Never Be Sick Again (12 page)

To avoid the weak and rusty body—to slow the aging process and keep disease at bay—the sensible solution is to stop the free-radical damage. The necessities are simple: a diet rich in antioxidant nutrients along with antioxidant supplements, and clean food, water and air. None of these ideas are new, but what people don't understand is why they are important. If you allow free radicals to damage your cells—to allow them to become weak and rusty—your body ages faster and becomes vulnerable to disease.

Salt Is Often at Fault

To be healthy, the nutrients in cells must be in proper balance. Upsetting the natural balance of chemicals inside a cell causes the cell to malfunction, which is what is happening to the balance of sodium and potassium in our cells. Over the past one hundred years, our diets have changed dramatically, increasing the amount of sodium and decreasing the amount of potassium in our diet, thus reversing the natural balance. Modern food manufacturers add lots of salt (sodium chloride) to their products, while modern diets do not include enough potassium-rich foods such as fresh fruits, vegetables, whole grains and legumes. When our genes were evolving, human diets contained little sodium and a lot of potassium. For example, eating an apple provides only 1 mg of sodium, but 310 mg of potassium. Eating a piece of modern apple pie provides 110 mg of sodium and only 80 mg of potassium, a drastic change.

Salt-rich diets force excess sodium into cells, disturbing the normal and healthy sodium/potassium balance. Among other problems, excess sodium interferes with cellular energy production, causing fatigue. Sodium attaches itself strongly to water molecules, so when more sodium goes into the cells, so does more water. Water retention elevates blood pressure and causes weight gain. Dietary salt contributes to an increased incidence of cancer and metastasis, cardiac disease, stroke, kidney disease, bronchial problems and kidney stones. By avoiding processed and packaged foods, most of our excess dietary sodium can be eliminated.

An Important Litmus Test

Healthy cells must have the correct pH. In addition to the dangerous imbalance of sodium and potassium, our modern lifestyles and diets have detrimental effects on another critical balance: the pH of our cells. Commercials commonly tout “pH balanced” shampoos for our hair, and most of us remember the litmus paper tests from our chemistry sets or grade-school experiments—those tiny sheets of paper that turn pink or blue based on pH. Cells must maintain proper pH balance, and our food choices affect that balance.

The pH is a measurement of acidity or alkalinity. On the pH scale, 7 is neutral; 0 to 7 is acidic, and 7 to 14 is alkaline. The normal pH inside of a cell is about 7.4, which is slightly alkaline. Maintaining normal pH in the fluid inside the cell as well as in other body fluids is critical for keeping body systems functioning normally. Most of the chemical reactions in the body, including the production of energy, occur most efficiently in an alkaline environment. The enzymes involved in these reactions are pH sensitive and only function within a narrow pH range; pH level affects other vital operations, such as the transport of substances through cell membranes. You can monitor your acid/alkaline levels by using pH paper (see appendix C).

Modern diets often cause cellular pH to drop below 7.0, into the acidic range. (Cells also can become too alkaline, but excessive acidity is most common.) A cell that becomes too acidic is said to have intracellular acidosis. Acidosis, an extremely serious condition, is one of the common factors present in many manifestations of disease. The more acidic a cell becomes, the more impaired its function. At very high acidic levels, the cell will die. Herman Aihara, author of
Acid
and Alkaline,
says that “one of the important causes of cancer— and other degenerative diseases—is the cumulative effect of the acidic condition of body fluid.”

How do cells become too acidic? Different foods have different effects on our pH. Ideally, we should consume only foods that maintain proper cellular pH. Instead, we consume a diet high in foods that have an acidic effect, such as sugar, soft drinks, white flour (pasta and bread), excessive protein and salt. Consumption of these foods, which deplete the body of alkaline materials, has skyrocketed over the past few generations.

Because acidosis is such a threat, the body tries to prevent it by using its own alkaline minerals (such as calcium and magnesium) leached from the bones and teeth, leading to dental problems and osteoporosis. By contrast, fresh and unprocessed foods, rich in alkaline minerals, help keep pH within normal limits. For this reason, among others, most of our calories should come from fresh, unprocessed vegetables, fruits, beans and whole grains.

Concerned about your pH? Measure the pH of your first morning urine before eating. This test offers an indicator of your cellular pH and can be used to monitor changes as you work to normalize your pH. First morning urine should be in the range of 6.5 to 7.5. If readings fall below 6.5, you are too acidic. Occasional readings above 7.5 are normal, but consistent readings above 7.5 are an indication of tissue breakdown, and a pH over 8.0 is a serious matter. Fatigue is often reflected in an acidic pH.

Why Am I So Tired?

Fatigue is one of the most common complaints made to physicians today. During the onset of my own illness, the first thing I noticed was fatigue. I simply did not have the energy I had been accustomed to having. So many people—epidemic proportions, actually—are tired and lack energy, but they do not know what to do about it. Indeed, when I told my doctor about my fatigue, he told me it was the result of aging. In truth, the fatigue had nothing to do with growing older and everything to do with becoming sicker.

All cells require energy to function. Your cellular powerhouses use enzymes to turn carbohydrates, fatty acids and amino acids into energy the body is able to use. Fatigue occurs because the body's energy production systems have been impaired. The powerhouses (called
mitochondria
) may not be receiving sufficient fuel or oxygen, may have been damaged by free radicals, may have the wrong pH, or may have their enzymes disabled by toxic chemicals. The high-energy compounds made by the powerhouses, such as ATP (adenosine triphosphate), are made in large quantities when we sleep, which is one reason that an under-rested person functions poorly and lacks energy.

Don't Blame Your Parents

Genes are the blueprints for the structure and function of every cell in our bodies. Although we inherit genes from our parents, how we maintain and care for our genes determines how well our cells work. Over a lifetime, to some degree, genes deteriorate and mutate naturally, but what we must focus on are man-made free radicals that accelerate or distort this natural process. Minimizing the damage is crucial; important steps are to avoid: radiation from medical X rays and other sources, environmental chemicals, prescription and recreational drugs, alcohol, tobacco smoke and even char-broiled meat. Minimizing the damage also means protecting genes with good nutrition—particularly foods containing ample antioxidant nutrients such as vitamins A, C, E and the mineral selenium.

Many people assume that “bad genes” or a family history of disease predestines them to be sick. In truth, while genetic predispositions do put a person at risk for disease, what a person chooses to do to protect the health of their cells and genes plays a more important role in whether or not disease develops. Choices, rather than genetic inheritance, are the key. We must focus on how we play the game, not the cards we were dealt; what we eat, what we do and what we are exposed to determines how healthy we will be.

Learning a New Way

Unfortunately, a common medical response to a diseased organ is to remove it surgically. Before taking such a drastic action, why not give the cells that make up that organ what they need, keep them free of what they do not need and restore the organ to health?

Modern lifestyles—diets and toxins—create the formulas for cellular malfunction and disease, yet traditional medical practices ignore them. How often have you, a friend or a relative consulted a physician and been given a diagnosis or treatment but were not asked even one question about how you care for or neglect your body? Not asked even one question about what you eat, what harmful substances invade your environment or how you live your life in general? More commonly you are asked about symptoms alone. Traditional medicine does not make us healthy and, worse yet, can make us sick and promote our death. Drugs, surgeries and other medical procedures that disregard the causes of disease—not fixing the problems inside the cells and instead addressing symptoms— can never cure the disease. Disease is not about “diseases,” it is about cells; diagnoses and treatments should always reflect this approach.

The battle between sickness and health takes place within every cell in your body. Choosing healthy cells means following each of the six pathways in a positive direction; let us move on to the first of the six: the nutrition pathway.

5
T
HE
N
UTRITION
P
ATHWAY

“The well-nourished American is a myth. Despite the high
level of education and the abundance of available food, many
people make poor food choices and are badly nourished. . . .
[T]he average human diet, nutritionally unfit for rats, must be
equally unsatisfactory or even more so in meeting human
needs.”

Carl Pfeiffer, M.D., Ph.D.
Mental and Elemental Nutrients

M
eet Elizabeth. For eight years Elizabeth has waged a losing battle against chronic fatigue. She suffers from painful arthritis (with measurable bone loss in one shoulder), and she takes powerful pain medications daily. Overwhelming exhaustion, coupled with the pain, prevent her from working or participating in meaningful activity. She has seen numerous medical doctors and alternative practitioners, but she is not improving.

After hearing me speak at a chronic fatigue support group, Elizabeth reached out for my help. Within a few months Elizabeth's pain was gone and her energy was soaring. A year later, she returned to work, at a six-figure income. “Raymond gave me back my life,” she tells friends. In reality, I simply taught her how to give her cells the nutrients they were desperately missing. Even more simply, I taught Elizabeth how to shop for food, prepare meals and find high-quality vitamin supplements. Simple, essential and life-saving.

To become healthier, Elizabeth began to consume more nutritious foods, eat more raw foods and fewer cooked ones. She was careful about which foods to combine together. She cut back on sugar, white flour, hydrogenated oils and milk products, as well as coffee. These choices literally made Elizabeth a changed woman; her whole life and health were turned around by improving the chemistry inside her cells. Her fatigue and arthritis pain gradually disappeared, and she actually repaired much of the damaged bone tissue in her arthritic shoulder.

In various forms, Elizabeth's story of declining health is played out millions of times each day in this country. Few Americans go to bed hungry, but almost all Americans go to bed malnourished, some severely so. This concept may be difficult to accept because we typically envision malnourished third-world people with distended bellies and listless eyes. In truth, “well-fed” Americans, including those—or perhaps especially those—who are overweight, are “starving” for the kinds of food needed to become and stay healthy.

Most of us eat the wrong foods. I call them “make-believe” foods that do not meet the needs of our cells. In fact, 90 percent of the typical American food budget is spent on make-believe foods. Most of us spend lots of money and lots of time shopping for and preparing meals that are, in small and large ways, killing our cells, creating disease and shortening our lives.

We shop in supermarkets full of empty-calorie foods. We buy foods that have been so mishandled that they no longer offer the nutrition we think we are buying. We prepare and cook our foods in ways that destroy their nutritional value. Nearly all of us—from junk-food junkies to “health-conscious” consumers—are being misled into believing that low-fat products and typical supermarket meat and produce can build a healthy diet. Consider:

• Too much of our diet is created from an officially approved “Big Four” list of foods that fail to nurture our bodies and also create toxins that sicken us. The Big Four? Sugar, white flour, processed oils and milk products. Even foods touted as “healthy,” such as multi-grain breads, usually contain impoverished flour.