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Introduction
There are many conditions in Western industrialised societies today that were unheard of, or at least very rare, just a century ago. The same conditions are still unheard of in primitive peoples who do not have the 'benefits' of our knowledge. There is a very good reason for this: They eat what Nature intended; we don't. The diseases caused by our incorrect and unnatural diets are those featured on these pages.
Dietary causes:
'Healthy', high-carb, low-fat diet.In 1999 I stayed for three months in New Zealand. While there I met the cousin of a friend in my home village. NL was in her seventies, overweight and diabetic. I suggested that for both conditions she should adopt a low-carb, high fat diet. And I managed to convince her of its benefits. Several months later, she wrote to tell me of her progress. Not only had she lost weight, she no longer needed her diabetes medication. But more than this, she wrote 'I had been to my ophthalmologist for a variety of tests ... First major surprise — the pressure behind my eyes which had for many years been border-line glaucoma, had reduced — excellent result.'
I met NL three years later when she visited England in 2002. Her glaucoma was completely cured without any other intervention.
Affecting around 2% of the population, glaucoma, which involves deterioration of the optic nerve, is the second most common cause of blindness in the UK and the USA.
For years, we were told that glaucoma results from fluid-pressure build up in the eye that causes the optic nerve to deteriorate. This theory was based on an incorrect medical model — and, not surprisingly, it was found to be wrong.
Now, the experts have given birth to a new theory. According to it, glaucoma is the result of insufficient blood flow due to agglutination (clumping together) of the red blood cells and waste build up in the cells and intercellular fluids. These blood-corpuscle clusters cannot squeeze through the extremely tiny capillaries in the back of the eye and so they block them, preventing the eyes from getting the nutrients they need. As glaucoma is more prevalent in diabetics, this makes a lot more sense and, as it is high levels of glucose in the bloodstream that causes blood to become 'sticky', it should be no surprise that a low-carb diet helps both to treat the condition and prevent it occurring in the first place.
Harvard University conducted a study of antioxidant use in glaucoma, but found no benefit. However, there was a small benefit from lutein and zeaxanthin. Eggs are good sources of both. Another snippet of evidence that 'healthy' diet advice may be a cause.
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