Never Be Sick Again (6 page)

In the state of California, actuarial calculations show that average life expectancy for females would be 100 if only one certain disease were eliminated—heart disease, which is entirely preventable through diet and lifestyle. Consider how much longer we might live by eliminating two or more diseases. Perhaps we have forgotten that health is our natural state. We blindly accept our average life span of seventy-six years; we accept that we will succumb to chronic and degenerative diseases.

Imagining entire populations who have lived far longer and healthier lives than we do seems inconceivable. People who rarely, if ever, suffered from any disease, including colds, allergies, flu or even fatigue. How were these people able to do that? Their nutrition was of high quality, their toxic exposure was minimal, they enjoyed psychological well-being and they were quite physically active. Their everyday lifestyles, to a large degree, met all the factors necessary to support the six pathways toward health.

Let us learn from these people.

The Remarkable Hunzas

In a remote valley of the Himalayas, in what is now northeastern Pakistan, live the people of Hunza, who were renowned for their near-perfect health, robust energy and extraordinary longevity. Though they lived under what we would consider primitive conditions, they regularly lived into their hundreds, and often lived to be 120 to 140 years old. Their culture was not plagued with cancer, heart disease, ulcers, diabetes, allergies, kidney and liver disease, arthritis, asthma, hypoglycemia, mental disorders, colds, flu, tooth decay or any of the other diseases so common in our society. Nor did they suffer from depression; several researchers described them as, “the happiest people in the world.” The Hunzas had clear minds, high intelligence, excellent memories, and enormous physical strength and stamina.

Many researchers went to Hunza in the early twentieth century—long before many of the advances of modern medicine— to study and write about these phenomenally healthy people. Sir Robert McCarrison, M.D., a prominent British physician, spent seven years living and doing research among the Hunzas, and he first brought the health of the Hunza people to world attention. In November 1921, Dr. McCarrison presented the results of his research at a meeting of the Society for Biological Research held at the University of Pittsburgh. He described the Hunzas as, “a race unsurpassed in perfection of physique and in freedom from diseases in general . . .” He found that chronic diseases, including cancer, were totally unknown. (Cancer was unknown among these extraordinarily long-lived people, yet we are told that cancer is a disease of aging.)

Another researcher, J. I. Rodale, in his book,
The Healthy
Hunzas,
reported that, “Colds are non-existent in Hunza.” He said it was not unusual to see men walking through snowdrifts in the coldest weather, barechested and barefoot. He observed one Hunza man travel sixty miles in a single day, by foot in mountainous terrain, arriving back as if he had returned from a casual walk. Hunza women did not suffer menstrual pain or any of the other female complaints of our society. In Hunza, people typically died of old age in their sleep, without experiencing the chronic suffering that usually precedes death in our own society. The story of the Hunzas shows the potential for human health—how healthy human beings can perform.

As part of their leisure activities, the men of Hunza (from teenage to 120 years old) performed vigorous, physically demanding folk dances. In his book
Hunza,
Hoffman described men in their seventies and eighties gliding through the air with the same grace and ease as those in their teens and twenties. Hoffman wrote: “The stamina of the people is beyond words. In fact men over a hundred years of age were observed going up these mountainsides just as though they were men of fifty. It is my belief that many American men of fifty years of age could not keep up with these Hunza men.”

What was it that allowed the Hunzas to achieve this amazing level of health? You probably already know the answer: a combination of a nutritious diet, toxin-free environment, exercise, sleep, sunshine, fresh air and low-stress lifestyle. Given only two causes of disease—deficiency and toxicity—let us examine how the Hunzas kept their cells adequately supplied with nutrients and free of toxins, thus realizing optimal health and longevity. While we cannot replicate their lifestyle, we can see how far our own lifestyles fall short of these goals, and we can begin to understand how to make the kinds of changes that will bring us closer to our potential.

An Optimal Diet and Lifestyle

The Hunza diet was highly nutritious, consisting mainly of vegetarian foods grown in nutrient-rich soil. They irrigated their fields with mineral-rich water and composted all of their organic matter (leaves, straw, manure, etc.), to produce soils of the highest quality. Contrast their mineral-rich soils to U.S. soils which are depleted due to modern chemical farming. It doesn't take a degree in agricultural science to know that if minerals are not in the soil, they do not get into the plant, and then they don't get into you. In addition to fresh vegetables and fruits, the Hunzas ate whole grains that were exceptionally high in nutrients as opposed to the refined sugars and nutrient-depleted white flour that's so prevalent in our diet. Only about 10 percent of the Hunza's calories came from fat, as opposed to about 37 percent in the American diet. Eighty percent of their foods were eaten fresh and raw. In addition to being high in nutrition, their diet was low in toxins, meaning that their foods didn't contain any cancer-causing compounds that come from exposures to pesticides, herbicides, fungicides and other agricultural chemicals. Along with getting plenty of exercise by working the land and walking everywhere, the Hunzas also got adequate sleep. Since there was no artificial lighting in their village, they went to bed when it got dark and they woke up at daybreak, regardless of the time of the year.

So what are we to take from the Hunza's habits? Should we quit our sedentary jobs and take up organic farming? Should we shun all supermarket foods and hide our head under the covers at sunset? While these options are surely not realistic, you can make some practical and positive changes in your lifestyle and this book will show you how. While you don't have to avoid supermarkets altogether, you can learn how to avoid filling your cart with the most toxic foods in the grocery aisles (some of which you might wrongly assume are “healthy” for you!) and paying good money for food that is actually killing you. You can learn how to prepare your foods in ways that don't rob them of their nutrients and how to avoid cooking your foods by methods that compromise your health. You can become aware of what toxic chemicals are lurking in your environment in everyday products and choose healthy alternatives instead. You can see how making a few simple changes in your sleeping habits will restore your body's natural rhythms and allow your body ample time to rejuvenate. You can make informed decisions about which medical treatments you need, and which are actually hurting your health. So, you see, you don't have to move to the Andes Mountains to find health; you can live a long and healthy life in your own town.

And what, you may wonder, would happen to these mighty Hunzas if they lived in your town—with a fast food restaurant on every corner? The results shouldn't surprise you. The Hunzas were geographically isolated from the outside world. The one treacherous road into the Hunza Valley was closed nine months of the year because of the weather, and the road was not all that inviting during the remaining three months. This isolation allowed the Hunzas to live in their traditional, customary, and close-knit familial and social groups, almost up until the present day. Had the Hunza Valley been more accessible, modern culture would have intruded and damaged the health of this population sooner than it did, and we would have lost our opportunity to learn from them. Eventually, modern foods were introduced into the Hunzas' lives when the first all-weather road was built through the mountain passes and into their valley in the 1970s, making this area more accessible to “civilization.” “Civilized foods,” such as white sugar, white flour, white rice, cola drinks, coffee, processed oils and alcohol were introduced. Fresh, homegrown, whole foods were replaced with the processed and toxic foods that make up much of the diet we eat today. This exposure to modern culture had tremendously detrimental health effects on the Hunza population.

What is especially notable is how rapidly a modern diet will cause health to decline. Researchers have noted that health begins to deteriorate within six months of introducing modern diets into populations previously eating only their traditional foods. The Hunzas were an incredibly healthy population just a few decades ago. Today, they face increasing levels of chronic disease—just like the rest of the “civilized” world. However, because of their prior isolation, the Hunzas provided a perfect control group—an ideal people for the study and measurement of the potential for human health.

If the Hunzas had been the only extraordinarily healthy people in the world, we might dismiss their health as an aberration. However, numerous other examples of long-lived and healthy populations are available, including people living in mountainous areas of Bulgaria and Hungary, the island of Crete, the lake district of Titicaca in Peru, the Vilcabamba Valley in Ecuador, and the Caucasus region of Russia. They all have a similar story. They eat high-quality, nutritious foods. They get a lot of exercise and plenty of fresh air, sleep and sunshine. They live a life of low stress in communities that emphasize family and human relationships. As a result, they enjoy a level of health and quality of life that we can barely imagine.

Unsanitary Conditions, but Healthy People

In another region of Ecuador, we find another story of superior resiliency and longevity: the Indians of the mountainous region of Cuenca. In his book,
How to Survive Modern
Technology,
Charles McGee, M.D., reports experiences he had as a Project Hope physician in this region, starting in 1965. McGee had awesome tales to tell about the resilience of these people, who ate excellent diets and lived low-stress lifestyles. Otherwise, however, their living conditions were what we would consider primitive. These Indians usually walked around barefoot and lived in one-room, dirt-floored houses that had no glass in the windows. They had extremely poor sanitary conditions, no running water, no toilet facilities, and their animals wandered haphazardly in and out of their living spaces. As a result of these filthy conditions and a contaminated water supply, infant mortality was very high from bacterial and parasitic infections. (Infants are more susceptible to infections because their immune systems are not yet fully developed.) Examinations of the local children showed that 95 percent had intestinal parasites.

Given the above, one would certainly expect these Indians to be sickly and weak. To the contrary, McGee found them to have perfect teeth, extremely high resistance to infections and amazing resistance to physical trauma resulting from accidents. He described incidents where he treated a man with a ruptured bladder (from a bus accident) and a woman with a ruptured uterus (from childbirth). McGee said that, considering the severity of the damage and the quality of the medical facilities, neither of these people “should have” survived. These people not only survived, they walked home to their mountain villages after treatment at McGee's hospital. Yes, by our standards, they should not have survived; however, our standards are substandard.

Our assumptions about the capabilities of the human body are significantly underestimated. The good nutrition of these people contributed to their cellular health, which allowed them to recover from severe injuries that would have probably killed the typical American. Likewise, absent in these Indians were the typical American diseases, such as heart disease, cancer, diabetes, allergies, asthma, senility and mental illness. Also compelling is that in one year of doing surgery, under very basic and unsanitary conditions, McGee observed only one postoperative infection; in modern, technologically advanced hospitals, infections are bewilderingly rampant. In fact, many people in our society are afraid of hospitals for this exact reason. The resistance to disease of these Indians, under exceptionally challenging conditions, was truly amazing.

Germs and parasites are everywhere, and we have been living with them for millennia. Despite the presence of intestinal parasites in most of the Cuenca, few of them ever became sick from them. Only since the germ theory, and the discovery of microscopic organisms, has medicine focused so obsessively on isolating and killing germs. Medicine has developed few or no protocols for promoting basic human health and immunity, yet promoting health is the only thing that consistently works, as we can see from these healthy populations. The Cuenca had virtually none of the diseases that are so common among us. Why? Because they were fundamentally healthy—that is, they had healthy cells.

McGee contrasted their superior health to the poor health of the population of a nearby city, where toxic junk foods like sugar, white flour, soda pop and white rice had been available for several years. In this city, not surprisingly, heart attacks, diabetes and other chronic diseases had begun to appear.

Modern “Progress”—
Toward Deterioration

Having seen how healthy people are capable of performing, living long lives free of disease and enjoying boundless energy, why, with all of our technology, are we doing so poorly by comparison? The many changes we have made in modern society have taken us away from the factors that enhance health and created new conditions that damage health. Never before, in all of human history, have so many health-related factors changed so rapidly and so completely. The basic nutritional, environmental and behavioral dimensions of our society have been severely and rapidly altered. Since the Industrial Revolution, and especially during the past century, humanity has: