In the state of California, actuarial calculations show that average life expectancy
for females would be 100 if only one certain disease were eliminated—heart disease,
which is entirely preventable through diet and lifestyle. Consider how much longer
we might live by eliminating two or more diseases. Perhaps we have forgotten that
health is our natural state. We blindly accept our average life span of seventy-six
years; we accept that we will succumb to chronic and degenerative diseases. Imagining entire populations who have lived far longer and healthier lives than we
do seems inconceivable. People who rarely, if ever, suffered from any disease,
including colds, allergies, flu or even fatigue. How were these people able to do
that? Their nutrition was of high quality, their toxic exposure was minimal, they
enjoyed psychological well-being and they were quite physically active. Their
everyday lifestyles, to a large degree, met all the factors necessary to support the six
pathways toward health. Let us learn from these people. The Remarkable Hunzas
In a remote valley of the Himalayas, in what is now northeastern Pakistan, live the
people of Hunza, who were renowned for their near-perfect health, robust energy and
extraordinary longevity. Though they lived under what we would consider primitive
conditions, they regularly lived into their hundreds, and often lived to be 120 to 140
years old. Their culture was not plagued with cancer, heart disease, ulcers, diabetes,
allergies, kidney and liver disease, arthritis, asthma, hypoglycemia, mental
disorders, colds, flu, tooth decay or any of the other diseases so common in our
society. Nor did they suffer from depression; several researchers described them as,
“the happiest people in the world.” The Hunzas had clear minds, high intelligence,
excellent memories, and enormous physical strength and stamina. Many researchers went to Hunza in the early twentieth century—long before
many of the advances of modern medicine— to study and write about these
phenomenally healthy people. Sir Robert McCarrison, M.D., a prominent British
physician, spent seven years living and doing research among the Hunzas, and he
first brought the health of the Hunza people to world attention. In November 1921,
Dr. McCarrison presented the results of his research at a meeting of the Society for
Biological Research held at the University of Pittsburgh. He described the Hunzas
as, “a race unsurpassed in perfection of physique and in freedom from diseases in
general . . .” He found that chronic diseases, including cancer, were totally unknown. (Cancer was unknown among these extraordinarily long-lived people, yet we are told
that cancer is a disease of aging.) Another researcher, J. I. Rodale, in his book, 
The Healthy Hunzas, 
reported that,
“Colds are non-existent in Hunza.” He said it was not unusual to see men walking
through snowdrifts in the coldest weather, barechested and barefoot. He observed
one Hunza man travel sixty miles in a single day, by foot in mountainous terrain,
arriving back as if he had returned from a casual walk. Hunza women did not suffer
menstrual pain or any of the other female complaints of our society. In Hunza,
people typically died of old age in their sleep, without experiencing the chronic
suffering that usually precedes death in our own society. The story of the Hunzas
shows the potential for human health—how healthy human beings can perform. As part of their leisure activities, the men of Hunza (from teenage to 120 years
old) performed vigorous, physically demanding folk dances. In his book 
Hunza,
Hoffman described men in their seventies and eighties gliding through the air with
the same grace and ease as those in their teens and twenties. Hoffman wrote: “The
stamina of the people is beyond words. In fact men over a hundred years of age were
observed going up these mountainsides just as though they were men of fifty. It is
my belief that many American men of fifty years of age could not keep up with these
Hunza men.”
What was it that allowed the Hunzas to achieve this amazing level of health? You
probably already know the answer: a combination of a nutritious diet, toxin-free
environment, exercise, sleep, sunshine, fresh air and low-stress lifestyle. Given only
two causes of disease—deficiency and toxicity—let us examine how the Hunzas
kept their cells adequately supplied with nutrients and free of toxins, thus realizing
optimal health and longevity. While we cannot replicate their lifestyle, we can see
how far our own lifestyles fall short of these goals, and we can begin to understand
how to make the kinds of changes that will bring us closer to our potential. An Optimal Diet and Lifestyle
The Hunza diet was highly nutritious, consisting mainly of vegetarian foods
grown in nutrient-rich soil. They irrigated their fields with mineral-rich water and
composted all of their organic matter (leaves, straw, manure, etc. ), to produce soils
of the highest quality. Contrast their mineral-rich soils to U.S. soils which are
depleted due to modern chemical farming. It doesn’t take a degree in agricultural
science to know that if minerals are not in the soil, they do not get into the plant, and
then they don’t get into you. In addition to fresh vegetables and fruits, the Hunzas
ate whole grains that were exceptionally high in nutrients as opposed to the refined
sugars and nutrient-depleted white flour that’s so prevalent in our diet. Only about
10 percent of the Hunza’s calories came from fat, as opposed to about 37 percent in
the American diet. Eighty percent of their foods were eaten fresh and raw. Inaddition to being high in nutrition, their diet was low in toxins, meaning that their
foods didn’t contain any cancer-causing compounds that come from exposures to
pesticides, herbicides, fungicides and other agricultural chemicals. Along with
getting plenty of exercise by working the land and walking everywhere, the Hunzas
also got adequate sleep. Since there was no artificial lighting in their village, they
went to bed when it got dark and they woke up at daybreak, regardless of the time of
the year. So what are we to take from the Hunza’s habits? Should we quit our sedentary
jobs and take up organic farming? Should we shun all supermarket foods and hide
our head under the covers at sunset? While these options are surely not realistic, you
can make some practical and positive changes in your lifestyle and this book will
show you how. While you don’t have to avoid supermarkets altogether, you can
learn how to avoid filling your cart with the most toxic foods in the grocery aisles
(some of which you might wrongly assume are “healthy” for you!) and paying good
money for food that is actually killing you. You can learn how to prepare your foods
in ways that don’t rob them of their nutrients and how to avoid cooking your foods
by methods that compromise your health. You can become aware of what toxic
chemicals are lurking in your environment in everyday products and choose healthy
alternatives instead. You can see how making a few simple changes in your sleeping
habits will restore your body’s natural rhythms and allow your body ample time to
rejuvenate. You can make informed decisions about which medical treatments you
need, and which are actually hurting your health. So, you see, you don’t have to
move to the Andes Mountains to find health; you can live a long and healthy life in
your own town. And what, you may wonder, would happen to these mighty Hunzas if they lived in
your town—with a fast food restaurant on every corner? The results shouldn’t
surprise you. The Hunzas were geographically isolated from the outside world. The
one treacherous road into the Hunza Valley was closed nine months of the year
because of the weather, and the road was not all that inviting during the remaining
three months. This isolation allowed the Hunzas to live in their traditional,
customary, and close-knit familial and social groups, almost up until the present
day. Had the Hunza Valley been more accessible, modern culture would have
intruded and damaged the health of this population sooner than it did, and we would
have lost our opportunity to learn from them. Eventually, modern foods were
introduced into the Hunzas’ lives when the first all-weather road was built through
the mountain passes and into their valley in the 1970s, making this area more
accessible to “civilization.” “Civilized foods,” such as white sugar, white flour,
white rice, cola drinks, coffee, processed oils and alcohol were introduced. Fresh,
homegrown, whole foods were replaced with the processed and toxic foods that
make up much of the diet we eat today. This exposure to modern culture hadtremendously detrimental health effects on the Hunza population. What is especially notable is how rapidly a modern diet will cause health to
decline. Researchers have noted that health begins to deteriorate within six months
of introducing modern diets into populations previously eating only their traditional
foods. The Hunzas were an incredibly healthy population just a few decades ago. Today, they face increasing levels of chronic disease—just like the rest of the
“civilized” world. However, because of their prior isolation, the Hunzas provided a
perfect control group—an ideal people for the study and measurement of the
potential for human health. If the Hunzas had been the only extraordinarily healthy people in the world, we
might dismiss their health as an aberration. However, numerous other examples of
long-lived and healthy populations are available, including people living in
mountainous areas of Bulgaria and Hungary, the island of Crete, the lake district of
Titicaca in Peru, the Vilcabamba Valley in Ecuador, and the Caucasus region of
Russia. They all have a similar story. They eat high-quality, nutritious foods. They
get a lot of exercise and plenty of fresh air, sleep and sunshine. They live a life of
low stress in communities that emphasize family and human relationships. As a
result, they enjoy a level of health and quality of life that we can barely imagine. Unsanitary Conditions, but Healthy People
In another region of Ecuador, we find another story of superior resiliency and
longevity: the Indians of the mountainous region of Cuenca. In his book, 
How to
Survive Modern Technology, 
Charles McGee, M.D., reports experiences he had as a
Project Hope physician in this region, starting in 1965. McGee had awesome tales to
tell about the resilience of these people, who ate excellent diets and lived low-stress
lifestyles. Otherwise, however, their living conditions were what we would consider
primitive. These Indians usually walked around barefoot and lived in one-room, dirt-
floored houses that had no glass in the windows. They had extremely poor sanitary
conditions, no running water, no toilet facilities, and their animals wandered
haphazardly in and out of their living spaces. As a result of these filthy conditions
and a contaminated water supply, infant mortality was very high from bacterial and
parasitic infections. (Infants are more susceptible to infections because their
immune systems are not yet fully developed.) Examinations of the local children
showed that 95 percent had intestinal parasites. Given the above, one would certainly expect these Indians to be sickly and weak. To the contrary, McGee found them to have perfect teeth, extremely high resistance
to infections and amazing resistance to physical trauma resulting from accidents. He
described incidents where he treated a man with a ruptured bladder (from a bus
accident) and a woman with a ruptured uterus (from childbirth). McGee said that,
considering the severity of the damage and the quality of the medical facilities,neither of these people “should have” survived. These people not only survived, they
walked home to their mountain villages after treatment at McGee’s hospital. Yes, by
our standards, they should not have survived; however, our standards are
substandard. Our assumptions about the capabilities of the human body are significantly
underestimated. The good nutrition of these people contributed to their cellular
health, which allowed them to recover from severe injuries that would have probably
killed the typical American. Likewise, absent in these Indians were the typical
American diseases, such as heart disease, cancer, diabetes, allergies, asthma, senility
and mental illness. Also compelling is that in one year of doing surgery, under very
basic and unsanitary conditions, McGee observed only one postoperative infection;
in modern, technologically advanced hospitals, infections are bewilderingly
rampant. In fact, many people in our society are afraid of hospitals for this exact
reason. The resistance to disease of these Indians, under exceptionally challenging
conditions, was truly amazing. Germs and parasites are everywhere, and we have been living with them for
millennia. Despite the presence of intestinal parasites in most of the Cuenca, few of
them ever became sick from them. Only since the germ theory, and the discovery of
microscopic organisms, has medicine focused so obsessively on isolating and killing
germs. Medicine has developed few or no protocols for promoting basic human
health and immunity, yet promoting health is the only thing that consistently works,
as we can see from these healthy populations. The Cuenca had virtually none of the
diseases that are so common among us. Why? Because they were fundamentally
healthy—that is, they had healthy cells. McGee contrasted their superior health to the poor health of the population of a
nearby city, where toxic junk foods like sugar, white flour, soda pop and white rice
had been available for several years. In this city, not surprisingly, heart attacks,
diabetes and other chronic diseases had begun to appear. Modern “Progress”—
Toward Deterioration
Having seen how healthy people are capable of performing, living long lives free
of disease and enjoying boundless energy, why, with all of our technology, are we
doing so poorly by comparison? The many changes we have made in modern society
have taken us away from the factors that enhance health and created new conditions
that damage health. Never before, in all of human history, have so many health-
related factors changed so rapidly and so completely. The basic nutritional,
environmental and behavioral dimensions of our society have been severely andrapidly altered. Since the Industrial Revolution, and especially during the past
century, humanity has:
• Completely changed its diet. • Created a new environment. • Developed new patterns of behavior and lifestyle. Granted, in this millennium, most of us simply cannot grow our own food and
harvest it when ripe, walk to our destinations, or totally avoid the stresses of modern
industrial society. However, in recognizing what contributed to the health of
traditionally healthy people, combined with an understanding of the significant
changes we have made to our own environments and lifestyles, we can begin to see
how we must compensate. We need to learn how to create healthy habits for living
within our modern ways of life. Our way of life is completely different from the lives of even a century ago. From
a personal standpoint, these changes have been made too slowly for us to notice, but
from an evolutionary standpoint, they have come rapidly— much too rapidly for
healthy adaptation by our bodies and minds. The Web of Life
Choosing health would be easy if only one factor were involved. However, no one
factor determines our health. Rather, our state of health is the end result of countless
biological and behavioral interrelationships called the “web of life.” Unwittingly, we
have been busy pulling this web apart, through the fundamental changes we have
made in our diet, our environment and our behavior. Everything relates to everything
else; making a change in one part of the web affects the rest of it. We are learning that life support systems are more interdependent and delicately
balanced than we ever realized. No one fully understands how it all works. The web
is as big and complex as the planet itself, and as some scientists suggest, as big as
the universe. But the fact that we do not understand it thoroughly certainly should
not prevent us from using what we do know for protecting and supporting our health
right now. Acting on our knowledge of the factors described in the chapters about the six
pathways can take us beyond “health” as we have come to accept it. We have seen
traditionally healthy people such as the Hunzas achieve a potential for human health
that is truly awesome, but to achieve a high level of health in our society requires
knowledge, commitment and a willingness to try new things. It can be done. While
none of us can or probably want to revert to living a primitive lifestyle, we can, with
a few changes in diet and lifestyle, improve our health and quality of life.3
T
HE
 N
EW 
T
HEROY 
OF
 H
EALTH AND 
D
ISEASE
“The most basic weapons in the fight against disease are the
most ignored by modern medicine: 
the numerous nutrients the
cells of our bodies need. If our body cells are ailing—as they
must be in disease—the chances are excellent that it is because
they are being inadequately provisioned.”
Roger J. Williams, Ph.D. Nutrition Against Disease
M
odern medicine believes that thousands of diseases exist, each with different
causes and treatments. This belief has led to a system of medicine so complex and
baffling that physicians resort to protocols that merely suppress symptoms. By
suppressing symptoms rather than addressing causes, diseases remain chronic. In
this chapter, you will learn a new approach. This new theory of health and disease is
a model that recognizes not thousands of diseases but only one disease, along with
only two causes of disease. This simple model of disease is so powerful that it can
enable you to go beyond health as you have experienced it and never be sick again. One Disease—Two Causes— 
Six Pathways
A real understanding of the relationship between health and disease cannot be
achieved through knowledge of germs, inherited genes, medicines, surgery, or any of
the many “diseases” that make people sick. Keeping up with these subjects is
complex and doesn’t really help people to take care of themselves. What we need
right now are solutions for good health. The time is ripe to simplify: Understand
what your cells need, how they work and what causes them to malfunction. Your
cells are what make your life possible. There is only one disease: 
malfunctioning cells. When cells malfunction, the body is no longer able to maintain homeostasis
(balance) by regulating and repairing itself. This is the essence of disease, no matter
what you call it or how it happens. Because only one disease exists, all we need to do
is prevent the causes of that one disease. There are only two causes of disease:
deficiency 
and 
toxicity. All you have to do for health is to give your cells what they need and protect them
from what they don’t need. Cells malfunction only if they suffer from a lack of
nutrients (deficiency), toxic damage (toxicity) or a combination of both. Preventingthese two causes of disease is made possible by our ability to choose how we live
our lives. Health depends on the choices we make. These choices fall into six
categories, or pathways. There are six pathways between health and disease:
nutrition, toxin, psychological, physical, 
genetic 
and 
medical. The body knows how to take care of itself, provided it has what it needs to do so. Good choices along the six pathways provide for the needs of your body just as
sunshine, water and rich soil provide for the needs of a houseplant. These concepts
are not complicated; in fact they are incredibly simple. We just become lost along
the way sometimes because we don’t have a sound theory of health and disease. Well, now we do: one disease, two causes, six pathways. Applying this theory can
restore balance to your cells and support your cells’ natural ability to self-regulate
and repair damage. Along each of the six pathways, I teach you in this book how to
prevent the two causes of disease. Using this knowledge, you can restore health and
prevent future sickness. The Need to Simplify
At the time of my illness, despite my scientific education and background, I
probably knew as much, or as little, about disease as most people. I thought that
disease was something that came from germs and from genetic predisposition. I
thought disease was something that happened to the unlucky, the starving, or to
those who really abused themselves, such as alcoholics and drug addicts. My
physician said that my problems were the result of aging, as opposed to something
that I had unknowingly chosen and could choose to reverse. During my recovery process, I realized that I would have been able to prevent my
illness if I had understood the causes of disease. I realized that as long as disease
remained something mysterious, complicated and difficult to understand, then only
the high priests of medicine—the educated experts we call doctors—would be able
to deal with it. What if we could all understand what causes disease? Wouldn’t we
be empowered to prevent disease? Can we actually do that? Can we distill simple
truth from this complex mystery? Throughout man’s history, great advancements in
science have often come from people who were able to take extraordinarily complex
subjects and simplify them. In this chapter we are trying to simplify the concepts of
health and disease.Simplifying Disease
Consider this: Rather than thousands of diseases, there is only one disease. Does
this sound ridiculous? Probably, but that is because we are conditioned to think of
many different diseases, rather than recognizing what is common to all disease. The
most difficult aspect of this theory is that it requires you to look at health and
disease in a completely different way. Using the concept of one disease dramatically
simplifies how we perceive disease in general. To simplify disease, we must first have an understanding of what disease is. In
order to do that, we need a basic understanding of 
cells. Every plant and animal on
earth is made of cells—the smallest unit of life. Fossil records show that the earliest
forms of life were single-celled organisms. Likewise, each human being started as
one cell—a single cell encoded with all of the information needed to develop into
the vastly complex, multitrillion-celled organisms that we are today. Each of us is made of about seventy-five trillion cells. Not all of these cells are
the same. Humans have over 200 different types of cells (nerve cells, blood cells,
muscle cells, bone cells, etc. ), forming many different types of tissues that enable us
to eat, breathe, feel, move, think and reproduce. Together, cells combine to form the
building blocks of biological structure and function. All of these cells communicate
with each other and rely on these communications in order to keep us alive and well. Healthy cells make healthy tissues, which are highly resistant to disease and
physical injury. Unhealthy cells create unhealthy tissues, which are quite susceptible
to both disease and injury. What Is Disease? Each cell must perform specific tasks in order to collaborate effectively with
other cells in the body. If all of your cells are healthy, these tasks are well executed
and the body functions at optimal levels. If all of your cells are healthy, you cannot
be sick. If, for any reason, a cell starts to malfunction, it is less able to perform its
assigned tasks, which is where problems can begin. When such malfunction occurs
in a large enough number of cells to impair the body’s ability to self-repair and self-
regulate, disease occurs. The scientific term for a cell that is malfunctioning is 
cytopathy 
(
cyto 
referring to
cell, and 
pathy 
to sickness or disease). As fantastically complex as we humans are,
the fundamental concept of disease is simple. Disease is the result of a large number
of malfunctioning cells (widespread cytopathy). This definition is not fancy or
eloquent; it may even seem absurdly simple. However, it is a profound, precise and
irrefutable definition of disease. This definition is so simple that no one—scientist,
physician or layperson—can deny it. This definition provides the unifying theory of
health and disease that the modern medical establishment lacks, which is the reasonthat modern medicine is unable to address the current epidemic of chronic disease. Perhaps you are thinking, “But wait! Disease is much more complex than that! What about genetic predisposition? What about bacterial and viral infection? What
about cancer? What about AIDS? What about . . . ?” True, many factors may
conspire in contributing to the malfunction of our cells and the many different ways
in which they can malfunction. In the end, though, cellular malfunction creates the
measurable abnormalities that we call disease. Therefore, no matter which cells
malfunction, or why they malfunction, 
the malfunction is the one disease. A person cannot be sick unless a large number of cells are malfunctioning. The
first steps on the path to disease are taken when, for whatever reason, a single cell
begins to malfunction, and then another cell and another. When the number grows
large enough, we may begin to notice. We may “feel sick” along the way, perhaps
experiencing a pain here, a discomfort there or a lack of energy. By the time your
health has deteriorated into a diagnosable chronic disease, no cell may be left in
your body that is still functioning optimally. I am astounded when people describe
their health problems and then claim that, “other than this,” they are in excellent
health! Unfortunately, modern medicine finds itself mired in complexity, confronted with
numerous diseases, diagnoses and treatments. Lost in the midst of thousands of
different diseases (each supposedly with its own unique causes), physicians are
unable to effectively diminish disease in our society. A simpler and more effective
solution is to focus on the process—the one disease—and to ask what causes it. When you understand disease as a process, rather than a “thing” to be cut out or
suppressed, then you see why surgery and drugs, virtually the only tools of the
physician, are limited in what they can do. The Two Causes of Disease
Cellular malfunction is the essence of disease. But why does it happen? Cells can
malfunction in a multitude of ways, and the biochemistry of these malfunctions can
be exceedingly complex. All malfunctions can be reduced to two causes: 
deficiency
and 
toxicity. Deficiency 
means that cells are lacking something that they need in
order to function the way they are designed to function. Toxicity 
means that cells are
poisoned by something that inhibits proper function. Either one of these factors—
and usually a combination of both—can and will cause disease. One of the great scientific minds of the twentieth century, biochemist Dr. Roger
Williams, wrote, “Body cells in general die for two reasons: First, because they do
not get everything they need; second, because they get poisoned by something they
decidedly do not need.” Humans can live long and healthy lives if we do two things
right: provide our cells with all of the nutrients they need and protect our cells from
toxins. To the extent that we can accomplish these tasks well, we can significantlyextend the length and the quality of our lives. In the real world, these two tasks are
never accomplished perfectly. As a result, cells suffer, we age, the quality of life is
diminished and we die. The variable in this sequence is how fast we allow this to
happen. What about other causes of disease, such as genetic inheritance and infections by
microorganisms? Yes, genes and germs trigger cellular malfunction, but they do so
by causing deficiencies or toxicities, which are always the common denominators of
disease. Eliminate these factors and you eliminate disease. For example, consider
diseases with a genetic basis, such as ALD (adrenoleukodystrophy), the genetic
disease featured in the movie 
Lorenzo’s Oil. People with ALD develop abnormally
high levels of very long-chain fatty acids, which are molecules that are natural to the
body. These fatty acids can build up to levels that are toxic to cells. This 
toxicity 
is
the result of a genetically caused 
deficiency 
of special protein molecules that keep
these fatty acid levels within normal limits. Lorenzo’s parents compensated for the
genetic deficiency by supplementing their son’s diet with a combination of oils that
helped to lower the level of the offending fatty acids, thereby reducing the toxic
effect on his body. What caused Lorenzo’s disease? Was it genetics? Yes, but for his
disease to manifest, his cells had to be deficient and toxic. Deficiency and toxicity
are always the common denominators of all disease. The same is true of infections
from microorganisms. Anthrax, for example, makes us sick and kills by producing
toxins. Without deficiency and toxicity causing cells to malfunction, there is no
disease. What about stress? Hasn’t that been proven to cause disease? True, stress is a
major factor that contributes to disease. Chronic stress results in an excessive
buildup of natural chemicals in the body, which at higher levels become toxic. In
addition, stress depletes the body of certain nutrients, resulting in deficiency. Stress
is a contributor to disease, but only by expressing itself through the common
denominators of all disease: deficiency and toxicity. Deficiency and toxicity, regardless of their cause, increasingly compromise the
functioning of cells, making a person steadily more vulnerable to developing a
diagnosable disease. By the time you contract a diagnosable disease (whether we’re
talking about the common cold, allergies, cancer or heart disease), you have
probably been “sick” for a long time. You have suffered enough cellular damage
from deficiency and toxicity that cells throughout your body are malfunctioning. You 
are 
sick long before you 
get 
sick. By the time symptoms are produced, cellular
malfunction has become widespread, cell-to-cell communications have been
disrupted and the systemic manifestations are the symptoms. Remember that disease
does not just randomly happen, like a meteorite falling out of the sky. Health, not
disease, is the natural state of human existence, but forgetting this point is easy
when we see all the disease around us.Symptoms Versus the One Disease
Our society’s current understanding of disease is based on the concept of
symptomology. Symptomology 
is about focusing on, identifying and categorizing
symptoms—in other words, the effects produced by disease. In this manner, doctors
supposedly can differentiate one disease from another. Because the entirety of
modern medicine and everything we have ever learned about disease is based on
symptomology, the concept of only one disease may seem unacceptably simplistic. Actually the symptomology concept is the flawed one. Symptomology is based on a fundamental misconception, one held by virtually all
medical establishments in Western society. The misconception is that thousands of
different diseases exist, each with different symptoms, causes and treatments. This
misconception stems from the many different ways that cells can malfunction, and
therefore the thousands of different symptoms that can be produced. The modern
medical treatment of almost all disease focuses on the management of these
symptoms (the effects of disease), rather than eliminating the causes, which are
deficiency and toxicity. People are told to take insulin to manage their blood sugar
rather than eliminating their diabetes, or to take diuretics to treat their hypertension
rather than normalizing their blood pressure. They are told to have a bypass
operation rather than reversing their heart disease or to undergo chemotherapy rather
than healing their cancer. Diagnosis by symptoms is the process by which modern medicine gives each
collection of symptoms a particular name. Medicine views symptoms as enemies,
and physicians are trained to eliminate them, even if that means aggressively
assaulting the body with dangerous toxins, radiation or invasive surgery. Symptomology leads the medical profession to look at symptoms individually,
organize them into thousands of categories, label them as different diseases and then
prescribe a currently accepted protocol to suppress those symptoms. This approach
adds needless complexity, creates massive confusion and results in an inability to
deal with disease in a meaningful way. In truth, each collection of symptoms—each specific “disease”—is just a different
expression of malfunctioning cells. However, with all of our different types of cells,
and all of the different ways in which each cell can malfunction, the number of
possible combinations of symptoms becomes vast. In other words, when cells
malfunction, we may feel sick in many different ways. Cells that are malfunctioning because of a vitamin C deficiency exhibit different
symptoms than those malfunctioning because of a zinc deficiency. Cells
malfunctioning because of lead toxicity exhibit different symptoms from those
malfunctioning because of mercury toxicity. Various combinations of deficiencies
and toxicities produce a myriad of complex symptoms (thousands of “diseases”), but
the symptoms are not relevant. To solve any problem, you have to address thecauses, not the symptoms. Modern medicine, by placing the focus on symptoms, has yet to develop any
theory regarding the relationship between health and disease. Medicine looks at
these as if they are two different states, while health and disease are really different
sides of the same coin in a constantly shifting continuum. Lacking a practical theory,
physicians have no framework in which to understand health or how to help patients
achieve it, like being lost in a vast jungle without a map or compass. Narrowly
trained, our physicians are taught the art of surgery and the administration of drugs
as tools to manage symptoms. If the only tool you have is a hammer, so the saying
goes, then every problem looks like a nail. If you go to a conventionally trained
physician, then medicine’s “hammers”—surgery and drugs—are what you receive. Unfortunately, these tools are designed to manage and suppress symptoms, not to
cure disease. For a more meaningful understanding of disease (cellular malfunction), we must
consider the health of our cells. Remember that noticeable health problems begin
when a large number of cells malfunction. As this happens, important cellular
chemicals are not produced, cell-to-cell communications become garbled and the
body ceases to regulate itself properly. Our tissues suffer and noticeable symptoms
appear, e.g., allergies, fatigue, aches and pains, colds, flu, depression, anxiety,
cancer or any of thousands of other complaints. Categorizing and suppressing the symptoms of malfunctioning cells does not fix
the problem. This approach cannot explain why the problem occurred in the first
place, cannot prevent the problem from happening again and cannot prevent it from
appearing elsewhere in the body. The only “cure” is to restore our cells and tissues
to health. What Is Health? Everybody thinks they know what health is, but people asked to define it give you
many different answers. In order to define health, perhaps we first should provide
the definition of health used in modern medicine: “Health is the absence of disease.”
This medical school lesson is not a very good definition. For medicine to recognize
disease, it must be diagnosable. You are not sick until the day the physician can
diagnose something. The absence of diagnosable disease is not a good working
definition of health. Modern medicine has no way of recognizing or diagnosing
disease when your health is in its initial decline. When I was sick and already
experiencing disturbing symptoms, my physician pronounced me in excellent health. He had never been taught how to notice and measure my already extensive decline in
health. We are considered sick only after the problem has become serious enough to
produce symptoms that fit neatly into one of medicine’s disease categories. This
way of looking at health is not helpful, productive or self-empowering. Health ismuch more than the absence of a diagnosable disease. When your cells are functioning as they should, you have ample adaptive capacity
to thrive in our constantly changing environment without ill effects. With properly
functioning cells, you have strong resilience to various kinds of stress— physical,
chemical, biological and emotional. You have the ability to make daily repairs to
your cells, the ability to build healthy new ones, and the ability to efficiently remove
pathogenic microorganisms and toxins from your body. You become an optimally
balanced organism, with integrated mental and physical equilibrium. Perhaps most
important is that achieving good cellular health gives our society the ability to
produce healthy offspring. While the above descriptions explain the practical effects of health, they still do
not offer a single, concrete definition of health. In order to clearly define health, as a
concept concrete enough to be understood and discussed, let us work with the
following definition:
Health is the state wherein all cells 
are functioning optimally. Never are all of our cells functioning perfectly, so the challenge is to keep cellular
malfunction to a minimum. Even in healthy people, cells are constantly being
damaged, dying and being replaced. Our bodies produce more than 10 million new
cells every second, as we constantly rebuild our tissues. How healthy are each of
these new cells? If we replace sick cells with sick cells, we will never recover. As
cells die off are we replacing them with healthy cells or sick cells? Who Succumbs to Disease? Only sick people become sick. Once you start to compromise health, a cascade of
events follow. Once a critical number of cells begin to malfunction, internal
communications and self-regulation systems become debilitated and destabilized. As the number of compromised cells increases, the effects are compounded. Before
anyone can exhibit noticeable signs of disease, normal cell function has to be
compromised significantly throughout the body. Vulnerability to infections, for
example, is created by widespread cellular malfunction. An infection indicates that
cellular malfunction already has weakened the immune system. Having a cold or the
flu is an alarm screaming at you that all is not well, because healthy people resist
infections in the first place. Few of us pay attention to these alarms. We think that
having a cold or the flu is normal, and that once the symptoms are gone we are well
again. Not so. The level of your health and immunity determines whether or not the presence of
a microorganism results in an infection. You are already sick before you come down
with an infection. Otherwise everybody who is exposed to a given “bug” wouldbecome sick, which is not the case. Contrary to the common notion that we “catch”
diseases, people become sick only after their cellular health is already compromised. Disease (cellular malfunction) comes first; active infections and chronic problems
follow. The skeptic says, “But he was born with asthma and suffered from it as an infant.”
“She was in the best of health, took great care of herself, and then suddenly got
breast cancer.” Although we hear these kinds of statements frequently, the notion is
flawed that a person is a powerless victim of disease. This way of looking at events
comes from living in a society that does not have an accurate understanding of
disease, or of what is required to create and maintain health. Think of the historically healthy societies, such as the Hunzas. These people
implicitly understood what they needed to maintain their health. They lived far
longer than we do, without the chronic degenerative diseases from which we suffer. The principles of good health were built into their beliefs and lifestyles. The key
lesson to be learned from these people is this:
Healthy people do not get sick. Most of us have not learned to think this way. We grow up in a society where
almost everyone has a chronic disease. We have been taught, through experience,
that disease is a “normal” part of the aging process. Diseased people are typically
seen as the helpless victims of an inevitable and “natural” process. Especially when
the symptoms of disease develop suddenly, people feel surprised and victimized. Yet, the two causes were there all the time, gradually wearing down cellular
competence and creating an opportunity for disease to “strike.”
As part of the body’s normal maintenance and repair process, old cells are
constantly being replaced with new ones. If new cells are not built with proper raw
materials, they will be unhealthy and weak. Such cells are unable to perform their
normal tasks, including routine repairs, and will be vulnerable to sickness and
injury. Ultimately, the body’s self-regulation systems will break down. Because of
the poor diets and the toxic environment in our society, cells are often deficient and
toxic when first created, becoming progressively more so over time. This situation is
precarious, with a large number of cells either malfunctioning or functioning at a
borderline level. Similar to walking a tightrope, falling off is easy. Any number of
stressful factors can affect a person adversely who is already deficient and toxic, be
it a stressful event, a pathogenic organism, a night out on the town, a physical injury
or even a lengthy airplane flight. Almost any challenge to a compromised system
can be the straw that breaks the overburdened camel’s back. Though painful to acknowledge, disease sufferers invariably (if unknowingly)
have made poor choices leading to illness. In the case of sick children, the parents
have made the poor choices.We are not taught that we have the ability to and, in fact, need to consistently
make meaningful choices about our health. Instead, when we become sick we look to
something outside of ourselves to explain our “misfortune.” We look for some
obvious circumstance that can explain why we are sick. Do these excuses sound
familiar? “I walked outside in the cold air and . . .” or “So and so was coughing and
sneezing near me at work and . . .” or “Everybody at little Ricky’s school is sick, it’s
no wonder that . . .” or “Obesity runs in my family . . .” We are accustomed to ill
health as something that mysteriously lands on us. We fail to see our own role
regarding its development. When invited to consider illness as the result of our poor
choices, usually we reject such a notion. By placing the blame for sickness on
excuses, we relieve ourselves of responsibility. However, accepting responsibility for our health can be enormously empowering. The overall competence of cells— determined by relative levels of deficiency and
toxicity—are the sole determinants of health. Learn how to embrace health and
avoid illness by educating yourself in how to make healthful choices that lower your
levels of deficiency and toxicity and promote your cellular health. In Which Direction Is Your Health Moving? Some of the time we are sick, and most of the time we are well. This variability in
our individual health is almost exclusively the result of the choices we make. In this
fluctuation, sickness is not the absolute opposite of health. Health and sickness are
not fixed concepts and they cannot be defined in black-and-white terms. Instead,
consider your health as a constantly changing continuum. Consider the balance
between sickness and health as a scale, with optimal health at one end, and death at
the other. Somewhere in between is a diagnosable disease. As life progresses, your
position on the scale shifts, moving back and forth all the time. At any time, it is
worthwhile to ask: Where am I on this scale? In which direction on this scale am I
moving? The Health and Performance Scale shown on the next page is simple but effective,
serving to illustrate the relationship between sickness and health. In considering this
diagram, remember our definitions of health and disease. Optimal health (on the far
right) is that theoretical state in which every cell is functioning optimally and you
are absolutely as healthy as your genetic capacity allows. This condition is called
homeostasis
—when the body is perfectly in balance and continually is fine-tuning
itself to maintain that balance. Very few Americans are at this end of the scale, but
we should strive toward this goal. Between optimal health and death is diagnosable
disease. In this state, cellular malfunction is occurring on such a large scale that the
symptoms of a medically defined disease are produced. On the far left of the scale is
death—where all cells have ceased to function.The Health and Performance Scale
©2002 
Beyond Health
Tragically, more than three out of four Americans have medically significant
cellular malfunction—a diagnosable disease of some kind. The overwhelming
majority of us are somewhere between diagnosable disease and death! Think about your personal health equation, your position on this Health and
Performance Scale. Do you have a diagnosable disease? If so, you are located
between disease and death. Even without having a diagnosable disease, your health
may be far from optimal. Fortunately, your position on this continuum is not static;
it can change depending on your choices. No matter your age or your current state of health, you have the power to change
the direction in which you are going and how rapidly you move on the Health and
Performance Scale. I learned this firsthand, in making powerful life-saving choices,
after it was declared a medical certainty that I would die. I learned it again years
later, after witnessing the illness and extraordinary recovery of an elderly woman. A family called me to ask for help with their bedridden and senile mother. This
woman was ninety-four years old and unable to get out of bed; sometimes she
recognized her family and knew where she was, at other times she did not. Her
children loved her very much and did not want to place her in a nursing home, yet
the burden of her care had become too much for them. With nowhere else to turn,
they asked if there was anything I could recommend. My reply was, “Probably not.”
Given the woman’s debilitated condition, I assumed that her health had deteriorated
beyond repair. At a certain point, enough cellular machinery has been damaged that
sufficient repairs can no longer be made. Though I was pessimistic about the
likelihood of any improvement, the family asked for my advice anyway. In
retrospect, I found out that I still had a lot to learn about the capacity of the human
body to heal itself. I started out by recommending some specific vitamin supplements to help supply
certain key nutrients to her cells. When I asked what she was eating, the first item
they mentioned was milk. After years of study, I had come to realize that cow’s milk
is not an appropriate food for any human being. For someone in her condition, cow’s
milk was almost certainly putting a toxic load on her already struggling body. I
recommended that they stop feeding her milk. As I hung up the phone, I doubted that
these suggestions would have much of an impact or that I would ever hear fromthem again. Two weeks later the phone rang with gleeful reports of her “miraculous”
improvement. She was getting out of bed, going to the bathroom and getting dressed
—all by herself. She was walking around the house and having rational
conversations with her family. A miracle? No, just a movement of her health
equation in the right direction. By addressing her cellular deficiency and toxicity,
this woman’s body began once again to repair and regulate itself. Indeed, I have
learned that almost anyone can alter his or her health equation in a positive
direction. Sickness never happens without a cause. The cause is usually our own ignorance
of or disregard for our personal health equations. So how can you avoid getting sick? Simple. Make the kind of health-conscious life choices that optimize your personal
health equation. We live in a fast-paced society that has created an environment and
adopted diets, lifestyles and behaviors that do not support human health. If we want
to be healthy, we have to make choices that significantly deviate from the diet and
lifestyle of the average American. Eating a “normal” diet and living a “normal” life
are virtually guaranteed to make you sick. To prevent this from happening, you must
be proactive. As Joseph D. Beasley, M.D., said in 
The Kellogg Report, 
“In the long
run, individuals cannot be better than their biology—as affected by their nutrition,
ecology, and lifestyle.”
The key to never having to be sick again is the ability to choose between the
things that are healthy and the things that are not. This sounds simple, but accurate
information about what is healthy is hard to come by. Next, let’s look at a definition
and an overview of each of the six pathways between health and disease and explain
how knowledge of them can lead to better decisions about health. The Six Pathways Between 
Health and Disease
Having read this far, has your perspective on health and disease changed? Are you
becoming accustomed to the theory of one disease and two causes? You have learned
that if your cells malfunction to the degree that they interfere with your body’s
ability to balance and regulate itself, you are diseased. Whether you are suffering from the flu, cancer, diabetes, depression or something
else, cellular malfunction is always the essence of the problem. The tool that I developed to help myself make better choices is the six pathways. As demonstrated, your personal health equation is always in flux; depending on the
choices you make, you will move either in the direction of optimal health or in the
direction of disease and death. This movement occurs along the six pathways. These
six pathways are like six different roads; each spans the distance between health anddisease. Depending on the choices made along each pathway, you are moving toward
one or the other. The six pathways concept provides a framework through which
informed, logical, health-enhancing choices can be made. The pathways are:
• Nutrition
• Toxin
• Psychological
• Physical
• Genetic
• Medical
A holistic approach to health requires attention to all of these pathways. Consistent movement in the wrong direction along any of them can lead to cellular
malfunction, breakdown of self-regulation and diagnosable disease. Continuous
movement in the right direction leads to optimal health and performance. By learning about the six pathways, you can have a clear understanding of the
different ways that health can be influenced. You will be empowered to mitigate the
negative effects of modern living, thus taking charge of your personal health. Pathway Number One: Nutrition
What is America’s leading cause of disease? Malnutrition. We think of ourselves
as so well fed that the idea that we are suffering from malnutrition is difficult for
most Americans to grasp. When we hear the word “malnourished,” we recall
television images of starving children. Although Americans are rarely
undernourished to this extent, we are malnourished, and in fact it is our leading
cause of disease. The typical diet, what most Americans eat, simply does not supply
sufficient nutrients. No wonder that we suffer from the one disease in its various
forms. The nutrition pathway is about the relationship between the nutritional content of
your diet and your health. Obtaining proper nutritional intake on a daily basis is
important because nutrients act as a team. A shortage of even one nutrient will
decrease the effectiveness of all the others. Nutritional status affects our entire
being, including moods and emotions, the ability to learn and remember, physical
performance and resistance to disease. Cells and tissues thrive when provided with
an environment rich in nutrients such as water, oxygen, vitamins, minerals, proteins,
carbohydrates and essential fatty acids, while deficiency causes disease and shortens
life. To some degree, almost all Americans are overfed but undernourished. Virtually
everything that we eat today, unless we make special choices, is nutritionally
inferior to the foods that our ancestors were eating as recently as a few generationsago. Not only have we fundamentally changed what we eat; we have changed how
our food is grown, processed, transported, stored, treated and prepared. These
changes cause our foods to be nutritionally deficient—the primary cause of our
modern epidemic of chronic disease. In addition, our crops usually retain toxic
residues from pesticides and other agricultural chemicals, and some are even ripened
with artificial chemicals. Both nutritionally deficient and chemically toxic, our
modern food supply promotes disease. Pathway Number Two: Toxin
Toxins interfere with normal cell function, thereby causing malfunctions. Most
people know that toxins are dangerous, but what are toxins, and how do toxins
damage our cells? We are exposed to toxins in various ways: in the air we breathe, the water we
drink, the clothes we wear and the food we eat. In our modern world, we are exposed
to these environmental toxins all day, every day. Toxins in our environment can
impose an undue external burden on us, while poor digestion, lack of exercise, and
negative thoughts and emotions can increase our toxic loads internally. Our bodies do have the ability to detoxify, but our detoxification mechanisms
require essential nutrients to function properly. Inadequate nutrition deprives the
body of the raw materials necessary to detoxify, so toxic levels build and negatively
affect cellular health. In our society, toxic overload is having a bigger effect than it
should, because our deficient diets do not supply the nutrients necessary to operate
and maintain our detoxification mechanisms. Not only is our toxic load the highest
in history, but our ability to process and eliminate these toxins is impaired. Because we know that excessive toxic exposure causes disease, learning about the
toxin pathway can teach us which substances are toxic, how toxic they are, where
they are, how they get there and how we can minimize our exposures to them. The
toxin pathway provides insight into the toxic aspects of our daily lives—in our food
supply, water supply, homes and personal products (including many soaps,
shampoos and toothpastes). Fortunately, healthful alternatives are available. Toxic
exposure is a fact of life, and the body is designed to deal with it. Our problem is
toxic overload, i.e., when the toxic input exceeds our ability to process it. Understanding this pathway can help us to reduce toxic exposure to manageable
levels by teaching us to recognize and avoid toxins in our daily lives. Pathway Number Three: Psychological
The psychological pathway may turn out to be the most important pathway of all. Through study of the psychological pathway, we learn about the significance of
thoughts, emotions and behavior, and how these affect our health. Many people believe that the mind has an enormous effect on the body. This idea,however, is based on the supposition that the mind somehow is separated from the
body. In truth, the entire body, including the brain, is the mind. When we understand
that the mind and body are one, reports of placebo effects and miraculous healings
should not be surprising. In fact, they are part of everyday life. Our thoughts and emotions trigger a cascade of biochemical reactions that either
enhance or damage health. How we react to various life events and how we respond
to our thoughts and emotions are choices that can damage or enhance cellular health. What we allow to enter our minds on a daily basis is critical. What we think and feel
over a lifetime plays a major role in our health or illness. The significance and
impact of the factors associated with this pathway may indeed be more important
than all the nutrients and toxins we put into our bodies, perhaps even more important
than all the other pathways put together. The psychological pathway explores the
subjects relevant to behavioral and psychological factors in health and disease,
including meditation, stress, thoughts, emotions and the placebo effect. Pathway Number Four: Physical
The physical pathway contains recommendations on how to recognize and provide
for the body’s physical needs. This pathway can be used to enhance physical
potential and to minimize physical damage. Just as nutrition and toxic avoidance are
important to health, physical maintenance and care are also essential to the health
equation. Most Americans do not get adequate exercise, sleep or sunlight. An indoor,
sedentary lifestyle means little or no exercise nor exposure to natural light. Our
mental lifestyle, meanwhile, is excessively fast paced, and this, together with a high
incidence of sleep deprivation, means that often we are chronically and seriously
stressed. Also we are exposed to subtle physical influences, such as electromagnetic
fields caused by the wiring in our homes, hairdryers, heaters, electric razors, cell
phones and the X rays we receive as part of medical and dental evaluations. Pathway Number Five: Genetic
Limit genetic damage. Optimize genetic potential. These are the goals we strive
toward on the genetic pathway. The genetic pathway focuses on optimizing the expression of our genes to
promote health and limit any damage to the genes. Each human being is genetically
unique; inherent strengths and weaknesses are a part of our basic genetic makeup. Genes are the blueprint of life. Our genes, however, rarely have the final say and
they are certainly not the primary cause of disease that modern medicine would have
us believe. Genes are a potential for expression, and they express themselves in ways
commensurate with life’s circumstances. The genetic pathway explores topics such as the genetic causes for disease and theeffects of genetically engineered foods. Further, this pathway identifies specific
hazards that can potentially cause genetic damage, such as environmental chemicals,
prescription drugs and radiation. Most important is the personal resolve of
individuals to commit themselves seriously to optimizing health, rather than
accepting their so-called genetic predisposition as a fore-doomed fate. Pathway Number Six: Medical
The medical pathway is perhaps the most surprising and most misunderstood of
all the pathways. As we have noted, many people rave about and swear by the near-
miraculous feats accomplished by modern medicine. The technology that
contemporary medicine has to offer is best used in crisis intervention and trauma
care. However, such applications are limited. No doubt that physicians are well-
meaning, but a blind trust in them and in the treatments they offer (surgery and
drugs) to the exclusion of other considerations can lead to destructive and even
lethal consequences. The medical pathway helps to explain how modern medicine can cause disease. Widespread ignorance and failure to comprehend this fact are reasons that modern
medicine harms the health of our population. By studying this pathway we can
identify and avoid potentially harmful aspects of medicine, while still reaping the
benefits of modern medical technology. The medical pathway is unique, expressing itself through all of the other pathways
and thus, compromising health at many levels. In working to optimize your personal
health equation, you need to be aware of the ways in which modern medical “care”
actually can damage your health along any of the other pathways. Chapter 10 about
the medical pathway describes more specifically medicine’s capabilities and its
limitations. A New Theory for a New Millennium
During the last century, modern industrial society has brought fundamental
changes to human existence; we are developing and changing the world much faster
than our biology can adapt. Today, nutritional intake, toxic exposures and stress
levels bear little resemblance to those of even our most recent biological ancestors. Every cell in our bodies is adversely affected by these profound changes, which is
why our society has suffered more and more chronic disease. Disease is the
catastrophic result of decades of inadequate nutrition, toxic exposures, sedentary
lifestyles, familial and social disruptions and a dependence on drugs (prescription,
over-the-counter and recreational). In this chapter, I have attempted to outline the complexity and confusion that
surround disease in our society. I offer a new theory of health and disease, a newway to look at these concepts: There is only one disease, cellular malfunction, and
only two causes of disease, deficiency and toxicity. Six pathways can lead to health
or disease. Our confusion arises because cells malfunction in many different ways. Modern medicine categorizes the symptoms created by these various malfunctions
as different diseases, even though they have common causes. Achieving victory over
disease requires removing the causes. Eliminate deficiency and toxicity, allow the
body to self-repair and self-regulate, and disease will go away.4
C
HOOSING 
H
EWALTHY 
C
HELLS
“Cells—in the skin, the muscles, the lungs, the liver, the
intestines, the kidneys, the blood vessels, the glands, the heart
and, crucially, the nerves and brain—must be well nourished if
we are to lead long and healthy lives. Contrarily, if these cells
are undernourished, disabilities and diseases of every
description will ensue.”
Roger J. Williams, Ph.D. Nutrition Against Disease
L
et us take a trip together to the front lines of the daily battle between health and
disease: your cells. Cells are the building blocks of your body. They build your
tissues, and these tissues make up your systems. Because malfunctioning cells are
the one disease, learning to care for cells is fundamental to healthy living. Come
with me on a tour of the systems that keep your body healthy or that make you sick. The struggle for life itself occurs within every cell. The vitality of a person can only
be as strong as the cells of which they are made. The basics of caring for your cells are as follows:
• Supply cells with all the raw materials they need. • Avoid the damaging effects of toxic chemicals. • Build healthy cell membranes, the cell’s first line of defense against disease. • Learn how to prevent and reverse disease by understanding how cells work
and how they malfunction. • Choices, rather than genetic inheritance, are key. Lost Along the Way
Before we leave our homes to travel—particularly if our destination is unfamiliar
—we usually spend time reading brochures, studying maps, or researching local
customs, currency, and, perhaps, health precautions. We rarely give that kind of
attention to our own bodies and to our health, yet what could be more important? Most people expect that their bodies generally take care of themselves, provided
they don’t smoke, drink to excess, or fall prey to some unstoppable virus or some
predetermined genetic disease. Most people believe that as long as they avoid
“fattening” foods, they are eating a healthful diet. On all counts, these people are
wrong. One of the most important things you need in order to fight disease and to
encourage your own health is knowledge. This chapter teaches you how to prepare
and what to pack for a healthy journey through the rest of your life. The small
amount of time you will spend reading this chapter will be an investment worthmaking: It may save your life. Knowledge is power, and you are about to plug into a
tremendous energy source. A cabinet stocked with medicines, a list of doctors to call, and a head filled with
commercial endorsements, medical studies and drug warning labels does nothing to
give you what you really need: a true understanding of what makes you sick or how
to get well. Without that understanding, you can be caught up in a whirlwind of
medical procedures and pharmaceuticals that suppress or surgically remove the
symptoms of what are labeled as thousands of different diseases. In reality, these
drugs and surgeries do not cure disease, and they may actually kill you. Despite the
confusion out there about how disease occurs and the different health plans that seek
to promote health, real success can only come if you keep your cells working right. This chapter teaches you, simply and clearly, how your body works at its most basic
level: your cells. The Cell
A cell is much more than a combination of molecules and atoms. A cell is a
miraculous reality—life itself. A single cell may be a life form, such as a bacterium. A human being, on the other hand, is made of about 75 trillion cells, including about
two hundred different kinds of specialized cells with specific functions throughout
the body, such as in the brain, the blood, the muscles, the liver and the eyes.
Never_Be_Sick_Again_by_Raymond_Francis.txt
Summarize the following text section accurately and concisely. Maintain specific details and numerical information, and use anti-repetition mechanisms:

        In the state of California, actuarial calculations show that average life expectancy
for females would be 100 if only one certain disease were eliminated—heart disease,
which is entirely preventable through diet and lifestyle. Consider how much longer
we might live by eliminating two or more diseases. Perhaps we have forgotten that
health is our natural state. We blindly accept our average life span of seventy-six
years; we accept that we will succumb to chronic and degenerative diseases. Imagining entire populations who have lived far longer and healthier lives than we
do seems inconceivable. People who rarely, if ever, suffered from any disease,
including colds, allergies, flu or even fatigue. How were these people able to do
that. Their nutrition was of high quality, their toxic exposure was minimal, they
enjoyed psychological well-being and they were quite physically active. Their
everyday lifestyles, to a large degree, met all the factors necessary to support the six
pathways toward health. Let us learn from these people. The Remarkable Hunzas
In a remote valley of the Himalayas, in what is now northeastern Pakistan, live the
people of Hunza, who were renowned for their near-perfect health, robust energy and
extraordinary longevity. Though they lived under what we would consider primitive
conditions, they regularly lived into their hundreds, and often lived to be 120 to 140
years old. Their culture was not plagued with cancer, heart disease, ulcers, diabetes,
allergies, kidney and liver disease, arthritis, asthma, hypoglycemia, mental
disorders, colds, flu, tooth decay or any of the other diseases so common in our
society. Nor did they suffer from depression; several researchers described them as,
“the happiest people in the world. ” The Hunzas had clear minds, high intelligence,
excellent memories, and enormous physical strength and stamina. Many researchers went to Hunza in the early twentieth century—long before
many of the advances of modern medicine— to study and write about these
phenomenally healthy people. Sir Robert McCarrison, M. D. , a prominent British
physician, spent seven years living and doing research among the Hunzas, and he
first brought the health of the Hunza people to world attention. In November 1921,
Dr. McCarrison presented the results of his research at a meeting of the Society for
Biological Research held at the University of Pittsburgh. He described the Hunzas
as, “a race unsurpassed in perfection of physique and in freedom from diseases in
general. ” He found that chronic diseases, including cancer, were totally unknown. (Cancer was unknown among these extraordinarily long-lived people, yet we are told
that cancer is a disease of aging. ) Another researcher, J. I. Rodale, in his book, 
The Healthy Hunzas, 
reported that,
“Colds are non-existent in Hunza. ” He said it was not unusual to see men walking
through snowdrifts in the coldest weather, barechested and barefoot. He observed
one Hunza man travel sixty miles in a single day, by foot in mountainous terrain,
arriving back as if he had returned from a casual walk. Hunza women did not suffer
menstrual pain or any of the other female complaints of our society. In Hunza,
people typically died of old age in their sleep, without experiencing the chronic
suffering that usually precedes death in our own society. The story of the Hunzas
shows the potential for human health—how healthy human beings can perform. As part of their leisure activities, the men of Hunza (from teenage to 120 years
old) performed vigorous, physically demanding folk dances. In his book 
Hunza,
Hoffman described men in their seventies and eighties gliding through the air with
the same grace and ease as those in their teens and twenties. Hoffman wrote: “The
stamina of the people is beyond words. In fact men over a hundred years of age were
observed going up these mountainsides just as though they were men of fifty. It is
my belief that many American men of fifty years of age could not keep up with these
Hunza men. ”
What was it that allowed the Hunzas to achieve this amazing level of health. You
probably already know the answer: a combination of a nutritious diet, toxin-free
environment, exercise, sleep, sunshine, fresh air and low-stress lifestyle. Given only
two causes of disease—deficiency and toxicity—let us examine how the Hunzas
kept their cells adequately supplied with nutrients and free of toxins, thus realizing
optimal health and longevity. While we cannot replicate their lifestyle, we can see
how far our own lifestyles fall short of these goals, and we can begin to understand
how to make the kinds of changes that will bring us closer to our potential. An Optimal Diet and Lifestyle
The Hunza diet was highly nutritious, consisting mainly of vegetarian foods
grown in nutrient-rich soil. They irrigated their fields with mineral-rich water and
composted all of their organic matter (leaves, straw, manure, etc. ), to produce soils
of the highest quality. Contrast their mineral-rich soils to U. S. soils which are
depleted due to modern chemical farming. It doesn’t take a degree in agricultural
science to know that if minerals are not in the soil, they do not get into the plant, and
then they don’t get into you. In addition to fresh vegetables and fruits, the Hunzas
ate whole grains that were exceptionally high in nutrients as opposed to the refined
sugars and nutrient-depleted white flour that’s so prevalent in our diet. Only about
10 percent of the Hunza’s calories came from fat, as opposed to about 37 percent in
the American diet. Eighty percent of their foods were eaten fresh and raw. Inaddition to being high in nutrition, their diet was low in toxins, meaning that their
foods didn’t contain any cancer-causing compounds that come from exposures to
pesticides, herbicides, fungicides and other agricultural chemicals. Along with
getting plenty of exercise by working the land and walking everywhere, the Hunzas
also got adequate sleep. Since there was no artificial lighting in their village, they
went to bed when it got dark and they woke up at daybreak, regardless of the time of
the year. So what are we to take from the Hunza’s habits. Should we quit our sedentary
jobs and take up organic farming. Should we shun all supermarket foods and hide
our head under the covers at sunset. While these options are surely not realistic, you
can make some practical and positive changes in your lifestyle and this book will
show you how. While you don’t have to avoid supermarkets altogether, you can
learn how to avoid filling your cart with the most toxic foods in the grocery aisles
(some of which you might wrongly assume are “healthy” for you. ) and paying good
money for food that is actually killing you. You can learn how to prepare your foods
in ways that don’t rob them of their nutrients and how to avoid cooking your foods
by methods that compromise your health. You can become aware of what toxic
chemicals are lurking in your environment in everyday products and choose healthy
alternatives instead. You can see how making a few simple changes in your sleeping
habits will restore your body’s natural rhythms and allow your body ample time to
rejuvenate. You can make informed decisions about which medical treatments you
need, and which are actually hurting your health. So, you see, you don’t have to
move to the Andes Mountains to find health; you can live a long and healthy life in
your own town. And what, you may wonder, would happen to these mighty Hunzas if they lived in
your town—with a fast food restaurant on every corner. The results shouldn’t
surprise you. The Hunzas were geographically isolated from the outside world. The
one treacherous road into the Hunza Valley was closed nine months of the year
because of the weather, and the road was not all that inviting during the remaining
three months. This isolation allowed the Hunzas to live in their traditional,
customary, and close-knit familial and social groups, almost up until the present
day. Had the Hunza Valley been more accessible, modern culture would have
intruded and damaged the health of this population sooner than it did, and we would
have lost our opportunity to learn from them. Eventually, modern foods were
introduced into the Hunzas’ lives when the first all-weather road was built through
the mountain passes and into their valley in the 1970s, making this area more
accessible to “civilization. ” “Civilized foods,” such as white sugar, white flour,
white rice, cola drinks, coffee, processed oils and alcohol were introduced. Fresh,
homegrown, whole foods were replaced with the processed and toxic foods that
make up much of the diet we eat today. This exposure to modern culture hadtremendously detrimental health effects on the Hunza population. What is especially notable is how rapidly a modern diet will cause health to
decline. Researchers have noted that health begins to deteriorate within six months
of introducing modern diets into populations previously eating only their traditional
foods. The Hunzas were an incredibly healthy population just a few decades ago. Today, they face increasing levels of chronic disease—just like the rest of the
“civilized” world. However, because of their prior isolation, the Hunzas provided a
perfect control group—an ideal people for the study and measurement of the
potential for human health. If the Hunzas had been the only extraordinarily healthy people in the world, we
might dismiss their health as an aberration. However, numerous other examples of
long-lived and healthy populations are available, including people living in
mountainous areas of Bulgaria and Hungary, the island of Crete, the lake district of
Titicaca in Peru, the Vilcabamba Valley in Ecuador, and the Caucasus region of
Russia. They all have a similar story. They eat high-quality, nutritious foods. They
get a lot of exercise and plenty of fresh air, sleep and sunshine. They live a life of
low stress in communities that emphasize family and human relationships. As a
result, they enjoy a level of health and quality of life that we can barely imagine. Unsanitary Conditions, but Healthy People
In another region of Ecuador, we find another story of superior resiliency and
longevity: the Indians of the mountainous region of Cuenca. In his book, 
How to
Survive Modern Technology, 
Charles McGee, M.
Not mentioned in the text. The text states that heart disease is "entirely preventable through diet and lifestyle", but it does not mention the primary cause of heart disease.
What is the primary cause of heart disease, according to the text?
Making informed choices to provide cells with what they need and protect them from what they don't need, which can be achieved by adopting a healthy diet, avoiding toxins, and maintaining a low-stress lifestyle.
What is the key to maintaining optimal health, according to the author?
Cellular malfunction.
According to the text, what is the fundamental concept of disease?
The author does not explicitly state that genetics plays a role in disease, but rather emphasizes the importance of making healthy choices to prevent disease.
What is the author's stance on the role of genetics in disease?
The author argues that modern medicine focuses on treating symptoms rather than addressing the underlying causes of disease, and that this approach is ineffective in preventing and curing disease.
What is the author's main argument against the medical profession?