After six years, six difficult long years, we know that my son suffers from an imbalance in his intestinal flora; the foreign microbes generate toxins that literally drive him insane. It took a long time to make the connection, because he shows almost no digestive symptoms. The colon is the last place you'd look.
At the same time, my wife Wendy suffered from debilitating ibs for over a decade. She was so ill that she could not leave the house. It took me five years to come up with a treatment for her, largely based on fiber, and another five years after she was well to realize why this helped. We were feeding the good bacteria and starving the bad. Ten years later, we still have to watch her sugar and her oils.
Now, here are two people in my family who are genetically unrelated, and have no background in common. They lived in separate states for their entire lives, up to the point that they became ill. What are the odds that both of these people should suffer from a microbial imbalance?
That's probability; here is some statistics. Given that this has happened, how many people in the United States suffer from this problem and don't realize it? My family is of course too small a sample to answer that question, but it suggests a huge, undiagnosed epidemic.
Why has it gone unnoticed?
Because medicine tends to group people together by symptoms. We put all the people with a common set of symptoms in a room, look at all their data, and ask, "What do they have in common? why have they all jumped the tracks?" We don't group people with completely unrelated symptoms together. Nobody would put Wendy and John together and search for a common cause. And so, I believe we are entering the 21st century with a great deal of ill-health, caused by an agent that is not recognized by modern medicine, or even alternative medicine. Yes, much has been written about candida, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. Bacteria is the real problem, and there are millions of species to choose from, each producing its own unique blend of toxins. Combine this with the patient's unpredictable sensitivities and predispositions, and anything is possible. Allergies, arthritis, emotional imbalance, hives, infertility, I don't know, anything! And so we just can't seem to put the puzzle together. I hope, by writing this blog, I can make people more aware. Of course I really need to cut it down to a Reader's Digest version, so people don't have to slog through this entire tome.
Why is bacteria a problem for so many Americans?
Because of our 20th century diet. Yes, environmental chemicals play a roll, but I think diet is the key. In the 1700's our ancestors in England ate 7.5 pounds of sugar a year. Today in the United States we consume 20 times as much, 150 pounds a year. You don't need a Ph.D. in biology to know that evolution can't keep up. Mammals have spent the last 50 million years drinking milk, and so, the bacteria that thrive on milk and live in our intestines have become our friends, in a simbiotic relationship that benefits everyone. In contrast, the bacteria that feed on sucrose are strangers to us. They make us ill in a thousand different ways.
Why do we love sugar so?
Ultra-sweet substances taste good to us because the occasional stash of honey that we pillaged from a hive gave us a real boost, and that only happened a couple times a year, so no harm done. It tastes like fruit, only better! Evolution had no reason to change our tastes, or our tolerance for pure sugar, because none of our ancestors was able to knock over a hive every day. Biology could not possibly anticipate technology. Now we eat 7 ounces of sucrose every day. Take your sugar bowl down from the shelf and measure it out. It's a lot!
The disorder wrought by our western diet is so subtle, and produces such a variety of symptoms, that we can't see it or understand it. Meantime teachers hand out candy as a reward, and pop machines line the hallways of our schools. What are the odds that the next generation is going to be very very sick? Pretty good, I'd say, unless something changes, and soon.