Toxemia

I've just finished reading Toxemia Explained by Dr. J. H. Tilden. It was first published in 1926, and I'd have to admit, if I hadn't read a few dozen related books before reading it, I may have quickly brushed him off as a nut case. But after having read Burkitt (see last post) and Food is Your Best Medicine by Dr. Bieler (see Book Links) I'd have to say that he is the closest thing I've seen to a genius when it comes to enabling individuals with a simple means of maintaining excellent health throughout life.

My paraphrased version of his theory of Toxemia is: via your body's normal metabolism, you break things down and build them up, which results in metabolic wastes, which are toxins if not eliminated from your body promptly. Your body has primary means of eliminating various toxins via your various organs, plus it has a back up plan of vicarious elimination where a secondary or tertiary organ helps out if the main organ is overloaded. If this happens for a while you have what he terms a "crisis of elimination" and you get sick. Do this repeatedly and you eventually end up with a chronic disease because you're starting to impair the function of one or more organs. Do it even longer and you end up with cancer. Pretty plain and simple - cut and dried. In my mind, it seems to work for just about any disease you can think of. You can read the book if you want specific examples, of which he provides plenty.

So, basically the Burkitt book (see Book Links) is a fairly thorough (though not exhaustive) list of the sorts of chronic diseases you are likely to acquire due to Toxemia if you go through life constipated.

This book has absolutely convinced me that conventional medicine (as a whole, though there are individual exceptions) has no interest in helping people achieve health. They simply want to keep a bunch of sick people from dying. After all, that's where the money is...

So, like Dr. Mercola (see Health Links) says, "Take Control of Your Health." If you don't learn what it takes to keep yourself healthy you'll suffer - physically, emotionally, financially and any other way you can think of.

One comment that Tilden makes in his book is that athletes usually suffer from Toxemia due to the extraordinary loads that are placed on their bodies. As a result they often die young (his words, not mine). I was a bit taken back by the comment, but I suspect he may have been talking about professional athletes. How many football players, boxers, even professional cyclists have you heard of that died young or became disabled ? How many that lived to a ripe old age, free of disabilities? When I go through my mental list they mostly fall in the former category. But when I think of amateur athletes, the tend more to fall in the latter. Still, I think Toxemia could explain overtraining syndrome...

Read the book (you can download a PDF copy for free using the link at the beginning of this post or in the Book Links). And have a dictionary handy. While not necessarily a technical tome, he does use some words that are rather obscure nowadays.