Paradigm Lost: The Answer To Cure Smoking

To understand how to quit smoking the world needs to put on a different set of glasses.
At a not too distant time in the past, the afflictions of mankind were diagnosed from a completely different vantage point than they are now--- a different paradigm was in place. Certain diseases that afflicted man were succesfully cured when this paradigm was in place. Yes, cured . . . problem gone.

What was that paradigm? Nutrient deficiency . . .

Though this paradigm was successful it has been abandoned for the germ/infection/vaccine paradigm which has not been successful in curing disease.

Though it has been abandoned, it is the true paradigm--- the only one that `works' or solves the issue and this includes the issue of how to quit smoking.

THE SCOURGE OF THE BRITISH FLEET

Heavy losses of manpower were incurred by the maritime nations that sailed the world for the two or three hundred years before the 20th century from a disease that came to be known as scurvy. According to the author Stephen Bown, in his book Scurvy: How a Surgeon, a Mariner and a Gentleman Solved the Greatest Medical Mystery of the Age of Sail, “ . . . historians have conservatively estimated that over two million sailors perished from scurvy during the age of sail”

In Vasco deGamas first trip around the Cape of Good Hope in 1497 he lost 100 out of 160 crewman. The suffering that the men went through is even agonizing to read.

In 1577 a Spanish galleon was found adrift with all aboard dead of this disease.

Jacques Cartier wrote in his journal, “We had almost lost hope of ever returning to France.” Snowbound and stranded in the depths of a harsh winter the French explorer wrote of a further complication--- scurvy had struck his crew of 110 men. Twenty-five men succumbed to the `plague' as Cartier called it, and there was no hope of salvation from the deadly clutches of scurvy. “Out of 110 that we were, not ten were well enough to help the others, a pitiful thing to see."

Cartier eventually prevailed upon one of the Iroquois Indians that he had known, a man by the name of Dom Agaya. Agaya revealed to Cartier the remedy for the illness afflicting his crew. They were to take a certain tree and strip the bark and needles and boil it in water and then drink the decoction. Within a few days the crew was miraculously cured. Cartier wrote, “If all the physicians of Montpelier and Lovaine had been there with all the drugs of Alexandria they would not have done so much in a year as that tree did in six days.” What was in that tree?

The cure for scurvy, this dreadful plague as Cartier called it, is a nutrient known to us today as vitamin C.
The scourge of sailors the world over was due to a nutrient deficiency . . .

Now, pay attention--- to prove that we all wear modern goggles which limit our vision drastically, let us see what would happen if this mysterious disease were to suddenly appear in our modern civilization--- just grant that it never occurred before--- how would we investigate it from our modern epistemological paradigm?

If the circumstances of the scurvy epidemic were to have occurred now instead of at that time in history we would see ALL research and money funneled into finding:

a vaccine

a pathogenic microbe

social policy in the form of laws being passed by lawmakers

not to mention money wasted on `educating' the public about the deadly scurvy and how you should be sure to get your scurvy vaccine every year

Problem solved? No . . .

This line of thinking almost happened with the disease known as beriberi, another disease which afflicted many parts of the world in the 19th and early 20th century. The paradigm of germ/infection/vaccine was in its cradle at the time--- if it was fully established the cause of beriberi would never have been found. Why? Because the cause of this world-wide affliction was a nutrient deficiency. In this case it was thiamine or vitamin B-1.

Western doctors called it the national disease of Japan in the late 19th century. There was angst in the air as Japanese doctors sought to solve this mystery which was threatening Japans future military might--- young naval recruits were dropping like flies. It was assuming epidemic proportions not only in Japan but in the Dutch Colonies where the disease was dubbed beriberi.

Though the germ/infection/vaccine paradigm was young this was the lense that doctors looked through in trying to find the cause of beriberi. And it was fruitless. This was the case in the Dutch colonies where the same disease was breaking out amongst some of the inhabitants but mostly the Dutch military that were stationed there.

A commission of doctors and pathologists were called in to try and halt the onslaught of the disease.
First they inspected the nerve tissue of deceased patients and animals to try and isolate the disease--- but they couldn't find any specific bacteria to isolate. Because of their belief in the germ theory they continued in their investigation by taking the blood of `infected patients' and injecting it into monkeys, rabbits and dogs. The animals were expected to `come down' with the disease . . . . but they didn't. The germ theory which would come to prevail in the entire world was not providing the answers in this case, and Western, along with Japanese doctors, remained perplexed.

Christian Eijkman found the cause quite by chance when he noted that some chickens that had come down with the disease `recovered'. A change of military cooks is what broght this about. The new cook had changed the diet of these chickens because he didn't think that “it was fit for military rice to be fed to civilian chickens.” The light bulb lit up in Eijkmans head and he realized what the problem was. The military and a growing number of the populace had taken to preferring white rice instead of brown rice. White rice has the hull removed but the hull contains factors known as vitamins. The cook changed the diet of the chickens to brown rice, which he deemed as inferior but actually it was what made the chickens recover because the vitamins were still intact.

Eventually the disease was discovered to be due to a deficiency of thiamine or vitamin B-1 which is only available in the hull of rice. In effect the people were starving themselves of a specific nutrient and they were dying as a result.

Ultimately, this led to food fortification laws in the Inited State in the early 1940's. But again a mysterious disease that ravaged poulations was discovered to be due to a ntrient deficiency.

THE FOUR D's

Because of Eijkmans findings some doctors were not sold on the germ/infection/vaccine hypothesis when it came to diagnosing the cause of pellagra. was known as a form of leprosy--- so devastating was its effect on the human form. This disease, at different periods of time, ravaged Europe and was especially virulent in the American South up until the 1920's. A New York Times article from 1909, echoing the opinion of doctors at the time, called it “one of the most horrible, pitiful afflictions mankind has ever suffered from.”
This was not just a skin disease however-- it was a killer. In the first ten months of the year 1915 there were 1,306 deaths due to pellagra in South Carolina alone. So this was a disease that not only manifested as a severe skin affliction but also what was described as "the four D's": diarrhea, dermatitis, dementia and . . . . death. In the South, in 1916, there were over 100,000 affected.
Because of the entrenchment of the disease for quite some time in the South, a hospital was founded in 1914 dedicated specifically to curing pellagra.

What is interesting about this disease is that the researchers and especially the primary researcher, Joseph Goldberger, had a completely different outlook on this disease than the researchers of beriberi. With beriberi we saw that the germ theory took hold and was unfruitful in finding a cure. In pellagra, Goldberger was looking, from the outset, for a nutritional deficiency. I think we can gather that this presupposition of his was heavily influenced by the work of those who eventually discovered that beriberi was a nutritional deficiency.

Even though there was widespread belief that it might be some type of germ or a poison in a food item, such as the Times article just cited speculated, Goldberger stuck to his assumption of a nutritional deficiency. Using volunteers from a prison, Goldberger was able to induce pellagra in the prisoners within two to three weeks by feeding them corn only. He cured the pellagra by giving them fresh fruits and vegetables. Eventually the cause was found to be a deficiency in the vitamin known as Niacin or vitamin B-3.

The germ/infection/vaccine paradigm that we look through would definitely have proven useless here also.

YOU ARE NOT ADDICTED TO CIGARETTE SMOKING YOU ARE STARVING

Cigarette smokers are suffering from a nutrient deficiency and they are seeking this nutrient in a nonfood form--- tobacco.

Medically, this phenomenon of consuming nonfoods is known as pica.

The objects of pica are diversified--- people have been known to eat clay, glass, chalk or even metallic objects like nails.

The general consensus is that these people are seeking a nutrient that, for some reason or other, is missing in their diet. Though the pica object is invariably a nonfood, IT DOES ACT AS A CARRIER FOR A METALLIC RESIDUE. In our bodies we call these metals--- minerals

You must keep in mind . . . tobacco is a plant and all plants contain various nutrients such as MINERALS

The human organism displays immense wisdom in regulating its internal environment. In other words, if a certain nutrient is not available in the normal food supply the organism will seek it wherever it can get it--- even if this means consuming nonfoods.

When the smoker replaces the nutrient that he is seeking through tobacco through whole food forms and/or supplements an amazing thing happens . . .

the desire to smoke completely vanishes. Smoking is cured because at its root it is a nutrient deficiency.