Primitive man did not have the same disease pattern as modern man. Primitive man suffered from infectious diseases but was almost free of degenerative diseases. Modern man has almost eliminated infectious diseases but is suffering from an epidemic of degenerative diseases. A logical approach to understanding degenerative diseases is to study people who are free of them.
This quote is from the introduction to part one of How to Survive Modern Technology1 by Charles T. McGee, MD. In the fascinating first section of his book, Dr. McGee describes many examples-a number of which he witnessed personally-of "primitive" cultures. These are some of the rapidly dwindling and disappearing spots in the world where the communities of people still live by their ancient customs and cultures. None of them have electricity, telephones, running water, or have ever eaten any processed food bought in a store-be it canned, packaged, or at fast food restaurant such as McDonalds. All food is grown or raised by the individuals or sold fresh and eaten the same day-there are no refrigerators.
Early Studies of Degeneration
A pioneer in the study of degeneration was Weston A. Price, DDS, who initiated
a study in the 1930s to understand the reason for tooth decay. Instead of studying
populations with tooth decay, he decided to study populations without tooth
decay to find the reasons for their excellent dental health. He traveled extensively
throughout the world where he found an amazing and consistent pattern. He has
documented all his findings in his book, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration.2
Whenever people lived beyond the reach of modern commerce, they had wide jaws, no crooked teeth, and a low decay rate of one percent. However, when the people began to eat modern commercial food, they rapidly showed physical degeneration. Jaws were narrowed in children when their parents switched to modern, processed store food. The children's teeth came in crooked, and their tooth decay rate jumped to 30-50 percent! After having children with narrowed jaws, crooked teeth, and high decay rates, whenever the parents resumed their traditional diet, they then had children with the original excellent dental health. After this pattern was well established at many different locations, Dr. Price could astonish the natives, because, by simply taking his dental measurements and asking ages, he could state within a year or two when the store had opened bringing them modern, processed food!
. . . people [living] beyond the reach of modern commerce . . . had wide jaws, no crooked teeth, and a low decay rate of one percent. However, when the people began to eat modern commercial food, they rapidly showed physical degeneration. Jaws were narrowed in children when their parents switched to modern, processed store food. The children's teeth came in crooked, and their tooth decay rate jumped to 30-50 percent! After having children with narrowed jaws, crooked teeth, and high decay rates, whenever the parents resumed their traditional diet, they then had children with the original excellent dental health.
In some areas visited by Dr. Price only 10-15% of the fresh food supply of the area was replaced by store food, yet their health pattern fell apart anyway. That minimal drop in levels of nutrients doesn't seem as if it would cause the devastation seen. This result seems to indicate that something happens to food in processing that renders it not only less nutritious but also damaging. Pottenger's cat feeding study in the 1940s showed the health of cats fell apart when parts of their raw food diet were simply cooked.3
More is described in Dr. Price's book than dental problems. Demineralization of bones and spontaneous fractures were found to be related to the deficient diets. Pelvic narrowing and deformity was also more common on commercial diets. This result is involved in the increase in Cesarean Section rates-from basically zero in the original native populations
Dr. McGee in Ecuador
For a year in 1965 Dr. McGee worked for Project Hope as a physician in Cuenca,
Ecuador with a total population of 400,000. He worked in a government hospital
serving only a population of about 320,000 Indians who lived outside the monetary
economy. Most health problems were related to infection due to poor hygiene
and water contamination. American diseases such as mental illness, heart attacks,
strokes, diabetes, arthritis, asthma, allergies, headaches, and many more were
not seen among the poor Indians. There were few cars and no air pollution.
Indians lived in mud-walled, one-room buildings with dirt floors. Guinea pigs, chickens, and sheep wandered in and out of open doors. Poor hygiene and dirty water caused about 40% of their babies to die of diarrhea by age two. Outhouses were completely lacking. The Indians would urinate and defecate wherever they felt like it. In town, sanitation resembled Europe in the Middle Ages when the sewers ran in the streets!
The Indians, who survived, had an amazing resistance to infection and could live through horrible trauma. One man walked into the hospital five days after falling off the top of a bus that had run off a mountain road and rolled over his body. He had not urinated for five days. He was operated on for a ruptured bladder and a large amount of urine was removed. Five days later he was well on his way to recovery and walked home ten miles to his mud hut in the mountains!
One man walked into the hospital five days after falling off the top of a bus that had run off a mountain road and rolled over his body. He had not urinated for five days. He was operated on for a ruptured bladder and a large amount of urine was removed. Five days later he was well on his way to recovery and walked home ten miles. . .
A woman was brought into the hospital with a ruptured uterus. When her labor had begun five days earlier, the baby was lined up crosswise to her body, and an arm came out of the vagina. Her helping neighbor pulled hard on the arm and pulled it off thus rupturing the uterus. The woman had to ride on a donkey several miles to a village with a bus, which only ran twice a day to the city thirty miles away. They had to carry her a mile to the hospital because they could not afford the 25 cents for a taxi. She was admitted with no blood pressure, a pulse over 200, very pale, and in a coma. In surgery the dead baby and her uterus were removed. No anesthetic was needed due to her coma. The blood bank would not give her any blood as the Indians wouldn't donate any. Her hemoglobin was only 3 grams while normal is between 12 and 15 grams or even higher at 9,000 feet. She stayed in a coma for two days, woke up, and walked home a month later!
There are two factors involved in any infection, the ability of the organism to infect, and the ability of the host to defend itself against the organism. Even though the Indians lived with intestinal worms all their lives, few ever became ill from them.
The Indians were well adjusted, poor, and worked almost all their time simply to provide food. Most lived their entire lives without ever seeing a doctor. They had no luxuries. They were honest, hard-working people, and crime was absent from them. They had good attitudes and a good sense of humor.
Lessons from the "Old Folks"
Vilcabamba, 60 miles to the south of Cuenca, has been described as one
of three areas in the world where an abnormally large number of people live
to be over 100. However, it is not the best of examples because the statistics
are not reliable. The number of people over 100 was very small, nobody had birth
certificates, and baptism records were unreliable because so many people had
the same name. Also, when old people discovered outside researchers were looking
for really old people they lied about their ages. Someone who told an investigator
he was 100 one year would say he was 103 a year later. Many young people moved
away to find better economic conditions.
Of 300 adults, none had coronary artery disease.4 They remained physically active-farming until they died. They stayed alert without senility. They lived on hilly farms and did hard work, hence had a lot of healthy exercise. Their life was peaceful, simple, and unstressful. There was no pollution and they used no chemical sprays, food additives, or automobiles. They grew their own food "organically" with compost and ate everything fresh. They remained healthy without the use of any modern doctors, shots, immunizations, or surgery. Continuing close family ties were stressed, and all family members were respected as long as they lived.
Unfortunately, the younger people became lazy with less incentive to do hard work. Many changed their diets to modern food, soda pop, and sweets. The more they switched to our life patterns, the more likely they were to develop degenerative diseases at an early age.
Hunza is located in northern Pakistan in the Himalayas. The exercise patterns, nutrition, and lack of stress were similar to those in Ecuador. The elderly Hunzakuts made their bread from whole wheat grain that they ground immediately before baking. Much of their food was grown and eaten fresh, and about 80 percent of it was eaten raw.
They maintained this approach to their food by design. Their leaders had traveled outside in the "modern world." After their observations there, they decided to keep their old tradition in food growth because they believed it was an important factor in their superb health. They had even passed laws against the use of chemical fertilizers and sprays. Their plants were free of pests, very healthy, and had a high resilience to disease.
They maintained this approach to their food by design. Their leaders had traveled outside in the "modern world." After their observations there, they decided to keep their old tradition in food growth because they believed it was an important factor in their superb health. They had even passed laws against the use of chemical fertilizers and sprays.
They lived simple lives without hardly any need for money since they used mostly the barter system. The food supply was shared and no one went hungry. They rarely used any goods from outside because one had to travel on a poor road over a 15,000 foot pass to reach the modern world. In those times, there was no crime, no police force, no jail, and almost no government for a population of 60,000!
This describes conditions 44 years ago.5,6, Since then the isolation has been lost as young people have left for military service in Pakistan and returned with new ways. The general health is definitely declining.7 The old pattern changed. Not only had young men left the area for military service and returned with bad habits, but also the outside world had taken an interest in their reported longevity and decided to go see the old folks for themselves. In came a jet runway, international hotels, modern foods, etc8.
The Caucasus cover a wide area between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. The people have approaches to life and dietary customs very similar to the traditional ones found in Hunza and Vilcabamba. There are many semi-isolated areas of different religions and languages. The Soviets have been studying the longevity of this area since 1930. A census was taken in 1970 listing the number of people 100 years of age or older in these areas. This table compares them with the United States in rates per 100,000 people:
| Georgia |
39
|
| Abkhasia |
60
|
| Ocetenskaya |
103
|
| Azerbaijan |
84
|
| United States |
3
|
Although complete accuracy in impossible, many approaches establishing fairly accurate age have confirmed a high incidence of very healthy, very elderly people. In 1970 there were around 5,000 persons 100 or older in these areas. (There were even some words referring to their great-great-great-grandfather as a living person!)
In all these areas we see a combination of continuous hard work, exercise, fresh unprocessed food, and a sense of belonging among the elderly. The other modern problems of pollution, a sense of urgency, and daily news of a stressful nature are absent.
These people experience very little heart disease, arteriosclerosis, kidney stones, gallstones, heart attacks, or hypertension, among other conditions. They have remained fairly unchanged over the centuries. Many villages can be reached only by a footpath up and over mountains. Dietary patterns and general lifestyle have not been changed here as they have in Hunza and Vilcabamba. People live in the same village their entire lives, have extended families, and the elderly are respected for their wisdom. They never retire, but continue hard physical exercise their entire lives. All food is consumed fresh.
In all these areas we see a combination of continuous hard work, exercise, fresh unprocessed food, and a sense of belonging among the elderly. The other modern problems of pollution, a sense of urgency, and daily news of a stressful nature are absent.
Dr. McGee in China
In 1990 Dr. McGee visited Hianan province, China, and interviewed medical chiefs
at the main hospital about health patterns. At that time there were no admissions
for heart attacks, high blood pressure, strokes, diabetes, and the usual list
of diseases of physical degeneration. There were no premature babies and no
birth defects. For many years the island was treated as a backwater rural part
of Canton province that kept people following an old traditional life style.
All monies for development were spent in the far off city of Canton.
By 1990 Hainan was just getting electricity outside of its cities (90% of the people still lived as farmers). Refrigerators were only then becoming available. An emphasis was placed on the importance of eating fresh food. An old adage advised eating "living" food. There were said to be a large number of old people but they didn't like to admit to being over 100. Ages were quite well documented. When the communists took over in 1949 birth certificates were issued to people who never had one before. Chinese people know very accurately what year they are born. Thus, in 1949 a person born in the year of the pig 3 cycles before would know his age to within a year (there are 12 years in each cycle).
Surviving Today with Innovative
New Directions
Unfortunately, most modern medicine has either concentrated on infective diseases,
hygiene, surgery-which can be useful at times-or on suppressing symptoms with
drugs, many of which have unfortunate, negative side effects. This is thanks
partially to our huge and rapidly growing multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical
industry. It is also encouraged by many doctors, who are taught in medical school
that a particular disease can be controlled by the same treatment in everyone.
To treat X symptom, prescribe Y drug.
Environmental Medicine (formerly Clinical Ecology) is a fascinating, growing medical practice, which can identify the specific food(s) and chemicals(s) each unique individual is sensitive to, and, by so doing, allows the patient to remove the root cause(s) of their symptoms without using any drugs at all! This unique approach was pioneered by the late NOHA Professional Advisory Board Member Theron G. Randolph, MD.
Eat as "Close to Nature" as Possible: Remember the excellent health and long lives of the "primitive" people described in the first part of Dr. McGee's book summarized above? The best thing to do is to buy, grow and eat fresh, organic produce and to eat only free range, certified organic chickens and beef, and wild caught fish from as unpolluted an area as possible. The LESS man had touched, transported, mixed, or processed the food, the better it is.
Exercise Regularly: The automobile is truly convenient, but it has many hidden costs: auto accidents, traffic jams, air pollution, global warming, obesity, high gas prices-just to name a few. The less one uses the car the better. Walking and bicycling are both much healthier and cleaner for the environment. In addition to fresh, organic food, regular exercise is essential to achieve the health of our "primitive" ancestors and truly survive modern technology.
______________
1McGee, Charles T., MD, How
to Survive Modern Technology, Keats Publishing, 1979.
2Price, Weston, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, Santa
Monica, CA: The Price Pottenger Nutrition Foundation, Inc., 1945.
3Pottenger, F.M., American Journal of Orthodontics and Oral Surgery
32:467-85, 1946.
4Leaf, Alexander, Youth in Old Age, New York: McGraw Hill,
1975.
5Banik, A.E. and Taylor, R., Hunza Land, Whitehorn Publishers,
1960.
6Taylor, R., Come Along to Hunza, Minneapolis: T.S. Denison
Co., 1974.
7Leaf, Alexander, op. cit.
8 Reports about Hunza from a lecture by Pavlo Airola, ND, 1975.
Article from NOHA NEWS, Vol. XXIX, No. 3, Summer 2004, pages 5-7.