{"id":2283,"date":"2015-04-14T06:08:40","date_gmt":"2015-04-14T06:08:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/healthicine.org\/wordpress\/?p=2283"},"modified":"2017-11-25T06:14:37","modified_gmt":"2017-11-25T06:14:37","slug":"malnutrition-epidemic-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/healthicine.org\/wordpress\/malnutrition-epidemic-america\/","title":{"rendered":"Malnutrition Epidemic in America"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Obese-family-600\"<\/a>America is suffering from an epidemic of malnutrition. But it’s not what you think.<\/p>\n

If you check the World Health Organization for malnutrition, you will find many studies about, and programs for malnutrition in children. It’s as if malnutrition doesn’t exist in adults? We’re all children. And many of us are suffering from malnutrition. If you search, you can find a\u00a0few references where the definition of malnutrition includes ‘eating too much’. But that’s not it either.<\/p>\n

America is suffering from an epidemic of obesity. There is no question about that. The only questions are about the causes. Few notice that obesity is easily\u00a0caused by starvation.<\/p>\n

It’s a common mistake, assuming\u00a0that obesity is caused by too much junk food, combined with too little exercise. All to simple, and all too simplistic. The conclusions are easy to accept: judgement of people for their behaviors. People who are fat, especially people who are obese, are themselves at fault. \u00a0If they would just eat less, and exercise more – they could solve their own problems. But that’s simplistic nonsense. It doesn’t produce cures. American doctors believe obesity is incurable.\u00a0\u00a0Cured is not even in many medical dictionaries.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

No one wants to be obese.<\/p>\n

Obesity, in America, is a disease of malnutrition. Cheap food makes us all poor, unhealthy, and fat.<\/a> Obesity often results when your body is starving. When the food you eat\u00a0does not provide the nutrients you need. \u00a0Your body knows you are starving, no matter how much you are ‘eating. \u00a0It reacts ‘hungrily’, trying to eat more food, to get the necessary nutrients. At the same time, because it senses ‘famine’, because the required nutrients are not available, it initiates a fat storage system to save\u00a0calories, ‘until the famine passes’.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0(obese) body is doing it’s best to get the nutrients\u00a0it needs, and to store extra food that is not needed. \u00a0It urges you to eat more, you get fatter. But you are still starving all of the time. Because the food you are eating does not provide the nutrients you need.<\/p>\n

Have you\u00a0noticed?\u00a0 Obese people are often ‘starving’. Most are starving for food, but many are also starving for other health needs, like community, respect, spirit, etc.<\/p>\n

How can this be happening? \u00a0Why is this happening? There are several factors:<\/p>\n

In the past, there were lots of ‘healthy, nutritious foods’ around. Even if you ate cake every day, most of the other food you ate met your biological needs, so you didn’t need to keep eating and eating.\u00a0\u00a0 Because your dietary needs were being met, your body was not ‘starving’. It didn’t push you to eat more. Because your body was not starving, it did not need to ‘store food’ for the famine.<\/p>\n

In the past, most foods were ‘seasonal’. \u00a0People were forced to eat different foods in winter than in summer, different in spring than in fall.\u00a0 These dietary changes forced you to consume a wider variety of foods, more likely to meet your nutritional needs – over the year. Even foods like beef, chickens, eggs, and milk changed with the seasons, because the animal’s diets changed.<\/p>\n

Today, it is possible to eat the same foods, day in and day out, with no seasonal changes, for many years. It is easy to ‘fill up’ several times a day on foods that do not meet your nutritional needs.\u00a0 Your body senses famine, stores fat for the famine, and urges you to eat more, to address your\u00a0malnutrition, your\u00a0starvation.<\/p>\n

This also exacerbates the accumulations\u00a0of toxic chemicals from \u00a0your foods.\u00a0When\u00a0we eat the same foods, day after day, month after month, season after season, year after year, the toxic chemicals in those foods accumulate. When our diet was changing with the seasons, we consumed\u00a0different toxic chemicals in different seasons, and left others behind. \u00a0Our bodies had months to recover. But today, we seldom change our diet consciously, and even if we do, the market ensures that we pick many similar foods, developed by similar growing and manufacturing processes with\u00a0similar toxic chemicals.<\/p>\n

There is another factor at play, which is often important.\u00a0 When you become obese, you don’t just ‘gain fat.\u00a0 Your stomach, and the rest of your digestive system grows.\u00a0 It takes more to make you ‘feel full’, you become more reliant on ‘feeling full’ to know when to stop eating. As soon as you feel ‘not full’, you start eating again. When you are ‘feeling full’, there’s always room for desert. \u00a0Your body is starving. When you feel stomach discomfort, your body urges you to eat – because it knows you are starving.<\/p>\n

As a result, even if you start eating the right foods, you will still feel hungry – and it might\u00a0take a very long time to shrink\u00a0your body, and your digestive system\u00a0back to a ‘healthy’ size. For all of that time, it will be easy to think you are hungry, when you don’t need food. It can take a long time to learn that you are not ‘hungry’ whenever\u00a0your stomach hurts, and you are not full when\u00a0your stomach hurts. \u00a0Those are lessons learned through malnutrition – hard to unlearn.<\/p>\n

It’s ironic, that most of the ‘treatments’ for obesity include some type of starvation. Cut back on calories, don’t eat this food, don’t eat that food. Fat loss diets range from rabbit food to lion food – but they seldom work. And sticking to them is almost impossible for anyone who has become obese. It’s hard to stick to a diet when you are malnourished. \u00a0It’s hard to stick to a diet that doesn’t meet your nutritional needs, when you are starving.<\/p>\n

The other ‘treatment’ suggested for obesity is exercise. \u00a0There are a variety of reasons why exercise is a high risk for obese people, from high blood pressure to dehydration, to breathing problems because of their larger chest wall. \u00a0But add to that, the fact that their bodies are not healthy, their bodies are starving, and thus more susceptible\u00a0to, and more likely to be damaged by the stress of exercise.<\/p>\n

There are people who can quit smoking in a day – I did it (after 5 or so\u00a0unsuccessful attempts). And there are a few obese people who can ‘fix their eating’ almost overnight. But those are few, and far between. \u00a0And perhaps more important, many who succeed have no idea what worked, what didn’t work, and how to proceed afterwards.<\/p>\n

Is it possible to cure obesity? If someone cured their obesity, how would we know?\u00a0 At present, cured is not defined for obesity – not defined for many other diseases.\u00a0There is no cure for obesity, it’s official – because cured is not defined for obesity, cannot be tested, cannot be proven. So we can’t find cures.<\/p>\n

The cures for diseases like obesity – the cure is to address the cause. We’ve tried dieting.\u00a0 We’ve tried exercise.\u00a0 It doesn’t work.\u00a0 We need to accept that lack of dieting, and lack of exercise are not the cause of obesity.\u00a0 If they were, we would be able to cure. But we can only ‘treat’ obesity.<\/p>\n

It’s more complicated. Obesity is a chronic disease.\u00a0Modern medicine often assumes that chronic diseases cannot be cured.\u00a0 In truth, they cannot be cured by medicine.\u00a0\u00a0Obesity has a ‘chronic cause’.\u00a0 Chronic malnutrition.\u00a0 As a result obesity is a chronic disease.\u00a0<\/a>The cure to any chronic disease is to address not just the cause, but to address the chronic nature of the cause.<\/a>\u00a0Addressing the chronic nature of a cause, is not a medicine.<\/p>\n

If someone who is obese manages to lose a lot of weight by dieting and exercise, and they want to remain ‘thin’, they are stuck in whatever\u00a0rut that helped them lose weight, even if it was an unhealthy technique. They are unable to escape, for fear of becoming obese again. Dreaming about chocolate cake. I still dream about smoking sometimes….<\/p>\n

You hear a lot about the epidemic of obesity in the USA. Is\u00a0it\u00a0really an epidemic of obesity? \u00a0A Harvard Study in 2011 listed the following causes of ‘preventable deaths’<\/a>:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Smoking:<\/strong> 467,000 deaths.<\/li>\n
  2. High blood pressure:<\/strong> 395,000 deaths.<\/li>\n
  3. Overweight-obesity:<\/strong> 216,000 deaths.<\/li>\n
  4. Inadequate physical activity and inactivity:<\/strong> 191,000 deaths.<\/li>\n
  5. High blood sugar:<\/strong> 190,000 deaths.<\/li>\n
  6. High LDL cholesterol:<\/strong> 113,000 deaths.<\/li>\n
  7. High dietary salt:<\/strong> 102,000 deaths.<\/li>\n
  8. Low dietary omega-3 fatty acids (seafood):<\/strong> 84,000 deaths.<\/li>\n
  9. High dietary trans fatty acids:<\/strong> 82,000 deaths.<\/li>\n
  10. Alcohol use: <\/strong>64,000 deaths.<\/li>\n
  11. Low intake of fruits and vegetables:<\/strong> 58,000 deaths.<\/li>\n
  12. Low dietary poly-unsaturated fatty acids:<\/strong> 15,000 deaths.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    It’s clear that high blood pressure, overweight-obesity, high blood sugar, high LDL\u00a0cholesterol, high dietary salt, low dietary omega-3 fatty acids, high dietary trans fatty acids, alcohol use, low intake of fruits and vegetables, and low dietary poly-unsaturated fatty acids<\/strong> are problems of malnutrition – and most are nutritional deficiencies. Most of these diseases are caused by starvation, even while obesity is near the top of the list. Obesity is a disease of malnutrition.<\/p>\n

    What about smoking<\/strong>, it’s not nutrition, or is it? People smoke to take nutrients – drugs – into their bodies. \u00a0People smoke because if they stop, they’ll gain weight. \u00a0Smoking is a substitute for eating. \u00a0Smokers need more nutrients, to help their bodies heal and clear the toxic chemicals, but instead, they eat less. And what about alcohol<\/strong>? Both smokers and alcoholics are prone to malnutrition<\/strong><\/em>, because they substitute smoking, and alcohol for food.<\/p>\n

    There is an epidemic of malnutrition in America. That’s why so many people are so fat.<\/p>\n

    What is the cure?\u00a0 Unfortunately, the word ‘cure’ does not appear in many medical dictionaries. Cure is not defined in medical treatment reference texts like MERCK, Lange’s, and Harrison’s. <\/a>Cure, the very concept of cure, has disappeared from modern medicine. Except for diseases caused by parasites, cured is simply not defined.<\/p>\n

    There is a simple, useful, functional definition of cure, and a process for finding a cure for any illness<\/a>.\u00a0 But it can’t be found in any medical textbook. Why not? Because the cure for any illness “not caused by a parasite” is not a medicine, it is health. Obesity, like many illnesses cannot be cured by medicines, the only cure is health.<\/a> To health the diet of the patients.\u00a0 Dieting is not healthing the diet, it is breaking the diet, in hopes that the patient will lose weight, but with no hope of a cure.<\/p>\n

    If we want to stop the obesity epidemic, we need to address the cause, not to look for medicines, or treatments for symptoms, symptomicines<\/a>, that cannot cure, and do not attempt to cure.<\/p>\n

    Post Updated: Oct 3, 2017<\/p>\n

    to your health, tracy
    \nTracy is the author of two books about healthicine:
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