"Although it is admitted that ... supplying the needed nutritional factors may be far from simple, the logical implication of the genetotrophic idea emphasizes the theoretical possibility that practically any human weakness, deformity, deficiency, or disease can be combatted with some success by supplying the needed nutrients ..."
Roger J. Williams, in his book "Biochemical Individuality", 1956 (4)
Root Cause of All Diseases
Written on: September 2024
Last edited: January 2024
The material on this page is organized under the following headings:
1. Preamble
7. Body Wisdom
Preamble
As I read more books and articles on the various diseases and nutrition, I am reminded of the fable "The blind men and the elephant". This fable recounts how a group of blind men hear that a strange animal, called an elephant, has been brought to the town, but none of them knows of its shape and form. Out of curiosity, they said: "We must find out how it looks by touching it". So, they go to find the elephant, and each of them gropes it. The first blind man, whose hand had touched the trunk, said, "This animal is like a thick snake". A second one, whose hand had touched the ear, said "This animal is like a big fan". A third one, whose hand had touched the leg, said, "This animal looks like a tree trunk". Clearly, because of their limited capability to establish what the elephant looked like, each blind man thinks that it is something different.
This is not unlike how our doctors and medical researchers think of what diseases are. In this case the "elephant" is our infinitely complex and amazing body. Each doctor and researcher is "blinded" by their limited, even if large, specialized knowledge of parts of our body, and end up with different pronouncements of what different diseases are due to and how they should be treated. And matters are further muddled by the profit motive as there is a great deal of money being made treating diseases, and this skews research, theories, promotions of treatments, and practices, in the direction that makes money rather than in the direction that makes health.
Nowadays, many diseases have been identified such as Cancer, Heart Disease, Hypertension, Diabetes, Gout, Obesity, and many more. Each of these diseases are treated as separate manifestations of body malfunctions characterized by some dominant symptom such as: Too many bad cells for Cancer; Too high blood pressure for Hypertension; Too much fat for Obesity; Too much blood glucose for Diabetes; Too much uric acid for Gout; Too much cholesterol for Heart Disease; and so on. To treat the symptoms of these diseases many different drugs have been developed and many more are being developed. These drugs all have one thing in common: they are all poisons designed to disable specific body regulating functions and they all kill if the recommended dosages are exceeded (see page "Modern Medicine").
All these drugs are heavily advertised, especially the new ones, directly to the sick promising cures to their ailments. And our doctors, often motivated by directly-to-physicians promotions from Big Pharma, prescribe liberally these drugs to their patients with the promise that they will improve, cure, or prevent diseases. This advertising, coupled with the indoctrination from our doctors and our media who are continually extolling the virtues of these drugs and publicizing studies supposedly proving their effectiveness, has pretty well everybody convinced that the path to good health is possible only through these drugs, and, if cures have not been achieved yet, it is only because better drugs need to be developed. And so we have now got to the point where everybody is taking several pills every day! So many pills that pharmacies are now offering the service of organizing these pills in neat packages that make it easier to have the right pills taken at the right time. And when you go for any medical procedure, you are asked to bring a list of the drugs that you are taking.
And now that everybody is taking so many "pills" every day, you would think that everybody is enjoying radiant good health, right? But no! Quite the opposite is happening! Physiological diseases in north america, and in all countries that have adopted our american "Western Lifestyle", have reached epidemic proportions. This approach to treating the symptoms of diseases with toxicology based drugs (see page "Are Modern Medicine Drugs Poisons?") is definitely making obscenely large profits for Big Med, but it is not delivering improvements to our overall health status as attested by our ever increasing prevalence of diseases and by our ever decreasing healthspan expectancy (70). And last but not the least, this approach is resulting in skyrocketing health costs and consequent skyrocketing taxes!
Must Put Science Back into Health Care
Nowadays our doctors have pretty well everybody taking pills everyday. In spite of this our physiological diseases have reached epidemic proportions and getting worse. So, clearly, we need to rethink our approach to treating diseases. We need to rethink the hypotheses of what causes diseases and how to treat them. And politically we must rethink to whom our health should be entrusted. Definitely our health should not be entrusted to those that profit the most when we are sick because of obvious conflicts of interests!
One thing is clear: to stem the tide of diseases, we must put Science back into health care. The "Scientific Method" fundamentally says that if an hypothesis is not working, it needs be replaced with a new one. And no more sham studies, such as the Ancel Keys " Seven Country Study" study, which according to Keys, showed that saturated fat causes heart diseases. This was a cohort observational study. According to other scientists who analyzed the same data, notably John Yudkin (60) and others (2,39), the data actually pointed at Sugar as the culprit for heart diseases and for several other diseases including Cancer (37,38,60,62). But Big Sugar makes obscenely large profits and John Yudkin's science could not prevail against the Big Sugar behemoth hell-bent to preserve their profits. Ancel Keys' study needed much more research to verify its conclusions, but it was accepted as if it was the ultimate word on heart diseases. This was not science! It was a travesty for which we, the people, have being paying with our health ... not only for heart disease but all kinds of other diseases.
The acceptance of Ancel Keys study singled out saturated fat as the culprit for heart disease, and exonerated sugar (60). This led to the culture of no fat diets, cholesterol lowering drugs, wide use of unsaturated fats such as vegetable oils, and unrestricted use of sugar. This culture has been, and is being, disastrous for heart disease and other diseases, while at the same time being obscenely profitable for Big Sugar, Big Food, and Big Med, whose collective "long arms" keep promoting it.
Studies such as the "Seven Country Study" mentioned above, are called Observational Studies. These studies are not able to address correctly the many factors that impact people's health, and are so inaccurate that they do not deserve to be called "scientific" (39). At best, these studies can be useful to suggest further research directions and, absolutely, should not be relied on to set public policies. But, as we all know, this type of studies are still being used frequently to promote various vested interests. And this while dismissing as "anecdotal" the personal stories of many people, including myself, who have cured or brought under control their diseases with proper nutrition (2,3,31,40,43,44,74).
On this website, I occasional refer to the Big Med, Big Food, and Big Sugar industries as the "Axis-Of-Sickness" because they appear as if they were "in cahoots" to create a nutritional and medical environment that promotes physiological diseases.
A Terrible Circle that Must Be Broken
On one hand we have many skilled and gifted doctors and surgeons busy keeping us miraculously alive in emergencies with amazing skills, drugs and equipment.
On the other hand we have many skilled and gifted scientists busy developing and promoting products (patentable medical drugs and processed foods) that are getting us sick with diseases that eventually land us in emergencies.
It is a sinister circle that must be broken! Even though I believe that the heart of all involved "is in the right place", I believe that their combined efforts are creating a terrible prevalence of sickness. This is keeping all the enterprises involved with the treating of the sick and catering to their needs "humming" and making obscenely high profits. But for us all, it is fostering sickness, suffering, decreased healthspan, and huge increases in health costs ... all of which is making our taxes skyrocket.
An important question comes to mind:"How much sickness can a society "absorb" while still remaining successful?" There is obviously a breaking point and we must act to do something that works "in fact" to stem the prevalence of physiological diseases.
Must Rethink the Approach to Achieve Good Health
Evidence has shown that prescription drugs work miraculously to keep us alive in emergencies. But evidence has also shown that these drugs have no place for everyday use "as a way of life" to achieve good health. If we want to enjoy vibrant good health every day, we must focus on ingestion of only good nutrition as a way of life. My experiences (see page "Body Changes") and the experiences of many other people are ample proof of this (2,3,67,68,69,71,74). It is surprising that I, as well as all other people who have achieved good health by focusing on daily regimen of good nutrition and no prescription drugs , did not get any support for my regimen from my medical professionals. Why are these professionals not embracing good nutrition to deliver good health to those that seek their help even-though the evidence that good nutrition works is overwhelming?
So we need to do some rethinking ... but who is going to do this rethinking? With the Big Sugar, Big Food, and Big Med behemoths hell-bent on preserving and increasing their profits, and with our politician more interested in taking care of their needs and covering their rear ends (rather than make the tough decisions), this rethinking is not going to be done anytime soon! So, how can we take care of our health in the mean time?
As we are the sole beneficiaries of practices that deliver good health and we are those that suffer the most, physically and financially, when good health is not achieved, it is up to us, to each one of us individually, to do this "re-thinking" to take care of our own health! Nobody else will... everybody out there are to busy and focussed on "making a living" for themselves rather than delivery good health to us! We must dare to "think out of the box" and dare to take charge of our own health! Just as I have done with my Leukemia. It is much simpler to do than one would think because mother nature has gifted us with a body that has the "wisdom" to keep itself healthy. All we have to do is feed our body good food rather than poison it with large amounts of sugar, vegetable oils, processed food, food from restaurants and fast food joints, lifestyle drugs, recreational drugs, daily prescription drugs, and much too little physical activities! Properly nourished, our body wisdom will deliver to us vibrant good health!
Maleficent Total Diet Syndrome (MaleDiets)
Based on my own personal experiences and schooled by the many medical books and articles written by the few great scientists that were truly motivated to help humanity, I am going to revive an old hypothesis to explain why we get sick and what we can do to stay healthy. Hippocrates said it in 350 BC: "Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food!". The most relevant books and articles that I have read are listed on the "Books and Articles" page. Reference (2) by Linus Pauling is the book that started me on my nutritional journey in a more organized way.
For a meaningful and enjoyable life, it is essential that we stay healthy. Clearly, getting and staying healthy does not give us immortality. But it does give us a sense of immortality because when we are healthy, everyday is full of energy, suffering free, and enjoyable; And everyday is full of meaningful purpose ... as if we were to live for ever!
It is clear that our doctors are focused on treating the symptoms of diseases rather than treating their root causes (Modern Medicine). This begs the questions: "What are the root causes of diseases?", and "Does every disease have a different root cause?".
The many books and articles that I have been reading, but mostly my experiences (e.g. see pages "Body Changes" and "Diseases of the Rich") have led me to the conclusion that there is only a single disease and that the long list of modern diseases are just different symptoms that characterize this single root cause disease. I will call this root cause disease "Maleficent Total Diet Syndrome" or MaleDiets for short.
The word "diet" is normally used to refer to the food and drink that a person eats. Within the context of this discussion, we must focus on the total set of substances that we ingest orally, subcutaneously, cutaneously, or synthesized by our body in response to physical activities. All of these substances have an impact on our health. On this website I use the term "Total Diet" to refer to all these substances which can be divided into the following three groups:
- Nutritional substances -- A person ingests these to meet its nutritional needs, and include: Water, Meat, Fish, Vegetables, bread, potatoes, etc, and Vitamin and Mineral supplementation.
- Non-Nutritional substances -- A person ingests these for non-nutritional reasons and include: Sugar, Prescription Drugs, Over- the-counter drugs, Lifestyle drugs, Alcohol, Tobacco, Vaping substances, Marijuana, and cosmetics.
- Physical activity substances -- These are the substances synthesized by the body in response to physical activities.
The MaleDiets syndrome is caused by the following:
- Ingestion of the Non-Nutritional substances. I consider Sugar and Prescription Drugs the most common offenders.
- Ingestion of nutritional ingredients which do not suit the person biochemical individuality (4,5). For example, some of us cannot handle carbohydrates properly and must stay away them. If not, they will end up contracting autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis (74).
- Ingestion of nutritional ingredients which are not sufficient in amounts, and that do not contain sufficient Minerals and Vitamins. For example vitamin C deficiency causes Scurvy and other serious disesases (2,3,32,44)
- Insufficient physical activities.
The MaleDiets syndrome is rampant in all societies that have adopted our American Western Lifestyle, and this has caused the Western Diseases ( Physiological diseases also referred to as the "Diseases of the Rich") to reach epidemic proportions and getting worse.
Persons who suffer from MaleDiets will appear mostly fine while still young. But as soon as the resilience of youth starts wearing down, they become sickly, and will gradually befell serious diseases such as diabetes, obesity, heart disease, inflammatory Bowel diseases, Mental Health, Cancer, and Dementia ... just to name a few. And we must remember that the babies of parents who have MaleDiets do not benefit from the "resilience of youth" because these babies are born already sick with terrible diseases and addictions. This brings to mind the Thalidomide prescription drug tragedy! In the 1950s and 1960s, in several countries (including Canada), Thalidomide was prescribed to pregnant women resulting in thousands of children born with severe deformities. I know that they say that it did not affect Canada. But that is not correct! I have a Thalidomide nephew, and I know of several other cases among my acquaintances.
The "powers that be" in Big Med are some of the smartest people in our society. They seem to profess ignorance about MaleDiets, but I am inclined to think that they understand well its dangers. They also understand that MaleDiets can be quickly eliminated by a well organized advertising and promotion campaigns to encourage people to adopt the BeneDiet, which is discussed below. But the "powers that be" in Big Med appear "hell bent" to preserve their obscenely large profits because they say nothing against MaleDiets as if they were afraid that these profits would disappear if people stop getting sick once they reject this diet. So they rather advertise continually to promote substances, lifestyles, and research, that are causing MaleDiets to reach epidemic proportions and getting worse.
The set of symptoms that characterize MaleDiets, are the diseases already identified such as Heart Disease, Diabetes, Obesity, Inflammatory Bowel Diseases, Ulcerative Colites, Celiac Disease, Chrohn's Disease, Scurvy, Cancer, and so on. That is, these are not different diseases with different root causes. All these diseases are all symptoms of MaleDiets and they are all prevented, cured, or significantly ameliorated by correcting the "total diet" by changing it to the BeneDiet discussed next.
Beneficient Total Diet (BeneDiet)
The BeneDiet is the " total diet" that heals the MaleDiets syndrome. The BeneDiet contains only the items that are beneficial to our body, as listed below:
1. Contains only foods ingested for nutritional purpose such as water, meat, fish, eggs, fat, bread, etc. The specific substances and relative proportions must be "tuned" to suit the person biochemical individuality.2. Contains supplementation with all Vitamins in large amounts and sufficient Minerals.3. Includes a frequent and vigorous exercise program.4. Does not contain non-nutritional substances such as Sugar, Prescription drugs, Lifestyle drugs, Recreationsl drugs and cosmetics.
How do we "tune" our diets and how do we ensure that we are taking Vitamins and Minerals in the optimal amounts? This "tuning" can be done only by the person involved by "listening" to its own body, and retaining in the diet only the foods that he feels well with. This process led me to converge on the carnivore diet shown on Table-D3 on the "Diet" page.
To do this tuning with Vitamins is much easier. The scientific consnsus is that vitamins are not toxic (2, 71), I have overdosed on vitamins from the very beginning on My Regimen, especially on vitamins C, and I have always felt very well. With minerals I have been more cautious, and I am sticking to recommended dosages on most minerals except Zinc, Calcium, Potassium, and Magnesium. I am overdosing on Zinc (100 mg daily) because it is keeping cankers away from my mouth. And I am overdosing on magnesium (600 mg daily), Potassium (10 mg daily), and Calcium (300 mg) because these three minerals have stopped very painful muscle spasm in my legs during my sleep. I have called them "spasm" because they occur when I am resting in bed and they are unusually painful and I an not able to resolve them by massaging or banking the muscle even though these procedures quickly resolve muscle cramps during physical activities.
I have been puzzled by these night muscle cramps mostly in the muscles lower on my legs. As I never suffered from these spasm before my 84th birthday, I am concluding that, because of my age, I need to supplement with more Magnesium, Calcium, and Potassium to prevent their levels to be depleted as I get older.
With vitamins, I am currently dealing with an issue that I read about in (2) but never experienced. The issue is that, although the vitamins themselves do not cause allergic reactions, the filler used for the tablets or capsules can cause allergic reactions. My issue started about two weeks ago after I increased my B3 (as Niacinamide), B5 (Pantothenic Acid) , and B7 (biotin) supplements packaged in capsules. Soon after I started this increased supplementation, I started itching behind my ears, on the sides on my neck, on my eyebrows, on my scalp, and my thighs. Two days ago I removed these capsules and today I have been free of any itching. It looks like that I got the culprit of my itching. I'll be looking at other manufactures of these supplement who, hopefully, use fillers to which I am not allergic to. And maybe my best option is to purchase these vitamins in pure poweder form as I am already doing with Vitamin C.
Body Wisdom
Optimal nourishment ensures that the body is being provided with all the raw materials that it needs to enable optimally all the biological processes needed to maintain all of the trillions of substances (molecules) present in the body at any one time in a state of optimal equilibrium. Optimal equilibrium means that the trillions of all body cells exist in optimal number with respect to each other and are all functioning optimally and therefore able to maintain the myriads of physiological variables within optimal ranges. When the body is in optimal equilibrium, it is in optimal health.
As an aside, current medical instruments are not able to measure the myriads of physiological variables in our body and, very likely, will never be able to measure them all. A relatively small number of them are measurable such as blood pressure, heart rate, temperature, and number of blood red cells just to name a few. This means that the health status of all physiological variables has to be inferred from a relatively small number of the variables that can be measured.
It must be emphasized that the optimal ranges of physiological variables values, are not necessarily optimal for everybody because each one of us is biochemically different (4,5). This highlights the importance of each individual to tune their nourishment to their biochemical individuality by retaining in their total diet only the items that they feel good with by listening to their body. This also highlights the importance of viewing with some skepticism the variable considered normal in medical tests such as blood tests.
When an individual ingests items different than what he needs for optimal nourishment (such as a plant toxin), the body will react to ensure an equilibrium that minimizes the negative health impacts of the toxin, and to ensure that deviations from the optimal equilibrium are minimized. This way the body maximizes survival but its health is compromized to an extent that depends on the strength of the toxin and the length of time that the body has to cope with it. Over time, continual exposure to the toxin will result in serious disease. In other words, our body is able to cope with unsuitable nourishment but not for too long.
It is important to remember that "toxin" are present in all plant foods such as fruit, vegetables, whole grains, and sugar. Several experts (60, consider these responsible for several diseases such as heart disease, obesity, crohn's disease, psoriasis, and rheumatoid arthritis ... just to name a few.
Doctors call the above equilibrium "Homeostasis". Homeostasis is continually optimized by the body to the extent made possible by the total set of substances ingested by the body orally, dermally, subcutaneously, or by exposure to environmental factors. When ingestion consists of only the substances in the optimal "total Diet" (BeneDiet) the Homeostasis achieved is optimal and, if maintained over time, the body achieves optimal health.
So what is "Body Wisdom"?
"Body Wisdom" is the vital biological instincts that mother nature has gifted to our body to react so as to keep itself healthy as much as possible with the nourishment and other substances ingested at any one time. That is, "Body Wisdom" refers collectively to all the body biological forces that continually drive the body to Homeostasis which optimal for optimal health only if the body ingests only the BeneDiet.
In conclusion, for us to remain healthy or regain our health, all we have to do is to feed our body the BeneDiet tuned for our biochemical individuality and then trust our Body Wisdom to achieve vibrant good health.
The discovery of vitamins has given us the ability to ensure that our individual BeneDiet contains sufficient nourishment . By providing in our BeneDiet large amount of vitamins so that our body is "swimming" in nutrition and Body Wisdom is enabled to "pick and chose" what it needs for optimal health.
How Do We Tune Our Individual BeneDiet?
As mentioned above, to tune our diet we have to "listen" to our body and keep eliminating food that we do not feel well with and add food that we feel well with. Unfortunately nowadays this "listening" has become more difficult because technology has enabled Big Food to make their foods and drinks taste, smell, look, and feel exactly as we like them. They will make us eat sawdust and make us lick our lips! So nowadays, especially when eating out, our "listening" cannot rely on smell, look, and taste. Nowadays this listening has to emphasize how do we feel after the eating.
It is not difficult for each one of us to converge to our individual optimal diet. But it requires our minds to remain open to question all kind of food ... even if it contradicts the advise of our nutritional experts. For example, the advise that vegetables are good for us may actually not be good for all of us because some of us are not able to handle the toxins in vegetables. Especially the new toxins being introduced by genetic modifications. And, because of our biochemical uniqueness (4,5), we must not be surprised if the optimal diet that we each arrive at are all different. Yes! There is no "one size fits all" formula for optimal nutrition.
In my case case this tuning converged to a fully Carnivore diet. See Table-D3 on the "Diet" page.
Further Discussion
In the hope of achieving more clarity, I will continue this discussion organized in the following separate pages:
- Diseases Cured By Diet. This pages presents known information on diseases that are cured by correcting the diet.
- How Did I Arrive at My Optimal Diet? This page recounts my journey to my current diet which I now consider optimal for me. See Table-D3 on the "Diet" page.
- How to Tell if Diet Changes Are Helping? To keep us moving in the right direction with food choices, this page provides examples of what to look for to give us the evidence that we are moving in the right direction.
- Use of Tests To Monitor Improvements. Our medical testing technology has advanced considerably, and it would be foolish not to use it to help us determine more objectively if our diet choices are working.