A book I’m currently reading, The Biology of Belief, got my motors running in a big way. It fired me up because it totally sums up the ridiculous blind tangent that some of the ‘smartest? people have been on for 60 years. The author, Bruce Lipton, Ph.D., states that the field of epigenetics (meaning control above genetics) is a revolutionary new field of biology regarding how we look at heredity. Instead of seeing genes as the sole determinants of our blueprint, epigenetics ?profoundly changes our understanding of how life is controlled. By this I can only assume that ?our? refers to the idiots that have been trying to unlock the human genetic code, and ?profoundly changes our understanding? means that they no longer think about it with the intellectual integrity of a moth.
Lipton is so excited about the amazing breakthrough that ?Genes are not our destiny! Environmental influences, including nutrition, stress and emotions, can modify those genes, without changing their basic blueprint. And those modifications, epigeneticists have discovered, can be passed on to future generations as surely as DNA blueprints are passed on via the Double Helix.
The bulk of that statement is right on, but epigeneticists haven’t discovered jack diddley. Any human that is not engaged on a rat race to see who can memorize the most unnecessary information (i.e. doctors, researchers, and scientists), can make this amazing ?discovery? using a little critical thinking, observation, and common sense. Furthermore, Weston A. Price and Francis Pottenger proved that heredity can be controlled by diet so thoroughly and irrefutably that to even question it again is absurd ? an exercise in absolute futility. And that was 70 years ago!
So geneticists have wasted seven decades of their time pursuing an already disproven hypothesis. We have unlocked the entire genomic code of the human being only to discover its insignificance. Price and Pottenger already showed us the basics of what we need to know about how heredity works. Gee, it’s almost as if they were right about nutrition as well, and proved the basics to a degree of irrefutability, yet we’ve wasted seven decades experimenting with nonsensical versions of that as well.
I hope, if anything, that this tidbit of information can break you of the idea that ?experts,? in the year 2007, know what they’re talking about. I hope that it dissolves the notion that our knowledge is the most advanced it’s ever been, and that we know more now than we ever have. The more I study, and the more I ponder where modern science and medicine are in regards to understanding human health, the more obvious it becomes that we are drifting away into outer space. Our ideas and concepts as a species in relation to health are farther from reality than they’ve ever been and getting progressively ludicrous.
It’s not that the people at Harvard splicing genes and recommending cholesterol-lowering meds and avoidance of saturated fat are less intelligent beings, but no amount of intelligence can bring you the answers you seek if you are looking in the wrong place and in the wrong way. It’s far more efficient to take a mortal man who got a D in 8th grade science (true story), point him in the right direction, and tell him to figure it out using common logic as a guide. Not studying in 8th grade turned out to be a great gift. I had less to unlearn later. Plus, during my 8th grade year, while not doing my homework I learned quite a bit about human anatomy. Yeah baby!
At first it seems outrageous, but you and I understand heredity and nutrition better than ivy league faculty members and top doctors (one from Harvard in particular recommends eating canned green beans to get more vegetables in your diet. Okey Dokey Smokey!). Cavemen understood heredity and nutrition better than the graduating class at Yale last year. Any caveman could have grunted to you that a vegetarian diet isn’t sufficient, that animal foods are invigoratingly healthful, that they can be eaten raw no problem, that fat is where it’s at, and that without plenty of wholesome food in the parents? diet, children don’t come into the world strong, healthy, beautiful, and resistant to illness. So don’t degrade your own intellect and common sense by listening to what the people at the top have to say. Even at the top the view is poor when your head is up your ass.
For review, Francis Pottenger performed a study on cats in the 1930’s. In a nutshell, some of the cats were fed a diet of raw meat and milk, while others were fed diets of cooked meat with pasteurized milk. The raw group thrived in every generation, passing along through heredity perfect teeth, hair, bone structure, reproductive ability, and complete resistance to chronic and infectious disease. The cooked groups did fairly well in the first generation. The second generation had slight facial deformities and resultant crooked teeth, allergies, signs of osteoporosis, parasitic and bacterial infections, arthritis, etc. The third generation of cats fed the cooked diet had severe deformities, rickets, and chronic and infectious illness to the degree that they were unable to reproduce. In other words, nutrition’s effect on heredity made the difference between perfection and extinction. The only difference between the two groups was that food was cooked and not raw. Imagine raw meat and milk versus Twinkies, Diet Coke, Miller Lite, and Cheetos!
Weston A. Price traveled the world in search of the determinants of human health. He found through undeniable examples of 14 isolated groups of people worldwide, that proper nutrition through primitive whole natural foods provided perfect heredity generation after generation ? not so much as a crooked tooth in some well-nourished groups. Comparison groups of people of the same lineage with access to modern refined foods like white flour, sugar, canned fruits, veggies, and milk, and vegetable oils showed the exact same characteristics found by Pottenger in his cat study ? facial deformity, crooked teeth, allergies, susceptibility to tooth decay, and rampant degenerative and infectious disease. He refers to this phenomenon as ?intercepted heredity,? for he discovered that without an insufficient diet humans passed along faultless characteristics every time. In other words, genes are flawless, until diet and lifestyle screw them up.
Also, in the book I’m reading and making fun of (even though the conclusions are true and very important), a laboratory experiment is done on mice comparing proper and improper diet of the mama mouse and the development of the lil? mouselets. From the same parents and same genes comes a big fat baby mouse that develops diabetes, obesity, and heart disease and another that, because its parents are later bombarded with nutrients, comes out perfect and has none of the problems of her fat sister.
As I’ve been saying in several of my blogs, we can inherit a poor ability to metabolize sugar and have a resultant propensity for weight gain, diabetes, heart disease, etc. This degenerative process that accumulates generation to generation is why we can’t ?eat chocolate and white bread like grandma did, never gain an ounce, and live to be 96 without health problems. That is why someone living relatively free of disease to old age is not evidence that they ate healthfully. It is also why many of us must make drastic changes in our diets and lifestyle just to keep our heads above water. And the fact that degenerative illnesses like heart disease, cancer, obesity, and diabetes have increased wildly is yet another irrefutable signpost showing us that the concept of genes being set in stone and consistent is a laughable theory that defies common logic. Accumulated ?intercepted heredity? is why type II diabetes can double in an area in 10 years among children like it has in Tennessee when lifestyle obviously hasn’t changed much. It is why obesity can double in 30 years nationwide when changes in diet and lifestyle during that time frame are negligible. It is all linked to the same fundamental cumulative imbalance.
There are literally endless examples of this occurring right now while modern science and medicine is baffled and pointing fingers in all directions in defense of their inability to figure it out. The good news is that it is, although it may take decades, a reversible process. Nourishing yourself properly, in this way, is a gift to the future of mankind if you are still of reproductive age. Eat your liver and drink your raw milk!
Well written article.
You see the more obscure implication in this, I assume — visiting the sins of the fathers on the sons, so to speak. That what we do, eat, even FEEL, can affect future generations.
PJ
“Even at the top the view is poor when your head is up your ass.”
Favorite quote of the day. :)