Ken Ward's Health and Nutrition PagesSomething is wrong |
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Although well-known to the ancients, nutrition
is the forgotten secret of health and well being. Many illnesses are either a direct
result of faulty nutrition or arise because of faulty nutrition. This is not the same as
saying that all disease is caused by faulty nutrition. It means that many undesirable
states of existence, including disease and low well-being are greatly influenced by what
we eat, what we drink, what we breath, what we think, and what we do. It is further claimed that something extremely wrong has occurred in the West in the last 100 years resulting in misery and illness for hundreds of thousands of people. For example, there has been a massive increase in:
When disease states arise, they can sometimes be eradicated or lessened through adopting appropriate nutrition. When some conditions arise, an emergency condition exists and little other than conventional medical action is appropriate. However, when there is time or when a preventative approach is taken a great deal of Western illnesses are amenable to nutritional therapy. There are two broad areas that indicate that something is wrong or has gone wrong on a global scale. I am taking heart disease as an example to illustrate the argument. Heart attacks are a major cause of death in the West, and so dramatically illustrates the problem. The first thing that appears to be wrong is present diet. The observation that although research indicated that in some countries, certain foods and behaviours were related to heart attacks, whereas, in other countries, even though people ate and behaved the same, the incidence of heart attacks was much lower. For example, the incidence of heart attacks is high in countries such as the USA and Holland, but low in countries such as Crete. The difference can be a factor of 10 - that is ten times more people die of heart attacks in some countries than in others. There are differences between:
Asian people who come to live in the West tend to suffer more with heart disease than those who remain in their countries of origin and more than people of Western origin. This suggests that there is something about the West that gives rise to heart attacks which is different from that in other countries. This information suggests that the causes are nutritional (including pollution) or (and) behaviour, The second indication that the problems are nutritional and behavioural is that many diseases in the West are diseases that seemed to grow in prominence in the last hundred years - that is after the turn of the last century. In the last century the incidence of heart attacks, cancer and mental problems seem to have increased dramatically. These are the major areas of health concern that have changed, however, many other diseases have appeared more frequently in the period. For example, asthma. Something has happened in the last 100 years that has greatly worsened the health and wellbeing of people in the West in some respects compared with people who have not experienced great lifestyle changes in this period. Heart attacks, for example are a disease of the last 100 years. According to the physician George A Stanton: The popular doctor, Sir William Osler, did not mention heart attacks in his 1910 lectures.[Presumably because he did not know about them or did not consider them significant]. The first clinical description of the coronary heart attack was made in 1912, suggesting that physicians did not know about them previously. Angina Pectoris was first described in 1768, but was a rare disease until the early 1900s. Since the 1950s, heart attacks have become much more common. I will remind you again, that this page is about something going wrong in the last 100 years and the reference to heart attacks is for the purpose of illustration. There are many other diseases and mental and behavioural problems that have increased during this period. These trends indicate that something serious has gone wrong in Western society during the period. This something has made us dangerously ill, made us miserable and has turned some of us to crime. If the last paragraph seems extreme, then take a God's eye view of the last century and notice how these changes have actually occurred. And notice how many have hid their heads under their doctor's white coat and accepted all this as inevitable.
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