Yet when it comes to the care and feeding of my own body, I have become something of a chemistry expert.

Brief background: I was born with digestive problems that persisted chronically throughout childhood. I was constantly sick growing up, with two or three bad colds a year. I missed most of 5th grade with mono. I was hospitalized when I was 14 with ulcerative colitis so severe that the doctors told my parents that nothing could be done and they should prepare for my death.

Two weeks of hospital food and removal from the stresses of my life and I improved enough to be released from the hospital. I had learned two important lessons: first, the doctors didn’t know why I was sick or why I improved; second, my condition changed from day to day depending for the most part on diet.

Even while I was struggling in chemistry class, I had begun a long-range chemistry experiment with the simplest of protocols: pay attention to what I was eating and drinking each day and then, starting with the next morning’s trip to the bathroom, pay attention to my results, including the condition of my hair and skin. If the results were less than ideal, I would consider changing something in my diet.

Or: input chemicals; observe outputs; reassess and make adjustments to inputs. Repeat daily.

This was in the 60s. Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring had just begun to alert us to the dangers of synthetic chemicals in the environment. The natural food movement was only getting started. Advertisements still featured doctors recommending certain cigarettes for the health benefits. No one was talking about nutrition or “good” and “bad” foods.

So my experiment started slow. Coca cola, the beverage of choice in our family, was the first to go. Then alcohol. In both cases, what I came to think of as the “morning reports” could not have been clearer. Avoiding each had immediate benefits, while sporadic attempts to “just have a little” never went well.

And so it has gone for more than forty years. The process has not always been fast — I had such deep attachment to some foods, especially wheat, that I continued eating them for years despite evidence that they were a problem for me. We have an amazing ability to deny the obvious in order to sustain the status quo.

In Search of the One True Diet

American medicine long ignored the obvious fact that diet and nutrition play a major role in human health. But even as doctors and medical researchers have come to accept that diet does matter, they have viewed nutrition through a reductionist lens that badly skews their findings and conclusions.

They begin by reducing every food to its nutritional constituents: a bowl of cereal has this much protein, this much fiber, this much Vitamin A and so on. At the same time, they reduce our nutritional needs to a list of Recommended Daily Allowances (RDA): every day we need to eat this much protein, this much fiber and so on. A healthy diet then becomes a matter of choosing enough of the right foods to meet your RDAs.

Sounds simple enough, but problems arise. Almost daily a new study is announced  that calls into question the previously presumed effects (from earlier studies) of a given nutrient. Likewise, we see a never-ending parade of diet books and nutritional experts explaining why their regimen is the answer for everybody, the one true diet.

Been there, done that, and here’s what I know:

• no single nutrient can be completely understood apart from the food in which it’s found. That’s the point of “whole foods”: nutrients are interactive and the nutritional impact of a specific nutrient changes when studied in isolation.
• no one diet will work for everybody.
• individually, our nutritional needs are ever in flux, depending on season, age, state of physical, mental, and emotional health, daily stressors, and other unseen factors.

Which is not to say that we shouldn’t pay attention to the studies, or read the books, or listen to people when they talk about what works or doesn’t work for them. Any information that can help us to better understand our bodies is welcome, but everything must ultimately be run through the “morning report” to confirm whether it holds true for the individual or not.

Physician, Feed Thyself

The CDC recently estimated that some two-thirds of American illness is caused by a combination of poor diet and sedentary lifestyles. In the past they’ve made similar statements about the role of stress in illness.

Yet despite the fact that most of what goes wrong with us is within our direct power to change, we remain a pharmaceutical-gulping, scary-disease-obsessed culture. We go to great lengths and expense to avoid this or that disease while neglecting our individual responsibilities as human body-minds.

What should be fantastic news — there are time-tested ways to achieve and maintain good health without spending a lot of time and money in doctors’ offices — is taken as some sort of offense, like cursing in church.

Rather than health insurance, which sets aside money so that you can see a doctor when something goes wrong, we need to practice health assurance, taking steps now to assure that doctors are rarely needed.

It all begins with Chemistry 101. Do the experiments. Become an expert.

Michael Sky | CommonHealth

We are exposed to astounding amounts of pollution. Over 80,000 chemicals have been introduced into our society since 1900, and only 550 have been tested for safety. According to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), about 2.5 billion pounds of toxic chemicals are released yearly by large industrial facilities. And 6 million pounds of mercury are poured into our air every year.

In fact, a recent government survey — “The National Report on Human Exposure to Environmental Chemicals” issued in July 2005 — found an average of 148 chemicals in our bodies. And those were only the ones for which they tested . . . The Environmental Working Group examined the umbilical cord blood of children just as they emerged from the womb. They found 287 industrial chemicals, including pesticides, phthalates, dioxins, flame-retardants, Teflon, and toxic metals like mercury. — Dr Mark Hyman

Highschool chemistry 101: chemical A mixed with chemical B results in X; chemical B mixed with chemical C results in Y; and chemical C mixed with chemical A results in Z. Most chemicals are reactive — when mixed with one or more other chemicals they result in new substances with different properties.

Chemical reactivity, of course, is the whole point of the pharmaceutical and industrial chemical industries. Scientists test specific chemicals for reactions when exposed to other chemicals, or to specific environmental conditions, or when introduced to animal and human bodies.

When a positive reaction occurs, they’ve taken a step toward a useful product or better medicine. When no reaction occurs, they move on to the next promising chemical. When a negative reaction occurs, they know to avoid such combinations or exposures in the future.

In a sane world, every new chemical would pass through extensive testing before release into the environment or (via food and pharmaceuticals) into the human organism. But even the most conscientious system could not hope to properly test 80,000 chemicals, with new ones being released all the time. Nor to test all of these new chemicals against each other, in infinite combinations.

For instance, it is well understood that the industrially-useful chemical mercury is toxic to humans. Through testing, a supposed safe level of exposure has been established, and we are told not to worry about the mercury in dental fillings or that is used as a preservative in some vaccines because they do not amount to toxic levels.

But has anyone tested mercury for reactivity to the chemical cocktail in the blood of newborns described above? Or, since mercury is one of the chemicals in that cocktail, have we tested for accumulation of mercury — start with x-amount in the blood, add some in vaccine preservatives, add some more in the air, and surely at some point the child has too much.

This is the problem I have with vaccines and other modern pharmaceuticals. Most have demonstrated positive reactions when tested on humans. When subsequently turned into medicines most have at the very least ameliorated symptoms, while some have brought about miraculous cures.

But the testing cannot possibly keep up with or account for the fast-changing chemical realities within and surrounding us. Nor the fact that individuals increasingly present unique chemical profiles.

Eighty years ago, when doctors administered the diptheria vaccine they could expect that all children would have the same reaction, with rare exceptions. Now, given the basic laws of chemistry, we should expect a range of unforeseen reactions as the medicine mixes with the different chemical realities from one body to the next, as well as with many new-to-the-world and never tested chemicals.

A wide range of unforeseen reactions is exactly what the pharmaceutical and chemical industries have brought us. Cancer, heart disease, asthma, diabetes, alzheimer’s, autism, auto-immune dysfunction — all of these modern diseases are rooted in toxic chemicals and/or poor nutrition (which is toxic chemistry via diet). When we add to this the myriad of environmental problems caused by industrial pollutants, the chemical industry clearly needs much tighter regulation and social controls.

I can’t see that ever happening, not in profit-mad America. The right of a company like Monsanto to rake in the cash while spewing untested crap into the world shall not be abridged.

But not to worry. In just a few generations we will surely adapt to the whole chemical soup. Chemo sapien here we come…..

Michael Sky | CommonHealth