THE NATURE OF
CANCER
by
Ernst Krebs, Jr. (click here for picture)
(Presented
before CCS Second annual Cancer Convention, Ambassador Hotel, Los
Angeles, California )
It is certainly a pleasure to be here
at the Second Annual Convention of the Cancer Control Society-an
outgrowth, as you know, of the International Association of Cancer
Victims and Friends.
As I look back through the years
marketing the emergence of these two fine Societies, I can recall
the number of miraculous victories we have had in those
intervening years; that it is as true today as it was eleven years
ago that Laetrile, Vitamin B17, is the first and last final hope
in the prophylasis in therapy of cancer in man and animals. The
reason for this is that Laetrile is a vitamin. It is the 17th of
the B vitamins.
We hear a great deal about its use in
terminal cancer, but the time to start with vitamin B17 is now
before the disease become clinical. The time to start is the same
with any matter of adequate nutrition and that is right now. You
may start now by commencing to eat the seeds of all common fruits
that you eat. The apricot and peach seed contain almost 2 percent
of vitamin B17 by weight. The apple seed, although very small, is
equally rich in Vitamin B17. So are the seeds of prunes, plums,
cherries, and nectarines. The only common fruit on the hemisphere
that lacks nitrilosidic seeds, are the citrus fruits. This lack
has come about by artificial cultivation by breeding and
hybridization, since the seeds of citrus fruits on the African
continent still contain Vitamin B17.
Two more rich sources
of Vitamin B17 are the simple cereal millet and buckwheat.
Macadamia nuts, although expensive and exotic, are very rich in
Vitamin B17 and so are bamboo shoots, mung beans, lima beans,
butter beans and certain strains of garden peas. But for
convenience, the simple source for your Vitamin B17 are the seeds
of the common fruit.
We know something about the
prophylactic dose of Vitamin B17. For example, we know the Hunza's
represent a population that has been cancer free for over 900
years of its existence. This population has a natural diet, which
supplies on the average between 50 to 75 milligrams of Vitamin B17
a day.
Hunzaland is a land that has sometimes been
described as the "place where apricot is king." The Hunzakuts eat
the fresh apricots for the three months they are in season and the
remainder of the year they eat dried apricots. They never eat a
dried apricot without enclosing the seed between them. This
supplies them with better than average of 50 to 75 milligrams of
Vitamin B17 a day.
There are many of us in the Western
World who don't ingest this amount of Vitamin B17 in the course of
an entire year. As a result we're in the midst of a fulminating
deficiency of Vitamin B17 or nitriloside, the anti-neoplastic
vitamin. Its absence from our diets accounts for the fact that
cancer on our population has reached such a pandemisity as to
account for its occurrence in one in every three American
families. The occurrence is probably much greater than that
because it is very late in its development when the cancer is
detected.. Many who develop cancer are killed by accident or
intercurrent diseases before the malignant process has become
sufficiently advanced to cause them to have it diagnosed.
Cancer is a chronic, metabolic disease...that is obvious. It isn't
an infectious disease, which is caused by bacteria of viruses. It
is a disease that is metabolic in origin. A metabolic disease is a
disease that is linked with our utilization of food. Most
metabolic diseases have as their basis specific vitamins and
minerals.
Let me give you a categorical or axiomatic truth
to take with you. One that is totally uncontradictable,
scientifically, historically and in every other way. This is that
no chronic or metabolic disease in the history of medicines has
ever been prevented or cured, except by factors normal to the diet
or normal to the animal economy. There have been many erstwhile
fatal devastating diseases that now have become virtually unknown.
They have been prevented and cured by ingesting the dietary
factors and thereby preventing the deficiencies, which accounted
for these diseases.
The one in which you are probably most
familiar is Scurvy. A fatal disease that killed mankind by the
thousands. A disease that would sometimes wipe out an entire Polar
expedition or accounted for about 50 percent mortality among the
Crusaders. A disease that is totally prevented and totally cured
by Vitamin C or ascorbic acid a factor normal to an adequate diet.
As you know so well from your school days that Great Britain
acquired the dominion of the seas, by empirically discovering that
by adding lime or other citrus juices to the provisions of the
British mariners the curse of scurvy from the British sea power
was removed. Therefore, Britain competitively gained the
ascendancy on the seas. Prior to the incorporation of Vitamin C
into their diets it wasn't uncommon for three-fourths of the crew
to become seriously ill by the end of a voyage and then those who
didn't die would mysteriously recover after hitting shore because
they would have access to fresh fruits and vegetables rich in
Vitamin C.
Then we have Pernicious Anemia, which had a
mortality rate of 98 or 99 percent. And no medical modality under
the sun could touch it. Arsenic and its salts, strychnine, iron
and hundreds of other remedies were tried, but to no avail until
the researchers Drs. Murphy, Shipple and Minot commenced their
classical studies on the relationship of Pernicious Anemia to
dietary deficiency.
While working at the University of
California they discovered a very simple remedy for preventing and
curing this disease. They simply said to their patients, "go down
to your butcher shop and get a quarter pound of fresh liver. Grind
it up and take a tablespoon everyday and take the quarter pound
and cook it very lightly and just singe the surface and use this
as a ration for three days." And when the patients followed this
advice without exception, those with Pernicious Anemia made
complete recoveries. Despite this these men were censored by the
Medical Establishment at the time and were criticized for engaging
in what was alleged to be Medical Quackery.
The argument
was how can respectable doctors advise people with a disease that
has a 99 percent mortality rate to ignore all of the established
drugs of medical science and go down to the butcher shop and buy
some raw liver and take this and expect this to cure a disease
that nothing else had cured. Well, raw liver did cure the disease
and raw liver did prevent it.
As the chemistry of raw liver
was studied it was discovered that the factors responsible were
Vitamin B12 and Folic Acid. So Vitamin B12 and Folic Acid are now
a part of our normal dietary experience.
So in 1974, the
uninformed, the unimaginative and some of the illiterate are
concerned with what to them is a preposterous idea that by eating
seed of fruit you can prevent a disease that carries a mortality
rate almost as high as that once carried by pernicious Anemia. But
scientific truth isn't dependant upon credibility or lack of it.
The scientific reality either is or isn't. And this is the
scientific reality that the seeds of all common fruits (except
citrus)contain Vitamin B17, an anti cancer vitamin. If we ingest
proper quantities for these vitamin either in the pure form or
through ingesting the nitrilosidic foods we will be able to
prevent this decease just as surely as we are able to prevent
Scurvy by the use of vitamin C or Pernicious Anemia by the use of
vitamin B12.
There was another disease that is a metabolic
or chronic nature and this is Pellagra. At one time it was so
endemic in certain parts of the world, particularly the American
southwest, that there were entire hospitals given to the treatment
of Pellagrans.
The great Sir William Osler in his
"Principles and Practices of Medicine" written at the turn of this
century, said of Pellagra, "I was at Lenoir, North Carolina during
one winter and this winter I visited the Lenoir home for the
colored insane and there 75 percent of the inmates died from the
disease. It ran rampant through this institution and convinced me
beyond any doubt that pellagra is a virus that is infectious." And then came the fine works of the United States Public
Health Service Surgeon, Dr. Goldberger, who showed conclusively
that the occurrence of Pellagra was related with a deficiency of
fresh green material in the diet.. So Dr. Goldberger approached
this problem first by the use of Brewer's Yeast, which would
completely prevent and cure pellagra. Further studies then showed
that the factor in Brewer's yeast that was most determinate of
this effect was niacin, Vitamin B3.
So another fatal
chronic metabolic disease found total resolution and cure through
factors normal to the normal diet or the animal economy. We know
that cancer is no exception to this great generalization and to
date has known no exception. That is that every chronic of
metabolic disease that will ever be controlled by man, must be
controlled by means that are a part of the biological experience
of the organism. Chronic and metabolic diseases can never be
controlled, prevented or cured by factors foreign to the
biological experience of the organism.
Let's make it clear
by what we mean by biological experience to the organism. We refer
to the experience the of the organism has had over the million
years of its evolution. The organism was exposed to water, air,
carbohydrates, fats, amino acids and various salts and these
factors became integrated with the evolving organism. And the
evolving organism became integrated with these factors. And these
factors with the evolving organism were incorporated into the
beautiful machinery of "life." And the vital mechanism of life
runs just like the parts of a fine Swiss watch only infinitely
more complex.
Dr. Thomas of the Sloan Kettering Institute
in a recent article in Science said, "I'm thankful that my liver
works without my knowledge. I do not have the brains to commence
to do one millionth of what my liver does. These things are
automatic . So I swallow the food and this infinitely complex
machinery takes care of itself. "We could spend years telling you
about this magnificent machinery and we still wouldn't touch the
surface of this infinite ocean. We do know that there is nothing
that we can do to improve upon it. We do know that in the history
of medicine there never had been found anything foreign to the
indwelling requirements of this machinery that will do the living
organism any good. And we can go further to say there has never in
the history of medicine been found anything foreign to the
indwelling machinery of this infinitely complex system that will
not harm the organism. There isn't such a thing as a factor
foreign to the biological experience that is not harmful to the
organism.
There is nothing we can add to our air water and
food to improve it. The most we can do is to look at some of our
devitalized food and hopefully attempt to replace that which was
capriciously removed from it in the process of food refining,
manipulation or cooking. There is absolutely nothing that we can
add to that food to improve it. These things are basic.
There isn't any chemical or drug that medical science could
suggest that would make us healthier or better adjusted or wiser
or give us hope for a longer life. There isn't a single drug or
molecule in nature that can unless that molecule exists in normal
food. And this probably explains one of the reasons why there is
so much resistance to Laetrile, B17
The application of this
science brings us face to face with a lot of things we do not like
to face. We have become over-civilized. We are inclined in out
delusory thinking to feel that here and there , there must be a
magic out. That there must be a simple way, a short cut, that
somehow or other medical science or some other man-made forces
beyond our comprehension will do for us those things we must do
for ourselves. And it is slowly dawning on us, perhaps too slowly
that this thinking is fraudulent; that it is unsound.
It
isn't in the field of cancer alone where we see this form of
charlatanism or quackery. We see it in the area of the human mind.
The futile attempts to spare man from the realities that surround
him. Above all to spare him from the fact that he is accountable
to himself and to his God and that there is no short cut in this
accountability.
It's real at the physical level. And when
we are eating less than adequate food, we know better, And when we
continue we are engaged in sin, this is the basis for practically
all of our physical and mental and spiritual difficulties. We had
better be realistic about it. We have them because we don't do the
right things. And when we fail in view of our knowledge now to
take Vitamin B17 this is a sin against our physical nature. And
when we develop cancer we will receive the results of this
transgression in the old fashion Biblical sense that the "wages of
sin are death."
If you are not getting Vitamin B17 in your
food the best way to get it is in the pure form. If you have
cancer, the most important single consideration is to get the
maximum amount of Vitamin B17 into your body in the shortest
period of time. This is secondary to the medical skill involved in
administering it, which is relatively minimal. Then very often
there are many supportive measures that are taken in the
management of the cancer patient such as the use of materials to
build up the blood, to raise or lower the blood pressure or to
relieve the pain.
Pancreatic enzymes and vegetable enzymes
are part of the supportive theory. You have the papaya melons as
the source of the enzyme Papain and pineapple as a source of the
enzyme Bromelain. The demasking effect of these enzymes against
the pericellular layer of the malignant cell is something very
concrete in the immunology of cancer. Now I prefer, rather than
advising the use of bromelain or papaya tablets that the
individual seeking these enzymes get them directly from the fresh
ripe pineapple and papaya fruit. As much as half a pineapple a day
should be ingested.
This is the way to go. You have nothing
to lose by eating fresh pineapple and papaya melons. Nothing to
lose by eating millet, the seeds of all the common fruits and
whole fresh foods.
Dietary deficiencies arrive primarily
from eating less than whole food. This is why the Federal and
State governments have made mandatory the artificial enrichment of
white flour. Look at any loaf of white bread or white flour that
has been enriched by the addition of crystalline Vitamin B1,
Vitamin B2, niacin, iron and all the rest. What a commentary on
the stupidity of our civilization that we put good food through a
process that defects it of its essential nutrients and then
enforced by the Government mandate requirements that say that we
must restore to this food some of the things that have been
processed out. One of the most critical factors is removed and
that is wheat germ, which contains the Vitamin E and the poly
unsaturated fatty acids. it would not be necessary to take it in
supplementation if our foods were not manipulated in a way to
remove this.
Now something about supplementation's in
addition to the Vitamin B17. We can't think in terms of just one
vitamin. We get an adequate diet by eating as wide a variety of
whole natural foods as possible and as close to their growing
period as we can possibly obtain them.
There are laetrile
therapists who recommend two or three grams of ascorbic acid or
Vitamin C in conjunction with the Laetrile program. This is a very
moderate recommendation and we can all take up to seven or eight
grams of Vitamin C without any problems. This is about the same
amount as the higher primates such as the gorilla on a pound to
pound basis ingest between five to six grams of Vitamin C a day in
their normal habitat. Incidentally, the gorilla in its natural
habitat eats about 100 to 125 milligrams of Vitamin B17 a day,
too. Like the population of Hunzaland, these gorillas are free of
cancer, so are bears in their normal habitat. out in the wilds
they don't develop cancer.
In the San Diego Zoo there was a
cage of about ten bears and out of the ten, seven of them
developed cancer. To some this was a sign that some mysterious
bear cancer virus was loose. but, it wasn't that at all. In the
wild state the bears are omnivores and they eat a lot of wild
nitrilosidic berries. Almost all wild fruits are nitrilosidic. Keep in mind how far we have drifted from the dietary
requirements of the machinery that we now possess. When we evolved
and came to our maturity as organisms about 8,000 or 9,000 years
ago the world witnessed the advent of agriculture and horticulture
came a little later. The millions of years prior to that time we
ate the cherries, apricots, apples, prunes and the rest of the
fruits. They had Vitamin B17 not only within the seeds, but in the
flesh, too. Today only wild fruit contain the Vitamin B17, but in
the process of hybridization it has been removed.
The fruit
that we eat today is the product of years of manipulation and
cultivation for lushness and abundance and so forth, so the meat
to that fruit is free of Vitamin B17. To meet our indwelling needs
of Vitamin B17 we must either eat the fruit seed in reasonable
quantity or begin supplementing our diet with Vitamin B17 tablets.
We can't of course, do that at present, but we hope to see before
very long Vitamin B17 available so that we can prevent cancer in
the same way we prevent scurvy.
Several new books are
coming out on Laetrile. Both are written by non-medical men -
World Without Cancer by Edward Griffin and Vitamin B17: Forbidden
Weapon Against Cancer by Mike Culbert. We are all laymen in he
field of cancer. There are more laymen in the Laetrile movement
who know more about cancer than some of our most prestigious
experts in our most prestigious institutions. These laymen know
enough about it to keep alive and not die from it. So you're a
pretty rotten expert if you know so little about it as to succumb
from it or have your family succumb from it.
We have many
case histories of people that have been helped by Laetrile. Both
Alicia Buttons and Mary Henderson were terminal with oral
pharyngeal cancer that has a mortality rate of 98-99 percent even
in early diagnosis. Both made remarkable recoveries with Laetrile
under the guidance of Dr. Hans Nieper in Germany.
You know
we have been meeting ten or eleven years and you've been hearing
this story. Each time after the meeting you had 360 days to go
home and read newspapers, American Cancer Society Boiler Plate and
so forth. In those ten years they haven't told you anything
against Laetrile that makes any sense. You can be pretty sure they
don't have anything against Laetrile because these people are very
uninhibited and the area in which they are most uninhibited is in
the area of simple lying.
If you have any questions about
Laetrile, the more critical the better because we are dealing with
solid science. We are dealing with a science that admits that
there is no rational alternative in the ten years that have past
since these meetings. Nothing has come about to do anything except
to make more obvious the fact that Laetrile, Vitamin B17 is the
answer to cancer.
Q. Will cooking millet destroy
the Vitamin B17?
A. No, cooking doesn't destroy
the Vitamin B17. Almost every food that we eat is better eaten
raw. And when we cook a fruit we destroy the enzymes and wherever
we have Vitamin B17 we have the accompanying enzyme B-glucosidase
naturally. B-glucosidase is destroyed by heat, but Vitamin b17 is
not destroyed by heat.
Is there any way in which a person
may be deficient in the enzyme rhodanese?
The enzyme
rhodanese is a normally occurring enzyme that converts cyanide to
the non-toxic compound neocyanate and we evolved with the Rhodes
because the Vitamin B17 containing cyanide originally was so large
a part of our diet. So far as we know there is no development of
rhodanese deficiencies.
We must be very realistic that
there is absolutely nothing we can do to alter this infinitely
complex machinery of the cell and of life. All that we can do is
to supply those components that are missing and then hope for the
best. It's like being on the freeway with a Cadillac in which the
hood is locked and you run out of gas. Now all your knowledge of
mechanics are going to be of no avail just pour gas in to the tank
and step on the starter and hope for the best that the gas gets
sucked into the motor. When the machinery of the cell begins to
falter or fail you put in those factors normal to the operation of
that machinery. Since we have no choice we allow the universe to
take its course. We don't go on the presumption that we can
successfully tamper with that infinite machinery.
Q. Do you believe that we should take the Wobenzym enzymes along
with the Laetrile?
Yes, they are good, except I
think they are slightly overpriced and I strongly recommend the
American Viokase put out by Viobin in Minticello, Illinois. Q. Is Laetrile a prescription item in Mexico or Canada? I know that it is legal in Mexico, but I don't know the exact
situation in Canada at the moment. You may get it without a
prescription in Mexico.
Q. If you get the benefits
from the seeds of fruits for prevention, why is it necessary to
take the more concentrated forms?
Like everything
else in science, it is self-answering. It isn't necessary, so eat
the seeds and you can get an adequacy of Vitamin B17.
Q. The fact that cancer is a metabolic disease, what role
does pollution have in that process?
Pollutants
harm the liver and the liver is a great detoxifying organ of the
body. If the liver is detoxifying an excess of estrogen, for
example, and capacity of the liver is impaired by pollutants, the
estrogen level then may reach a concentration sufficient to induce
cancer. If we are eating apples that have been sprayed with
arsenic and we eat enough of these apples, the arsenic may produce
a hepatic chirrosis that again will impair the capacity of the
liver to detoxify certain carcinogens and thereby contribute to
the development of cancer. If we are receiving a very high
concentrating of Vitamin B17 this will offset the possibility of
developing cancer, but these pollutants still can kill us through
producing chirrosis of the liver and destroying other vital cells. Q. Can the body handle inorganic Vitamin C? The Vitamin C on the market is organic and contrary to what is
sometimes believe is not synthetic. The Vitamin C that is produced
in this country is produced by fermentation involving the growth
of the mold Streptomycetes. So it is a biosynthetic process. This
is the cheapest and most efficient way to do it, although this is
not a "complex."
Q. How many seeds should we eat? I would say that 15 seeds every other day would provide an
adequacy and give quite a margin.
Q. If we are
supposed to eat seeds, why aren't we supplied with teeth for
breaking through the pits?
There are societies
that have not become too corrupted by the sophistications of
modern technology. These people are capable of biting through the
pit. We have even seen small dogs break the pit and eat the seeds.
Squirrels, chipmunks, bears, higher primates such as monkeys
ordinarily do it.
Curators of zoos tell us when monkeys and
apes are thrown fresh apricots, peaches and plums, in time, if
they are thrown enough of them, they cease eating the sweet sugary
fruit and they begin hoarding the pits. they manage to break open
those pits. Primates will take them in hand and hammer them
against a piece of concrete. Eating these seeds is universal among
the nomads and among the higher animals.
Q. How do
you keep the seeds once they are out of the pit?
You may keep the seeds indefinitely if you keep them thermatically
sealed under refrigeration. If you don't d\keep them under
refrigeration the Vitamin B17 won't deteriorate, but the
unsaturated fatty acids will turn rancid and become carcinogenic. Q. Does Vitamin B17 help sickle Cell Anemia? A lot of fine work is being done on this. Robert Houston has
done some very brilliant studies along these lines and he has
published several top-rate papers. Sickle Cell anemia crises is
the result of a fulminating deficiency of Vitamin B17 and it
occurs in Americans of African origin, who upon leaving the
African continent become removed from a dietary source of vitamin
B17. Sickle Cell crisis is a Vitamin B17 deficiency disease in the
same way that Pernicious Anemia is a Vitamin B12, Folic Acid
deficiency disease.
Q. Do almonds contain cyanide? The Romans found that here and there almond trees appeared
which had almonds that were completely sweet and no longer had any
trace of bitterness. That bitterness is due to the presence of
Vitamin B17. So they proceeded to destroy all of the almond trees
that had any trace of bitterness and propagated those almond trees
that just yielded the sweet kernels. so those almonds that have
come to us in the Western World are very rich in the enzyme B-glucosidase,
but deficient in Vitamin B17. On the other hand the eastern part
of the world, such as the Ukraine, Soviet Union and Red China,
have predominately the original bitter almond, very rich in
Vitamin B17
Q. Is it o. k. to eat all the legumes
raw?
No, it isn't. It is good to cook most beans.
The cooking doesn't destroy the Vitamin B17 content. Although
beans eaten raw in small quantities are quite acceptable as food. Q. Is it best to take all 15 apricot kernels at once? Yes. I should add that it is a good idea to grind them up in a
nut grinder. One teaspoon of the material is equivalent to seven
of eight seeds. Take two teaspoonfuls and lace a fruit salad or
oatmeal or whatever you are eating. You can incorporate it into
muffins or use it a hundred different ways. You can take it
straight or you can eat it and then follow it with a little honey
because of the persisting bitterness.
Q. Are the
broad beans or visa fava high in cyanide?
Yes,
they are splendid. It was one of the staples in the diet of the
Roman legions. The legionnaires not only ate broad beans. but they
fed them to their horses. This made for a very vigorous infantry
in Calvary. Visa fava are also known as Italian beans or flat
beans.
Q. Is Vitamin B17 helpful against
devastating effects of excessive quantities of environmental or
medical radiation?
No, and the reason for it is a
very common sense one. In all of the exigencies of our evolution
and natural selection, the presence of radiation in such horrible
concentrations was never anticipated. The organism may be beset
with such onslaught and there are no mechanisms including Vitamin
B17 to medicate the deadly effects of such excess radiation. This
is one of the most horrible assaults on living tissues. The most
horrible assaults that living tissue can sustain, because it
destroys not only the individual of one generation, but it may
cripple, if not extinguish the immortal germ plasma, on which the
continuity of the species itself relies.
From a
mountaintop land where cancer and heart disease are unknown, come
some down-to-earth ideas about eating for health.
Death
Rides a Slow Bus in Hunza by Jane Kinderlehrer
How
would you like to live in a land where cancer has not yet been
invented? A land where an optometrist discovers to his amazement
that everyone has perfect 20-20 vision? A land where cardiologists
cannot find a single trace of coronary heart disease? How would
you like to live in a land where no one ever gets ulcers,
appendicitis or gout? A land where men of 80 and 90 father
children, and there's nothing unusual about men and women enjoying
vigorous life at the age of 100 or 120?
We see a lit of
hands going up. Fine. But first, you have to answer a few more
questions before setting out for a place called Hunza, a tiny
country hidden in the mountain passes of northwest Pakistan. Are you willing to live 20,000 feet up in the mountains,
almost completely out of touch with the rest of the world? Are you
ready to go outside in every kind of weather to tend you small
mountainside garden, while keeping you ears open for an impending
avalanche? Are you prepared to give up not only every luxury of
civilization, but even reading and writing?
We see a lot of
hands going down. But if you want the benefits of the pure air
that whips by the icy cathedrals of the Himalayan Mountains, the
pure water that trickles down from glaciers formed at 25,000 feet,
and the mental and spiritual peace that comes from living in a
land where there is no crime, taxes, social striving or generation
gaps, no banks or stores-in fact,-no money- where are you going to
find it outside of Hunza?
But don't give up! Not yet,
because there is still one more question to be answered. That is:
are you prepared to eat the kind of food the Hunza's eat? If you
are, then you can rightfully expect to give yourself at lease some
measure of the super health and resistance to degenerative disease
which the Hunzakuts have enjoyed for 2,000 years.
What kind
of exotic, ill-tasting grub do these Hunza people eat, you are
wondering. Strange as it may sound, virtually everything the
Hunzakuts eat is delectable to the western palate, and is readily
available in the United States-at least if you shopping horizons
do not begin and end at the supermarket.
Not only is the
Hunza diet not exotic, but there's really nothing terribly
mysterious about its health-promoting qualities, Everything we
know about food and health, gathered both from clinical studies
and the observation of scientists who have traveled throughout the
world observing dietary practices and their relationship to
health, tells us that it is to be expected that the Hunza diet
will go a long way towards improving the total health of anyone,
anywhere. The Hunza story is only on of the more dramatic examples
of the miraculous health produced by a diet of fresh, natural
unprocessed and unadulterated food.
All systems
"Go" At 20,000 Feet
Maybe you're wondering: are
the Hunza's really all that healthy? That was the question on the
mind of cardiologists Dr. Paul D. White and Dr. Edward G. Toomey,
who made the difficult trip up the mountain paths to Hunza, toting
along with them a portable, battery-operated electrocardiograph.
In the American Heart Journal for December, 1964, the doctors say
they used the equipment to study 25 Hunza men, who were, "on
fairly good evidence, between 90 and 110 years old." Blood
pressure and cholesterol levels were also tested. Hwy reported
that not one of these men showed a single sign of coronary heart
disease, high blood pressure or high cholesterol.
An
optometrist, Dr. Allen E. Banik, also made the journey to Hunza to
see for himself if the people were as healthy as they were reputed
to be, and published his report in Hunza Land (Whitehorn
Publishing Co., 1960). "It wasn't long before I discovered that
everything that I had read about perpetual life and health in this
tiny country is true, "Dr. Banik declared. "I examined the eyes of
some of Hunza's oldest citizens and found them to be perfect." Beyond more freedom from disease, many observers have been
startled by the positive side of Hunza health. Dr. Banik, for
example, relates that "many Hunza people are so strong that in the
winter they exercise by breaking holes in the ice-covered streams
and take a swim down under the ice." Other interpit visitors who
have been there report their amazement at seeing men 80,90,and 100
years old repairing the always- crumbling rocky roads, and lifting
large stones and boulders to repair the retaining walls around
their terrace gardens. The oldsters think nothing of playing a
competitive game of volleyball in the hot sun against men 50 years
their junior, and even take part in wild games of polo that are so
violent they would make an ice hockey fan shudder.
The
energy and endurance of the Hunzakuts can probably be credited as
much to what they don't eat as what they do eat. First of all,
they don't eat a great deal of anything. The United States
Department of Agriculture estimates that the average daily food
intake for Americans of all ages amounts to 3,300 calories, with
100 grams of protein, 157 grams of fat and 380 grams of
carbohydrates, In contrast, studies by Pakistani doctors show that
adult males of Hunza consume a little more than 1.900 calories
daily, with only 50 grams of protein, 36 grams of fat, and 354
grams of carbohydrates. Both the protein and fat are largely of
vegetable origin (Dr. Alexander Leaf, National Geographic,
January, 1973).
That amounts to just half the protein ,
one-third the fat, but about the same amount of carbohydrates that
we Americans eat. Of course, the carbohydrate that the Hunzakuts
eat is undefined or complex carbohydrate found in fruits,
vegetables and grains, while we Americans largely eat our
carbohydrates in the form of nutrition-less white sugar and refined
flour.
Needless to say, the Hunzakuts eat no processed
food. Everything is as fresh as it can possibly be, and in its
original unsalted state. The only "processing" consists of drying
some fresh fruits in the sun, and making butter and cheese out
of milk. No chemicals or artificial fertilizers are used in their
gardens. In fact, it is against the law of Hunza to spray gardens
with pesticides. Renee Taylor, in her book Hunza health secrets(
Prentice-Hall 1964) says that the Mir, or ruler of Hunza, was
recently instructed by Pakistani authorities to spray the orchards
of Hunza with pesticide, to protect them from an expected invasion
of insects. But the Hunzas would have none of it. They refused to
use the toxic pesticide, and instead sprayed their trees with a
mixture of water and ashes, which adequately protected the trees
without poisoning the fruit and the entire environment. In a word,
the Hunzas eat as they live -organically.
Apricots Are
Hunza Gold
Of all their organically-grown food, perhaps
their favorite, and one of their dietary mainstays, is the
apricot. apricot orchards are seen everywhere in Hunza, and a
family economic stability is measured by the number of trees they
have under cultivation.
They eat their apricots fresh in
season, and dry a great deal more in the sun for eating throughout
the long cold winter. They puree the dried apricots and mix them
with snow to make ice cream. Like their apricot jam, this ice
cream needs no sugar because the apricots are so sweet naturally. But that is only the beginning. The Hunzas cut the pits from
the fruits, crack them, and remove the almond-like nuts. The women
hand grind these kernels with stone mortars, then squeeze the meal
between a hand stone and a flat rock to express the oil. The oil
is used in cooking, for fuel, as a salad dressing on fresh garden
greens, and even as a facial lotion ( Renee Taylor says Hunza
women have beautiful complexions).
The Apricot
Kernel Anti-Cancer Theory
Do these kernels have
important protective powers which in some way play an important
role in the extraordinary health and longevity of the Hunza
people? The evidence suggest they very well might.
Cancer
and arthritis are both very rare among the Taos (New Mexico)
Pueblo Indians. Their traditional beverages is made from the group
kernels of cherries, peaches and apricots. Robert G. Houston told
PREVENTION that he enjoyed this beverage when he was in New Mexico
gathering material for a book dealing blender shakes based on an
Indian recipe. Into a glass of milk or juice, he mixed a
tablespoon of honey with freshly ground apricot kernels(1/4 of an
ounce or two dozen kernels) which had been roasted for 10 minutes
at 300. It is vitally impotent to roast the kernels first. Houston
points out, "in order to insure safety when you are using the pits
in such quantities." roasting destroys enzymes which could upset
your stomach if you eat too many at on time. In any event the
drink was so delicious that Houston kept having it daily. On the
third day of drinking this concoction, Houston says that a funny
thing happened. Two little benign skin growths on his arm , which
formerly were pink had turned brown. The next day, he noticed that
the growths were black and shriveled. On the seventh morning, the
smaller more recent growths had vanished completely and the larger
one. about the size of a grain of rice, had simply fallen off. Houston says that two of his friends have since tried
the apricot shakes and report similar elimination of benign skin
growths in one or two weeks.
What is there in
apricot pits that could produce this remarkable effect? some
foods, especially the kernels of certain fruits and grains,
contain elements known as the nitrilosides(also known as
amygdaline
or vitamin B 17) says Dr. Ernst T. Krebs, Jr., biochemist and
co-discoverer of Laetrile, a controversial cancer treatment(
Laetrile is the proprietary name for one nitriloside).Nitrilosides,
says Dr. Krebs, are non-toxic water-soluble, accessory food
factors found in abundance in the seeds of almost all fruits. They
are also found in over 1.00 other plants. Wherever primitive
people have been found to have exceptional health, with marked
absence of malignant or degenerative disease, their diet has been
shown to be high in the naturally occurring nitrilosides, Dr.
Krebs maintains.
"These nitrilosides just might be to
cancer what vitamin C is to scurvy, what niacin is to pellagra,
what vitamin B12 and folic acid are to pernicious anemia," says Dr
Krebs (Cancer News Journal, May/August, 1970).
There are
other common foods (all seeds) which provide a goodly supply of
this protective factor. Millet and buckwheat, both of which the
Hunzakuts eat in abundance, are two. Lentils, Mung beans and
alfalfa, when sprouted, provide 50 times more nitriloside than
does the mature plant, Dr. Krebs points out. And the Hunzas, as
you might expect, spout all of their seeds, as well as using them
in other ways. Since other essential protective elements are
increased in the sprouting of such seeds, young sprouts are
excellent foods which give us more life-giving values than most of
us realize.
Apricots Rich in vitamin a and Iron Aside from whatever anti-cancer properties the seeds
of apricots may offer, the fruit itself is exceptional in its own
right. There is probably no fruit which is as nourishing as the
apricot. When they are dried, and most of the moisture removed,
the concentration of nutrients becomes even greater. A generous
handful of dried apricots (3 1/2 ounces) is packed with nearly
11,000 units of vitamin A, or more than twice the recommended
daily allowance. In fact, if this much vitamin A was put into a
capsule the FDA would arrest the person selling it. because they
consider this amount both "useless" and "potentially dangerous."
The Hunzas eat it every day. Dried apricots also contain a great
deal of iron, potassium and natural food fiber.
The
Style For Longer and Better Life
Besides apricots,
the Hunzas also grow and enjoy apples, pears, peaches, mulberries,
black and red cherries, and grapes. From these fruits, the Hunzas
get all the vitamin C they need, as well as the other nutritional
richness of fresh fruit, including energy from the fruit sugars.
From the grapes, they also make a light red wine that helps make
their simple fare into more of a real "meal".
The
World's Freshest Bread
The bread which accompanies
each meal enjoyed by the Hunza's, and sometimes forms the mainstay
of the meal, is called "chapatti" - and is quite different from
any bread that we are used to. The grain is kept intact as long as
possible, and is ground at the very last moment, the housewife
grinds only as much as she needs for the next meal, and kneads
again and again with water- no yeast! She then beats it into very
thin, flat pancakes similar to the tortillas of the Mexican
Indians,
Chappatis can be made form wheat, barley,
buckwheat of millet, So although chappati is something new to us,
the ingredients are all familiar and easily available. Sometimes
the flours are mixed together and baked in several shapes, small
or large, depending on the occasion.
While bread baking at
home in our country is practically a lost art because of the time
involved, a surprising feature about chappatis is the incredibly
short "baking time, if you can call it baking at all. The dough is
simply placed on the grill for hardly more than a moment and it is
finished.
"Just long enough to grow warm and no longer
taste raw". Dr. Ralph Bircher noted in his book on Hunzas
published by Huber in Bernie, Switzerland. "No more effective
method of preserving the health value of the grain exists and the
taste is excellent even without butter of jam, " Dr. Bircher
notes.
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