Prescription for Nutritional Healing

5 Responses to “Prescription for Nutritional Healing”

1. D. S. Heersink says:

   April 29, 2010 at 8:50 pm

   No one disputes the value of a healthy diet, although I reflect readers might be surprised to learn that one’s job status is more extrapolative of disease than the “predictable” factors of diet, smoking, exercise, etc. So, while healthy diets are valuable as one strategy among many, its actual influence in the event and outcome of disease is nearly insignificant. If the book merely made the viable and credible aver that diet might improve health or lower disease (not an uncontroversial aver, btw), one would have agree: It cannot hurt. But the book makes a preposterous leap that defies credibility: That the ingestion of certain foods heals. Nutritional deficiencies, yes; otherwise, no.

   A closer examination, but, suggests just how implausible, and entirely improbable, these “cures” are. Focusing on only one aver, which then can be extrapolated to all the additional claims, considier their “cures” for depression, both of which “borrow” from psychiatry’s actual science. Various biochemical depressions occupy the neurotransmitters (hormones) dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin. Let’s look at the last two, which are identical, except for the neurotransmitter targeted.

   According to the Balches, 5-HTP, a precursor to the hormone-neurotransmitter serotonin, is ingested, and depression flees. Or, if you subscribe to the norepinephrine basis of depression, just ingest more norepinephrine. (The problem with the latter is that the FDA restricts its use to critically-ill patients only.) So, circumventing the FDA, consume tyrosine, since the neurotransmitter norepinephrine is synthesized by a series of enzymatic steps in the adrenal medulla from the amino acid tyrosine. In additional words, ingest the “natural” precursor or amino acid that might become the desired neurotransmitter, the same neurotransmitters that drugs like Prosac, Paxil, Effextor, etc. target, and the individual gets the same relief “naturally” lacking having to buy the prescription. (Note: The “natural ” neurotransmitter norepinephrine is available by prescription for critically-ill patients as a vasopressor. If “ingestion” of the neurotransmitter norepinephrine itself affected depression, why don’t physicians simply give patients Levophed, norepinephrine in its purest form?) This question is significant, because it goes to the whole theses open by the Balches.

   Anyone with a simulacrum of intelligence knows that simply “ingesting” an ingredient is not how the effect is achieved. In chemistry, every action has an equal result. But the mere increase or presence of a substance is not in itself suggestive of anything. Besides, one of the first compound reactions of “ingestion” occurs in metabolism, which can alter the substance signficantly. If depression (or any medical situation) was treated by ingesting substances that putatively increases the presence of a substance (here, neurotransmitters), medicine would have thousands of cures more than it does now. But that is precisely how it does not work.

   Prescription antidepressants SNRI and SSRI act as “reuptake inhibitors,” which through their inhibitory action, provoke the brain to increase production of the neurotransmitter in question, which act synergistically – and only in the brain – to have an effect on the nerve impulse as it leaves the dendrite, crosses the synaptic cleft, and reaches the axon on the additional side. This dynamic is contained entirely within the neurons of the brain, only at the synaptic cleft, by what can only be described as an “indirect” route. The drugs do not inhibit reuptake of the neurotransmitters in the peripheral nervous system, but only at certain brain sites, and it is the stimulus-response mechanism that produces the effect which itself is the subsequent stimulus for the next response. Ingesting directly, or substances that metabolize indirectly, into the neurotransmitter will not have the proposed effect, and in the case of Levophed (norepinephrine), could be letha.

   It parallels antibiotics; antibiotics don’t heal or attack the pathogen. They cause the body to react to the antibiotic “as if” it is a pathogen, and the chimera pathogen (the drug) simply produces increased antibodies, that in turn fight the infection. One doesn’t ingest or increase white blood cells, or add more lymphatic juices to the diet, that themselves fight the infection. The antibiotic works as a “surrogate” pathogen, which provokes the body to respond to a “chimera pathogen,” and this response results in increased white blood cells and the lymph glands that do the actual work, not the antibiotic itself.

   Again, nutritional deficiencies cause disease. Additional diseases, like diabetes, can use nutrional strategies to adapt. But basic foodstuffs — proteins (nucleic acids), lipids (fats), and carbohydrates — “heal” only hunger and malnutrition. It is incoherent to judge that the ingestion of certain foods can “heal” anything. Compensate for additional disorders, certainly. But foods as the primary cause of disease (except for deficiency and malnutrition), and foods as “cures” of disease is so contrary to elementary knowledge of physiology, pathogenesis, and commonsense.
   Reader’s Rating: 2 / 5
2. alan schneider says:

   April 29, 2010 at 10:49 pm

   i’ve read parts of this book this book, and i also own the second edition. the only reason i’m not buying this book right now is that the ISBN number is NOT 1-58333-083-6. i use this book in my business as a nutritional advisor and the trade paperback isn’t sturdy enough. when you get this book in the comb binding, please inform me; the longer i don’t have it the more it costs me.
   Reader’s Rating: 4 / 5
3. A Gal of All Trades... says:

   April 30, 2010 at 1:42 am

   I turn to this book for all-purpose info, but it leaves out a lot of herbs and supplements, and healing methods that are used widely today. It’s excellent for reference, but not for point instruction.
   Reader’s Rating: 3 / 5
4. coldslide@worldnet.att.net says:

   April 30, 2010 at 2:15 am

   I thought this book was a bit overdone. No one person is ever going to need all of the information in this book. It goes into what I feel is minute details about colds, canker sores, heart disease, cancer, etc. I reflect a much better book, a book that you can really use on a day to day basis is The Real Vitamin and Mineral Book by Shari Lieberman. This book goes into detail and discussions about all of the point minerals and vitamins that yor body needs to survive. It also has fantastic information about supplements. It also clarifies the RDA, RDI and ODI facts in brilliant detail as well. After reading this book you will be able to really map out your own vitamin, mineral and supplement program. A program that will certainly help you in hte long run and will help you maintain optimal health. Now I am biased when it comes to nutrition and supplementation because I sell them via a home based business. But for my money, it is certainly the better book of the two.
   Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
5. Amanda Abraham says:

   April 30, 2010 at 2:35 am

   I thought this book was okay, but I wouldn’t call it a classic. I did hold onto it, and it is on my bookshelf, but I rarely refer to it. When I do, it’s just to get a basic description of an illness, not for the remedies it recommends. I felt like it just repeated what everybody else is adage, and didn’t really have any original information to offer.
   Reader’s Rating: 3 / 5