecular level have allowed
us to map out the many ways the components of (a proper diet including) fruits
and vegetables inhibit cancer formation.’ (1) “
“You’ve got it right as usual, Julie. That’s the link between the natural
products side of alternative medicine and nutrition. One’s good health can be largely dependent on the specific
natural products in the foods that he eats. That’s why we could say a moment ago that good nutrition is
the best path forward for a healthy person who wants to stay healthy.”
“Shall we provide some specific suggestions for that
up-to-now healthy person?”
“Sure. Most
people in the U.S. have been eating too much sugar, refined carbohydrates, and
the wrong kind of fat. Instead,
they need more fruits and vegetables, especially the cruciferous ones like
broccoli, cauliflower, and Brussels sprouts. There was even an article in the August 2013 National
Geographic about how we eat too much sugar, much of it invisible as
high-fructose corn syrup. The
average American eats 22.7 teaspoons of sugar per day without touching the
sugar bowl. Among the worst
sources are sugar-coated breakfast cereals and carbonated drinks (soda). We have acquired a taste for poor
nutrition. For example, a can of
soup wouldn’t taste right if were not crammed full of salt.”
“Curmudge, I believe everyone knows what you just said, but they seem unwilling to put it into
practice. But suppose our ‘healthy
person’ really wants to get serious about his/her diet. Assuming she has a computer and is
willing to learn, what resources should she turn to?”
“I first recommend a change in syntax. Use the French word régime instead of diet. Diet connotes ‘fat’ and an effort that
is often short, unpleasant, and unsuccessful. Second, recognize that many of the experts in nutrition are
those who have used diet as the foundation for their approach to diseases via
alternate medicine. And finally,
you’ll see that many of those diseases are senior citizens’ afflictions that
have been the most resistant to conventional medicine, such as cancer.”
“I suspect that the first nutrition ‘guru’ that you will
recommend is Andrew
Weil, MD.”
“For him, ‘guru’ is he right term, Julie, and he can
certainly provide more authoritative advice than we can. It‘s spelled out in his
anti-inflammatory diet and
food
pyramid. Most of the
authorities whose books I have read are fairly consistent in their dietary
recommendations. Russell Blaylock
MD and Donald Yance, a nutritionist and herbalist (2), describe in detail why
certain foods are good or bad for you.
And locally (Green Bay), Terry Lemerond includes diet advice in his Terry’s
Traditional Diet. For the
dedicated meat eater, Al Sears MD provides advice on protein. (3)”
“A new find for us, Old Guy, but seemingly not for a lot of
other people, is William Davis’s book, Wheat
Belly. I even found a summary
of the book on the web, so the price is right for a tightwad like you. Dr. Davis makes a pretty strong case
for a wheat-free diet, although some of his assertions have recently been contested. Davis’s diet has a lot in common with
the well-known Paleo
diet.”
“Davis’s results sound impressive, Julie, but adhering to a
wheat-free diet would be difficult.
I would have to make toast from rye bread and give up frosted cupcakes
and weissbier (beer made from
wheat).”
“But Curmudge, all of these diets are demanding, and it’s
hard to get enthusiastic about eating a bunch of vegetables.”
“Try juicing or blenderizing them, Julie. I haven’t tried that yet, but Doc Mack
has. The first step is to buy a
blender, and it’s critical to find one that is easy to clean. (1, p. 28)”
“We can’t leave nutrition without considering smart
shopping. Look for a store that
uses the NuVal system for evaluating food
nutrition. The system considers
30-plus nutrients and nutrition factors – the good (protein, calcium, vitamins)
and the not-so-good (sugar, sodium, cholesterol). And then it boils it
down into an algorithm that gives a score from 1 (bad) to 100 (good) for
each food item. These numbers
should be visible for each item in a store that has adopted this fairly new
system. I’ve seen some of these
numbers in the local Festival Foods.
So, Professor, we’re at the end of another class. Do we have a final observation for our
readers?”
“When I’m in a restaurant or in the hospital where I
volunteer, there seem to be lots of obese people. But in my apartment complex, where most of the residents are
over 80 years old, very few people are obese. I think I know why.
Bon appétit, Julie.”
Kaizen Curmudgeon
(1) Blaylock,
Russell L., MD Natural Strategies for Cancer Patients
(2003, Kensington)
(2) Yance,
Donald R. Herbal Medicine, Healing & Cancer (1999, McGraw-Hill)
(3) Sears,
Al, MD P.A.C.E. (2010, Wellness Research and Consulting)
Link to posting from blog archives: Patient Safety—Communications 1/22/09
http://kaizencurmudgeon.blogspot.com/2009/01/patient-safety-communications.html
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