Читать книгу Food Combining for Health: The bestseller that has changed millions of lives - Doris Grant - Страница 20

The cause and cure of arthritis, whether rheumatoid or osteoarthritis, has baffled the medical profession. Doctors frankly admit as much; they prescribe anti-inflammatory drugs and painkillers, and tell their patients they must learn to live with it. The side-effects of the painkillers, however, can be serious, even lethal, as the effects of one ‘wonder drug’ for arthritis, Opren – now withdrawn – proved all too tragically. ‘No drug to date has cured, or ever will cure, a true case of arthritis,’ wrote Dr Hay.

There are many contributing causes of arthritis, such as injuries, abuse of the body, allergic reactions, infections, stress-exhausted adrenal glands, vitamin D deficiency, etc. But the end result of most of the underlying causes produces one common denominator – deranged body chemistry. A main cause is therefore an accumulation of acid end-products of digestion resulting in a lowered reserve of the alkaline buffer salts. Dr Hay stressed that ‘the function of every organ and tissue depends on the height, breadth and depth of the alkaline reserve; and the lower this is the lower the function …’

The logical approach to treatment is therefore a nutritional one, aimed at the deranged body chemistry and not at the joints as in the conventional drug treatments and surgical treatments presently in vogue. These are merely palliatives which, once again, deal with the symptoms instead of grappling with the causes.

In a personal communication from Dr James Lambert Mount (author of Food and Health of Western Man [Charles Knight & Co. Ltd, 1975], and one of the founders of the McCarrison Society) he described how he had successfully applied a nutritional approach when treating 100 volunteer patients, suffering from arthritis, who took part in a trial in New Zealand. They were put on a diet aimed at changing the body from an acid to an alkaline state, by giving up red meat, flour and sugar, and concentrating on salads, fruit and organ meats (e.g. heart, kidney). There was an average 80 per cent success rate varying from considerable improvement in the arthritis to a complete cure.

Arthritis is considered the least amenable to treatment of all the chronic diseases. But Dr Hay maintained that arthritis responds to nutritional treatment as surely as do other degenerative diseases. Twenty-eight years of experience enabled him to write very positively – and comfortingly – about the ultimate cure of arthritis:

Most cases of arthritis are curable, and permanently so, if the disease has not progressed to such a degree that it has permanently destroyed the function of the affected joint as occurs in ankylosis. As long as there is motion left in any joint, the case is by no means hopeless. Do not be discouraged if the pain seems to inhibit motion completely, if at the same time the joint can be moved passively to any degree.

He warned, however, that deposits outside the circulation, as those in the tissues about the joints, may require years to be completely absorbed or may never be fully absorbed, yet the joints become usable, and pliable, without pain. But he promised that even cases of severe arthritis, when every joint in the body is affected with pain and immobility, recover uniformly when the body is relieved of its excessive debris and feeding is corrected.

No specific diet is necessary, or even advisable, he said, for arthritis, but it is essential that the food intake should be largely of the alkali- or base-forming variety – vegetables, salads, fruits – and kept so throughout life; that the colon should be brought up to date and kept so. It is essential that the diet should contain fresh, properly constituted foods, whole foods, and as much as possible of these in raw form. It is interesting that, in 1936, at the Royal Free Hospital in London, an experiment on arthritic patients with a raw diet was successfully carried out by Dr Dorothy C. Hare. In the report of this experiment Dr Hare stressed the fact that the rawness of the food seemed to be the one outstanding factor that brought about results.^*

Dr Hay warned that starches and sugar, carbohydrates of concentrated character, are the chief dietary causes of arthritis, not so much because they are so intrinsically causative, as because they are usually eaten in combination with incompatible foods and their proper digestion prevented, with resulting fermentation.

The elimination of starches and sugar in the diet is therefore of paramount importance. In the opinion of some authorities at the present time, most arthritic patients experience difficulty in assimilating carbohydrates, with ensuing indigestion. (Once again, starch is the villain of the piece, and even a valuable whole-grain one can be so if not correctly combined with other foods.) From my own experience, and that of correspondents and friends, indigestion frequently precedes and accompanies arthritis. This indicates that both conditions are due to the same cause – incompatible food mixtures and a lowered alkaline reserve. This underlines the great value of compatible eating; it automatically reduces the amount of starch eaten and ensures its compatible combination with other foods.

Many of Dr Hay’s patients recovered fully by making no other dietary change apart from the strict separation of incompatible foods (as in my own case). But to make this strict separation, and at the same time to make the diet 80 per cent alkali forming, is more effective, speedier and helps to correct the chemical balance. Arthritis, asserted Dr Hay, is a purely nutritional state, the result of an imbalance in the body’s chemistry; he found this was evident from observation of many cases. He also found it evident that ‘exposure to weather, or occupational pursuits, have nothing to do with the creation of the condition, except in a secondary way’.

To help correct the chemical balance and increase the delicate alkaline reserve in the bloodstream, Dr Hay particularly recommended a sufficiency of acid fruits such as oranges, grapefruit and lemons (the juice of a lemon in a glass of water on waking is very beneficial); these acid fruits are especially high in alkaline salts – lemons most of all. Unfortunately, many arthritic sufferers make the mistake of avoiding all ‘acid fruits’ thinking thereby to help their condition, whereas they are merely worsening an already deficient intake of vitamins. As there seems to be much confusion regarding the term ‘acid fruits’, the reader is urged to re-read its classification in Chapter 2.

Dr Hay also recommended:

Celery juice; this has proved invaluable in dissolving and removing years of accumulated acid deposits in the cartilage of arthritic joints. In The Home Herbal (Pan Paperback), Barbara Griggs recommends celery seeds for arthritis and rheumatism because their ‘high alkaline value helps to counteract acid formation in the blood and clear it out of the system’. Arthritis sufferers will find her other recommendations most helpful.

Wheatgerm, bran, kelp (seaweed, obtainable in tablet form at health-food shops) and cod liver oil. Dr Hay claimed that these supplements are also very beneficial for all departures from health.

Gentle exercise, rest and natural sunlight. Research by Dr John Ott, famous pioneer of time-lapse photography, confirmed the great benefit to arthritis of natural sunlight. In Health and Light (The Devin Adair Co., Conn., USA) he proved with regard to his own arthritis that spending as much time as possible out of doors, walking or gardening, and receiving natural sunlight energy (even on dull days) directly through the eyes, minus sunglasses, spectacles or contact lenses, is highly beneficial in the control of this disease.

The elimination from the diet of vinegar, spices, tea, coffee and alcohol – especially sweet wines and liqueurs.

Calmness and emotional control; tension, fear, anger, hate etc., do much to aggravate arthritis symptoms and increase suffering.

It must therefore be repeated again: arthritis is a purely nutritional state and its logical treatment is a nutritional one. Unfortunately, arthritis research foundations have been issuing statements for many years that nutritional therapy is totally without merit, thus discouraging most doctors from paying attention to their patients’ diet. Any cure or improvement resulting from nutritional therapy has therefore been dismissed as a ‘spontaneous remission’. There is now, however, too much solid evidence of sustained benefit from such therapy to justify this concept. In particular, the Arthritic Association has had much success in promoting a high-potassium diet based on the work of Charles de Coti-Marsh, which is very much in accord with the ideas of Dr Hay.