THE FOOD-HEALTH CONNECTION
Decades ago, Physicians began warning diabetics away from sugar and sugary foods. More recently, they have raised the alarm about the dangers of eating trans-fats, and they have begun advising people to restrict their intake of certain fish due to the risk of heavy metals contamination. That is, mainstream medicine has made the connection between food and disease-but it has yet to focus on the connection between food and health.
In contrast, sailors and explorers of the “new world” made the food health connection five hundred years ago. They learned to avoid the horrors of scurvy by eating fresh whole foods. You have likely heard the classic accounts of Christopher Columbus unloading desperately ill sailors to die on a tropical island only to return a few months later to find them not only alive, but thriving. Similarly, when scurvy devastated the crew of Fresh explorer Jacques Cartier in the winter of 1535-1536, First Nation peoples taught the sailors to treat the disease with a tea infuse with evergreen needles.
These sailors were lucky because illness and death from scurvy is not pretty. Early symptoms include bleeding under the skin and in deep tissue, receding gums, and loose teeth, anemia, fatigue, joint pain, and difficulty walking- a condition the British Royal Navy viewed as mere laziness and treated with flogging.
The problem however, was not laziness, but low production of collagen related to low of Vitamin C. as the disease progressed, bones began to rub painfully together making it impossible to walk. Sailors eventually died of cerebral hemorrhage, blood loss, or convulsions.
Most physicians of the day scoffed at the idea that something in food could offer a treatment, maintaining it was the sea air that made the sailors ill. Nevertheless, Dr. John Woodall began treating scurvy with lemon Juice and ultimately convinced the East India Company to provide it to their sailors when they were at sea.
In the mid-1700s, James Lind, a surgeon’s mate with the British Royal Navy, offered different remedies to six pairs of sailors affected with scurvy. To Lind’s delight and surprise, the pair given a remedy that include a daily ratio of two oranges and one lemon recovered. Eventually, the British Royal Navy was persuaded to use lime juice to prevent scurvy, but it tools over 40 years of coaxing and cost an estimate 100,000 seamen their lives before the change was implemented.
Today healthcare providers acknowledge that the vitamin C contained in citrus fruits and other foods offers a treatment for scurvy. Nevertheless, somewhat like its 18th century predecessors, modern mainstream medicine remains slow to make similar connections between dietary nutrients and health. Yes, physicians have made the connections between some nutrients and certain health conditions: iron and anemia, calcium and osteoporosis, and folic acid and neural tube defects, to name just a few. But are other nutritional deficiencies causing, or at least contributing to, a whole range of unexplained maladies in North America today? It may be possible.
According to Nutritional researchers at Arizona State University (ASU), Vitamin C deficiency is more pronounced in America than iron deficiency- which is reportedly the most prevalent nutrient deficiency. One study at (ASU) showed that 6% of subjects were deficient in Vitamin C and other 30% were depleted of it; that is, these subjects did not meet the Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) for Vitamin C. in a paper entitled “A Case for C”, researcher Carol Johnson at ASU argues that scurvy is misdiagnosed today as polio or Vasculitis simply because no one, physician or patient, is on the lookout for scurvy (Johnson).
What’s particularly interesting here is that physicians may be diagnosing polio (a viral cause) or Vasculitis (an inflammation) rather than scurvy (a nutrient deficiency). Perhaps this is to be expected for a couple of reasons: First, of course, scurvy is perceived to be a disease of bygone era, not of our modern age. Second, medical doctors and registered nurses get very little (if any) formal education in nutritional science; their training and profession tend to focus on pharmaceutical and surgical remedies. As a result, it may simply be unreasonable to expect a doctor or nurse trained in Western mainstream medicine to recognize a nutritional deficiency or to offer a nutritional remedy. And even if a doctor undertook extra study in science of nutrition, medical licensing regulations under which medical doctors work typically discourage them from recommending nutritional remedies.
The focus on pharmaceutical and surgical remedies may not be surprising. After all, a great deal has been achieved in public health in the past hundred years. At the beginning of the 20th century, infections were the leading causes of death. Mainstream medicine used pharmaceutical remedies to win that fight, and it used them again in the fight against pneumonia, diarrhea, and diphtheria. The result was a dramatic reduction in rates of illness and death from these potentially lethal diseases.
As pharmaceutical remedies were proving their worth, nutritional remedies appeared to be losing their value. Soils across the globe were degrading, but in varying degrees. Plants grown in different parts of the world or in different parts of country, for that matter, did not contain consistent level of nutrients-at least in part because the quality of the soils varied from place to place and farmer to farmer. How could a physician rely on a nutritional remedy if it could not be measure or controlled? As the use of the pharmaceuticals became more successful and more widespread, and as plants (and the soils they grew in) became an increasingly complex issue, nutritional remedies were slowly overshadowed.
Today, the issue of nutrition and its connection to health is hotly debated in medical circles. Medical schools, researchers, physicians, and governing bodies engage in modern mainstream medicine generally allow little room for Nutritional remedies. Healthcare providers in complementary healthcare argue that natural remedies, including food supplements, have a more viable place in healthcare than drugs. Other see the issue in neither black nor white, but in varying shades of gray—where there is room for integrative treatments that combine both mainstream and complementary practices.
Exploring this lively and sometimes intense debate is beyond the scope of this book. The intention, here is to draw from solid scientific research to teach you about your own biology, to let you decide whether food supplements may play o role in your overall nutritional status, and to help you make informed decisions about which food supplements to buy. First, though, let’s examine a few reasons to consider supplements at all.
(Askew and Paquette p. 15-18)
In contrast, sailors and explorers of the “new world” made the food health connection five hundred years ago. They learned to avoid the horrors of scurvy by eating fresh whole foods. You have likely heard the classic accounts of Christopher Columbus unloading desperately ill sailors to die on a tropical island only to return a few months later to find them not only alive, but thriving. Similarly, when scurvy devastated the crew of Fresh explorer Jacques Cartier in the winter of 1535-1536, First Nation peoples taught the sailors to treat the disease with a tea infuse with evergreen needles.
These sailors were lucky because illness and death from scurvy is not pretty. Early symptoms include bleeding under the skin and in deep tissue, receding gums, and loose teeth, anemia, fatigue, joint pain, and difficulty walking- a condition the British Royal Navy viewed as mere laziness and treated with flogging.
The problem however, was not laziness, but low production of collagen related to low of Vitamin C. as the disease progressed, bones began to rub painfully together making it impossible to walk. Sailors eventually died of cerebral hemorrhage, blood loss, or convulsions.
Most physicians of the day scoffed at the idea that something in food could offer a treatment, maintaining it was the sea air that made the sailors ill. Nevertheless, Dr. John Woodall began treating scurvy with lemon Juice and ultimately convinced the East India Company to provide it to their sailors when they were at sea.
In the mid-1700s, James Lind, a surgeon’s mate with the British Royal Navy, offered different remedies to six pairs of sailors affected with scurvy. To Lind’s delight and surprise, the pair given a remedy that include a daily ratio of two oranges and one lemon recovered. Eventually, the British Royal Navy was persuaded to use lime juice to prevent scurvy, but it tools over 40 years of coaxing and cost an estimate 100,000 seamen their lives before the change was implemented.
Today healthcare providers acknowledge that the vitamin C contained in citrus fruits and other foods offers a treatment for scurvy. Nevertheless, somewhat like its 18th century predecessors, modern mainstream medicine remains slow to make similar connections between dietary nutrients and health. Yes, physicians have made the connections between some nutrients and certain health conditions: iron and anemia, calcium and osteoporosis, and folic acid and neural tube defects, to name just a few. But are other nutritional deficiencies causing, or at least contributing to, a whole range of unexplained maladies in North America today? It may be possible.
According to Nutritional researchers at Arizona State University (ASU), Vitamin C deficiency is more pronounced in America than iron deficiency- which is reportedly the most prevalent nutrient deficiency. One study at (ASU) showed that 6% of subjects were deficient in Vitamin C and other 30% were depleted of it; that is, these subjects did not meet the Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) for Vitamin C. in a paper entitled “A Case for C”, researcher Carol Johnson at ASU argues that scurvy is misdiagnosed today as polio or Vasculitis simply because no one, physician or patient, is on the lookout for scurvy (Johnson).
What’s particularly interesting here is that physicians may be diagnosing polio (a viral cause) or Vasculitis (an inflammation) rather than scurvy (a nutrient deficiency). Perhaps this is to be expected for a couple of reasons: First, of course, scurvy is perceived to be a disease of bygone era, not of our modern age. Second, medical doctors and registered nurses get very little (if any) formal education in nutritional science; their training and profession tend to focus on pharmaceutical and surgical remedies. As a result, it may simply be unreasonable to expect a doctor or nurse trained in Western mainstream medicine to recognize a nutritional deficiency or to offer a nutritional remedy. And even if a doctor undertook extra study in science of nutrition, medical licensing regulations under which medical doctors work typically discourage them from recommending nutritional remedies.
The focus on pharmaceutical and surgical remedies may not be surprising. After all, a great deal has been achieved in public health in the past hundred years. At the beginning of the 20th century, infections were the leading causes of death. Mainstream medicine used pharmaceutical remedies to win that fight, and it used them again in the fight against pneumonia, diarrhea, and diphtheria. The result was a dramatic reduction in rates of illness and death from these potentially lethal diseases.
As pharmaceutical remedies were proving their worth, nutritional remedies appeared to be losing their value. Soils across the globe were degrading, but in varying degrees. Plants grown in different parts of the world or in different parts of country, for that matter, did not contain consistent level of nutrients-at least in part because the quality of the soils varied from place to place and farmer to farmer. How could a physician rely on a nutritional remedy if it could not be measure or controlled? As the use of the pharmaceuticals became more successful and more widespread, and as plants (and the soils they grew in) became an increasingly complex issue, nutritional remedies were slowly overshadowed.
Today, the issue of nutrition and its connection to health is hotly debated in medical circles. Medical schools, researchers, physicians, and governing bodies engage in modern mainstream medicine generally allow little room for Nutritional remedies. Healthcare providers in complementary healthcare argue that natural remedies, including food supplements, have a more viable place in healthcare than drugs. Other see the issue in neither black nor white, but in varying shades of gray—where there is room for integrative treatments that combine both mainstream and complementary practices.
Exploring this lively and sometimes intense debate is beyond the scope of this book. The intention, here is to draw from solid scientific research to teach you about your own biology, to let you decide whether food supplements may play o role in your overall nutritional status, and to help you make informed decisions about which food supplements to buy. First, though, let’s examine a few reasons to consider supplements at all.
(Askew and Paquette p. 15-18)
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