Fasting and Eating for Health (21 page)

So we must get diabetics off their treatments. If the sugars are not adequately controlled with diet alone, then fasting must be used. If the diabetic is motivated and truly wants the best opportunity for a long healthy life, we should not use medication at all in type II diabetes; instead, we should utilize aggressive nutritional intervention with fasting, the most effective treatment for these patients.

My results, obtained from diabetics adopting this natural approach, show that over 95 percent of type II diabetics can come off medications with much better blood sugar control than they had on insulin or oral medication. With the dietary modifications alone, type I, or childhood-onset, diabetics are able to reduce their insulin requirements by almost half. But more important, they can improve their overall health, retard the destruction of their bodies, and significantly reduce complications and the risk of early cardiac death.

All physicians should inform their patients about the optimal recommendations to maximize their life span and minimize their risk of suffering from disease complications. Then at least the patient can make an educated and informed choice. If this prescription is followed, heart attacks and strokes will become rare. Diabetes will diminish in incidence and practically disappear from our society.

We can help ourselves, our friends, and our children adopt eating habits they can live with so that they can be free of the fear of heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and many other serious illnesses. Passing on to you this valuable information gives you the power to free yourself from medical treatments, to control your own life, and to choose your own health destiny.

NOTE: No patient on medication should make dietary changes without the assistance of a physician, as medication adjustment will be necessary to prevent excessive lowering of the blood sugar level, or hypoglycemia.

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A Superior Approach

A patient's wife wrote, ―My husband has been seeking medical help for the past two and a half years for rheumatoid arthritis. He was going for blood tests every two to six weeks. He was using Azulfidine, Prednisone and Methotrexate along with other prescribed drugs. He was about to begin gold shots when he changed physicians. Thank God he did! He would not die from the arthritis, but from the side effects of the treatments. After three months Dr. Fuhrman has my husband off all drugs.‖ The patient added, ―Six months ago I prayed I would die; now I'm ready to live again.‖

—Mr. and Mrs. Priatt

From the Priatts' unsolicited remarks one can see why I am so enthusiastic about the treatment of autoimmune diseases with diet and fasting. I have consistently watched my patients recover from what they have been told are incurable illnesses.

There are more than a hundred clinical syndromes labeled as autoimmune disease. Those discussed in this chapter are serious medical illnesses. They cause pain, suffering, and early death. Drugs, the present-day treatment, have extremely serious side effects. As a matter of fact, the toxic effects of the drugs can be worse than the diseases themselves. It is not uncommon that patients are unable to tolerate the medications prescribed by their physicians.

The good news is that in the majority of cases these diseases respond predictably to fasting and plant-based diets. To get optimal results, these diets must be modified for the particular needs of each patient.

It is also predictable that in spite of well-conducted scientific investigations and the clinical experience of many physicians, this effective nutritional treatment of autoimmune disease is generally ignored. This is unfortunate, because optimal nutrition alone can prevent the suffering of millions.

It is important to note that the fact that a particular autoimmune disease is not discussed in this chapter does not mean it will not be helped or alleviated by this approach. Autoimmune illnesses that I will not discuss, but that
do
typically respond to this type of treatment include Hashimoto's thyroiditis, nephritis, Sjogren's syndrome, connective tissue disorders, and others. Even some diseases not generally classified as autoimmune actually improve with this approach because they have mechanisms the same as or similar to those outlined in this chapter. These include asthma, allergic disorders such as rhinitis, and various dermatologic disorders such as eczema, urticaria, and 110

dermatitis herpetiformis.

What Is Autoimmune Disease?

The body's defense system against foreign invaders is called the
immune
system
. This finely tuned system is constantly adjusting itself with checks and controls in an attempt to remove substances foreign or toxic to it.

Sometimes the body's internal defenses make a mistake; they see an enemy where in reality there is none, or they respond uncontrollably to a minor insult.

The term
autoimmune disease
was coined to reflect the body's misinterpretations.

Normally, the intricate activities of the immune system effectively distinguish between the body's own cells and cellular debris and foreign infiltrators. In autoimmune disorders this recognition breaks down, and the body's own cells are attacked. In effect, the body loses its ability to tell the difference between foreign substances and itself. When this occurs, the immune system generates antibodies against its own tissues, and may begin to attack, inflame, and destroy itself.

The miscommunication of the body's internal defense structure happens for two reasons: one, because the cells may have been altered in some way that makes them appear foreign to immune recognition, and two, because some aspect controlling immune activity has gone awry.

All cells have protein and lipid projections on their outer walls that serve as identifying markers to the immune system. Antibodies are designed so that they can bind with a cell's outer surface projections, much the way a key fits into a lock. Thus the antibodies can attach themselves to the cell and recognize whether the cell looks normal or not. If through this contact with the surface of the cell the immune markers tag the cell as abnormal, other, larger components of the immune system will be attracted to destroy the so-labeled body cell.

As we place disease-causing stressors on our body throughout our lives, our cells can become biochemically weak and congested with self-generated wastes. Eventually, as waste accumulates within the cell, it overtaxes the cell's detoxifying ability. More and more waste is then forced into the cellular wall, which will eventually mark the cell as aged and abnormal to immune surveillance. The immune system will at this point begin its job of attacking this cell in an attempt to remove it. Therefore, in many autoimmune illnesses, cellular detoxification via nutritional management and fasting is essential for achieving improvement or recovery because these measures allow the cells to reduce their load of metabolic wastes and therefore appear normal again to immune surveillance.

In multiple sclerosis, for example, part of the myelin sheath that protects nerves is attacked and destroyed. For some reason these cells look abnormal to the immune system. In hemolytic anemia red blood cells are attacked and 111

destroyed, and in Graves' disease thyroid cells are attacked and stimulated, causing excessive secretion of thyroid hormone.

In rheumatoid arthritis, the immune system attacks and inflames the joints.

In psoriasis, the attack is directed against the skin, and in inflammatory bowel disease (ulcerative colitis and Crohn's) the digestive tract becomes the site of the immune hyperactivity. Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is a chronic inflammatory disease that can affect various parts of the body, especially the skin, joints, blood, and kidneys.

Besides recognizing cellular deviance, the immune system can cause damage for other reasons, especially from the formation and accumulation of immune complexes in our tissues.

In order to protect us, our immune system first has to identify the object it wants to attack. The antibodies attach themselves to foreign substances, debris, and dead or abnormal cells. They identify this interior pollution so that the other part of the immune system, the immune cells, can be attracted to the area and gobble up or destroy the offending substance. When an antibody attaches itself to an offending substance, called the antigen, an antigen—

antibody complex is formed.

These complexes are present in the blood in increased quantities in individuals with autoimmune illnesses. When these complexes are not effectively cleared from the bloodstream, they can become lodged in various tissues, where they cause inflammation, much like a sliver of wood does when it is caught under the skin.

In rheumatoid arthritis, for example, these complexes are deposited in the joints, and redness, swelling, stiffness, and pain develop, followed by destruction of the joint as the inflammation continues. The amount of immune complexes deposited in the joints corresponds to the severity of the arthritic symptoms.1

Autoimmune Disease Equals Digestive Dysfunction
The number one source of this excessive immune complex formation is
digestive tract malfunction,
often called "the leaky gut syndrome."

It has been shown in scientific studies that many people with rheumatoid arthritis and other autoimmune diseases have increased intestinal tract permeability.2,3 Because of genetic or other insults to the digestive system earlier in life, autoimmune disease sufferers have an abnormality of the digestive tract that allows incompletely digested foodstuffs to pass through the intestinal lining and enter the bloodstream.

Proteins in foods are the chief culprits that can excite an abnormal immune response. A protein is typically made up of thousands of amino acids linked together. The digestive enzymes cleave the bonds between the amino acids during digestion, allowing the individual amino acids to pass through the wall of 112

the digestive tract. When isolated amino acids enter the bloodstream, they do not excite an (abnormal) immune response. During the process of digesting the protein, however, if a piece of partially broken-down protein, known as a peptide, is able to pass through the digestive tract wall by mistake, this peptide can and will excite the immune system to react against it.

The peptide, containing perhaps a hundred amino acids, is now recognized not as a nutrient like an individual amino acid, but rather as a foreign substance that needs to be attacked and removed. Thus, the immune system produces an antibody to this antigen, and an antigen—antibody complex is formed.

It is clear that the intestinal tract is a critical interface between the external world and our tightly regulated inner environment. When this critical line of defense is disrupted, enzymes, bacteria-elaborated toxins, immunostimulating peptides, and other unwanted substances may escape the mucosal defenses of the digestive tract and enter the bloodstream. The result is circulating immune complexes that can induce autoimmune disease, joint inflammation, and pain.

Meat and Other Animal Foods Are Implicated in Autoimmune
Illnesses

There is evidence that when peptides from animal proteins are absorbed, they not only can lead to the formation of antibodies against them, but also can cross-react against human proteins in the body. This may be because animal meats have amino acid sequences that are similar to those found in human tissue. Plant proteins are less likely to cause this reaction, even if their peptides pass into the bloodstream, because they bear little resemblance to human proteins.

When the immune system views the animal peptides in the bloodstream and attempts to attack and destroy them, the antibodies created can continue to attack other body tissues later. Because amino acid sequences in human body proteins are similar to those of the animal peptides, these antibodies can attach to and cause a reaction to one's own tissues.

Excess protein in the diet creates a significant risk for the development of autoimmune disease because, by nature, we are designed like the other large primates to consume comparatively low amounts of protein.

When we eat an animal-food-based diet with servings of high-protein animal foods at each meal, our capacity to digest this-food efficiently is strained.

Unlike the true carnivorous animals, which can secrete large quantities of acids in their digestive tracts and huge amounts of protein-cleaving enzymes to aid in the digestive process, the human animal cannot. Because we cannot efficiently dissolve these proteins, more incompletely digested peptides are apt to be absorbed. In addition, our intestines allow more bacteria species to overgrow when this environment is rich with animal food-derived peptides. This results in the absorption of toxic bacterial by-products, which can create an inflammatory environment. So the overgrowth of various bacterial species 113

thriving in the gut of the average American contributes to immune dysfunction.

The excess of fat in the diet from either animal fats or excessive vegetable oil can impede the ability of the body quickly to clear immune complexes from the bloodstream. Excess fat hinders immune function.4 The immune complexes created by gut leakage are not adequately removed because their removal is impeded by fat consumption. The complexes then circulate for long periods and eventually deposit themselves in our tissues. This impairment of the immune system by fats is one reason the present-day Western diet is associated with such a high rate of cancer and autoimmune disease.

So rheumatoid arthritis, the most common of the autoimmunetype illnesses, is not merely a joint disease. It is a problem of the entire body, starting with the digestive tract. Joint pain is one of the most common autoimmune symptoms simply because the joints are particularly vulnerable to immune insults.

The joints receive nutrients and remove wastes through the joint fluid. Joint areas are extremely sensitive to decreased oxygenation because they have a marginal blood supply to begin with. Instead of being directly fed by blood vessels, the joints must receive their oxygenation via the joint fluid. When a fatty meal is consumed, the blood thickens and red blood cells stick together, which reduces the oxygenation of all tissues. This has a significant effect on the oxygenation of joint tissues, increasing the sensitivity of joints to inflammation and immune system damage. Decreased oxygenation alone can cause inflammation.