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An Excerpt from Andrew Saul's 1995 Dissertation |
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Dissertation Extract |
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NATUROPATHIC EDUCATION AND MOTIVATION IN
HUMAN HEALTH BEHAVIOR
There is a critical fork in the path of health education, and it occurs most
clearly at the point where the subject to be taught is nutrition. Traditional,
mainstream dietetics favors a balanced, all-food-groups diet and discourages
the use of food supplements. However, a persistent minority of unorthodox
nutritionists favor radical diet revisions and the therapeutic use of high
potency vitamin preparations. There is a remarkably big difference here
in both philosophy and effectiveness. Throughout our
lives, we have made many crucial, this-or-that decisions: which college to
attend or not attend; who to marry or not marry; which job to accept or not
accept; how many children to have or not have. Collectively, our country
makes proportionally major choices with each Supreme Court decision, with
each general election, and with each Congressional vote. Today, the Making
pharmaceuticals available to everyone won't solve our disease problem any
more than making guns available to everyone will solve our crime problem.
More vaccinations will do little for cardiovascular diseases that are responsible
for one half of all deaths in the I (obviously) feel
very strongly that there is an alternative, a nutritional "road less
traveled" that we should have taken long before this. That road is
the one of personal responsibility for health, complete dietary overhaul,
and, when needed, aggressive high-dose vitamin therapy instead of
drugs. The closest professional description of this approach is
naturopathy, the organized science of natural healing (Airola,
1970, 1977, 1980; Inglis, 1965; Law, 1976). There is still time
to reverse our steps and take this other path. I perceive a keen need
for a direct appeal to individual doctors, students and patients to improve
their health by changing their own lives. I work with all of these folks
every day as a college lecturer and natural therapeutics consultant. Dale
Carnegie maintained that winning friends is everybody's second priority,
because their number one concern is their family's health (Carnegie, 1981). Pasteur said on his
deathbed that poor health is not the fault of germs (Nutri-West,
1994). Neither is it uniquely the fault of Congress, as much as we may
like to say so. Aside from
accidental injury, whatever we do to our bodies we do ourselves, daily, by
the lifestyle choices we make. Even the effects of Down's Syndrome,
often seen as the ultimate genetic curse, can be largely overcome by huge
doses of B-complex vitamins (Harrell,
1981). There is no outside enemy to fight; as Pogo said, it's us. As
the "bogeyman" disappears from a child's room as soon as the light
is turned on, so do old-style, failed disease-care systems pale and fade when
examined under the light of nutrition research and clinical proof. We
do not need "further study" on mineral and vitamin therapy.
The work has already been done, the results are in print, and the public is
cheerfully but unhealthfully ignorant. How
did we miss it? One possible
explanation is that the public has been "dumbed
down" by a cozy relationship between the mainstream medicine and the
media. As many communities have only one major newspaper, and our
country in effect operates with a "one-party" (i.e. medical)
health-care delivery system, we have more than a hint of monopoly. Major
wire services are continually fed articles reflecting the positions of the
largest, most vocal, and best funded health lobbies and professional trade
groups. What is politically correct, popular, and easily reduced to a
sound byte is what gets publicity; what gets publicity tends to get funded,
and what is funded gets done. Medical witch hunts for a test-tube,
magic-bullet cure for cancer or AIDS fit this description. Since
pharmaceutical industry investment in such projects is very high, there is
funding. Media cooperation is equally high, for a heroic, new
celebrity-style medical crusade easily sells papers and commercial air
time. Politicians know a bandwagon when they see it, and the result is
more laws favoring orthodox medicine... and still more funding. If there is one
truth about clinical nutrition research, it is that it is certainly not self
evident. Frederick Robert Klenner (1949, 1971), William J. McCormick
(1946, 1947, 1952, 1953, 1954, 1957, 1962), Irwin Stone (1972), and later
Linus Pauling (1976, 1986) all reviewed the literature on vitamin C, came to
the same conclusions about its importance as a therapeutic agent, and were
summarily ignored. I have often said to both practicing and student
chiropractors that if established medical and nutritional authority won't
listen to their own, they certainly won't jump to hear you. Considering
the paucity of interest (and funding), it is quite remarkable how much good
nutrition research has been done, and how almost all of it points to three
embarrassingly simple conclusions: 1. The average American's
diet is terrible, being superabundant in chemicals, calories and protein and
very deficient in fiber and diverse major vitamins and minerals. 2. Higher US
Recommended Daily Allowances plus nutritional supplements are clearly needed,
and even modest increases in vitamin and mineral intake regularly result in
both disease prevention and clinical cure.
3. Most citizens,
and their doctors, are vaguely aware of item
1, unaware of item 2, and not concerned enough to act on either. I continue to be
amazed at the number of people who actually do not know that huge doses of
vitamin C can safely be used as an antibiotic, antiviral, and antihistamine
(Smith, 1988). Most surprising is the clinical nutrition misinformation level
among doctors, who ought to read their own journals but apparently don't. Busy physicians tend to over rely on the salesforce (or "detail men") from
pharmaceutical houses the way TV viewers rely on news anchorpersons: just
give us the summary. Patent drug companies make money from patented drugs,
not generic vitamins. There is much more money to be made with
Prednisone than with pyridoxine (B-6). Doctors
prescriptions generate patent drug sales without the doctor having to pay a
cent. This well entrenched and profitable system favors itself
politically and in the mass media. The medical lobby is the most
powerful in the land, for the American Medical Association's Political Action
Committee has outspent all others (Raasch and
Cochran, 1994; White, 1994). Whether nutrition disinterest results from
a lack of financial interest, a lack of political clout, or a lack of
inclination, the end product is the same: patients are the losers. My purpose is to
help correct this problem by placing both the facts and the motivation directly
into the reader's hands. From that point, it is up to each person to live
healthfully using all available tools to do so. It is wise to select the less
traveled path when it gets you where you want to go. The first task is
to get people interested in making the journey. You can lead a horse to
water, but you can't make it drink. You can, however, make it want to
drink. Motivation shortens the distance between the pond and the muzzle. Although each of us
must ultimately make our decisions alone, it is our nature to pay attention
to input from others. We appear to have been listening much too closely to
the "vitamins are dangerous, drugs are not" spokespeople. Our
attitude towards health too often seems to resemble a psychology experiment
where white-coated scientific authority figures were able to get subjects to
deliver apparently painful shocks to other human beings simply because they
were told to. If scientific
authority has adequate power, it can accomplish remarkable feats of
repression outside of the laboratory. For example, it took 112 years
after James Lind discovered the citrus fruit cure for scurvy for the British
Board of Trade to require lime juice on their merchant ships (Pauling,
1976). Scurvy is a fatal disease, and countless thousands of sailors
died in the meantime. Linus Pauling appeared before a Senate Subcommittee on
Health in 1975. He gave a carefully referenced and crystal-clear presentation
on the benefits of large doses of vitamins, especially vitamin C (Williams,
1977, chapter 9). After over twenty years, that same Subcommittee has
done nothing with that information. Nutrition can cure us, and ignoring
nutritional research can and has hurt us.
Surgeon James Lind
was right about citrus, and Professor Pauling was right about supplemental
vitamin C. Each of these men published, and were
promptly put on the back burner of the scientific stove. Their work
endures because of its soundness and because it helps people. It is a
big kitchen, however, and louder, larger and shinier pots and pans have
gotten the public's attention, the professions' attention, and the attention
of the press. The first task, therefore, is to show people that they do
in fact have a choice. Since there are so very many choices in life, it
is easy to have missed Dr. Lind's 1753 Treatise on Scurvy and almost as easy
to not have read Dr. Pauling's How to Live Longer and Feel Better
(1986). As a civilization, we've spoken rather a lot and said rather
little; we've written a lot and buried some of what's most useful under the
heap. By strip-mining
libraries, we can produce some very motivating evidence of successful
nutritional cures. Since such an endeavor itself requires motivation, there
is a need to stimulate an individual to action. After years of shamelessly
coercing patients, students, and practicing doctors to hit the books and see
for themselves, I can confidently report that once started, this educational
process is self-sustaining. Thorough knowledge of mega-vitamin nutrition
mixed with our own keen need for personal health improvement is such a
combustible mixture that a single, well placed spark will start a good fire. To help provide
that initial spark, I have written three books that attempt to blend personal
conviction, motivation, and all too seldom seen scientific literature into a
guide for students and patients. This project has evolved
over some 23 years of classroom teaching and private practice as a natural
therapeutics consultant, or naturopath. We think in terms
of the difficulty of educating and motivating someone else to do something
when the really tough task is to do it ourselves. Dr. Albert Schweitzer
said that not only is example the best way to teach, it is the only way. The
issue of motivation comes back to each of us: we may talk the talk, but can
we walk the walk? First, we need to work on ourselves. An old
saying is that the teacher teaches best what she most needs to know. Teaching and
motivation are closely connected. The first rule of teaching is that you
need to get the listeners' attention in order to deliver the goods. A second
rule is you need to get them to both accept and act on their new
knowledge. The third is to monitor progress and make sure they got it
right. (Loeffler, 1986) Rule One is fairly
easy, as health is personally important to everyone, particularly to those
who don't have it. Monitoring effectiveness is simple, too: if they get
better, it worked. If they didn't, try something else. This is a
routine and completely valid approach in medicine, used every day by
physicians everywhere. Rule Two is the
tough one: getting them to act on their knowledge. If Oglethorpe knows full
well that smoking is harmful, how then do you get him to stop? To want to stop?
To even want to want to stop? Facts alone are not enough. Even
our love and concern is inadequate. I have watched many of my relatives
smoke themselves to death, fully informed and fully loved. It is the same
situation with any other health issue, including nutrition. Overweight
people, sedentary people, alcohol drinkers and careless eaters all increase
their risk of disease. This knowledge is as well known as the behaviors are
common. How shall the personal health behaviors of millions of Americans
be changed? A citizenry that holds individual freedoms such as the right to
bear arms so dearly will almost certainly reject any attempt to control their
food choices. I have often witnessed the mere presence of a vegetarian at
dinner causing a form of mental indigestion among others. (I have not only
seen it, I've been the token veggie at many a meal.) To enlighten the
people, a great deal of public mobilization, and money, would normally be
suggested at this juncture. Perhaps an all-out educational campaign
would help. After all, per capita cigarette smoking has decreased ever since
the landmark Surgeon General's Report of 1964 (Ray and Ksir,
1990). Perhaps money would help. Look what that can do for our national
highway system. Still, I think that prodding our government to do it
sounds better than it will play out. Federal endorsement of alternative
medicine and aggressive vitamin therapeutics would likely conflict with far
too many special interest groups to ever get through the House or the Senate. Veterans of World
War I learned that war does not end all wars. Many of us have lived long
enough to be considered veterans of other wars. The War on Poverty
resulted in a demeaning welfare system. The War on Drugs has resulted in
more Americans in prison than any Westernized country. The War on Cancer
has resulted in more hospitals, yet cancer kills half a million Americans
annually. A War on Germs is lost before it is begun, since germs are
everywhere but not all people are sick.
In the Sixties, one
slogan was "What if they gave a war, and nobody
came?" Enough individual actions should add up to peace. Well,
what if each person eats right, exercises, eradicates their bad habits, and
starts taking vitamins? Might our new slogan be: "What if they gave
everybody health insurance, and nobody needed
it?" The result would be nothing less than total national health,
gained one person at a time. Oddly enough, it
may be that we've had trouble seeing the trees because of the forest. Health
care is such an enormous issue that we tend to bite off more than we can
chew. Getting a nation to be healthy is one tall order. To think we can
ever gain national health by refinancing the same old disease model is
ludicrous. Having to respond
to a problem frequently means someone was asleep at the switch who should
have prevented the problem in the first place. Teachers themselves are
taught the importance of being proactive. Well planned lessons and well
established discipline will avoid many a classroom disruption. An
unwritten code of teaching is that if the principal has to come to your room
to quell trouble, you botched it. When police respond to a crime victim,
or when ambulances respond to a heart attack victim, in some way we have
failed to be proactive. An author that
calls for personal action on the part of the reader had better have something
worthy to contribute. I for one will be embarrassed if all the
nutritional advice I can offer to the universe is "eat a balanced
diet." Aliens would be puzzled to see all our hospitals and nursing
homes so full of our loved ones, and yet so barren of natural foods and
supplemental vitamins. We have to motivate and educate for optimal
nutrition today to avoid ending up in those places tomorrow. And we
personally have to do it ourselves, for ourselves. As difficult as it
truly is to change our own personal habits, it remains the only sure method
to gain our own health, and to positively influence another person to do the
same. This project is really about education and motivation in just one
person's health behavior, and that is the individual reader's. In the end,
education may be reduced to an option, and motivation may be reduced to an
offer: there is a way out, and you are free to try it. The Titanic had insufficient lifeboats,
yet many of them were launched when less than half full (Winocour,
1960). There actually was a way out for hundreds more to be saved, but
only for those 1) who knew early that the ship actually was sinking and 2) who
climbed in a boat. Most of those lost never knew their options until it
was too late. Today, Americans
have real health options but are largely unaware of the safety, the
scientific validity, and the real curative power of simple nutrients.
Sometimes it is the most dreadfully ill persons that make the discovery, on
their own, that there is a way off the sinking ship of conventional
drug-and-surgery disease care. Terminal cancer patient Anthony Sattilaro, M.D. is a good example (Monte, 1981; Rehert, 1981), and Ann Wigmore
is another (Wigmore, 1964, 1983). These
individuals recovered after "hopeless" diagnoses. It is regrettable
that so much more often, patients are never informed that they even have
choices such as macrobiotics or wheatgrass, and that these alternatives can
really work. This can and must
change. We must advocate, and personally choose, that less-traveled
route if it will lead us to health. That small lifeboat, no matter how
flimsy it looks, is a better bet than staying on a big, solid, doomed ship. Copyright C 1995, 2004 Andrew W. Saul. Andrew Saul is the author
of the books FIRE YOUR DOCTOR! How to be
Independently Healthy (reader reviews at http://www.doctoryourself.com/review.html
) and DOCTOR YOURSELF: Natural Healing that Works. (reviewed at http://www.doctoryourself.com/saulbooks.html
) For ordering information, Click Here .
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AN IMPORTANT NOTE: This page is not in any way offered as prescription, diagnosis nor treatment for any disease, illness, infirmity or physical condition. Any form of self-treatment or alternative health program necessarily must involve an individual's acceptance of some risk, and no one should assume otherwise. Persons needing medical care should obtain it from a physician. Consult your doctor before making any health decision. Neither the author nor the webmaster has authorized the use of their names or the use of any material contained within in connection with the sale, promotion or advertising of any product or apparatus. Single-copy reproduction for individual, non-commercial use is permitted providing no alterations of content are made, and credit is given. |
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