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The hope of humanity lies in the prevention of degenerative and mental diseases, not in the care of their symptoms.

DR ALEXIS CARREL

There is a generally held belief today that people are living longer than formerly. Although more children survive to reach adult life, middle-aged people have scarcely improved upon the life-expectancy of their great-grandparents. The unpleasant truth is that, instead of living longer to a healthy and enjoyable old age, we are merely taking longer to die.

Moreover, with each generation there is an increase in the ordinary diseases of degeneration, and these are appearing at ever earlier ages than formerly. All the ‘tremendous new discoveries’ in the drug field have been unable to stem this increase. Belief in the curative power of drugs has contributed to this increase by diverting attention from the positive promotion of health.

As a result, the disillusioned drug-givers and drug-takers are now showing a healthy interest in the doctrine of ‘holism’ – treating the whole person rather than just the disease symptoms. There is a much greater emphasis among health professionals on disease prevention, educating their patients to eat healthily, drink sensibly and give up smoking. Complementary therapies such as homoeopathy, acupuncture and aromatherapy are now so widely used that they are no longer seen as ‘alternative’. This is completely in line with Dr Hay’s commonsense principles, which more than ever before are shown to be valid. He advocated the treatment of the patients themselves – not the symptoms – and argued that it was childish in the extreme to suppose we can restore a person to full health without first rooting out the cause of the disease; to do otherwise was just as stupid as bailing out a leaky boat without first finding and stopping the leak.

Dr Hay also argued that this cause, in every case, is one and the same thing – food (over-consumption of refined carbohydrate, and incompatible combinations) – and pointed out that the degenerative diseases are just different manifestations of this one cause. The cure, he pointed out, ‘therefore lies in food always and only’.

This unitary conception of disease bears a close resemblance to that advocated by Surgeon Captain Cleave in The Saccharine Disease (except regarding incompatible combinations with which he was not in accord). He, too, indicts food (over-consumption of refined carbohydrate) as the cause of disease and he, too, points out that the degenerative diseases are just different manifestations of this one cause. This concept, known as ‘the saccharine disease’ (i.e., relating to sugar), is now grudgingly conceded by the medical establishment, and enthusiastically accepted by a growing number of doctors both here and abroad.

Among 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.