Food Combining for Health: The bestseller that has changed millions of lives. Doris Grant

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СКАЧАТЬ these manifestations Dr Cleave lists constipation, with its complications of varicose veins and haemorrhoids; obesity; diabetes; skin diseases; dental decay and periodontal disease; urinary tract infections (such as cystitis, from which so many women suffer today); and coronary disease. Dr Hay dealt with most of these manifestations and others as well, but nowhere in his many writings have I found any reference whatsoever to coronary heart disease (CHD).

      This fact is highly significant; it confirms Dr Cleave’s contention that it ‘takes time for the consumption of refined carbohydrates to produce the various manifestations of the saccharine disease’, and that these manifestations have ‘incubating periods’ which differ in each case. In the case of diabetes, for instance, the incubation period may be 20 years, but in the case of CHD, 30 years. As CHD was a rare disease from 1900 to 1930 when Dr Hay was practising medicine, it is not surprising that he never had to deal with it. It was still a rare disease in the 1920s and it was not until 30 years afterwards, in the 1950s, that CHD started to become an epidemic disease, concurrent with the massively increasing consumption of refined sugar.

      A recently concluded study of the lifestyle and diet of the people of Okinawa, an island in the North Pacific, established that the 1.3 million inhabitants have the longest life expectancy in the world with four times as many centenarians as in the Western world (Bradley Willcox et al., The Okinawa Way, Michael Joseph, 2001). Heart problems and strokes are virtually unknown among the older people who still follow their traditional plant-based diet. However, Western diseases are beginning to appear among the younger adults who, since the American occupation, have adopted a Western diet. As Dr Cleave demonstrated, these problems have arisen roughly 20 to 30 years after the introduction of refined and processed foods.

      CHD incidence in Britain was among the highest in the world when this book was first published in 1984, killing 170,000 people annually – one every three minutes – and about 5,000 of these before the age of 50. Since then the annual number of deaths from CHD in Britain has been declining. However, this is thought to be owing to better survival rates rather than a reduction in heart disease. In 1991, a government white paper ‘The Health of the Nation’ reported that CHD accounted for about 26 per cent of deaths in England and was still one of the highest death rates for CHD in the world. A 10-year study published by the Office of Health Economics showed that deaths from CHD between 1990 and 2000 fell by 36 per cent, although mortality in Scotland remained much higher – 1,014 per 100,000 people compared with 835 in England and Wales.

      A report on BBC Radio 4 (28 September 2003) stated that CHD was four times more likely than breast cancer to be a cause of death in women, though the latter was perceived as a more potent threat.

      Doctors now generally accept that the main risk factors for CHD are cigarette smoking, raised plasma cholesterol, raised blood pressure and obesity coupled with lack of physical activity. All these can be influenced by changes in lifestyle, and the emphasis is now very much on prevention by stopping smoking, reducing the consumption of saturated fats, sugar, salt and refined carbohydrates, and increasing intake of fruits and vegetables (‘Diet, Nutrition and the Prevention of Chronic Diseases’, WHO, 2003).

      Dr Hay advocated this selfsame approach – not for CHD, which was virtually non-existent in his lifetime, but for treating and preventing all the degenerative diseases. There are a number of very good nutritional cures now being promoted, but it can be stated categorically that the Hay system comes nearer to a full understanding of the causes, treatment and prevention of disease than any other doctrine, as the following discussions of some of these degenerative diseases will confirm.

      Constipation (Simple)

      Fifty years ago William Howard Hay listed constipation as one of the main sources of acid formation in the system. He warned that long-term cases of constipation could be the cause of many of the degenerative diseases. Present-day medical findings have confirmed this warning and have also revealed that constipation is almost certainly a contributing factor to the high rate of bowel cancer in Western society.

      Dr Hay also listed incompatible food combinations and fibre-deficient refined carbohydrates as sources of acid formation. Both these sources directly contribute to constipation. Striking proof that they do so was provided in a paper entitled ‘Amylaceous Dyspepsia’ (starch-caused indigestion), published in The Liverpool Medico-Chirurgical Journal in 1931. Its author was Dr Lionel J. Picton, author-in-chief of the famous Cheshire Medical Testament, published in 1938, in which 31 family doctors declared that the prevention of sickness depends on right feeding.

      In this paper Dr Picton drew attention to a well-known laboratory experiment on dogs by the famous Russian scientist, Pavlov. From this experiment, according to Dr Picton, Pavlov deduced the following data: minced beef fed to a dog is digested in about four hours, starch by itself passed through a dog’s stomach in a much shorter time, in one-and-a-half hours or less, white bread more slowly than brown. But when meat was mixed with the starch there was invariably a delay – a protracted delay. Instead of four-and-a-half hours for meat alone, this mixture took eight or more hours to leave the stomach.

      Dr Picton argued that this delay in one section of the line tended towards delay all along the line. As he pointed out: ‘The somewhat startling conclusion flows from this, that meals of mixed character such as meat and bread favour constipation, whereas meat and salad at one meal and starchy food such as bread and butter at a separate meal have no such effect.’

      Dr Picton’s paper provided outstanding confirmation of the truth of the starch – protein concept, and of the close relationship of incompatible food mixtures to constipation. And his case histories of patients provided proof.

      The first step in the treatment of constipation is therefore none other than that recommended by Dr Hay for all diseases, the removal of the cause – far too much acid-forming meat and carbohydrates (especially refined carbohydrates), far too little alkali-forming vegetables, salads and fruits, and incompatible food mixtures. Instructions for ‘the removal of the cause’ are given in Part Two; they are not difficult to follow and will soon prove to simplify meal-planning, and lessen cooking and the cost of cooking.

      No matter how correctly the meals are combined, the fibre in the diet may be increased by taking unprocessed wheat bran daily. It should be taken at first in teaspoonful doses, in water, before meals, increasing this gradually to suit individual needs. The fibre found in oats, brown rice, linseeds or psyllium, vegetables and pulses is more soothing to the gut than wheat bran, which can cause problems for people with diverticulitis or irritable bowel syndrome. Linseeds or psyllium fibre are particularly helpful in encouraging regularlity and should always be taken with a large glass of water.

      Neil S. Painter, well-known London surgeon, advises: ‘You are eating enough bran only when you can pass soft stools without straining. Once you have found this amount take it for life.’ Recent research has shown that in Westernized countries the daily stool is hard and viscous compared to that of rural Africans and Asians living on unrefined foods, and that the intestinal transit time (the time taken for food to traverse the intestines) may be as long as five days instead of 24 hours. Thus many people who think that they are not constipated may be very constipated indeed, despite having a daily stool. For this reason, and in order to speed recovery from any disease, Dr Hay suggested taking a daily two-quart, cool, plain water enema, but not without professional instruction.

      Indigestion

      (Standard type – upper abdominal pain, heartburn, sometimes accompanied by acid regurgitation)

      

      For many people this condition has become an accepted evil and part of their lives. It is most СКАЧАТЬ