This is a continuation of yesterday's post, which I thought was more than long enough as it was.
The Hundred-Year Lie
Randall Fitzgerald's new book The Hundred-Year Lie
is an exhaustively researched condemnation of the food, pharmaceutical
and chemical industries, explaining how these industries, in their
search for profit at any cost, have imperiled our health. To me it was
reassuring: Everything in the book supports my self-experimentation hypothesis
that modern immune-system diseases, both AIHDs and AIDDs, are caused by
a combination of 'modern malnutrition' (lack of diversity and
micronutrients in what we ingest) and exposure to toxic man-made
environmental poisons.
But the book was also enormously
disappointing -- after promising it wouldn't scare-monger, it does
exactly that, and leaves the reader with next to no ideas on how to
compensate for and cope with the damage these industries are doing to
us.
The best feature of the book is the vast amount of data
that it contains, and its thorough refutations of the common myths that
our health and longevity are actually improving because of modern foods
and drugs, and that reported incidents of spikes in previously-rare
diseases are only due to better measurement and reporting mechanisms.
We really are living in an era of epidemic diseases, caused by these
three industries, diseases for which there are, in most cases, no
cures. And we face huge denial, massive and powerful resistance from
the rich and powerful industrial lobbies, and huge costs if we want to
reform these industries so they stop killing us.
Fitzgerald
analyzes the entire food supply chain to explain how the multiplier
effect of modern malnutrition and exposure to toxics works to
impoverish and poison what we eat:
- The soil in which foods
are grown is depleted (on average 85% of the micronutrients present a
century ago are gone) and exhausted from erosion and overuse.
- Chemicals sprayed on soil and crops kill good as well as bad, and are ingested when we eat the crops.
- Water
used to irrigate the crops is contaminated with pesticides, herbicides,
hormone disruptors, industrial chemicals and other toxins.
- Genetically-manufactured
crops homogenize and reduce the diversity of these 'products' and
contaminate and overrun more diverse food strains.
- Farmed
animals (and our pets!) are fed nutritionally poor feed, contaminated
and soaked with waste products and toxins, and injected with dangerous
hormones, all of which we ingest when we eat them.
- Harvested crops are then further soaked in preservatives and other poisons to make them last longer or look better.
- They
are then processed by freezing, canning, irradiation, spraying of
further toxins etc. all of which kill much or most of their nutritional
value. Water used in processing is also contaminated.
- Additives
are then thrown in, many of them synthetic, untested and arguably
dangerous to our health, mostly for flavouring, preservation, aesthetic
or cosmetic purposes, which further pollute and deplete the nutritional
value of the foods.
- To try to compensate for the damage done,
synthetic vitamins and nutrients are then added, many of which are not
properly absorbed by the body as the natural ones stripped out from
them would have been. Nevertheless, these additives allow food
processors to legally sell these products as 'enriched'.
- The
food, pharmaceutical and chemical lobbies aggressively interfere with,
disrupt and disable the few weak government programs that are meant to
try to minimize the dangers to human health created by these industries
(e.g. the aspartame lobby's blocking of bans on its dangerous products
and blocking the introduction of safe natural alternatives like stevia).
- Endemic,
pervasive and persistent toxins, like flame retardants in furniture and
benzene persisting in carpet fibres, and including many that are so
dangerous they have been illegal for decades, continue to show up in
all our foods, in the soil, air and water -- there's simply no
filtering them out or getting rid of them.
- We wash or mix these products with water contaminated with other toxins.
- Plastics
and other materials used to package, heat and store these products
leach toxins into the foods over time and with exposure to heat.
- Finally,
we eat the resultant, utterly-depleted, toxic stew. And we're surprised
to be both malnourished and poisoned as a result.
- The vast
amounts of antibiotics in which our foods are soaked also cause havoc
to good bacteria in our bodies, and enable antibiotic-resistant strains
of bad bacteria to evolve which make us ill.
- Both in utero
and through our DNA, we pass along these toxins and the genetic
weaknesses they cause to future generations, making them even less
resistant to the toxins they will ingest as they eat our modern food
products.
- These chemicals are not only destructive and often
dangerous in their own right, but in combination and interaction with
other chemicals have been found to be many times (sometimes hundreds of
times) as toxic as they are by themselves. There is essentially no
testing of such interactions, and to do so now would cost trillions of
dollars and take generations because of the sheer number of
combinations).
I've tried to capture all this in the diagram above.
The
problem is, we can't rely on government or government agencies, the
medical profession, industry or science (which relies heavily on
industry grants and sponsorships) to warn us, or to take any meaningful
steps to fix the system. The FDA and EPA have no capacity to test or
demand information, very limited authority and resources to take legal
or other action, a desperate shortage of inspectors and staff, and
indifference and even animosity from anti-regulation governments put in
power by donations from these industries. Government can't protect us.
The medical profession and Big Pharma profit from our illness. A
medical journal study showed that half of all drug advertising and drug
information supplied to doctors is so misleading as to encourage
mis-prescription and over-prescription of these drugs. Industry cares
about profit, not people's health. And science does and says what the
people who dole out money to them tell them to. It's up to us to
protect ourselves. Even the NIH admits to its helplessness:
We're
struggling to look at where genetics and the environment interact in
the human cell, causing a molecule to change that starts a kind of
chain reaction leading to disease. Scientists liken the changes to a
cascade -- a series of ever-larger waterfalls of cellular changes --
that may lead to cancer, Parkinsons', arthritis, heart disease or other
diseases. Though we still do not understand the root causes of many of
these serious chronic diseases, we suspect they can be caused or
triggered by chemicals and other environmental exposures, even from
years before.
Last year the US Government Accountability
Office cited the EPA for abject failure to protect people from tens of
thousands of toxic chemicals. But they have no authority to rectify the
problem. The EPA relies totally on tests provided by industry itself,
and even those biased test results have only been forthcoming for 15%
of the chemicals industry has introduced in the last generation.
Fitzgerald
criticizes industry and policy-makers for trying to find and push
"silver bullet" solutions to health problems instead of looking at
programs that combine natural and common-sense actions holistically.
But when he finally proffers solutions at the end of the book, they too
are of the 'silver bullet' variety: Eat "pure foods" and "no
synthetics" he says. Go to a detox centre like the Hippocrates Health
Centre. Eat wheatgrass and green algae. Fast every second day. Sweat in
a "far infrared" sauna. Get your colon cleansed regularly. Some dubious
(and recently-challenged by independent sources like Consumers Union)
claims for a few popular herbs are also trotted out. Aw, come on,
Randall, surely you can do better than that.
Nevertheless, The Hundred-Year Lie
is a useful resource to add to your library, if only to understand how
the multiplier effect works to ruin our health and to deal with the
pervasive myths and naysayers.
A Stress Management Program
As
I explained yesterday, so far my body seems to have taken charge of
managing my stress level, to the point I feel less stressed than I have
at any time in my life. But some of this may be due to the combined
effects of drugs, insomnia, fatigue, and anemia, so I don't want to
count on it continuing. Part of Phase 2 of my self-experimentation
program will be conscious
stress reduction and stress management activities, geared towards
strengthening the four stress coping capacities mentioned in
yesterday's research: Perspective (dispassion in the face of stress), Let-Self-Changeability (developing resilience), Outlets (to discharge stress), and Acceptance
(of what you cannot control/change). There is a mind-boggling amount of
material on the Internet about this subject, but most of it is just
common sense. Some of the ideas out there are ludicrous, and some
obvious ways to cope with stress are not mentioned at all. I've
developed the following stress management program, which I hope will
supplement and sustain the ten stress-reducing changes I wrote about
yesterday that my body has already had the good sense to impose on me:
Perspective and Acceptance Capacity-Building Activities:
- self-awareness
and self-control -- monitoring stress level, being aware of how
stressed you are at all times, understanding what stress is
controllable/predictable and what isn't, and working quickly and
effectively to calm yourself; self-hypnosis
- meditation
- identifying
and removing the chronic stressers from your life: vexatious and
hateful work and people and pollution and noise; unnecessary commutes
and trips; urgent but unimportant tasks (learning to say no)
- building
social support network -- people who can 'talk you down' when you get
stressed, and teach you from their own experience how not to get worked
up
Let-Self-Change Activities:
- consuming less sugar and other stimulants and body-stressers
- anaerobic exercise -- strengthening muscle tone, stretching and relaxing exercises, improving posture, yoga
- physiotherapy and massage -- getting the years of tension and distress out of your musculo-skeletal system
- work habits -- working standing up instead of sitting down, using appropriate furniture
Outlets:
- aerobic exercise -- gradual, easy, fun, focused on duration and frequency rather than intensity
- sex
-- also focused on duration and frequency rather than intensity; how do
I put this delicately?: the kind that gives you that lasting warmth and
glow that radiates out from your whole body for days, like the
perpetual roller-coaster with the slow build, or the surfer's endless
wave that keeps you right on the edge for what seems forever, and feeds
on itself, and if you have a good imagination doesn't even require a
partner
- social time -- activities with no pre-determined objective
- physical contact with friends -- the power of touches and hugs
- generosity activities -- giving your time, and compliments, to others, and accepting them gracefully and genuinely in return
- play and fun -- hobbies, games, times spent with children and animals, and other things that make you laugh and smile
- music and crying -- for me at least, very cathartic, connected, and not at all stressful
- nature walks and drives
I'd love to know what you think is missing from this program. I also need to develop measures for each of these, so I can track progress.
Questions on Probiotics:
The
idea of probiotics is to replenish the natural 'flora' of bacteria and
enzymes that take the good stuff out of what you digest and neutralize
the bad stuff. The problem is that the natural flora are infinitely
varied, while probiotics, whether taken in yogurt or in nutritional
supplements, tend to me one or a few specific varieties. There is some
evidence that probiotics act only as a temporary working substitute for
natural flora, until the latter can replenish themselves, rather than
actually replenishing the flora, but that's OK. The most common
probiotic types are lactobacillus and bifidobacterium. The current fad
product, Activia yogurt from Danone (Dannon in the US), contains a type
of bifidobacterium that supposedly speeds passage through the large
intestine, which I guess is important for those who suffer from
'irregularity' and don't want to take high-fibre products like psyllium
seeds (aka Metamucil). There's yet another commercial probiotic called
saccharomyces boulardii, prescibed as an anti-diarrheal (the opposite
effect of Activia).
Another problem with probiotics is the lack
of standards: In many products tested recently by the CBC, most of the
bacteria were already dead at time of purchase, or died quickly
thereafter. Quantities of bacteria promised and delivered per dose are
all over the map. There's even some evidence that most probiotics never
make it through the digestive tract (the stomach especially) to the
place where they do their magic.
The clinical and empirical
evidence for the value of probiotics seems impressive, and I've already
made them part of my regimen, but I'm not sure it's doing me any good.
Anyone out there suggest some good, credible readings on the subject,
or have stories, good or bad, about your use of probiotics? I'd love to
hear them.
OK, I'm done. I promise, no more about self-experimentation for awhile. Tomorrow, some musings on co-dependency.
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MADE IN CANADA
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