Orthomolecular Medicine for Everyone. Abram Hoffer, M.D., Ph.D.
Refining of carbohydrates is harmful in three ways: (1) it removes fiber from our diet, which affects the gastrointestinal system, from the teeth to the colon; (2) it causes overconsumption of calories, obesity, and diabetes due to the concentration of sugars; and (3) it removes protein, which is required to neutralize hydrochloric acid in the stomach.
Gastrointestinal Problems
The removal of fiber causes two sets of conditions:
• Simple constipation with its complications of venous ailments (varicose veins, deep-vein thrombosis, hemorrhoids, diverticular disease, and cancer of the colon)
• Dental caries and periodontal disease
When normal quantities of fiber (bulk) are consumed, the normal transit time of the feces is about 24–48 hours, as against the 48–96 hours found in people who live on low-fiber diets. As a result, constipation is very common. In Britain, up to 15 percent of the population regularly takes laxatives. This is most common among the elderly, who have had much more time to damage their bowels by their defective nutrition. We have seen a large number of elderly who use daily laxatives and as a result suffer from a variety of complications, including malabsorption. Two serious consequences arise from constipation—diverticulosis and diverticulitis (an inflammation of the diverticuli). The slow passage of the colon’s contents leads to increased absorption of water from the feces and to greater dryness of the contents, necessitating excessive contraction of the bowel. Whatever the reason, there is a clear association between constipation, diverticulosis, and absence of a diet containing adequate quantities of fiber.8
Diverticulitis is ascribed to a combination of the constipation due to the lack of fiber and the deleterious effect of the high sugar intake that accompanies it. There is an undesirable pathological effect on the bacterial population of the gut due to the surplus of the sugar. The effects on the bowel do not come on quickly and may require up to forty years before they are fully developed. The evolutionary mechanism developed for rejecting foods that are harmful to us does not come into play.
Another manifestation is the irritable colon (colitis) due to the same two factors. Therefore, the simple addition of bran while continuing to eat large quantities of sugar may not be helpful. One of the most dangerous conditions is cancer of the colon, which may derive from the same set of causes.
Obesity and Diabetes
The refining of food leads to an unnatural concentration of carbohydrates, which deceives the palate, our sense of taste, and leads to overconsumption. This is the sole immediate cause of obesity. A large appetite is not the cause, nor is a dislike of exercise. For example, it would be highly unusual for anyone to consume six apples over a five-minute period. The bulk of this natural food prevents this from happening. But it would not be unusual to consume the equivalent amount of calories in the form of sugar in one’s tea, coffee, or soft drink. Obesity is very often associated with severe mood disorders.
Obesity is very closely linked with diabetes mellitus and with the even more common condition called hypoglycemia. We believe that a large number of so-called diabetes, especially of the adult-maturity type or late-onset type associated with obesity, are not really diabetes but one of the variants of relative hypoglycemia. Any patient who does not require insulin, in our opinion, does not suffer from true diabetes.
Stomach Acid and Peptic Ulcer
Usually the stomach is stimulated to secrete gastric juices containing hydrochloric acid when food is consumed. For perhaps 99 percent or more of our existence on earth, food contained the natural admixture of protein plus the other constituents. When the food reached the stomach, the acid quickly was bound by the protein, which it helped digest. Therefore, there was no surplus amount of acid lying around in the stomach, and the inner lining of the stomach—the mucosa—remained intact. The protein buffered the acid against the stomach wall.
However, in today’s nutrition, very often food is consumed that contains less protein than was originally present or it may contain no protein at all. Refined foods, such as flour and polished rice, have lost perhaps 10 percent of their protein, but the refined sugars have lost it all. When one drinks a bottle of soda, one places in the stomach what might appear to be food to the stomach because it is attractive in appearance and tastes sweet. There will be the same increased excretion of acid, but there will be no protein present and the soda will remain free in the stomach. The only buffering protein will then be the mucosa itself and the protein exudates (materials released from blood vessels) on its surface.
The causes of peptic ulcer are more complex. It is now considered a chronic bacterial disease due to the invasion by Helicobacter pylori and, in most cases, does respond well to specific antibiotic treatment. Untreated, it may later advance to cancer of the stomach. Peptic ulcer was once considered another of the classic psychosomatic diseases. Thus, another of the main psychosomatic diseases turns out to be an aspect of the sugar metabolic syndrome. Nutritious food turns out to be much more important than thousands of hours of skillful psychoanalysis.
Other conditions that may be manifestations of the sugar metabolic syndrome include coronary disease, primary E. coli infection of the bowel, and gallstones.
TECHNOLOGY TO THE RESCUE?
Technology can be used in two ways. It can be used as it has been in Western society to enhance the palatability of food—to make it colorful, tasteful, easily served, and stable for long storage while more or less ignoring its nutritional quality. Or it may be used to improve the quality of natural foods by skillful preparatory techniques. The undesirable techniques have been amply described and documented. Examples of the beneficial technological methods are less well known.
The preparation of corn (maize) by the alkali-processing technique was known for at least 2,000 years. Corn, as prepared by most people, is an inadequate food, and heavy reliance upon it as a main food was responsible for the pandemic of pellagra in the United States until vitamin B3 was added to wheat products in the 1940s. Tortillas are a food made from corn cooked with alkali. Rats and pigs fed on tortillas are healthier than those fed with ordinary corn. Tortillas in Central America are made by heating dried corn to almost boiling in a 50 percent solution of lime in water for 30 to 50 minutes. It is then cooled, the solution remaining is poured off, and the treated corn is washed thoroughly and drained. It is then ground finely and cooked into pancakes. Apparently this process increases the availability of some of the essential amino acids, increases the ratio of isoleucine to leucine, and increases the availability of vitamin B3, which in corn is almost unavailable otherwise. People living on tortillas are, therefore, less apt to develop pellagra.
Researchers have concluded that people who had not discovered this method of preparing corn would be more apt to suffer malnutrition. A careful examination of fifty-one societies proved that corn remained a major source of food only for those societies that were using the alkali-preparing method. Seven societies were high consumers and cultivators of corn and used the alkali technique, while none of the twelve societies that were both low cultivators and consumers used alkali. Researchers concluded that maize became an extensive part of the diet only when alkali cooking techniques were used. This practice developed at least by the year 100 B.C. and lime soaking pots were already in use then at Teotihuacán, the first urban center in Mesoamerica.
Over the centuries, people who adopted the alkali process must have been dimly aware that they felt better or that they were healthier, and they associated this improved health with the new way of preparing corn. Later, the technique would become part of the cultural tradition or would even be given religious value. Once the technique became generally used, it would in an evolutionary way produce a superior race of people biologically. The alkali users must have gradually displaced those who, either through ignorance or due to opposing views, did not follow such a technique.