How modern diets drive degenerative diseases through fat, sugar, and nutritional ignorance
December 30, 2025
The majority of premature deaths in affluent nations are caused by degenerative diseases (cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes) rooted in "fatty degeneration." This results from widespread ignorance about nutrition, particularly concerning fats and oils, and an over-reliance on drug-oriented medicine rather than natural, preventive approaches.
Degenerative diseases that involve fats prematurely kill over two-thirds of the people currently living in affluent, industrialized nations. Sixty-eight percent of people die from just three conditions that involve fatty degeneration: cardiovascular disease (43.8%), cancer (22.4%), and diabetes (1.8%).These deaths are the result of eating habits based on ignorance and misconceptions. In 1990, cancer killed 1 person in 30. In 1980, it killed 1 person in 5. Today, it kills 1 person in 4. At the turn of the century, cardiovascular disease accounted for 1 death in 7. In 1980, it accounted for 1 death in 2. Today, it still kills more than 1 person in 3. The recent decrease in cardiovascular deaths may be partly due to better post-heart attack management with high-tech medical methods. Diabetes rose at similar rate, and other diseases of fatty degeneration, like multiple sclerosis and liver and kidney degeneration, also increased rapidly. Medical doctors, to whom we have entrusted our health because we have not yet learned to cure it ourselves, studied disease rather than health in medical school. The curriculum included little on nutrition, lots on pharmaceutical drugs, and nothing about the effects of processing fats and oils on human health. Doctors steeped in drug-oriented medical practices (crisis intervention, symptoms control, and disease management) remain skeptical about natural approaches to health. The problem: Fatty degeneration In order to maintain health, avoid disease, and regain health once we have lost it, we need to change our consumption of fats, oils, and other fatty substances. If we want to avoid premature death from cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, and other diseases of fatty degeneration, and if we want to avoid the suffering of arthritis, obesity, premenstrual syndrome, certain types of mental illness, we need to take this last and well-understood area of human nutrition into full account in our food choices. To do so, we must become informed. When vital organs are damaged beyond their ability to function or to recover, reversal of degeneration is no longer possible. No one know when that point has reached, therefore no patient should be automatically written off. Not all health problems and degenerative conditions can be cured by foods and life-style changes. Specific genetic conditions, which affect a total of five per 1000 individuals, may not be cured but can still be helped with improved nutrition and detoxification. Eventually, the human body naturally wears out. This inevitable fact is one that we must come to terms with. Natural nutritional approaches are effective for reversing degenerative diseases that result from eating habits and life-styles out of line with nature. These degenerative conditions, which affect the majority of affluent people in the world, can be reversed, with special focus on fats, oils, and cholesterol. The solution: Understanding fats The fats that heal have different molecular structures than those that kills. Their healing or killing potential rest on these molecular differences, that make them behave differently in our body.
Wonderful fish oils: EPA and DHA The health secret in these oils was discovered only recently, and revolves around two w3 fatty acids called eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA,20:5w3) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA,22:6w3), respectively. EPA and DHA, come from cold water fish and other northern marine animals. Fish can make EPA and DHA from brown and red algae which manufacture EPA and DHA. EPA and DHA, being highly unsaturated, have a strong urge to disperse. They have extremely low melting points (-54 degree C{-65 degree F}; and -44 degree C {-47 degree F}, respectively, will not harden or aggregate. EPA and DHA can lower high triglycerides by up to 65%. They may somewhat lower cholesterol level and low-density lipoprotein (LDL), and lower very low-density lipoprotein (VLDL). High cholesterol, triglycerides, LDL, VLDL levels are associated with cardiovascular disease: high blood pressure, atherosclerosis, heart and kidney failure, stroke, and heart attack. The rate at which the average human body can convert LNA to EPA has been measured in one study using normal adults to be 2.7% per day LNA administered-nutritional intake if c0-factors necessary for conversion. Is cholesterol theory wrong? A theory with many flaws. The cholesterol theory has many flaws. Doctors have little success in preventing and curing cardiovascular disease with treatment based on this theory. Heart attacks and strokes are two leading causes of death among affluent people. They accounted for 31% of all deaths in 1987 (U.S. Surgeon General’s Report on Nutrition and Health,1988). Cardiovascular disease (CVD) affect two-thirds of the affluent around the world and kills about 45% of them. The cholesterol theory and treatments based on it are failing too many of us. We need to take a closer look at this theory. Oxidation theory Recent discoveries show that oxidized cholesterol, as well as oxidized fatty acids in TGs, damage arterial walls, leading to CVD. If this is true, we must ask why cholesterol and fatty acids in our blood become oxidized. A large part of the answer is that when antioxidants (Aos), which prevent this oxidation from occurring, are lacking in foods due to poor choices or processing, then lipids and cholesterol are attacked by oxygen. Triglyceride and sugar theory The triglyceride theory is based on discovering that correlation between blood TG levels and CVD is as good as that between CVD and cholesterols. TG levels spike with excessive intake of refined sugars, starches, calories, and hard non-essential fats. Sugar consumption is one of the quickest way to increase TGs, because our body turns sugar into fats to protect itself from the toxic effects of excess sugar. Sugar also increases oxidation damage, cross-link proteins, inhibit immune functions, and interferes with transport of vitamin C. All of these actions of sugar can affect the development of cardiovascular and other degenerative diseases. Refined dietary sugars almost always turn into fats, and starches can also turn into saturated fats. Excess glucose Nature did not equip our body to deal with continued excess glucose. Here, glucose is fed into the energy-producing (Krebs) cycle within the mitochondria in our cells. Glucose in excess of our cells’ energy requirements stimulates the production of fatty acids. Three fatty acids, hooked to a glycerol molecule, make a fat molecule (triglyceride). Sugar consumption leads to high blood triglyceride levels, which are associated with cardiovascular disease. Our body can turn excess sugar into fats, but it cannot turn fat back to sugars. It must burn fat through activity. Fat burn-off can take place in our organs, because they can use fat as energy producing fuel. The conclusion reached by researchers who favor the triglyceride theory is that whatever increase TG levels will increase our risk of CVD, Beside sugars, fats, excess calories, and obesity, lack of exercise increase Tg levels, because excess calories that turn into fat are not worked off. Decreased consumption of refined sugar and non-essential fatty acids prevent and helps reverse CVD and other degenerative conditions. It also increases vigor and longevity. These observations lend weight to triglyceride and sugar theory. If you insist on frying and/or deep-frying It bears repeating that the less oils are heated, the less they are destroyed, and better they are for us. Frying and deep-frying destroy all oils and cannot be recommended for health. But some oils are less damaged by frying than others. If you must fry, use refined oils that contain the lowest of EFAs and the greatest amount of SaFAs and MAFAs, and use sulphur-rich garlic and onions in frying to minimize free radical damage. Frying and deep-frying are completely prohibited if optimum health is what you are after, or you are attempting to reverse cancer or other regenerative condition using natural means. The ‘life battery” analogy for stress Our capacity for dealing with stress has limits. If we exceed those limits, our body breaks down and become ill. Let us look at how our stress coping system works, how fats are involved in this system, and how we can increase our body’s capacity for dealing with the physical and mental stresses of life without getting burned out. Stress take two forms that share biological mechanism. Positive stress we choose to engage in, which includes challenges and romance. sex; and negative stress, which perceive as being imposed on us, over which we feel powerless. Positive stress strengthens us; negative stress demeans us and tears us down. Stress and the general adaptation syndrome Han Selye received worldwide recognition for his inquiries into the nature of negative stress. From his observation, he concluded that one underlying adaptive mechanism deals with all types of stress. Selye named this common set of symptoms which occurs in response to stress General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS). If stress is greater than an organism’s adaptive resource, the resources are depleted, and exhaustion occurs. What Selye called ‘disease of adaptation result from exhaustion, and minor stress can kill us. Diseases of adaptation include high blood pressure, water retention, arthritis, heart enlargement, strokes, neurological problems, cancer. These disease symptoms resemble symptoms of essential fatty acid (EFA) deficiency. They also resemble modern day degenerative diseases. The ‘life battery’ It appears to Selye that there was within each organism a sort of ‘life battery’ that stores life current in a way similar to an electric battery stores electric current- a battery with a limited capacity, that runs down when use without recharging. Selye wondered what the biochemical basis of this life battery might be, whether there was a way to recharge the battery when it ran down. The analogy of life battery turns out to be a good one. A battery has two poles, positive and negative, between which currents of energy will flow under suitable conditions, that is, when the circuit is completed. This happens to be true for our life battery as well. It has two poles. Biochemically, the poles of our life battery are good oils and good proteins-oils rich in EFAs, and sulphur-rich proteins. On our life battery, good oils are negative poles and good proteins are positive poles. In biological terms, one could call good oils the female pole, because eggs and female bodies contain more of these oils, and good protein in the male pole, because sperm and male bodies contain more sulphur and more of these proteins. Both males and females needs both poles for health. Present day diet are usually protein-rich but lacking in good oils. The result of an imbalanced life battery is lowered capacity to withstand stress, easier break down of health, and degeneration. The more we are stimulated and stressed, the more life current must flow between the poles of our battery, the more good oils and good proteins are used up, and the sooner our life battery runs down. More stress requires more oils and proteins (as well as minerals and vitamins); less stress requires less. Whenever the demand by our body for good oils and good proteins plus mineral and vitamin co-factors exceed that supplied by our foods, our body begins to run down and we slowly develop deficiency as our reserves of these substances are used up. With deficiency comes weakness, then sickness. We require rest then, a chance to recognize our resources, and good nutrition to replenish low supplies. The cure for a run-down life battery involves increase intake of good oils, good proteins, and co-factors through the use of foods that are rich in these nutrients. The fast pace at which we live runs down our life battery. Life in the fast lane is faster, but also shorter. The better our nutrition, the longer we can stand up to this pace; the worse our nutrition, the sooner we fall apart. All worsen under increased stress and poor food choice. The deficiency of EFA-containing oils is one of the greatest stresses in our technology way of life. We don’t need huge amount of them, but they are extremely important. ‘Good’ oils effectively alleviate degenerative conditions because they return the missing EFAs in their natural state to EFA-deficient diets. Diabetes as a case study Adult onset diabetes is a dangerous condition that affects about 6% of the population, and accounts for 1.8% of all deaths (about 38,000 individual). Pre-diabetes affect about 20% of the population. This results from consuming too much hard fat, refined sugar and starch, and too few vitamins and minerals. They are often accompanied by cardiovascular complications, which cause another 95,000 deaths each year. Diabetes, blindness, blocked circulation of extremities (leading to gangrene), and heart attacks, all resulting from impair circulation, are symptoms of fatty degeneration. In part, diabetes suffer from functional essential fatty acid (EFA) deficiency. High sugar levels make EFA present in fat tissues unavailable to our body. The old name for diabetes was sugar diabetes, in honor of its connection with sugar-high sugar consumption, high blood sugar, and sugar in the urine. EFAs given to diabetes have an insulin-sparing effect, indicating effectiveness of insulin depends on them. In fact, dietary W3 fatty acids decrease the amount of insulin needed by diabetes. To avoid premature death and degenerative suffering, individuals must become informed. The path to health requires:
Food choice is the most powerful tool for preventing and reversing the degenerative disease epidemic. |
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