Focus on Health:
Is Western Living Killing You?
[Historical Note: We honor Imhotep (see photo) the ancient Kamitic healer and pyramid builder of the 3rd Dynasty, who predated Hippocrates by over 2000 years, and who, based both upon accomplishment and precedence, deserves the title of Father of Medicine, a title which the West has accorded instead to the Greek Hippocrates. Imhotep was known to the Greeks as Asclepius, and it was to him that Hippocrates swore the "Hippocratic" oath.]
Let me tell my story, then draw what I believe to be valid general implications about Western living, Western medicine, and health. For my story is not uncommon, rather the norm.
High Blood Pressure, Allergy, and Skin Problems
I had been going to three doctors: an internist for hypertension, an allergist for an allergy condition that had become year-round, and a dermatologist for a recurrent skin rash. Each "treated" that part of me that presented with a problem that fell into their narrow area of specialty. Each had reason to claim success. The internist had me on high blood pressure medication -- ACE inhibitors -- and indeed my blood pressure was maintained in the range considered safe. My allergist gave me Seldane tablets, as well as very expensive allergy shots. This treatment also "worked". And my dermatologist gave me a liquid medication to rub on the rash whenever it appeared, and yes, that "worked" also. In all the cases, however, I had to keep going back to the pharmacy for more medication, and to the doctor for recurrent "check-ups", and to renew the prescription. It was all very expensive, but I was 80% "covered" by my insurance, so I could manage.
The Water Cure
I had been prepared to go along with this program, secure in my illusion that Western medicine was taking good care of me, and happy to be in the situation to afford what it cost... ...Until I came across the book, Your body's many cries for water, by Dr. F. Batmanghelidj, in which he advances an alternative theory, namely that high blood pressure is (one of) the body's adaptive response to chronic dehydration. His recommendation is to drink more water, that is, at least 64 oz. per day, or half your body weight in oz. (for example, if you weigh 200 lb., you should drink 100 oz. daily). He goes into much physiological detail to argue the hypothesis. Be that as it may, drinking more water is a painless, cost-free remedy which I decided to try, having nothing to lose. At about the same time, I met an herbal healer from the Ausar-Auset Society in Washington, DC, Shekhem Hames Meten, and he recommended an herbal flush along with the greatly increased consumption of water. Within six or so weeks, my blood pressure (diastolic) was down 15 points, and my systolic was down 10 points. Dr. Batman also hypothesizes, and argues physiologically, that overweight is one of the body's adaptive responses to chronic dehydration. And indeed, within six weeks I lost about 15 lb. taking the water (plus herbal flush) remedy.
Chronic Dehydration the Common Cause
Almost two years later, I am completely off high blood pressure medication, and my weight came down from about 245 lb. to about 190 lb. By drinking more water, I was able to cure my chronic hypertension, and my tendency to overweight. It saved me money too, as even the 20% not covered by my insurance came up to a pretty penny for the expensive patent medicine that I was taking. But in addition, I found that my allergy problem disappeared, and my skin condition also. (The latter flares up from time to time, but I treat it as a wellness barometer -- when it happens I know I need an internal flush, and I treat it holistically with food and nutritional supplements, rather than taking medicine to suppress the symptoms.) So yes, the high blood pressure, and the allergy problem, and the skin condition, all were symptoms of a common underlying cause, namely chronic dehydration. None of my specialist, high priced doctors addressed that.
I have also found, just as Dr. Batman says in his book, that the body often confuses thirst for hunger: since keeping up the water intake, I find myself snacking less. And I have pretty much given up coffee, tea, and alcohol -- dehydrators all -- reaching instead for a glass of pure water. Doing that was sufficient to defeat the craving for all of those beverages, for when thirsty, I would reach for anything else but water: a snack, a beer, a cup of coffee, a glass of Coke, etc. Reaching instead for a glass of water, indeed drinking eight 16 oz. glasses of water a day, pretty much takes care of thirst, leaving no urge for snacks, coffee, tea, sugared soft drinks, or alcohol.
Relevancy of Salt and Diet
Dr. Batman opines that salt is critical to osmotic balance and the process by which cells are hydrated. If the body senses it is not getting enough salt, it will respond by going into salt-retention mode, which is also undesirable. Therefore, as with almost anything else we consume, there is a question of dosage. Dr. Batman opines that we need no more than about a quarter of a teaspoon of salt each day. I do not know if Black folk should take even less than that. But my suspicion is that processed foods are heavier in salt than that, and therefore "not good" as the basis for a healthy diet. Along with drinking more water, I have cut out canned and processed foods. And I gave up on meat sometime after "mad cow" broke out in England, and after watching some television documentaries about how pigs and chickens are industrially "grown" in this country. I have a problem with chickens being made to eat recycled chicken parts -- like the mad cows in England were made to eat recycled cow parts -- and never seeing daylight before they're, yes, harvested, and sent off to KFC's or wherever. And the less said about pig farming in this country, the better. I'll say only that I believe the Jews, the Muslims, and the Bible to be correct when they abjure pork, and that Black folk would be well advised, on this count, to heed all three.
Anyway, all of those changes have worked. Reduced salt consumption is part of the picture, but it's not the whole of it, or even the most important part. Drinking a lot more water would seem to be better, first-resort advice. Cut down on salt, but not totally. Take moderate exercise, daily. I take a 40 min. to 1 hr. walk four or five times a week. Cook your own food from fresh ingredients. Cut out the canned and processed stuff (frozen vegetables are okay). Eliminating meat probably helps also, but I stopped that for reasons that have nothing to do with blood pressure.
Dr. Batmanghelidj's book explains a lot of the physiology of diseases whose root cause is dehydration. Not only high blood pressure, but adult-onset diabetes, arthritis, allergies, asthma, low back pain, acid stomach, peptic ulcers, among others.
Big Medicine and Drug Dependency
It is remarkable and revealing to me, that Western medicine opts for the billions of dollars in profits to be had from merely treating these diseases with all manner of pills, rather than curing them with as simple a treatment as drinking more water and eliminating the bad dietary and lifestyle habits that cause them. As some wise ancient said: "Let your food be your medicine, and your medicine your food." That approach is however antithetical to that of Big Medicine and its primary concern with making Big Bucks, rather than curing the sick.
It is of course to the benefit of Western capitalist medicine to "treat" all the chronic diseases at great cost, while studiously avoiding the simple cures that are known to be available. In this way, billions of dollars are made every year pushing drugs and medications for such chronic illnesses as high blood pressure, arthritis, asthma, allergies, diabetes, etc., all of which, if caught soon enough, may be cured, costlessly, by drinking more water. In my case, I spent thousands of dollars on blood pressure medication before stumbling across this book and finding the cure. I had been misled into thinking that I would have had to keep taking the medication for high blood pressure for the rest of my life, moreover that it would do me no harm. I was later to discover that prolonged taking of the ACE inhibitor medication (for high blood pressure) leads to other medical complications notably involving heart disease.
Treatment vs. Cure
This is typical of the Western non-holistic approach to medicine. By focusing on parts and ignoring the whole, Western medical specialists inevitably must treat, rather than cure, disease. This also happily coincides with their financial interest, for patients who remain uncured have to keep coming back to pay more and more doctor's fees, and to buy more and more of the expensive patent medicines. Morally, this is little better than the drug dealer on the street who understands clearly the necessity for his business of creating drug dependency. In the case of Western medicine, it is not even the case that it may be claimed that they do no harm, medically speaking. For the treatment of disease by the suppression of symptoms rather than the removal of the underlying cause is certain, in time, to generate complications. In my case, the "ACE inhibitor" medicine I was taking for high blood pressure, as I have said, would in time have caused heart complications. At that point, my friendly internist would have handed me over to his colleague the cardiologist, who also would go about expertly addressing a small part of the problem, but never the whole.
The practice of partial medicine is a hydra-headed monster. For every chronic illness "treated" by Western medicine, two more crop up in time, generating yet more business for the doctors and the pharmaceutical companies. This causes pain and distress to long-suffering patients, while enriching the doctors and pharmaceutical companies who in this way violate the Hippocratic oath under which the medical practitioner is sworn to "first do no harm".
Prevention is better than cure. Removing causes is better than suppressing ("treating") symptoms. And holistic healing, that addresses the whole person -- body, mind, and spirit -- is better than the non-holistic, partial-system approaches of Western medicine.
Fast Food, Soul Food and Chronic Illness
But what is the cause of the epidemic of illness among Black folk, especially here in the U.S.? Why is it that Black folk suffer more than the rest of the population from hypertension, diabetes, prostate problems, arthritis, breast cancer, fibroid tumors, etc. etc. Why is it that diabetes, to take one example, is very rare in Nigeria, but among Nigerians in the U.S it is close to the rate for Black folk as a whole? Why is it that Native Americans also suffer a high rate of diabetes, when that illness was practically unknown among them before they were placed on reservations, and adopted a diet rich in Government cheese and canned foods? The clear and compelling answer is: diet. Western living, with its surfeit of canned, processed, fried, sugared, over-salted food, is deadly, albeit in a slow, insidious way. It could very well be that Black folk are more susceptible to the ravages of poor nutrition, or it could simply be that we have a taste for the foods that are not good for us -- the highly sugared soft drinks like Coke, Kool Aid etc., the KFC's and the Big Macs, not to mention so much of "Soul Food" which is overladen with butter, lard, sugar, white processed flour, and other ingredients that gum up the colon, turn the blood into a gooey syrup, and lead inexorably to obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes, arthritis, and a host of other name illnesses that really derive from a simple, clear cause: the nutritional errors of Western living.
The Right One, Baby!
Our people are dying for a lack of this simple knowledge. And we are bewitched by slick, clever advertising -- a form of witchcraft, it slips by the conscious mind and registers directly at the level of the unconscious, which is exactly the way witchcraft works -- that beckons our young to join the Pepsi generation, eat at KFC's because it's finger-lickin' good, it's the right one, baby, aha!, not to mention this Bud's for you. Thus bewitched, we pay now, and we pay later, enriching Big Business and Big Medicine, unfortunately to our detriment.
Grisso
