Special to the News: Health Is a State of Complete Well-Being

Dear Dr. Meinig:

It seems to me that our ability to secure an optimum diet depends greatly upon how we define what that means. Even though the subtitle of your book. ” ‘NEW’ Trition, How to Achieve an Optimum Diet,” I couldn’t find any place in it that you defined the subject. Sure, most of what you have written gives us ways to achieve this goal, but I felt you might clarify just what you are alluding to. – P.J.

 

Dear P.J.:

You are quite correct. On the one hand it seems easy to say certain foods and diet practices produce top-notch optimum nutrient levels or conversely health destroying properties. A common fault of writers is to fail to define what it is that they are trying to say.

To clarify, let me present three definitions of this important subject. The first is by the World Health Organization. They define health as follows: “A state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.”

This statement has been made over and over again but the average person still feels if he isn’t sick or suffering some serious problem, that he or she is as healthy as can be. This may be so, but for most further investigative procedures or laboratory testing show the average person to be far from healthy.

Before getting into such disclosures, let us examine the National Research Council’s statement about optimum nutrition and its dependency on optimum diet: “This becomes distinctly significant if one recognized that health… has quantitative characteristics involving-ediciency, reserves, and the capacity not only to avoid diseases, but to attain maximum inherited potentialities.”

Frances M. Pottenger, Jr., M.D., in an article published by the International Institute of Clinical Psychology, stated his definition of an optimum diet to be: “That which would provide man with the nutrients essential to regenerate his body cells; to enable him to mature regularly as determined by normal osseous, physical and mental characteristics; to resist disease; to reproduce his kind in homogeneity; and to enable him to produce a livelihood for himself and his family.”

Let me take each of his statements and explore their significance. Everyone, even those on poor diets, seems to regenerate their body cells. But do they? How about individuals who suffer from dermatitis arthritis, and any number of other conditions that demonstrate failure of body cells to regenerate and heal the disease.

How many children can you name right now whose bone growth is too slow or too fast; whose body physical development (even to a lay person) is far from normal?

In spite of all the research that has demonstrated the connection between brain development and mental ability, most people can’t quite see the dietary relationship. The staggering number of our delinquents who need treatment by psychiatrists and psychologists, keeps increasing right along with the increased use of junk foods and bottle beverages.

Both Dr. Poftenger and the National Health Council state that with optimum diet and health, we should resist and avoid disease.

The vast growing number of all kinds of illnesses now costs our people more than $500 billion per year. It has reached the point of bankrupting our country.

World famous Dr. Emanuel Cheraskin puts it another way. He states our national health care system has become the biggest failing business In America.

To be able to reproduce in homogeneity denotes that not only must we have good health, but that each of our children and their children, generation after generation, are expected to have the same unfailing patterns of growth development. Unfortunately for most families, the opposite holds true. Children in America are found to be in poorer health than their parents. Because so many are in worse shape you may feel this part of Dr. Pottenger’s definition to be a ridiculous provision, but the truth of his statement has been demonstrated time and again in studies of animals and was proven true in the lives of 14 races of modern time primitives.

We all know of individuals who just can’t seem to provide a livelihood for themselves or their families. Optimum diets have a way of providing the nutrients all our cells need, and when that occurs, we develop a vim, vigor, and vitality that provides the where-with-all ability to work successfully.

Getting back to the statement by the World Health Organization made at the beginning of this article, that many believe themselves to be healthy because they are NOT experiencing any outward manifestations of disease…When such individuals are asked to complete questionnaires, such as the Cornell Medical Index, that relate to 200 or more common symptoms, it is found that the average person has numerous medical deficiencies that they somehow like to ignore when talking about their health status. A few examples of the diverse conditions that are present in many people are vision problems, constipation, digestive problems, gas, diarrhea, hemorrhoids, hay fever, frequent colds, tooth decay and gum diseases, hearing loss, fatigue, weight problems, and a myriad of other conditions.

Then, too, if tests are made of so-called healthy people’s blood, urine, feces, saliva, hair, etc., all kinds of other medical difficulties are frequently found to be present.

While truly healthy people are few and far between, all of this may lead you to believe that optimum health is impossible to attain. The problems are certainly many and difficult, but as people work toward achieving optimum health, they find many of their symptoms disappear. What is more, as time goes on, the benefits of preventive measures make more successful, happy lives.