|
Christmas has been and gone and so has
the New Year, all in all an interesting time with
an interesting paradox.
In
our celebration of Christmas we tend to reward
our self with all sorts of goodies that we do
not normally consume. Then just a week after Christmas
we also celebrate the ancient Celtic practice
of welcoming in the New Year (which is celebrated
by more people around the world than those that
actually celebrate Christmas) with all sorts of
resolutions to perform better during the coming
year.
Our
patients, some of whom have been on corrective
diets also celebrate Christmas with those foods
that have been restricted during the year. It
comes as no surprise when a number of our patients
report in after the holiday season with reduced
body function which is a clear warning to get
on track and continue to take corrective measures
until they are in full remission.
It
is with these thoughts in mind that I have compiled
this special first of the year epistle for the
‘Charter Newsletter.’
•
The first report will deal with Science Re-inventing
the wheel.
•
The second report will be a review of two recently
cited PDF reports dealing with food and health,
with a primary focus on mental health.
I
sincerely hope that you not only enjoy these reports
and also find them of use as information for your
clients.
The
pharmaceutical and medical lobby love to jump
on any discussion regarding natural healthcare
with the statement but there is no scientific
proof. These same individuals also control the
funding for all research and do not generally
fund genuine natural healthcare research.
It
is interesting that over the last year more and
more “scientific research’ has purportedly
been conducted into natural healthcare therapies,
the bulk of which are poorly designed and executed,
with an aim to achieve a negative result.
Prior
to Christmas, however, a major pharmaceutical
manufacturer paid for research for “Vitamin
D supplementation and Osteoporosis.”
Why
this manufacturer would fund such research is
not known at present, but it is a manufacturer
that does need its image sanitised.
The
result of this well conducted study did arrive
at the finding that Vitamin D supplementation
was beneficial for bone density. The study also
confirmed the fact that Vitamin D supplementation
was essential for all “chronic obstructive
pulmonary disease (COPD),” is a mixture
of 3 “separate” disease processes,
namely, chronic bronchitis, emphysema, and to
a lesser extent asthma.
The
study also found that the daily requirement for
Vitamin D deficiency was twice the amount that
is recommended as the daily dose by pharmaceutical
manufacturers.
So
congratulations to the doctors and researchers
that produced such a well qualified study.
The
study did not report on other conditions where
Vitamin D plays a major corrective role and which
have been known by Natural HealthCare Practitioners
for over a hundred years.
Below
is a short list of some conditions where Vitamin
D deficiency plays a major corrective role:
•
Colon, breast, prostate and ovarian cancers
• Heart disease
• High blood pressure
• Type 1 diabetes
• Multiple sclerosis
• Depression
• Rheumatoid arthritis
• Tuberculosis
Possibly
the study ran out of funding before these and
other well known effects of Vitamin D supplementation
could be investigated.
While
some practitioners may feel that this approach
re-invents the wheel, I am of the opinion that
the doctors concerned should be congratulated
for presenting an honest report instead of a pseudo
report that we have come to expect.
We
as practitioners should take every opportunity
to insist that scientific reports consist only
of honest, pure, provable science and not pseudo
science designed to support pharmaceutical manufacturing
interests.
Read
on for the second report
Two
Interesting PDF Report reviews
Submitted
by
Kenneth V. McIver. Ph.D.
Director of Research The New Zealand Charter of
Health Practitioners Incorporated.
January 20 2006.
While
the following two reports are not an exhaustive
dissertation on the effect of the modern Junk
Food Diet on our mental and physical wellbeing.
They do succinctly touch on information that Natural
HealthCare Practitioners have over the last fifty
plus years endeavoured to place before the public.
These
reports are structured in such a way that they
are ideal for patient information. I have included
some edited snippets from each publication so
that practitioners can gauge the quality of the
information before downloading.
•
These simple, but hard-hitting reports should
be compulsory reading for all members of parliament,
all government administrators and especially
ministry of health officials and most importantly
administrators of the Australia New Zealand
Food Safety Authority.
• While the reports are United Kingdom
based they are directly applicable to New Zealand’s
situation.
To
read these PDF files you may need to download
Adobe Acrobat Reader, which is available free
from the Internet, just search the Internet for
an Adobe Acrobat Reader.
Changing
Diets, Changing Minds:
How food affects mental well-being and behaviour
A
full copy of this pdf report can be downloaded
from
www.mental
health.org.uk
The
site is very user friendly and also has some very
interesting healthy recipes plus a simple checklist
for conditions and corrective nutrients, as well
as a FAQ (frequently asked questions) section.
Changing
Diets and the implication for our mental health
Recent
decades have seen a substantial global increase
in mental ill health. We present a review of the
growing body of evidence pointing to a connection
between nutrition, behaviour, brain development
and mental health. Connecting diet to a rise in
mental illness and disorders raises an important
question: has the human diet undergone some change
over the same period that may be a causal factor.
Many
packaged and processed food products are nutritionally
inferior to less processed foods. Processed foods
tend to be high in calories, fat, salt and/or
sugar. Soft drinks, for example, are high in calories
and sugar, yet in the UK in 2000 the average person
drank 186 litres
of soft drinks. Some 75% of salt in the diet comes
not from salt added at the table, but from processed
food, including bread and breakfast cereals, with
white bread often the single largest source of
salt in an individual’s diet. Processed
foods can also be missing nutritional elements
– one study found that canned chicken soup
had only a tenth of the beneficial fats of homemade
chicken soup.
Dramatic
changes to our food supply over recent years.
•
In the UK, 33% of all food expenditure is on food
eaten outside of the home – an increase
of 40% between 1980 and 2000.
•
Fast food sales increase by 3% during 2003.
•
Processed foods also tend to be lower in micronutrients
than their fresh equivalents.
• For example tomato juice can lose 65%
of the tomatoes original vitamin C. 17% of its
niacin and 40% of its carotene
•
Moreover much of our food is dosed with synthetic
chemicals, few of which have been thoroughly tested
individually, much less as a mixture. Soil depletion
and other consequences of modern farming methods
may mean some foods are losing the very nutrient
that used to make them good to eat.
•
It is possible that the same changes that are
contributing to our rising physical health problems
are also contributing to our rising mental health
problems.
Now
is the time for nutrition to become a mainstream,
every day component of mental health care.
Feeding
Minds
The impact of food on mental health
Download
from www.sustainweb.org
It
has been estimated that the average person in
the UK and other industrialized countries will
eat more than 4 kilograms of additives every year.
The impact of this situation is still controversial,
as governments have appeared reluctant to fund,
conduct or publish rigorously controlled studies
examining the effects of additives.
Changing
methods of farming have also introduced higher
levels of different types of fat into our diet.
For
example, chickens now reach their slaughter weight
twice as fast as they did thirty years age, which
has also changed the nutritional profile of the
meat. Whereas a chicken carcass used to be 2%
fat, it is now 22%. Also the diet fed to chickens
has changed dramatically, which has reduced omega-3
fatty acids in chicken meat.
Similarly
the diet fed to farmed fish is changing the ration
of fatty acids in the fish we eat.
•
Over the last 60 years there has been a 34%
decline in UK vegetable consumption with currently
only 13% of men and 15% of women now eating
at least five portions of fruit and vegetables
per day.
•
People in the UK eat 59% less fish than they
did 60 years ago.
•
Those who report some level of mental health
problems also eat fewer healthy foods (fresh
fruit and vegetables, organic foods and meals
made from scratch and unhealthier foods (chips
and crisps, chocolate, ready meals and takeaways).
Recommendations
In their recommendations the authors of this report
extensively listed all the departments that should
have access to this report and the reasons why!
They
maintain that primary care should have ready access
to information on the link between diet and mental
health as well as a working knowledge of the information
and expertise available to support people through
dietary change.
Specifically
For Food Standards Agencies
Targets should be introduced to reduce unhealthy
levels of fat, sugar and salt in processed food,
and to remove dangerous trans-fats from food ingredients
and food products.
To
ensure that you are on the correct websites to
download these reports go to www.mental
health.org.uk www.sustainweb.org
I
hope that you enjoy reading these full reports
and find some information that will be of benefit
for your patients.
Yours
in Health — Kenneth V. McIver.
top
|
