Modern Nutritional Diseases

I've been a bit quiet for the last 10 days. I've been deep in a technical but informative book. "Modern Nutritional Diseases, and how to prevent them" is a book by Fred Ottoboni and Alice Ottoboni. Alice Ottoboni, was a toxicologist who served over twenty years in the California Department of Health Services. Along with lecturing and consulting on toxicology and the environmental factors concerning public health, Ottoboni was also a scientific adviser to the American Council on Science and Health in New York. Fred Ottoboni, was an industrial chemist and he worked in industrial health for the California Department of Health Services. (They are still alive, Alice is 95 and Fred is 89, according to my source. They've been eating in a very-low-carbohydrate manner for over 20 years.)

"Modern Nutritional Diseases" is a difficult technical book to read. I'm not recommending it unless you've previously read a lot of science, chemistry in particular. But the book is very detailed and persuasive. The key new thing I learned was the importance of eating a diet with a lot more omega-3 essential fatty acids, while at the same time trying to minimise the omega-6 essential fatty acids, in the diet. Cod liver oil, or fish oil capsules are important supplements that most of us need. There's much more, but that is a good start.

I've written about the success or the failure of the Women's Health Initiative. Here is a paper written by Fred and Alice Ottoboni about that Low-Fat Diet and Chronic Disease Prevention: the Women's Health Initiative and Its Reception.

In "Modern Nutritional Diseases" the Ottoboni's write that most of the chronic ailments we think of, as a normal part of aging, are caused by our poor diet, and are not something we need to put up with. They are quite clear, diseases are CAUSED, and your diet is probably the cause of whatever problems you have.

The Ottoboni's are also clear that the dietary guidelines we've been given for the last 60 years are not fit for purpose. That a low-fat diet will make you sick. They are adamant that most of us need to eat more animal fat in our diets. They write at length about Weston Price and his effort to find people's who ate healthy diets, and to define what were the essential features of those diets. He never resolved the problem.

As you might have discovered by now, there are no medicines that can cure a disease caused by your diet. But doctors are ignorant about diets, that's not their expertise. Sadly, dietitians until very recently have had no training in bio-chemistry, so they just trot out what they have been told, they recommended the pseudo-scientific low-fat high-carbohydrate diet. In the last 20 years, bio-chemists, have made remarkable advances in nutritional science, most of which the public know nothing about. Alice Ottoboni, who was employed as a toxicologist, was on the cutting edge of the application of bio-chemistry to nutrition.

Alice Ottoboni, writes: "When we retired in the mid 1980s, we dedicated our retirement years to study of nutrition with special emphasis on nutritional biochemistry. Our goal was to help people who had the desire to achieve and maintain good health through proper nutrition learn how to do so based on valid nutritional science rather than on the pseudo-science that is the hallmark of the Food Guide Pyramid."

The key new knowledge for me in "Modern Nutritional Diseases" was that both the omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids, have a cascade of biochemical reactions that can only occur if the raw materials are available in the diet. The omega-6 cascade is well catered for. The omega-3 cascade is usually disabled because we need more linseed, cod liver oil or fish oil in the diet. BOTH, cascades need to work if inflammation is to be reduced, and homeostasis is to work as intended. FEED your body and your body will look after itself.

"Our studies were revealing. They were also accompanied by major changes in our thinking about human nutritional needs and chronic disease. We soon found that there were a few scientists whose writings kept coming to the fore in our searches. They echoed the scientific facts we were discovering; they were pioneers in development and medical use of the low- or no-carbohydrate nutritional plan."

Alice Ottoboni, credits Dr. Robert Atkins, Dr. Barry Sears, Dr Mary Dan and Dr Michael Eades for making the early running, and showing the way forward for the work that Fred and her were to do later.

Alice writes; "Remember always that Your Body is the Temple of Your Mind. All of your study, all of your work, all of your hopes, all of your dreams are for naught if your mind in not able to function properly because of ill health. So read, study, and learn what nutritional science tells you. You will never regret the time and effort expended."

So here's a list of modern diseases CAUSED by faulty diet.

There's no medicine that can correct the ongoing problem your faulty diet is creating. Only you can stop it.

From the Blog in the last Month

Changing Dietary Understanding. Dr Ted Naiman

Dr Ted Naiman was a sickly vegetarian as a young man, but he thought he was healthy. He was eating a "text book vegetarian diet" during his studies at medical school, but he had many health problems.

When he was a junior doctor a patient demonstrated how to lose weight and reverse his diabetes. Naiman was impressed, but his supervisors dismissed it as unimportant. "He'll probably be dead in two years they quipped."

I was impressed by what he says about mitochondria, so much so that I've changed my exercise programme to acknowledge this new information. Finally he tells us to feed ourselves if we want to lose weight. But you must eat nutrient dense food, not energy dense foods. That insight caused me some problems; what are nutrient dense foods?

Nutrient Dense Foods: Nutritious Foods

This post was a follow-up on Ted Naiman's concept of feeding yourself. Goggle offered me a hundred conflicting opinions, there was no agreement on what "nutrient dense" meant. I explain in the post an outline of the argument. In the end Adam Drewnowski gives us a good guideline. "Meats and dairy foods have the greatest nutritional value." Drewnowski believes that while most Americans are obese, only 15% of Americans are well nourished. Fat people are actually starving for lack of proper nutrition.

Better Quality Food

In this post I'm following up on an idea I've written about recently, inflammation in the body. By now I'm starting to read "Modern Nutritional Diseases," by Fred and Alice Ottoboni. They are very keen on people eating enough quality meat. Not something I've payed much attention too in the past. But in the past several months talking to the butcher has certainly improved the quality of the meat we are eating.

Understanding Type Two Diabetes

Canadian, Dr Jason Fung, a kidney specialist, spends most of his time educating the medical profession. In the video presented in this post he talks about diabetes, and his audience is the general public.

Everybody should learn more about diabetes, because if you are eating a typical mixed diet, the sort of diet recommended as a healthy diet, after 20 or 30 years you are likely to become insulin resistant, develop a fatty liver, and put on weight. Ten years later you're diabetic, and the doctor is telling you it's an incurable disease.

What your doctor means is that modern medicine, drugs, can't cure diabetes. But, you can cure it yourself, if you know what to do. ALERT: you don't have diabetes, great. Make sure you never get it, pay attention to your diet now.