The second issue is whether improved nutrition, as is recommended by orthomolecular nutritionists, increases the body’s defenses above what they commonly are. About this issue, there are two divergent camps. We believe that enhanced nutritional health will increase defenses to the point that the incidence of a large number of diseases is decreased, and if disease is already present, then healing is accelerated. However, the majority of physicians do not believe that enhanced nutrition is necessary, for they believe that most people are already nutritionally healthy. The arguments in favor of nutritional enhancement arise from observations made by many physicians. As will be discussed in this book, a number of conditions respond to orthomolecular treatment. The fact of this improvement leads to the conclusion that the body’s defenses are revitalized. If vitamin B3 improves arthritis, then increasing vitamin B3 intake should prevent arthritis. Enhancing nutritional states from very poor conditions thus improves defenses.
A lead story in The Medical Post on March 4, 1986, reads: “Malnutrition, rampant among surgical orthopedic patients, is greatly increasing the number and severity of complications suffered by these people.” Studies of orthopedic populations in university and private hospitals have shown patient malnutrition of 42 percent and 68 percent, respectively. In one study, 85 percent of Symes amputations performed on malnourished patients failed, compared to 86 percent success among properly nourished patients. The report in The Medical Post concludes: “General surgeons have long known that the morbidity and mortality associated with operations on malnourished patients is markedly elevated…. Yet very few references concerning the importance of nutrition appear in the orthopedic literature. This study has shown that malnutrition is much more common among surgical patients than most people believe.” Other supporting observations arise from experiments in which nutritional supplements have been used in animals and humans to test immune defenses.
WHAT KIND OF FOOD DO WE NEED?
We must live on food that our bodies can digest and which will provide us with the essential nutrients. These are nutrients that cannot be made in the body; in other words, we must eat food to which we have adapted during our evolution.
Animals are divided into three main groups according to their major food source:
• Herbivores live primarily on vegetation.
• Carnivores live primarily on meat.
• Omnivores can live on, and in fact require, a large variety of foods from animal and vegetable sources. This group includes humans, apes, bears, etc.
Herbivores have adapted to their food supply by developing a digestive system that can break down cellulose-rich foods and digest them. Carnivores have different digestive tracts. Omnivores have systems that can deal with some vegetable food and all flesh, but which cannot break down grass, for example, to its elementary glucose. It is not difficult to understand why forcing cows to live on meat or feeding grass to lions would make them ill. In other words, our health depends upon eating food to which we have been adapted over 100,000 years of evolution. Unfortunately, most of our food is processed and has been so altered that it bears little resemblance to the food consumed by our caveman ancestors. For most of our evolutionary development, we lived on food that is similar to food consumed by animals and fish, which still live in a natural state. The best zoos try to follow this principle in feeding their animals.
We, as omnivores, are not all alike. We differ physically in nature, in personality, in blood types, and in fingerprints. We also differ in our nutritional requirements. The range is enormous, sweeping across the omnivore spectrum from people who are almost entirely carnivores to people who are almost entirely vegetarian; most people are somewhere in between. There is no single diet that is “the” diet for everyone. When anyone recommends “the” diet for everyone, it is a lie—certainly many people may be helped, but not all. So far there is no generally accepted way, except by trial and error, of determining an individual’s optimum diet.
Our food requirements also vary with age, activity, gender, stress, and presence of disease. An infant can digest human milk but he or she may be lactose-intolerant as an adult. A pregnant woman must have a diet that is different from her nonpregnancy diet. Most people are somewhat aware of this. Requirements for supplements also vary: the need for any one nutrient may vary a thousandfold, though usually a narrower range of variation exists. The need for supplements decreases as the nutritional quality of all the food on our plates increases.
WHAT KIND OF FOOD HAVE WE BEEN ADAPTED TO?
Although we cannot be certain of it, the evidence is overwhelming that our ancestral food was of much higher quality than is our modern, high-tech food. Evidence is available from anthropological studies, from studies of people still living on food little damaged by food technology, and from studies of animals in zoos. This primitive food can be described by six adjectives: whole, alive, nontoxic, variable, indigenous, and scarce. Any diet which can be described by these six adjectives, whether it is mostly vegetarian or meat, will be suitable for people. Unfortunately, it is not the kind of food we feed people in hospitals, nursing homes, restaurants, cafes, and in most of our homes.
Whole—Animals in their native state eat whole foods. Deer graze on leaves and berries, wolves eat other animals, and bears eat fish, animals, insects, and vegetation. Our ancestors seldom luxuriated in too much food. Scarcity is a great motivation to not waste food. They ate all the edible portions of animals, even cracking bones to get at the marrow. They ate whole grains when they could get them. The advantage of whole foods is that they contain all the nutrients needed to keep life going. But whether there was an initial advantage or not, we have been locked into a system that demands we eat foods that we have adapted to—and we have adapted to whole foods.
Alive—In the native state, animals, especially carnivores, eat food that is alive or has recently been alive. The advantage is that this food has not deteriorated by loss of nutrients, by oxidation, and by contamination with bacteria and fungi. When food does not have to be stored, there are no storage problems.
Nontoxic—Most plant species are poisonous for man. Our ancestors used two main guidelines: Did the plant taste neutral, sweet, or bitter? And did it make one sick or dead? By trial and error, we discovered which plants and which portions of plants we could eat. Theoretically, there is no nontoxic food, since every species is foreign and can induce injury in some people. However, food plants are relatively nontoxic and will do no harm if our diet adheres to the six adjectives.
Variable—Our ancestors’ diet depended on time of day and season as well as on geography. They were wanderers who followed their food supply, as did the !Kung tribes in the Kalahari Desert until recently. When we eat a large variety of foods, we are less apt to become allergic to any one food. This variability also increases the nutritional quality of the diet, since one food’s surplus of some nutrients can compensate for another food’s deficiencies. The Native American formerly ate a much larger variety of foods than we or they do today.
Indigenous—Animals and plants adapt to cold weather by changing their ratio of omega-3 to omega-6 essential fatty acids (EFAs). Omega-3 EFAs are more liquid, freeze at lower temperatures, and, as antifreeze protects our cars, they protect our bodies. If we eat foods grown locally, we already start with a ratio of omega-3 to omega-6 suited to that climate and we need to do less work biochemically to try to create the correct EFA ratio in our bodies. It is difficult to correct this ratio without using the right foods. People who live on indigenous (locally produced) foods will be healthier and adapt more readily to their climate.
Scarce—It is