Nutrition and Physical Regeneration

See also: Part 1 and Part 2
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This is the third installement in the series How To Get Well. I am changing the name to Curing The Incurables so as to better describe what Dr. Schulze is all about. If you haven't already please read the introduction to this series before viewing the video.

Note to my email subscribers: you may have to go to the website to see this video.

Enjoy!

Michael
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Editors Note: The author's apparent idea about good nutrition from a traditional foods perspective is incorrect, but the concept of not diverting social costs for what we eat is a good one.
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The recent debate on revolutionizing the medical system in the United States has brought Pigouvian tax concepts — arguing for taxes to counteract the so-called "social costs" of individual purchases — back into vogue. A recent article in The Economist describes a series of papers advocating new taxes on junk food.

The case made by the authors of the cited studies is simple: people who eat junk food suffer from more severe health issues than their vegetable-eating counterparts. According to The Economist, annual medical costs of an obese person are $700 greater than those of a thin person. However, those additional costs are not entirely borne by the obese.

These studies suggest that levying taxes on junk food would redirect the costs to exactly those whose consumption patterns are causing the national healthcare bill to rise. Such taxes, these economists argue, would internalize the negative externalities imposed by the obese on the rest of the society, generate additional money for the healthcare system, and even provide an incentive for consumers to live healthier lives.

Read more…

See also: Why Do People Get Flu Shots

I never can think about flu shots without remembering a wedding I once attended. Strangely enough, no grandparents were among the participants, and no one who was present seemed to be over 60. When I asked where all the older folks were, I was told they had all received their flu shots a few days before, and they all were at home, recovering from the ill effects of the shots.

The flu vaccine’s efficacy and potency still are subjects of great debate, particularly since the strains covered by one year’s vaccine often fail to correspond to whatever strains are causing flu at that particular time. The entire effort resembles a game of roulette in which, in any given year, the numbers may or may not match the strains.

We were all afforded a peek into the real dangers of the flu vaccine in 1976 when close governmental surveillance of one strain, the swine flu vaccine, disclosed that 565 cases of Guillain—Barre paralysis were associated with this vaccine, as were the unexplained deaths of 30 elderly persons. One wonders how much more would be known about the ill effects of flu shots if this kind of surveillance had been exercised over everyone who had received other forms of flu vaccine over the years

What’s ahead for the future? A vaccine has been developed for Russian flu which Dr. John Seal of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease says may cause the same paralyzing Guillain—Barre syndrome. "We have to go on the basis that any and all flu vaccines are capable of causing Guillain—Barre," Dr. Seal says. Again, we are quick to pull the immunization trigger, but we are slow to examine the consequences of our actions.
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Dr Robert Mendelsohn received his Doctor of Medicine degree from the University of Chicago. He appeared on over 500 television and radio talk shows, and is the author of Confessions of a Medical Heretic, Male Practice: How Doctors Manipulate Women, and How to Raise a Healthy Child in Spite of Your Doctor

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Editor's Note: Dr. Robert Mendelsohn is one of my all time heroes in the world of medicine and alternative healing. Even after all these years his book, Confessions of a Medical Heretic, is must reading for anyone concerned about their health and how they might bring about change for the future. He anticipated many of the battles that are being fought today. If you never had a chance to hear him speak either live or on television it is difficult to describe just what a force of nature he was at a time when he was universally opposed by most of his colleagues. I hope the above snippet will be an encouragement for you to delve deeper into his writings.
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[The picture above appears in accordance with the fair use clause of the US Copyright law]

Red meat has been maligned for decades as an artery-clogging source of cholesterol and saturated fat. Yet a rare-cooked slab of quality red meat may just be your best defense against heart disease.

One of the main casualties of what we might call the Public Health-Industrial Complex’s war on cholesterol has been a molecule called "coenzyme Q10" (CoQ10). Among its many benefits and functions, coenzyme Q10 is a powerful protector of the heart and blood vessels. CoQ10 is found primarily in red meats, especially organ meats like liver and heart, and is heat-sensitive, destroyed by overcooking. The anti-cholesterol campaign of the government and its associated medical cartels has assaulted the population’s CoQ10 status first through dietary recommendations, and now through the expanding use of CoQ10-lowering drugs, more popularly called "cholesterol-lowering" statins.

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Julia Child has been a favorite topic for several weeks now in the blogosphere, largely on the strength of the new movie Julia and Julia. She was a delightfully funny and perky lady, well known in America but not so much in the land whose cooking style made her famous. You can read a few posts here, here, and here.

I like the way one fellow summed up her two favorite foods as illustrated in the picture below:

Ah yes, if you think of gin as a broad term for alcoholic drinks including wine, then no doubt Julia and I would have got along just fine.

Julia was a big believer in the taste and nutritional superiority of animal fats (i.e. saturated fats -- what French chef isn't), as you will see in her comments in the video below about McDonald's french fries, which were originally made with beef tallow but "nutritional pressure" forced them to adopt vegetable oils nearly 30 years ago.

Julia Child passed away in 2004 at the ripe old age of 91.

A warning that the new swine flu jab is linked to a deadly nerve disease has been sent by the Government to senior neurologists in a confidential letter.

The letter from the Health Protection Agency, the official body that oversees public health, has been leaked to The Mail on Sunday, leading to demands to know why the information has not been given to the public before the vaccination of millions of people, including children, begins.

It tells the neurologists that they must be alert for an increase in a brain disorder called Guillain-Barre Syndrome (GBS), which could be triggered by the vaccine.

GBS attacks the lining of the nerves, causing paralysis and inability to breathe, and can be fatal.
The letter, sent to about 600 neurologists on July 29, is the first sign that there is concern at the highest levels that the vaccine itself could cause serious complications.

It refers to the use of a similar swine flu vaccine in the United States in 1976 when:

• More people died from the vaccination than from swine flu.
• 500 cases of GBS were detected.
• The vaccine may have increased the risk of contracting GBS by eight times.
• The vaccine was withdrawn after just ten weeks when the link with GBS became clear.
• The US Government was forced to pay out millions of dollars to those affected.

Concerns have already been raised that the new vaccine has not been sufficiently tested and that the effects, especially on children, are unknown.

It is being developed by pharmaceutical companies and will be given to about 13million people during the first wave of immunisation, expected to start in October.

Top priority will be given to everyone aged six months to 65 with an underlying health problem, pregnant women and health professionals.

The British Neurological Surveillance Unit (BNSU), part of the British Association of Neurologists, has been asked to monitor closely any cases of GBS as the vaccine is rolled out.

One senior neurologist said last night: ‘I would not have the swine flu jab because of the GBS risk.’

Read the rest of the article here

The above photo is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 License.
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See also: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and The War on Good Food
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11. See yourself as involved in and an integral part of a dynamic movement that is larger than you

Many great movements (good or bad) throughout the ages had leaders who were a little bit messianic in their approach, by which I mean they thought their (initially) little movement, even in the earliest days, possibly could change the world or effect it in some profoundly significant way. It is this kind of thinking and deep sense of purpose that attracts people to what you do and believe. It is this kind of thinking that can help give you a sure sense of stability and a laser beam focus in the war on good food. It is this kind of thinking that can help you get through those deep dark moments when you know you are right but you want to quit anyway (in terms of relating to those who are around you or even in your own personal nutritional lifestyle).

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If you’re viewing this post via e-mail or an RSS reader that doesn’t support video, watch the video here.

Freedom can stand or fall on issues large (wars, depressions, natural disasters) or small (a hundred thousand regulations that manage our daily life). Regulations on food labeling count among the small issues. It is a tricky issue for market advocates because bad labeling might actually count as breach of contract and thereby require legal intervention of some sort.

As Murray Rothbard writes, "if A sells B breakfast food, and it turns out to be straw, A has committed an illegal act of fraud by telling B he is selling him food, while actually selling straw. This is punishable… [by] the legal code of the free society that would prohibit all invasions of persons and property."

But by conceding that small point does not mean that regulators should be permitted to regiment all aspects of food production, which is where we are headed.

At issue is the theoretical presumption itself. Can market forces manage issues of food labeling or must regulators be involved? Many politicos on Capitol Hill are under the impression that food manufacturers are neglectfully poisoning the 6-11 million Americans who have food allergies by sneakily failing to point out on labels that the food contains deadly ingredients. So here we have the ultimate paranoid-socialist fantasy at work: business rakes in profits through fraud while people die!

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photo credit: laura padgett

In a piece over at Matt Stone's blog, a reader mentioned that while he was in Poland that some of the followers of Jan Kwasniewski's Optimal Diet were having problems "because the nutrient content of meat is not what it used to be."

Oh and there's another thing I wanted to share with you… When I was in Poland last time I visited some dietitians who work under Jan Kwasniewski's guidelines… and it wasn't too nice. They were elderly but all very obese and unhealthy looking and they told me his diet can a bit dangerous to follow, that some people they know got atherosclerosis after some years of eating this way, even though it's supposed to cure it. And that you need to take plenty of vitamin supplements with it even more so than with other diets "because the nutrient content of meat is not what it used to be". They also said they recommend eating more carbs than Jan K. says (as far as I could understand because their English wasn't great). It was a bit disturbing to be honest, I mean they really sounded so negative about the diet… even though it did cure one woman I met of rheumatoid arthritis, to be fair!

Matt also mentioned in response to one of his commenters that he thinks that people get into the nutritional holes they do because the food is lacking in quality from the outset. In this particular post (he also says it directly elsewhere) he does so by way of quoting Sir Robert McCarrison as to one way (but certainly not the only way) poor food quality can harm someone:

…in the absence of vitamins or in their inadequate supply, neither proteins nor fats nor carbohydrates nor [minerals] are properly utilized; some are largely wasted, while others yield products harmful to the organism.

Now McCarrison is not talking about supplements, but food itself. And the entire post from which I am quoting is in the context of fingering poor basal metabolism as being at the foundation of many health issues, which is a largely unrecognized problem among the modern health gurus of today. If you want to review Matt's solution to the issue you can read the rest of the post (or rather series of posts) titled Low Carb Rehab and The Carb Wars over at his corner in cyberspace.

Here at Nutrition and Physical Regeneration I want to tackle what I believe to be the root of the problem. Why isn't meat what it used to be? Why is the nutritional value of many if not most foods so low today? How can one fix their metabolism or tailor a diet that is specifically designed for their particular metabolism and not just based on overall generalities like "eat what we evolved on" or "eat what your ancestors ate" or the more specific but still too generic "metabolic typing"?

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