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low fat/low protein, high complex carbohydrate diet that Pritikin were prolonged far beyond what was expected. advocated correct? Or is the Atkins diet with high protein/fat, low Dr Beard's enzyme treatment caused turmoil in the allopathic carbohydrate the one we should favour? Should we eat according to = medical community in England. He was called a charlatan and our blood type? What about raw versus cooked foods? Is soy good __ received threats to close down his practice. However, patients of for you, or is it harmful? Do the media drive our choices through other doctors requested Dr Beard's enzyme treatment. To satisfy advertising? What about the "friendly" doctor staring from your them, doctors ordered pancreatic juice from local pharmacists who, television set, telling you how dangerous this herb or that vitamin is? —_ in turn, ordered it from the slaughterhouses. Doctors were sold pan- Are nutritional supplements effective or not? The debate seems end- _creatic juice from older animals whose enzyme content was inactive. less. Unfortunately, the results were not successful and patients were very Over the last decade, sales of nutritional supplements have gener- disappointed. ated a US$4 billion industry worldwide. Almost every month, new In all, Dr Beard treated 170 cancer patients and recounted his companies claim to have the "magic bullet" for what ails us. Multi- enzyme therapy in his book, The Enzyme Treatment of Cancer and level/network marketing companies are quick to get on the band- its Scientific Basis, published in 1907. wagon, knowing how much profit is available thanks to members of Not much followed from the early part of the 20th century. the baby-boomer generation who pride themselves on "looking Indeed, it was not until the 1930s that clinical use of enzymes began good" and staying healthy, no matter what the cost. The rush to dis- _ to pique the interest of a few physicians. cover new drugs from medicinal herbs in In 1930, at the First International Third World countries keeps pharmaceutical Microbiology Conference, held in Paris, Dr companies abreast of all that is under the sky. Paul Kautchakoff, a Swiss doctor, presented a aper entitled "The Influence of Food Cooking Pioneers in Enzyme Nutrition Therapy on the Blood Formula of Man". In it, he Within the field of nutrition, enzymes have explained how digestive leukocytosis occurred become the buzzword. Every company now every time cooked food was ingested by sub- has its own "super-concentrated enzyme for- UJ jects of differing age and sex. This phenome- mula", and boasts how powerful it is and how Dr Pottenger s non was observed in patients as early as 1843 it contains 10 times the enzyme power as the observations and was considered a normal occurrence. other company's product. Digestive leukocytosis is the dramatic Yet, understanding enzymes and their role should have shaken increase in the amount and activity level of in human nutrition requires more than just the foundations of white blood cells (leukocytes) in the blood due knowledge of the chemistry. We also need to modern medicine. to a stimulus—that stimulus being undigested be familiar with the history and pioneers behind the development of enzyme nutri- tion therapy and the rationale behind its clinical use. Historically, there is recorded evi- dence of diverse cultural groups develop- ing foods high in concentrated enzymes. Many of these cultures discovered the health benefits of enzyme-rich foods because of trial and error and probably just plain luck, by leaving them out in the open for bacteria to work on them. Among these foods are fermented dairy products, such as yoghurt, kefir and vari- ous soured-milk products; fermented digest what we eat. vegetables, such as European sauerkraut From 1932 to 1942, Dr Francis and Korean kim chi from cabbage; and soy products like miso and Pottenger, Jr, of Monrovia, California, began one of the most tempeh, which were first developed in Asia. In tropical countries, intriguing clinical studies undertaken in the field of nutrition. His certain fruits such as papaya and mango were found to contain very study ran for 10 years, covering four generations of over 900 cats. high concentrations of enzymes, and have been used traditionally for —_ In this groundbreaking study, Dr Pottenger simply controlled the cooked food crossing the gut wall. With canned and cooked foods, the increase was moderate. With heavily processed foods such as packaged meats, the increase was identical to food poisoning! The only difference was the absence of the bacterium associated with food poi- soning. Cooked foods are missing essential enzymes which prevent ade- quate digestion. Dr Kautchakoff made note that there was no increase leukocyte count/activity in subjects who ate only raw food. This is because all raw food contains food enzymes which completely Nonetheless his work, like that of so many others, has largely been ignored. the topical treatment of burns and wounds. food cats were fed. The original group was fed raw, unpasteurised Nonetheless, it was not until the early 1900s that Dr John Beard,a__ milk, cod liver oil and cooked meat scraps. The other two groups Scottish embryologist, filtered the pancreatic liquid of freshly were fed uncooked meat/pasteurised milk and cooked meat/pas - slaughtered young animals for the active enzyme content. He rea- teurised milk respectively. The fourth group was fed uncooked, raw soned from observation that young animals had to have greater and — meat and raw, unpasteurised milk. more powerful concentrations of enzymes because the energy Dr Pottenger's observations should have shaken the foundations of required for growth was greater. Dr Beard injected this concentra- | modern medicine. Nonetheless his work, like that of so many oth- tion into veins, gluteal muscles and sometimes directly into tumour __ ers, has largely been ignored. He meticulously recorded his obser- sites of cancer patients. He observed the rapid shrinkage of tumour vations with exacting measurements and photographs. Here is a masses and cancer cell growth inhibition. Some patients experi- brief summary of his discoveries. In the group of cats fed only raw enced allergic reactions because the unpurified juice contained for- food, there were no chronic degenerative diseases! The cats lived to eign proteins. In spite of this, more than half of the cancers com- grow old and were easily handled. They primarily died of old age, pletely disappeared, while other patients’ lives greatly improved and _ living much longer than cats from the other groups. Dr Pottenger’s observations like that of so many others, has largely been ignored. 12 + NEXUS should have shaken the foundations of modern medicine. Nonetheless his work, www.nexusmagazine.com OCTOBER — NOVEMBER 2003