The time is long overdue in this country for honest discussion about health matters. Each politician is only interested in his own viewpoint, and not in the good and welfare of the entire country. Unfortunately, politics largely determines how diseases have been, and are presently, being treated.  Physicians and scientists have, for the past hundred years, associated exceedingly closely with the drug industry and the federal government. Since the passage of the Federal Food and Drug Act of 1906, disease has been treated mainly by medical intervention, in the form of prescribing drugs, surgery or radiation. Drugs are developed and prescribed for patients, with absolutely no regard for nutritional improvement recommendations. Medicare, Medicaid and drug cards help pay for expensive medicines, but no vitamins, minerals or supplements are ever paid for, except by the patients themselves. The use of nutrition to prevent or treat disease continues to be largely ignored or discouraged.
 
     “I would rather trust my doctor than some unqualified practitioner who doesn’t know what he’s doing! Surely the doctors would use nutrition to treat disease if there was some validity to it,” is the common statement made by people who are unfamiliar with nutritional methods of treating disease. Unfortunately, doctors have not been trained to use nutrition to treat disease.  As long as doctors and their families will die, in the prime of life, of heart attacks, strokes and cancer, I feel that I have much to offer in my Newsletter ISSUES.

     One of our greatest health care problems is insuring the some 40-odd million Americans who are presently without health coverage. This significant percentage, 1 in every 6.5 people, is denied adequate coverage, other than emergency rooms and “poor people’s clinics,” both of which treat the ailment, whereas treating the whole body would be a better way to go. Senior citizens are offered various drug card benefits. Those with cancer, in some cases, can receive reduced prices on expensive drugs.
 
     There is a better way than all of these– teaching the population to avoid illness. Yes, it can be done. The old saying, “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” is certainly true in this case.
How would I propose to teach people to avoid illness? In five steps:
1. Prepare a pamphlet that teaches the ABC Diet plus exercise and distribute it through the mail to every home in the United States.
2. Create television and radio programs that illustrate what food and drinks are healthy and should be used, demonstrating how to prepare them, very much like the food programs on television now.
3. Congress should pass legislation to forbid the payment of U.S.D.A. food stamps for the items on the “A” list (see Issue #2 for a complete list), those items which, although popular, cause physical and mental illnesses when taken into the body. Contact your President, your Congressmen, (or is it Congresspersons?) and Senators.
4. Teach the ABC Diet and exercise in each classroom of every school, providing a teacher’s guide on how to teach the subject.
5. Prepare a physician’s and a clinic pamphlet to teach patients how to follow the ABC Diet and encourage them to do so, in order to prevent future diseases. Pay the health care providers for such instruction, as they are being paid for treating illness now.

     In the long run, by preventing illness, the need for such programs as Medicare, Medicaid and other health care programs can, or will, depending on your co-operation and support, be reduced significantly, providing affordable, universal health coverage and lowering taxes for everyone. May I hear from you?
   If it appears that I was too repetitive in recommending THE ABC DIET + Exercise, I purposely did this, because some, or many, readers will  read only small portions, or only one ISSUE. I had to reach them about the dangers of coffee, tobacco, alcohol, chocolate, sugar and fluorides, no matter how little they chose to read.  Only by changing the dietary lifestyle of my readers can I hope to improve Health Care in the United States and the rest of the world.
 
                                        TRUE OR FALSE

   The following five statements are either true or false. The first five were discussed in ISSUE #3, and the final five are discussed here. Please understand that answers given here are not necessarily the current, politically correct ones; nevertheless, they are conclusions I have reached, slowly, over a thirty-year period. Here are my answers:
 
Statement: “Butter is better.”
   Answer: True. Margarine was developed as a butter substitute during the Second World War when butter was in short supply.  It was supposed to be better than butter, reducing heart disease because it had mono-unsaturated, poly-unsaturated and trans fats, “healthier for the body.” Recently, trans fats have almost entirely been removed, but margarine is still not as healthy as butter, for two reasons:
   Butter can endure a greater heat temperature in frying or baking, before it becomes rancid, simply because it is chemically saturated,; margarine spoils more easily.
   Secondly, butter is Vitamin E-sparing, meaning that butter allows this vitamin to be more potent and remain effective longer in the body before it is broken down, in the process of metabolism.
 
Statement: “Exercise is not necessary.”
   Answer: False.  Unless we exercise the various parts of the body on a regular, daily basis– called “use it or lose it,” the unused parts deteriorate, making it more difficult for them to be flexible later on.  This issue has been devoted to some of the exercises needed for maintaining good health and preventing the body from having stiffness, lower back pain, bone and muscle loss. 
 
Statement: “Incurable diseases are just that– incurable.”
   Answer: False.  It depends upon when the symptoms of these diseases are first detected. While there may be some so-called “incurable diseases” which progress so rapidly that improved nutrition cannot be begun in time to save the patient’s life, the greater majority of diseases do not fall into this category. The decision to use nutrition in addition to medical care should be in the hands of experienced-in-nutrition physicians, who would like to do all they can, to try to prevent the disease from killing the patient.  I firmly believe that it is not a matter of “either-or,” using nutrition, but “in addition to.”  Some diseases require immediate treatment, using drug therapy, while others require long-term, more slow-acting, vitamins, minerals and other supplements that are lacking in the patient’s diet, thus causing the illness.  Most diseases are caused by the combination of genetics with bad nutrition, and only by improving the patient�����s nutritional aspect will symptoms of the disease lessen or disappear.
 
Statement: “Doctors should include nutritional improvement in discussions with their patients.”
   Answer: Absolutely true. Doctors have been in a very difficult position for quite a few years. They are right in the middle of health care insurance organizations, including state and federal governments, and patients who have increased knowledge of alternative treatments dispensed by non-medical sources.  Consequently, their “perks,” larger-than-average income and prestige, have been greatly reduced. Everybody appears “out to get them,” including malpractice lawyers.
So, what’s a doctor to do in order to reverse this potentially-disastrous trend? The simplest answer in the world is “join ‘em.”  A way must be developed to pay doctors for their time and skill in the “total care” of the patient– medical and nutritional treatment. Physicians are the ones vested with the responsibility of “birth-to-death” patient care. They also maintain the patient’s medical records. They should be paid more because of all the extended training in medical care they had been taught, and which they achieved through many years without earning a sufficient income.  Both physicians and scientists should be paid for studying non-drugs– compounds which improve the nutrition– as well. Physicians, especially those who treat the elderly, must be trained to almost automatically prescribe higher strength multiple vitamin and mineral preparations when more than one drug is prescribed, just to keep an even, healthy, playing field.
 
Statement: “Caffeine is more dangerous to the health than tobacco or alcohol.”
   Answer: True.  It is the most addictive substance used on a daily basis, leading many individuals to abuse of other substances such as alcohol, marijuana, cocaine, heroin and morphine derivatives.  In my book, written in 1986, I listed three pages of harmful effects of caffeine in the body.  There is far more danger to using caffeine than keeping people awake at night. Drinking decaffeinated products which don’t cause sleep interruption doesn’t prevent caffeine’s harmful effects in the body.
   Consider the many cases of lung cancer in patients who have never smoked or associated with people who did, but who used caffeine in one or several forms regularly. A former client, who had a recently diagnosed case of A.L.S., completely reversed the disease by eliminating the daily pot of coffee, taking high potency vitamins and minerals, and eating fresh raw foods with every meal.
   My mother, who had arthritis and heart disease, lived almost twenty-five years longer than all other siblings in her family because all caffeine and most of the other negative elements of nutrition were discontinued, high potency vitamins and minerals, other supplements and fresh raw foods were taken with every meal. When the dosage of the vitamin and minerals was  reduced, she needed an anti-coagulant and triple the dose of the heart medicines used to treat atrial fibrillation, until the higher dose vitamin and mineral preparation was restored to the daily regimen. After a month or two, the  blood thinner was discontinued and the heart medicine was reduced by two-thirds again.

    To me, this more than adequately demonstrated the “cause and effect” relationship of nutrition and disease, both qualitatively and quantitatively. Now it’s up to Science and Medicine to examine my ”testimonial evidence” and prove it will work on a large scale.  Anybody out there who would like to help provide the funding?