The Box

What is a box? A box is a container, which keeps things in, but also keeps things out. For most people the most important thing kept out is new thinking. For ages. I have said, “I am so far out-of-the-box I don’t know where the box is”. My work and my thinking, by most people’s standards, is definitely unorthodox. That what I do works so incredibly well is just not believable by those people who still live in their small box and will not consider a new way of thinking or doing. Let me describe a recent example of something in a very small box.

I have been consulting with the family about a child who is now a few months old. For privacy of the family I will not describe much detail about this child, but the child was born with serious birth defects and has undergone surgery as a consequence. Some of these defects are mostly not amenable to surgical intervention. My bioenergetic work with this child has suggested a number of bioenergy corrections and some nutritional intervention. It was clear, bioenergetically, that this child had significant nutritional deficiencies. Being fed through a tube, reportedly directly into his duodenum, gives good opportunity to give this child quality nutrients. Mother’s milk is a major part of the diet, supplemented (according to the medical people) with a standard infant formula (which I consider grossly inadequate, in not downright harmful, since it is full of synthetic materials and a lot of sugar). I suggested several additions to the diet, including vitamin D3, a good ionized calcium, DHA, and several other items, including changes to mom’s diet is. One recommendation was biotin. Now the official guidelines suggest 5 µg of biotin are sufficient for a child that age. My bioenergetic testing indicated more like 60 µg of biotin where required. The boxed in people refused to give that much. The hospital dietitian insisted that 5 µg was enough because that was the standard recommendation. In our discussion of that number she said well, 5 µg is all that 98% of the population needs. I said that this kid is not in the 98%. Furthermore, that intake is presumably the amount needed by healthy people to stay healthy. She didn’t have much response to that. I also mentioned the work of Roger Williams, the discoverer of pantothenic acid and who named folic acid, and he wrote about biochemical individuality.

Many years ago Williams showed that genetically identical mice, as understood in that day, could have as much as a twentyfold difference in need for a given specific nutrient. It seems she never heard of Williams. The bottom line was that she said she could not give more than the five unless I could refer her to peer review published studies indicating that the 60 µg was safe and effective, or some such thing as that. It was not clear to me she had to adhere to a book or whether it was her book. It took me only a few minutes of on-line checking to discover interesting things about biotin. One is that most adults have an adequate level of biotin because biotin is made by the microorganisms in the gut. Much more is being made in the body than it needs to use (some times hundreds or even thousands of times more) and so most adults have an excess of biotin being made in the body. Great. Further reading indicates basically that biotin is not toxic even as in large amounts. And, very importantly, in some pregnancies something happens to the microorganisms in the gut that make the biotin and so the pregnant woman becomes deficient in biotin. It is also indicated that a deficiency of biotin is associated with birth defects. Now it seems to me that a hospital, when working with a child with birth defects, would assign somebody to be responsible for knowing what’s in the literature about that. And a dietitian should especially do some research. To refuse to give essential nutrients when indicated is, in my mind, serious malpractice. Furthermore, even if this literature is not very adequate a child in such serious condition deserves every benefit of the doubt. The child might die anyway, but to die from malnutrition in a hospital is unconscionable.

I’ve had a theory for a number of years now.

It is not rare that we read a newspaper story about some person who, for example, ran off the road in their vehicle and was lying trapped in the ditch for five days before they were found, still alive and relatively unharmed mechanically. However, after two or three days in the hospital they died “of their injuries”. I have a hard time understanding why, if they are okay after five days without attention, they would die two or three days after being given attention and treatment. My theory is this: one of the first medical treatments is to give IV glucose. Now glucose, in order to be metabolized in the body, requires the use of various other nutrients. After five days of no nutrients coming into the body many people in that circumstance will have low levels of those nutrients, so getting glucose, will deplete those nutrients still further, leaving body systems with inadequate levels to continue functioning. [See Note at bottom of this article.] If no glucose were given and the person was just fed real food, or additional appropriate nutrients were provided, along with the glucose, those people may not have died. In other words, inadequate medical treatment literally causes the death. To be clear, I don’t have real supporting data for this hypothesis, but I have seen repeatedly that the lack of nutrition education in the medical system is harmful to people. For example, sometimes I work with people who have cancer. Every one of these folks in the last 2 or 3 years I have asked a simple question: “Did your medical doctor talk to you about vitamin D and cancer?” So far everyone has said “No”. How can it be that the medical doctors seem to be the only people who do not know something about the literature about cancer and vitamin D? That information has been published in virtually every magazine, many books, talked about on many, many radio and TV stations, newspaper articles, and vast numbers of references on the Internet.

When I was medical school faculty, several decades ago, and I talked about nutrition to colleagues, nobody wanted to listen. Then, and I believe it is still true, medical students received about three hours lecture about nutrition in their entire career. This three hours of lecture included wonderful information like “three square meals a day is all you need”, “taking vitamins is a way to make expensive urine”, and other equally useful information!

It is this ignorance which is at the key to the issues with the child discussed above. Furthermore, it is this ignorance which allows pregnant women to be or become, nutritionally deficient, in turn causing many more birth defects than would happen otherwise. To me this is criminal. Even the March of Dimes Charity has claimed that half of all birth defects are due to malnutrition. I am quite certain they significantly understate the case.

In my bioenergetic work I use an energy index of diet quality. The perfect diet has an index of 100, but this is essentially impossible these days because food quality is so low, so I consider that any index of 90 or above is usually adequate. I have tested the diet quality in hospitals for a number of people that I know personally. (They were there for physical injury requiring surgery. To really heal they get out as quickly as possible.) A typical hospital diet index is about 20 on my scale. The fast food place down the block, or even the canteen in the hospital, usually has a diet quality index of about 30 or 35. In other words, the traditionally called “junk food diet” is actually better quality than the typical  hospital diet. Maybe now we know one of the reasons that so many deaths occur in the hospitals!

Being afraid to step out of your box and look at the broader universe is very sad. The World is changing very rapidly these days, and if you insist on staying in your box, it may be the one you are buried in.

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Note from above:
Over the years I have supervised many people fasting, and often participate myself. Almost anyone can safely fast for a week or more. I have supervised a month-long fast and countless shorter ones. If you have difficulties on the first and second days particularly, it usually means you are undergoing withdrawal from foods to which you have become addicted. This is little different than withdrawal from drug addiction.

On a whim I can decide to fast and do so for a week or two with no effort at all (and no one notices unless I mention it). As a bonus, the time saved by not dealing with eating can be put to good use! Good reasons to fast will be discussed in later Posts.

A reasonably healthy person should easily be able to fast for a week or ten days without any special effort and hardly notice any hunger most of the time.

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