Arthritis is considered the least amenable to treatment of all the chronic diseases. But Dr Hay maintained that arthritis responds to nutritional treatment as surely as do other degenerative diseases. Twenty-eight years of experience enabled him to write very positively – and comfortingly – about the ultimate cure of arthritis:
Most cases of arthritis are curable, and permanently so, if the disease has not progressed to such a degree that it has permanently destroyed the function of the affected joint as occurs in ankylosis. As long as there is motion left in any joint, the case is by no means hopeless. Do not be discouraged if the pain seems to inhibit motion completely, if at the same time the joint can be moved passively to any degree.
He warned, however, that deposits outside the circulation, as those in the tissues about the joints, may require years to be completely absorbed or may never be fully absorbed, yet the joints become usable, and pliable, without pain. But he promised that even cases of severe arthritis, when every joint in the body is affected with pain and immobility, recover uniformly when the body is relieved of its excessive debris and feeding is corrected.
No specific diet is necessary, or even advisable, he said, for arthritis, but it is essential that the food intake should be largely of the alkali- or base-forming variety – vegetables, salads, fruits – and kept so throughout life; that the colon should be brought up to date and kept so. It is essential that the diet should contain fresh, properly constituted foods, whole foods, and as much as possible of these in raw form. It is interesting that, in 1936, at the Royal Free Hospital in London, an experiment on arthritic patients with a raw diet was successfully carried out by Dr Dorothy C. Hare. In the report of this experiment Dr Hare stressed the fact that the rawness of the food seemed to be the one outstanding factor that brought about results.*
Dr Hay warned that starches and sugar, carbohydrates of concentrated character, are the chief dietary causes of arthritis, not so much because they are so intrinsically causative, as because they are usually eaten in combination with incompatible foods and their proper digestion prevented, with resulting fermentation.
The elimination of starches and sugar in the diet is therefore of paramount importance. In the opinion of some authorities at the present time, most arthritic patients experience difficulty in assimilating carbohydrates, with ensuing indigestion. (Once again, starch is the villain of the piece, and even a valuable whole-grain one can be so if not correctly combined with other foods.) From my own experience, and that of correspondents and friends, indigestion frequently precedes and accompanies arthritis. This indicates that both conditions are due to the same cause – incompatible food mixtures and a lowered alkaline reserve. This underlines the great value of compatible eating; it automatically reduces the amount of starch eaten and ensures its compatible combination with other foods.
Many of Dr Hay’s patients recovered fully by making no other dietary change apart from the strict separation of incompatible foods (as in my own case). But to make this strict separation, and at the same time to make the diet 80 per cent alkali forming, is more effective, speedier and helps to correct the chemical balance. Arthritis, asserted Dr Hay, is a purely nutritional state, the result of an imbalance in the body’s chemistry; he found this was evident from observation of many cases. He also found it evident that ‘exposure to weather, or occupational pursuits, have nothing to do with the creation of the condition, except in a secondary way’.
To help correct the chemical balance and increase the delicate alkaline reserve in the bloodstream, Dr Hay particularly recommended a sufficiency of acid fruits such as oranges, grapefruit and lemons (the juice of a lemon in a glass of water on waking is very beneficial); these acid fruits are especially high in alkaline salts – lemons most of all. Unfortunately, many arthritic sufferers make the mistake of avoiding all ‘acid fruits’ thinking thereby to help their condition, whereas they are merely worsening an already deficient intake of vitamins. As there seems to be much confusion regarding the term ‘acid fruits’, the reader is urged to re-read its classification in Chapter 2.
Dr Hay also recommended:
It must therefore be repeated again: arthritis is a purely nutritional state and its logical treatment is a nutritional one. Unfortunately, arthritis research foundations have been issuing statements for many years that nutritional therapy is totally without merit, thus discouraging most doctors from paying attention to their patients’ diet. Any cure or improvement resulting from nutritional therapy has therefore been dismissed as a ‘spontaneous remission’. There is now, however, too much solid evidence of sustained benefit from such therapy to justify this concept. In particular, the Arthritic Association has had much success in promoting a high-potassium diet based on the work of Charles de Coti-Marsh, which is very much in accord with the ideas of Dr Hay.
Obesity
This is a far more serious condition than most people realize; it is now closely linked with diabetes, cholesterol-rich gallstones, coronary artery disease, high blood pressure and stroke. Roughly half the people in the UK are overweight, and obesity among children is now reaching epidemic proportions. One in ten six-year-olds is now classed as obese, and the epidemic is spreading at nearly one per cent a year.*
It is generally believed that people become obese because they eat too much. Dr Hay believed that obesity is far more often evidence of an imbalance in nutrition than the result of eating too much, and that its cause lies very frequently in the mixture of starchy food and proteins, or starches with acid fruits. He also strongly indicted refined carbohydrates, as did Dr T.L. Cleave 50 years later.
The logical treatment of obesity,