A Look to the Past to Ensure Future Health

By

Dr. Matthew Abdullah Tracey, OMD., AP.

It is my hope that the information I present helps in some way at least one person and they in turn help another and so on Insha Allah.  I have researched the data on health and degenerative diseases extensively but welcome any information that disputes or proves anything that I present.  As Muslims it is our duty to search for the truth without prejudice. 

The last few decades have produced significant technological advances.  From life saving surgical techniques, magnetic resonance imaging and DNA mapping to in-vitro fertilization, modern medicine has reaped many benefits from these technologies.  Unfortunately, although these advances have had enormous impact in emergency medicine and infectious diseases, they have done little for chronic degenerative diseases.  In fact, the incidence of degenerative diseases such as diabetes, cancer, cardiovascular diseases, birth defects, infertility and arthritic disorders has skyrocketed.  But, how could this be possible in light of such scientific breakthroughs? Much research was done in the past that foresaw these occurrences.  If we would open our eyes (minds) and see, I’m sure we would find the answers.

Dr. Barnett Sure (Jol. Nutr., Aug., 1939) fed a group of pigs twice the daily requirement of synthetic B-1. A like number of pigs were given the same amount of natural B-1. The results: All of the first generation offspring from the pigs fed the synthetic vitamin were STERILE. None of the first generation offspring were sterile from the pigs fed natural B-1. Obviously, synthetic B-1 is not a nutrient, it is a genetic poison that damages the chromosome packages responsible for transmitting sexual characteristics from parent to offspring. In the case of Dr. Sure's pig experiment, the first generation offspring acquired the genetic damage. In the case of humans, more than one generation is required.

In 1981, a report from the University of Florida revealed some startling facts. It stated that in the year 1929, the average young American male adult produced approximately 100 million sperm cells per milliliter of semen. In 1973 the average sperm count had dropped to 60 million per ml. By 1980, the average count was down to 20 million / ml.  What could have possibly caused such a frightful decline in male fertility in just 61 years? One very possible explanation could very well lie in the historical use of synthetic B-1 and other phony nutrients. Textbooks record that vitamin B-1 was first isolated in the year 1926. About 10 years later, scientists were able to synthesize the mirror image of thiamin (B-1) from coal tar. Around the beginning of World War II (9/1939) enrichment of refined, devitalized flour became compulsory. The so-called enrichment was with synthetic fractions of counterfeit vitamins. Since World War II people have had a daily allotment of a genetic poison in most of the flour products, bread, cereals and other food items that are forced, by law, to enrich with the only cost-feasible enricher; synthetic vitamins.

During my postgraduate studies in clinical nutrition I became interested in diabetes.  During this time I came across a poison that is known as “Alloxan”.  Alloxan destroys the beta cells of the pancreas (the ones that produce insulin) and is used to induce diabetes in laboratory animals.  A residue of alloxan is found in bleached flour products.  Alloxan may also be formed by combining the chemicals chlorine and xanthine.  Xanthine is a natural chemical found in coffee and is part of the vitamin E complex and chlorine is added to most municipal water supplies.  What does all this mean? 

Well, let’s say that you live in one of the areas that have chlorine added to the water supply (most industrialized countries) and every morning you wake up and make yourself a cup or two of coffee with the water from the tap with a couple teaspoons of white sugar.  Then add to that maybe some bread or a few croissants made with bleached, synthetically enriched flour.  The possibility of damage with such a small amount of alloxan may be negligible per dose, but cumulative.  If continued daily for many years and even generations, irreparable damage and even mutation could occur.  Diabetes is always one of the first degenerative diseases besides dental caries, to hit a newly civilized country.  When these people abandon the foods they lived on for generations and start importing the refined foods, they also import the diseases that are caused by them. Dr. Weston Price, in his book “Nutrition and Physical Degeneration”, tells us of many cases where diabetes, cancer, and dental caries soon appeared after the introduction of white flour and white sugar into territories where these food products had been previously unknown.

It is now accepted by the Food and Agricultural Organization and the World Health Organization in their reports of 1978 and 1982 and by the Surgeon General’s Report on Health in the USA in 1988 that there is a nutritional link between diet (nutrition) and heart disease, multiple sclerosis, arthritis, breast and colon cancer, and diabetes. These are diseases of modern civilization and are almost unheard of in primitive cultures that haven’t had the “benefit” of food technology.  The government agencies with the responsibility of protecting the public allow many harmful and sometimes deadly poisons to be continuously put into commercial food products and water supply.  It is their conclusion, despite research that proves otherwise, that the amounts allowed in each product would cause little or no damage or that the benefits outweigh the risks.  What they fail to take into account is that the average consumer in a single day will consume several of these products and therefore receive several times the legal limit.  The limits, it would seem, are set more for the industry’s benefit than that of the people.  The food industry’s primary objective, like any business, is one of profit.  The farmers and food producers have forgotten what their true purpose should be, which is to provide the sustenance to build strong, healthy, disease-resistant people.

The practices of refining, devitalizing and adulterating foods were born in the west.  All of these practices substitute superior life giving foods with larger quantity of inferior dead food while deceiving the people into believing they are the same or in some cases better.  This practice is a form of Riba (Usury) known as Riba Al-Fadl and is therefore Harram (Forbidden).  (2:275)

In the West, the exposure to food refining, environmental toxins and pesticides has been a gradual increase over a few generations.  Therefore, there has at least been a brief time for some of our systems to try to adapt.  Other countries such as those in the Middle East were hit with this change almost overnight.  Without the opportunity to acclimatize, there has been a radical increase in birth defects, diabetes, cancer and other degenerative diseases.

It is my sincere belief that many of the degenerative changes can be eliminated and prevented for future generations if something is done about it now.  All that has to be done is that we look at the problem with open minds.

The following Ayat from the Holy Quran are just a few that provide guidance to these problems.

“Everything good that happens to you is from God.  Everything evil that happens to you is from your own actions” (4:79).

“Eat of what is on earth lawful and good” (2:168).

“Lawful unto you are all things good and pure” (5:4).

In this context, “good” refers to what is pure, clean, wholesome and nourishing.  In other words, fresh, unrefined, unadulterated, life giving food and not synthetic life robbing non-food.

The tide is slowly starting to change in America and other parts of the world.  Many people are realizing the importance of quality food, exercise and preventing disease rather than just suppressing symptoms once they appear.  More and more people are turning to organic produce and meats from naturally fed animals without the use of pesticides or hormones. 

During the early part of the 19th century, the United States experienced an era known as "free trade in medicine." A historical vignette in the Journal of the American Medical Association explains that during the mid-1800s, botanics and homeopathy were in great demand.[1] Those alternative health practices were a powerful counterforce to regular medicine.  During the period, the United States was one of the healthiest nations, with the world's lowest infant mortality rate.[2]
The truth is, during this time, Homeopathy was far superior in its results with curing the ills of the people in comparison to the blood letting, mercury compounds and other toxic procedures employed by the Allopathic practitioners. 

According to the World Health Organization, about 4 billion people--80 percent of the world population--use herbal remedies for some aspect of their health care. Yet in the United States the FDA often considers herbal remedies to be worthless or potentially dangerous.[3]

Every year millions of Americans seek providers who offer health care therapies that are neither widely taught in medical schools nor generally available in U.S. hospitals. Researchers from Harvard Medical School studied the health care practices of U.S. adults and estimated that 22 million Americans sought providers of unconventional care in 1990. The study, reported in the New England Journal of Medicine, estimates that in 1990 Americans made more visits to providers who offered unconventional therapies than to all primary care physicians--425 million compared to 388 million visits.[4]

Health care regulators defend their position as necessary to protect consumers. But contrary to conventional expectation, users of unconventional therapies are well educated and have higher-than-average incomes.[5] Even in countries with socialized health systems that provide access to conventional medical care for all citizens, users of unconventional therapies and practitioners are usually from higher social classes.[6]  A study of complementary medicine in the United Kingdom suggests that patients from higher social classes presumably have the opportunity to research and explore the possibilities of complementary medicine and to pay for it.[7]

All the great scientists of the past, from Galileo to Einstein, were first met with opposition, ridicule and condemnation when they dared to venture outside of the popular opinion of their time in search of the truth.  History has shown us that new ideas, especially those that conflict with a currently accepted hypothesis may take years, decades or more before they are accepted.  How long do you think we should wait?

Medical science throughout history has continuously tried to fit a square peg into a round hole.  The Germ Theory of disease causation is such a hole.  With the discovery that certain diseases and epidemics such as tuberculosis, pneumonia, etc. were caused by bacteria, the search for any other multitude of contributing factors was largely abandoned.  With every new disease a specific germ was searched for despite the overwhelming evidence of other possible causes.  Scurvy, beriberi, pellagra and many other diseases, now known to be caused by nutritional deficiencies, were in some cases blamed for centuries on infectious origin even though numerous studies were performed that proved the nutrition connection.  Most of these so-called pathogenic germs are also found in healthy persons, only becoming pathogenic when the immune system has been compromised.  Even Louie Pasteur stated shortly before his death that the germ is nothing and the terrain is everything.  Meaning that the bacterium is not the cause, but rather the effect of a change in the terrain that allows the germ to thrive.  In other words, in a healthy body the pathogenic germs are kept under control because the environment is not conducive for their growth.  If this environment changes, due to improper nutrition or exposure to toxic chemicals, then the germs may find a more suitable habitat. 

Each of the healing arts, whether it is Modern Medicine (Allopathic Medicine), Homeopathic Medicine, Nutrition, Herbal Medicine, Acupuncture or any other Traditional Medicine has its place in the overall picture of health.  Each has its benefits and each has its drawbacks.  The Prophet (s.a.w.s.) by urging his followers to seek medical attention desired that they should attend to their sicknesses whether of minor, major, epidemic or non-epidemic consequences.  Moreover, he did not restrict his followers to any particular method or way of alleviating illness.  This means that Muslims may resort to an allopathic or homeopathic or any other type of medical care.[8]  The most important thing is to educate the public and have competent practitioners in each area of health care so that each may do their part to restore the sick to health and prevent illness.

I have no doubt that a difference can be made and much suffering can be eliminated if:

·         Unbiased research is encouraged for the benefit of the people rather than suppressed for the benefit of business,

·         the public is educated on the problem and what can be done,

·         all the people are provided with a source for that which is lawful, good, and pure,

·         diseases are prevented rather than just treated or symptoms merely suppressed, and

·         freedom is returned to the practice of healthcare and all of the healing arts are used together for the benefit of the patient.

To some this may seem like an impossible task.  However, if we all do our part, it is possible for both business and health to flourish rather than one at the expense of the other.