In his concluding part of his series on his experience of the nature of illness, Haydn Shaughnessy looks at food cures and wonders why we have come to rely on pills to remedy the body's ills when food traditionally did the job
The popularity of detox diets is one of those fascinating developments where medicine is by-passed by an idea whose time has come. Enough people are convinced that their bodies are somehow toxic that they willingly go out and buy a Carol Vorderman book.
If you believe food has a toxic effect, and ultimately the consequence of that is a degenerative illness, then the conclusion should be to detox all the time in the ways that food is prepared and eaten and the way that toxins are discharged.
Food toxins come in a variety of natural forms. From the parasites that cling to raw foods to the microscopic fungi that grow on nuts and seeds, to the bacteria that inhabit meat and eggs and cheese, to the toxins that develop once root vegetables are exposed to light and air, to the oils in foods that go rancid over time, to the chemicals produced when oils are heated.
We used to have a sound knowledge of these toxins and our cooking and eating habits were effectively an encyclopaedia of how to neutralise them rather than allow them to overburden the body's immune system.
Humans, going back over millenniums, were tasked with preserving foods through periods of scarcity. The long periods where food had to survive oxygenation, airborne bacteria, fungi, and parasites was equivalent to a natural university where people discovered how to balance our dietary needs with the realities of decay.
The acidity within naturally fermenting foods (ie those that are decaying in a controlled way) kills the bacteria that harm us. Naturally fermented foods are nature's preservation process and they contain bacteria that we now call probiotic.
We don't eat naturally fermented foods as much as we used to. We take antibiotics that kill our probiotics. We eat an abundance of carbohydrates that break down into sugars that feed toxins.
We eat too much, so we are hard pressed to digest everything we put down there, and we pass acidic waste through our bodies and suffer inflammation right through the intestinal tract or regurgitate acids into our throats and harm ourselves that way.
An inflamed body's burdened immune system is also prey to viruses, fungi and bad bacteria.
Medical science confirms that inflammation, heat, is one cause of physical degeneration. When Merck recently discovered that their anti-inflammatory Vioxx caused heart attacks it was in a trial designed to use Vioxx in bowel cancer prevention. Why? Because medical science is beginning to realise that heat in the bowel plays a role in the development of tumours.
What is wrong with giving people the appropriate foods instead?
My own first discovery in treating myself with food rather than pills was that raw sauerkraut, fermented cabbage, seemed to have an immediate limiting effect on my stomach acidity.
Finnish researchers recently discovered that the fermentation process in sauerkraut creates isothiocyanates, a compound known to be anti-carcinogenic. Fermented cabbages happen to be healthier than cooked. Scientists at the University of Alberta have isolated a new way to attack h. pylori. It is the humble yoghurt - or fermented milk.
These lightly acidic foods are full of gut friendly bacteria and more. I hardly pass a day without them. But let me try to be systematic in explaining how I keep inflammatory problems at bay.
The foods that create acidity and inflammation in me tend to be the sweeter foods and by "sweet" I mean sugars of course but I also mean green vegetables (which tend to be sweet and bitter) and meats as well as carbohydrates whether simple or complex. On the other hand the foods that neutralise acidity tend to be bitter or sour.
I know I am always going to be eating "sweet" foods, because I need green leafy vegetables. They are the only sure way to health.
I might reduce meats and I try not to eat grains unless toasted and then only in small quantities. In all cases I try to balance them with sour tastes. Why?
Sour is the natural taste of beneficial bacterial acidity. I use bitter tastes often as a more rapid treatment. I take the bitters. Bitter seems to have an immediate effect on the stomach. Water too is a great alkaliniser and I use an alkaline water as emergency treatment regularly.
Finally I take the view that anything in excess is damaging. While everybody accepts that is the case with alcohol, I think it applies to any food. I have eaten herbs to excess and suffered terrible dehydration.
With those principles in mind here are my five steps are outlined in an adjoining panel.
By focusing on balancing acidity, reducing the level of bad bacteria, parasites etc, and with an emphasis on cooling and purging foods I've managed to keep away from doctors and pills for five years. I've had very few inflammatory problems whereas previously they wrecked my day. It's not perfect but it's certainly better.