I have also observed a very high incidence of allergy-related diseases among my dental patients. Many of them present with chronically enlarged tonsils and an inability to breathe through their nose. They also display very poor facial muscle tone. If this trend continues, then we are likely to see the majority of our children suffering with chronic allergies in the near future.
The healthcare costs associated with allergy-based diseases are enormous. Access Economics reported in 2007 the financial cost was $7.8 billion dollars! This cost was based on lost productivity and direct healthcare expenditure. Six years ago, the average financial cost for an allergic sufferer was $1912 per person per year.
Healthcare workers from many fields of allopathic and alternative medicine often claim to successfully diagnose and “treat” modern day childhood allergies. These range from “allergy elimination” techniques, to the mandatory carrying of EpiPens® for anaphylactic sufferers.
When a disease condition has reached “epidemic proportions”, it’s important to examine what’s changed in the past 100 years. Compared to our ancestors who lived a century ago, we are living longer but suffering more with chronic degenerative diseases. The causes can be broadly divided into three categories: our environment, the food we put in our mouths and the thousands of new chemicals we come into contact with daily. I would like to discuss a case study that covers each of these categories through a controlled experiment.
Dr Weston Price in the 1930s began a nine-year journey to study the physical, social and psychological decline that occurred when communities changed from their own native diet to the “modern diet” that we are so familiar with today. The change was replacing wholesome food products grown in their own backyards, to highly refined white flour and high-sugar Western foods. The findings both surprised and shocked him. His research culminated in his great book, titled Nutrition and Physical Degeneration.
His studies conclusively showed that introduction of the Western diet and lifestyle resulted in narrow faces, crowded teeth and tooth decay, which was previously very rare. The effects of this physical degeneration is seen in our children today, who struggle to breathe though their nose and suffer with increasing rates of tooth disease. Their compromised immune system suddenly starts to see many normal food and environmental sources as threats.
The black and white picture to the left is a striking example that illustrates Dr Price’s controlled experiment. The two women pictured are sisters. The older sister stayed in her village eating her traditional diet, consisting of organic, whole foods grown in her garden. The younger sister went to the city and adopted the Western diet, which is high in sugar and refined carbohydrates. In case you are wondering, the younger sister is the one pictured on the left! If you’re interested in reading the details, there’s a website established to promote Dr Price’s life-changing work: www.westonaprice.org
I will leave you with a thought: reconsider the food you are feeding yourself, and your children, and the effect it has on your health and wellbeing. As the father of modern medicine, Hippocrates, so eloquently put in the 5th Century BCE, “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.”
