Archive for the ‘Opinions & Responses’ Category

My Response to Dr. Andrew Weil’s Assessment of Spirulina and Chlorella

Friday, May 15th, 2009

Dr. Weil does not have much to say about spirulina and chlorella, yet they are the most powerful foods known. In his Article on Spirulina and chlorella, he states the following: “ Spirulina and chlorella are two varieties of freshwater algae - primitive plants that are cultivated for nutritional use, dried and sold as dark green powders or tablets. They are very expensive and heavily promoted as miracle supplements.

Expense is relative when you are speaking about the cost of any food. You will spend $4 or $5 on a box of cereal but you will get almost no nutritional value out of that box of cereal even though the box states otherwise. This is because the body has tremendous difficulty absorbing nutrients from dead foods, especially those that have been highly processed. Like all cooked foods, the box of cereal will do nothing to improve your health. However, when you spend $40 on a large bottle of chlorella or spirulina, you have spent money on foods that can radically change your health for the better. When you think of it in those terms, a box of cereal costs a fortune because it provides the body with little nutrition and, like all cooked foods, lead to all disease. As I often state, we spend a fortune making ourselves sick when for a very small amount of money we can obtain true health, especially when we spend our money on true superfoods such as spirulina and chlorella.

No food can perform miracles of health in the body. Rather it is what the body will do with those nutrients once they have been consumed that allows the body to cure itself of any disease. Vitamin A in large doses can help a person feel better when they have a cold, but it is a band aid that can only help the body in the short term because it does not lead to true health. It fools us into thinking that taking supplements are a healthy thing to do when in fact only eating raw fruits and vegetables can lead us to being truly healthy.

Dr. Weil falls into the trap of stating that algae such as spirulina and chlorella are supplements when they are not. Spirulina and Chlorella did not earn the title of superfoods because they might be beneficial to one person, but not another. They earned that exalted title because they are the most perfect foods known, containing ideal compliments of amino acids (pre-digested proteins), carbohydrates and fats. A person could not only survive by exclusively eating these superfoods, they would be incredibly healthy doing so. Ideally, however, we should consume a broad array of raw foods in order to obtain optimal health, not limit them to certain food groups.

Spirulina and Chlorella are not supplements. Supplements are collections of vitamins, minerals, proteins and other dead nutrients. While their profile may look good on the back of the nutrition panel of their container, in reality these nutrients will not be assimilated by the body the way nutrients from raw foods will. There is no substitute fov what God provides for us by way of raw food nutrients, nor is the variety limited in any way. The foods that we know and regularly consume are but a slight fraction of the plethora of foods that are available worldwide.

Supplements are produced from extracts and concentrates, which are not alive. There is no place for true supplements in the world of Achieving Great Health. Spirulina and Chlorella are often referred to as supplements, even by prominent naturalists, but this is a misnomer. For instance, I eat 3 – 5 cloves of garlic each day. One could say I am supplementing my diet with them, but that does not mean that raw garlic should be referred to as a supplement. If you were to extract the oil or specific nutrients from garlic and consume it, then that would be considered a supplement. But when the food is consumed whole with nothing extracted from it, it is not a supplement.

When alga is harvested fresh, then either powdered or tableted, it is essentially unchanged from its original state and therefore must still be categorized as a food, not a supplement. Spirulina and Chlorella are whole foods and eating them is like eating a banana or apple or broccoli. You can use them to supplement your diet with the protein and other broad array of nutrients they possess, but they should always be called what they truly are: Whole Foods.

Dr. Weil also states: “They are good sources of chlorophyll, but there is little to no research supporting the claims made about the algae.”

Spirulina and Chlorella are excellent sources of chlorophyll, but that is like saying that garlic is a good source of fatty acids. Garlic has a vast array of incredible health properties beyond simply being a good source of fatty acids and so is true of Spirulina and Chlorella. They are the two most nutritionally dense and have the broadest array of nutrients of any foods known. I have written two books on Spirulina and Chlorella and of course have researched them extensively. My second book, Achieving Great Health, became a struggle for me to determine which studies not to include in my book because there are so many of them. The scientific research that has been done on Spirulina and Chlorella are scholarly, extensive and come from countries all over the world. It is astounding that a prominent physician such as Dr. Andrew Weil knows almost nothing about the two most important whole foods on the planet.

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My Response to Dr. Weil’s Opinion of the Raw Food Diet

Friday, May 15th, 2009
Dr. Weil does not support moving to a Raw Food Diet, the only diet that is actually healthy for us. As I often state, all disease comes from our diet and is not genetically inherited. In his article, the reason Dr. Weil does not approve of the raw food diet: “ I'm not a proponent of the raw foods diet. First of all, when you eat everything raw, you lose much of the best flavor, texture and appearance of food. ” My question to Dr. Weil is: Are we talking about the health or the flavor and appearance of the foods we eat? If it is only the flavor of our foods we are interested in, regardless of whether they are consumed raw or not, then we cannot expect to be healthy when we eat the foods that we cook. In my opinion, foods should be consumed with regard to whether they are healthy, not whether they taste good and look appetizing, although raw foods can be prepared to make them both taste good and look appetizing. The only reason we eat cooked foods is for taste and because we are conditioned to believe they are healthy for us. We are addicted to cooked foods. It is the greatest addiction of human history. As it is with most doctors, Dr. Weil understands everything about medicine and very little about true health. It is true that cooked foods are tasty, although I would argue that you “ lose much of the best flavor” of raw foods when you cook them. In fact, just the opposite is true. Cooking a food robs it of much of its true, robust flavor.

Dr Weil also states: “you can get lycopene, the carotenoid pigment that protects against prostate cancer, only from cooked tomatoes, not from raw ones. The carotenoids in carrots are more bioavailable from cooked carrots than they are from raw ones.” Cooking any food transforms it from an alkaline to an acid substance. Lycopene, an anti-cancer agent found in tomatoes, is a perfect example of this. Lycopene is found in greater concentration after heating tomatoes above 120°F. But the overall detriment to the tomato is not worth the extra lycopene the body may absorb from it. Also, the smaller amount of lycopene will be absorbed more efficiently by the body from a raw tomato than the larger amount of lycopene found in the cooked tomato. This is essentially true of any food once it has been cooked.

Dr. Weil states: “ Alfalfa sprouts contain canavanine, a natural toxin that can harm the immune system.” This is a misleading statement because Canavanine is found in miniscule amounts. Canavanine is a non-protein amino acid that's toxic in high amounts. In the dry seed it serves as a storage protein, a growth inhibitor, and a defense against natural predators. It is also known as an enzyme inhibitor, meaning that once you sprout a seed such as alfalfa it quickly dissipates to insignificant levels. A 150 pound person would need to consume 14 grams (14,000 milligrams) of Canavanine all at once for it be dangerous to their health. There are insignificant amounts of toxins in nearly all foods if one looks close enough, but they are harmless to us, especially if we live on a raw food diet. Copper, zinc, selenium, vitamin A and iron are all potentially toxic if we consume too much of them, but that is essentially impossible when we receive these nutrients from raw foods. It is when we consume them in bulk in vitamins after they have been extracted that they become dangerous. Spirulina, for instance, has large amounts of iron, however, since we consume it unprocessed and it is contained within a natural whole food it will not build up in the body and become toxic.

Dr Weil continues: “ celery produces psoralens, compounds that sensitize the skin to the harmful effects of ultraviolet radiation in sunlight. All of these are broken down by simple cooking. Although our bodies have natural defenses against these toxins, a raw food diet can add to the toxic load we're already dealing with. ” We develop unnatural sensitivities when we live on a cooked food diet, as the vast majority of us do. Psoralens, or oxalic acid found in beet greens and other foods, become a problem for us only when we create unnatural imbalances by living on a cooked food diet. Quite the opposite as suggested by Dr. Weil, raw foods do not add to the toxic load when we live primarily on a raw food diet. However, in the cooked world anything is possible because of the myriad number of imbalances we create through the wrong diet of cooked foods.

Dr. Weil sites a study, published in the March 28, 2005 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine , which states that calcium and Vitamin D were both low in those living on the Raw Food Diet. These kinds of deficiencies could very well happen to someone who is on the Raw Food Diet if they do not follow The Watershed Wellness Health Protocol of Spirulina, Chlorella , Raw Foods and Ionized Water. Those who simply stop eating cooked foods and go on a vegan raw food diet will be healthy, although they can become deficient in many areas of their health if they do not use Spirulina and Chlorella for their protein, drink ionized water and have a broad array of raw foods in their diet. I eat between 150 – 225 different foods every year. Health is about variety and consuming only raw foods. Dr. Weil could not be more wrong in his assessment of the Raw Food Diet.

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Why the “Quack Watchers” Need to be Watched

Friday, May 15th, 2009

We've all seen the websites of the self-proclaimed debunkers of faux science and other myths. They explain to us that, except for the things we personally know to be true, everything we believe to be true is completely false. Almost every rumor we have heard turns out to be an urban myth when it comes to the Quack Watchers and other debunkers. And if something that they denounced turns out to be true, not another word is ever said about it and the debunking web page is quietly removed.

What quack watchers do best is plant doubt in our minds when we are trying to search out the truth about something such as a health issue. It's easy to be a skeptic. It's hard to be a believer and even harder to believe in things that others regularly ridicule. Quack Watchers often have a chilling effect on an open debate because of the way they often scoff at the issues they are challenging.

As a whole, we tend to believe the Quack Watchers because we want to believe that we can't be so easily fooled. And it's reassuring for us to believe that we are not so easily fooled. We enjoy hearing that the things that may sound a little weird or too good to be true of course could not be true. The most dangerous debunkers are the ones who have a background in science, but little or no experience at all with the subject that they are debunking. Many of the de-bunkers tend to be heavy on their opinion and light on the facts. In fact, they quite often present their opinion as gospel. For instance, when the interpretation of a photo is in question, their analysis is offered as fact, the final report.

I don't expect the de-bunkers to go away. But we need to understand that many of the claims some have made are no more than one more opinion, not the Last Word. What bothers me is that so many of the debunkers serve nothing more than to confuse us. However, it becomes unsettling when we're trying to determine the truth about crucial issues such as our health.

Quack Watchers denounce Lorraine Day, M.D. because she dares challenge the medical establishment and tell people that we can heal ourselves if we live on the right diet and have faith in God. They conclude from their Debunkdoms that someone is a crank when in fact they are someone they simply have profound differences with.

When a radical scientific concept is first introduced, there is commonly resistance to it by the prevailing scientific community of the time. New ideas are commonly ridiculed and derided because people become comfortable with ideas and they don't want to change. Often, the members of the established community must die off so a new generation can be raised with the new concept and accept it from the beginning without any unnecessarily hand-wringing about what they once embraced as the truth that has now been shown to be superseded by the next wave of discovery. The new concept will no longer be described as radical.

My problem with one Quack Watcher is his ridiculous denunciation of Ionized Water as snake oil when, in fact, a staggering amount of research has been done on the effects of Ionized Water, which is produced by running filtered tap water over positive and negative electrodes that produce positive and negative ions in the water that are then separated. Thus, ionization produces two different waters at the same time, one alkaline the other acid.

All of the research done has arrived at the same conclusion: Ionized Water benefits everything it comes in contact with as long as its used correctly. (For instance, don't drink acid water.) The Quack Watchers who denounce Ionized Water could not be more wrong about it since Ionized Water is one of the most phenomenal inventions of the 20th century for a number of reasons.

Their first mistake is to suggest that only purified water be consumed. Purified water is water without minerals produced by reverse osmosis (RO) or distillation. I have written extensively myself against the practice of consuming purified water.

Water Ionizers are designed to be used with your tap water or bottled water. If you attempt to ionize purified, de-mineralized water, you will not get a change in pH nor will the ORP (oxidation reduction potential) change. Minerals must be present in the water for ionization to take place. With water that contains minerals, ionization changes both of these properties, pH and ORP. Read my article on Ionized Water for a more detailed explanation of its properties.

Ionized Water is very alkaline and helps balance the body's pH. It is crucial to point out this characteristic when it comes to those who would denounce Ionized Water because we must consume substances that are alkaline to maintain a balanced body pH. Few substances are more alkaline than Ionized Water with an adjustable pH of between 8 and 10. When we acidify ourselves with a processed food diet and a stressful lifestyle, we open ourselves up to every disease imaginable. At a pH of 10, Ionized Water is 100 times more alkaline than the body should be at pH 7. To conclude that consuming a substance which is 100 times more alkaline than the body ought to be is not beneficial to our health is to demonstrate you know nothing about Ionized Water and body pH. The average person is much more acidic than she/he ought to be. Bodily acidity is the door to disease, the unraveling of our health. To ignore the incredible life-saving potential that high pH Ionized Water has to raise our overall body pH is to ignore the facts. Therefore, we need to put extremely alkaline substances into our body in order to offset this incredible acidity we create through poor diet, pollution and stress. Ionized Water has been demonstrated over and over again to raise body pH. How could it not? When we constantly consume soft drinks, which are extremely acid (pH 2.5 ~ approximately 50,000 times more acid than ideal body pH 7.0), we are dropping our body pH. When we consume Ionized Water slowly we raise our body pH until we are in homeostasis or balance.

The Quack Watcher states that the term Ionized Water is meaningless to him. Is he suggesting that ionization, a scientific principle, doesn't exist? Or is he admitting that he doesn't know what ionization is? Whether we believe in Ionized Water or not is irrelevant because it is a physical fact that cannot be denied. We can argue philosophy, but not physics and Ionized Water is chemistry and physics and what it does for the body and for our health is undeniable.

He suggests that Ionized Water is simply a placebo, something that we believe is going to change our health when in fact our mind is doing all the work. In other words, Ionized Water has no physiological affect on the body, only a psychological one, which certainly is not the case. Ionized Water balances the body pH and is a powerful antioxidant, hydrator and detoxifier.

This is our first clue that the debunker understands little if anything about Ionized Water. To ionize means to gain or lose an electron and water that has been ionized is water that has these characteristics, that of either having an extra or missing electron. We know this is true by the physical scientific measurements we can make regarding Ionized Water. We can measure changes that ionization causes with both a pH meter and ORP meter. On the alkaline side, the pH is elevated and the ORP is driven into the negative range, which counteracts the oxidation of the body when we consume it.

Tim Bolen runs a website called quackpotwatch.org that has dared to challenge these websites that denounce practically ANYTHING that is not wholly accepted by the medical establishment. In the world of the quack watchers, nothing in the universe is provable unless a double-blind study has been done on it. I often point out that there is absolutely no evidence of chronic disease in the wild, meaning that wild animals do not contract chronic diseases such as cancer, arthritis, diabetes, high blood pressure. I have challenged people to show me evidence of any chronic disease in the wild and no one has yet to produce any. Do we need a double-blind study to determine the obvious? Other than universities, the only industry capable and willing to perform double-blind studies is the pharmaceutical industry. Double-blind studies are enormously expensive, costing hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars. The pharmaceutical industry is able to afford expensive studies such as these because it is very profitable for them. Studies lead to the release of medical drugs for all kinds of disease that make pharmaceuticals a lot of money. If taking drugs to control disease is the path that you chosen so be it. But drugs and medicine do not lead to health. Alternative health and Wellness protocols are often natural and inexpensive. And since no one stands to make much money off them, double-blind studies are never done on "alternative cures" such as Ionized Water. Another example is the fact that I recommend people move toward a Raw Food Diet, which doesn't cost much at all for someone to do. However, since no one is ever going to make large amounts of money from promoting raw foods, double-blind studies are never done.

The reason debunkers and quackwatchers spend their time on these websites is because they can be quite profitable. They appear as "expert witnesses" in lawsuits and they collect large fees for doing so. In essence, the intentions of quackwatchers are not to expose scams and fraud, but to denounce anything that the American Medical Association has not blessed. The Medical establishment can say and suggest almost anything and not worry about being challenged on it.

The detoxification effects alone are enough to make you realize that Ionized Water is not like any other water you will ever consume. Ionizing water changes the water molecule grouping structure so it is much smaller, hexagonal in shape, and therefore far more penetrating and hydrating. And as it hydrates your body tissue, it pushes out all the things that do not belong in the body, which are commonly known as toxins. How water molecules group together is another thing that debunkers like to state does not happen and is so much more quackery, when in fact a huge amount of scientific research has been done on water-molecule clusters .

The debunker of Ionized Water who is found on the Internet could not have gotten it more wrong in every regard. He is a retired chemistry professor from Simon Fraser University in Canada and if he had bothered to examine the properties of Ionized Water he would have found that they are exactly as I describe them to be. He also would have found that they do exactly what I say they do inside the body. He discredits himself immensely when he states that Ionized Water is simply "snake-oil on tap". History will humiliate him and Simon Fraser University should denounce any association with him. If they do not, then they are complicit in his denouncement of the one of the greatest health advances in human history.

Those that would attack Ionized Water as being a hoax of some sort do not understand how important it is that we consume substances that are negatively charged and possess negative ions. Those who debunk Ionized Water have never consumed it. None that I have seen have ever read my first book, Confessions of a Body Builder, nor excerpts from my second book, Achieving Great Health in 90 Days or Less. In my eight years of studying and consuming Ionized Water (1.5 – 2.0 gallons per day), I have never found anything that Ionized Water doesn't enhance and benefit as long as it's used properly. Read what Ionized Water has done for me . And what you can expect from drinking Ionized Water.

Many articles have been written about Ionized Water. Dr. Hidemitsu Hayashi, a Heart Surgeon and Director of the Water Institute, Tokyo , Japan , wrote a 30 page article explaining Ionized Water in great detail . Dr. Hayashi describes Ionized Water in excruciating detail, including its precise chemistry during and after ionization. All this is completely ignored by the Quack Watcher who claims to be a chemist. When we don't understand the rudimentary principles of how something functions, some of us tend to simply dismiss it out of ignorance. This is certainly the case with the debunker of Ionized Water because anyone with even the rudimentary knowledge of its chemistry will see that Ionized Water is exactly what the body requires: higher pH, strong antioxidant, negative charge, abundance of electrons, incredible hydration and detoxification properties.

If the debunker truly wanted to know if Ionized Water actually did anything to the human body one way or another, he would need to consume some for a few days or a week, but I can assure he has not. Debunkers are notorious for never trying what they denounce. They are part of a faux-intelligentsia that believes that all science can be explained on paper and therefore there is never a reason to actually test anything in the field. This is the biggest mistake that any scientist can ever make and, by his own admission, the debunker of Ionized Water has never touched a drop of it nor used a water ionizer to draw the scientific conclusions he has made. As with many of the debunkers, closer examination of them and their methods reveals who they are and that they themselves should be debunked.

pH (potential for Hydrogen): (chemistry) p(otential of) H(ydrogen); the logarithm of the reciprocal of hydrogen-ion concentration in gram atoms per liter; provides a measure on a scale from 0 to 14 of the acidity or alkalinity of a solution (where 7 is neutral and greater than 7 basic is and less than 7 is acidic)

ORP (oxidation reduction potential): The potential for one liquid substance to reduce the oxidation of another substance as measured in millivolts (mV).

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My Response to Dr. Robert Young and his book: The pH Miracle

Friday, May 15th, 2009
I recently read The pH Miracle. Balance Your Diet, Reclaim Your Health and found several points to disagree with in the book, which has recently become very popular. Dr. Young has done great work and I have a lot of respect for him and many of his concepts on health. However my areas of disagreement with him are profound because they refer to critical components of human health. We disagree on several other minor points such as the fact that he doesn't encourage us to exercise, but others cannot go unchallenged because they are misguided in the most fundamental way. In my opinion, Dr. Young should reconsider his position on the following stances:
  1. Dr. Young promotes the consumption of fish, which is a problem for two reasons. First, almost everyone cooks the fish they eat. Cooked foods acidify the body and lead to nearly all disease. However, even if fish is consumed raw such as with sushi, it has become extremely laden with heavy metals, in particular mercury. The US pumps 40 million tons of methyl-mercury into the atmosphere, China over 300 million tons and Russia reportedly even more. Because of this, mercury has accumulated in fish, especially larger species such as Tuna, Albacore, Sword and Shark. Heavy metals are replete throughout our environment, having accumulated because of industrialization over the last 200 years. Cooked animal protein is one of the leading causes of disease. Eating raw meat, fish, eggs and dairy is not a health hazard as long as it is organic, non-medicated and disease free. The higher we eat on the food chain, the more concentrated the toxins we consume because animals have hundreds and sometimes thousands of meals that contain toxins that become concentrated in the flesh of the fish, animal or the milk and eggs they produce. When we consume animal flesh, we are consuming those concentrated toxins found in the animals. Because of these reasons, I would never suggest anyone eat fish.
  2. Dr. Young promotes a diet that is only 80% raw, 20% cooked. He offers many cooked food recipes in the back of his book, something I would never do. People don't need to be tempted with cooked foods, nor instructed on how to make them in delicious ways. Of course, I want people to be eat as many raw foods as they possibly can. If someone is only able reach 20% raw foods in their diet, it is better than nothing. On the other hand, I encourage everyone to strive for a diet of 100% raw foods. Most of us won't reach that goal. It has taken me many years of hard work to reach a 99% raw food diet. When I first started eating raw foods, I believed that 20% of our diet should be comprised of cooked foods, mostly starchy carbohydrates such as rice or potatoes. But after four years of eating that way, I eventually realized that chronic disease does not exist in the wild not because those animals who live disease free do so on a 100% raw food diet, not 80%. There are others who promote less than a 100% raw food diet, but they do so in ignorance. Or perhaps they want to rationalize their inability to reach a 100% raw food diet. It is very difficult to achieve that goal, but that is no excuse for promoting anything less. It may appear to be a practical approach to encourage people to eat cooked foods, but that will only encourage and sustain their addiction to cook foods. It is no different than offering an alcoholic a beer occasionally because you think they need it. Giving an alcoholic a drink is encouraging alcoholism in that person and suggesting anyone eat cooked foods is telling them to engage in an activity that prematurely ages us and leads to all disease. If you do suggest anyone eat cooked foods under any circumstances, then you are an enabler. People often will ask me which cooked foods are healthy and I answer that none of them are. And as to which raw foods are healthy, they all are, which is why I promote a 100% raw food diet and attempt to eat that way each and every day.
  3. Dr. Young states that “spirulina and algae supplements . . . thrive in acid conditions and . . . are the scum you see growing on the surface of stagnant ponds and lakes.” While you may find algae mixed with scum growing on a pond, it is not scum itself and should not be confused with it. There are over 70,000 species of algae and most are quite nutritious. I quite often hear nutritionists and dietitians refer to algae as pond scum and it demonstrates a profound ignorance about some of the most powerful foods on Earth. They regurgitate this ignorance of the facts because that is what they are taught during their college years and they have never bothered to research it themselves. It does not take a lot of research to discover the truth about the miraculous health properties of certain species of algae. Dr. Young also states that algae are drawn from natural sources such as lakes. All the Spirulina and Chlorella found on the market is grown in a controlled environment in ponds and not harvested in lakes such as Klamath Blue Green Algae, which is sold under various brand names. He also states that the vitamin B12 derived from algae is “made by bacteria that get into the algae via bird feathers and droppings. ” Spirulina and Chlorella naturally contain the entire vitamin B-Complex, including B-12. The body will not easily assimilate vitamin B-12 when it is not consumed from a natural food that contains the entire vitamin B-Complex, such as Spirulina and Chlorella. Dr. Young also suggests that broccoli and algae are equally nutritious, which is an absurd notion. “Fortunately, a day's dose of algae differs little from a serving of organic broccoli, so you can reap the benefits without facing the risks.” A nutritional analysis of broccoli will show it to be a food that contains a very narrow range of enzymes and other organic chemical nutrients that are particular to that food. Nutritional analyses of either Spirulina or Chlorella reveal them to be the two most nutritional foods known. They contain the broadest array of nutrients and are the most nutritionally dense foods known. They also happen to be the two most scientifically researched foods in human history.
  4. Dr. Young also promotes the consumption of soy. Soy is rarely consumed raw unless it is sprouted. Nearly all soybeans are eaten after they are processed into tofu, textured protein or fermented into foods such as tempeh. Once you have cooked or processed any food, you have altered its natural chemical structure. Heat is a chemical reagent that radically alters anything it comes in contact with, including the foods we consume. The energy footprint of soy is unlike any other food we commonly consume. All raw foods contain negatively spinning ions, which are advantageous to our health and in fact are an absolute necessity if we want to be healthy. However, soy contains positively spinning ions, which are counter productive to our health, as are all positively charged particles. There are plenty of other problems with soy and its negative effects on the body, such as it produces a lot of gas for many who consume it. Other digestive problems often disappear when soy is removed from their diet, including infants. Processed soy products are rich in phytohemaglutinin (PHG), a glue-like substance that unbalances body chemistry, slows circulation and thickens the blood, numbing the immune and nervous systems. Enzyme inhibitors found in soy interfere with the action of trypsin, a digestive enzyme that breaks down protein. Soy also contains goitrogens, which suppress thyroid functions; phytic acid, which can block the absorption of essential minerals such as calcium, copper, magnesium, iron and zinc in the intestinal tract. The high amount of manganese found in soy-based infant formulas, 200 times that of breast milk, can cause brain damage in babies and a slowing of brain functions in children. One study concluded that the last thing women should do to prevent breast cancer is to consume soy. Another study showed accelerated brain aging in those who regularly consumed soy. Women who are pregnant should avoid soy because of the risk of breast cancer. Soy has also been linked to pancreatic cancer. Soy can slow sexual performance because isoflavones interfere with estrogen function. In one major study, Asian men who ate tofu increased their chances of getting Alzheimer’s Disease. “Soy can be used as a transition food to move away from meat and other animal protein to plant protein, that of Spirulina and Chlorella. But once that bridge has been crossed, it must be burned and soy should be completely avoided.”
  5. Lastly Dr. Young offers rather confusing advice regarding the most important component of human health, that of water. “Getting liberal amounts of alkaline water (having a pH between 9 and 11) neutralizes stored acid wastes and, if consumed every day in conjunction with a good diet, gently removes the acids from the body.” This is essentially true and I agree with Dr. Young, although I don’t recommend drinking water with a pH over 9.9 because it has become too caustic at that level. Ironically, Dr. Young promotes consuming purified water produced by distillation or reverse osmosis. He claims: “Distilled water comes closest to rain water, which, if our atmosphere wasn’t so polluted, would be the ideal source of water.” Distilled water is not anything like rain water. Rain water is full of oxygen and crystallizes into snow flakes unlike distilled water which has no crystalline structure. Dr. Masaru Emoto, a Japanese researcher, first introduced the concept of micro-cluster water molecule clusters. Using Magnetic Resonance Analysis, he demonstrated that water which had been distilled, polluted or passed through the body after consumption had lost its structure or inner order. It has been changed beyond its natural structure the same way cooking foods changes the natural chemical structure of food. The water found in plants is quite similar to distilled water in its purity. However, when we consume a plant such as a carrot, we do not only consume the water, but the whole plant as well, thus the water is buffered by the alkaline nature of minerals and enzymes of the plant. But to extract that water and consume it without neutralizing its purity and acidic nature, our body becomes the buffering agent and alkaline minerals are leached from it. I have written extensively in both my books about the dangers of drinking purified water. “[purified] water – like rainwater—have more oxygen atoms or hydroxyl ions (OH-), and fewer hydrogen ions (H+). More hydrogen makes water acidic.” Purified water is acidic, yet Dr. Young prescribes drinking both purified and alkaline water. Ionized Water and purified water are the exact opposite from one another in every way. Purified water is acid; Ionized Water is alkaline. Purified water leaves the body dehydrated; Ionized Water is extremely hydrating. Purified water leaches minerals from the body; Ionized Water provides minerals to the body. Purified water does not provide the body with oxygen; Ionized Water does. Purified water does not scavenge for free radicals; Ionized Water does. Purified water encourages oxidation of the body; Ionized Water reduces oxidation. On the other hand, Dr. Young seems to promote ionized water and even helps promote a water ionizer.

If Dr. Young wishes to be considered someone who promotes true health, he needs to re-examine some of the basic tenants of his ideas about health, particularly those I have outlined in this article.

_____________________________________________________________________ Endnotes:

The pH Miracle, Balance Your Diet, Reclaim Your Health, by Dr. Robert Young. Time Warner Book Group. 2000. Pg. 120.

Mercury In Your Fish, by Ken Cook, President of the Environmental Working Group.

The pH Miracle, Balance Your Diet, Reclaim Your Health, by Dr. Robert Young. Pgs. 117 – 118.

Ibid. Pgs. 86 – 87.

Ibid. Pg. 87.

Ibid. Pg. 87.

Ibid. Pgs. 63 – 64.

Phytohemaglutinin: Phyto=Sun hema=blood + glutin=glue or blood glue.

Nutritional status and phytate: zinc and phytate X calcium: zinc dietary molar ratios of lacto-ovovegetarian Trappist monks: 10 years later, Journal of the American Dietetic Association 88:1562-1566, December 1988.

Dietary estrogens stimulate human breast cells to enter the cell cycle. Dees, C. et al., Environmental Health Perspectives (1997) 105(Suppl. 3):633-636.

Dr. Lon White, Honolulu Heart Program. 1965-1993.

Oncol Rep 1999 Sep-Oct;6(5):1089-95.

The USDA trypsin inhibitor study. I. Background, objectives and procedural details Rackis, Joseph J. et al., Qualification of Plant Foods in Human Nutrition, vol. 35, 1985.

Heather Patisaul et al, Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. 2003. Study done with rats produced blood levels of the isoflavones similar to those in women regularly taking the supplements.

White LR, Petrovich H, Ross GW, Masaki KH, Association of mid-life consumption of tofu with late life cognitive impairment and dementia: the Honolulu-Asia Aging Study. Fifth International Conference on Alzheimer's Disease, #487, 27 July 1996, Osaka, Japan. White LR, Petrovitch H, Ross GW, Masaki KH, Hardman J, Nelson J, Davis D, Markesbery W, Brain aging and midlife tofu consumption. J Am Coll Nutr 2000 Apr;19(2):242-55. ACHIEVING GREAT HEALTH. How Spirulina, Chlorella, Raw Foods and Ionized Water Can Make You Healthier than You Have Ever Imagined In 90 Days or Less, by Bob McCauley. Pg. 52 – 54.

The pH Miracle, Balance Your Diet, Reclaim Your Health, by Dr. Robert Young. Pgs. 92 – 95.

Ibid. Pg. 94.

Effects of alkaline ionized water on formation & maintenance of osseous tissues, by Rei Takahashi Zhenhua Zhang Yoshinori Itokawa (Kyoto University Graduate School of Medicine, Dept. of Pathology and Tumor Biology, Fukui Prefectural University).

Bob McCauley

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My response to Andrew Weil, M.D. and His Opinion of Ionized Water

Saturday, May 9th, 2009

In a reply to a question about the validity of ionized water (alkaline water) on his website, Andrew Weil, M.D. ( www.drweil.com ) completely denounces the use of ionized water for better health. However, he could not be more wrong with this sentiment. He states in his reply “ your body needs absolutely no help in adjusting its pH. Normally, the pH of blood and most body fluids is near seven, which is close to neutral. This is under very tight biological control because all of the chemical reactions that maintain life depend on it. Unless you have serious respiratory or kidney problems, body pH will remain in balance no matter what you eat or drink.” This highlights the incredible lack of understanding by the medical establishment and the failure of our medical schools to instruct doctors on the most basic elements of body chemistry and the effects of the foods we eat have on it. While it is true that the body's blood pH always remains within a specific range (7.25 – 7.45), body pH can vary tremendously and is a precursor to all disease when it drops below pH 6.5. All disease lives in an acid environment and won't thrive in an alkaline environment. For instance, when a cancer patient becomes rife with cancer their body begins to produce ammonia as a chemical response to the extreme acid condition that has been created by the cancer. This is the smell that one experiences when visiting a cancer ward. One of the three things we must do if we want to be healthy is alkalize the body. The other two are hydrate and detoxify the body.

Dr. Weil continues in his response: “Unless you have serious respiratory or kidney problems, body pH will remain in balance no matter what you eat or drink.” Dr. Weil is suggesting that no matter what substances we put into the body, its body pH will remain balanced at around 7.0. This sentiment, which is also promulgated by the medical establishment at large, demonstrates their incredible misconception that our diet is not of any real critical importance when it comes to disease. All chronic disease comes from our diet and has almost nothing to do with genetics as the medical establishment have led us to believe. Dr. Weil obviously does not accept this basic premise, and like the medical establishment, he points to genetics as the culprit as to why we get diseases such as hypertension, diabetes, cancer, etc. What we inherit from our parents and grandparents are dietary habits that are passed from generation to generation; and it is from these habits that we contract the same diseases that we assume “run in the family” . The best evidence to prove that diet has everything to do with disease and nothing to do with our genes is that there is no evidence whatsoever of chronic disease in the wild. We are the only species on Earth that has chronic disease other than the animals that we domesticate and put on a cooked or processed food diet. Once we remove them from the environment of the wild where all foods they consume are raw, they contract every disease that we have.

As for water, Dr. Weil once again demonstrates in the same reply he knows little about the subject he is discussing and offers this opinion: “As for water, you should consider the fact that alkaline water is common throughout the western states but to my knowledge it has not protected anyone from the diseases and disorders that occur elsewhere in the U.S. ” I am not aware that water is alkaline in the western part of the United States or that it even tends to be more alkaline than water in the Eastern portion of the U.S. Being a medical doctor and a prominent member of the medical establishment, surely Dr. Weil would have a study or set of government statistics on what the pH of water is throughout the U.S. And as to whether it has protected anyone from disease, how would Dr. Weil know one way or the other whether the pH of water they drink had helped protect those consuming it from disease. The truth is that it is impossible to know whether it has or not unless studies have been done in that regard and which none have been. Dr. Weil is guessing. He is tossing out opinions that have absolutely no basis in fact. Yet we are suppose to assume he knows what he is talking about simply because he is a doctor and doctors are not be questioned about such things.

Bob McCauley

I have written two books on ionized water ( Confessions of a Body Builder and Achieving Great Health ) and the fundamental principles of ionized water are easily demonstrated through scientific measurement such as pH and ORP ( oxidation reduction potential - the degree of completion of a chemical reaction by detecting the ratio of ions in the reduced form to those in the oxidized form as a variation in electrical potential measured by an ORP electrode assembly). When we ionize water, the pH and ORP change dramatically. The pH can be raised on the alkaline side to 10 or higher, which is 100 times more alkaline than the body ought to be at a pH 7. (pH scale is logarithmic, meaning every move to the right or left is a move 10 fold) When we consume substances that are this alkaline, the pH of the body will rise. On the contrary, when we consume substances that are very acid, such as soft drinks which are pH 2.5 (50,000 times more acid that the body ought to be at a pH 7.0) the body is going to become more acid. All cooked foods are slightly to extremely acid. All raw foods are slightly to extremely alkaline. Dr. Weil assumes to ignore these basic principles of chemistry and the undeniable link between body pH and disease. It is a fundamental principle of health that the medical establishment as a whole has yet to learn. They see no link between diet and disease other than to pay passing attention to it and suggest it is one of many components that cause that mysterious thing called disease. Disease is not mysterious. It occurs only when we trash our bodies by putting the wrong things into it. When we put the right things into it, disease disappears and does not return. Once again, when it comes to disease the medical establishment could not be more wrong about what causes it and what can be done to prevent and cure the body of any disease.

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