Book review: Food is Your Best Medicine, by Henry Bieler

As I start to cast my net wider in the world of nutrition, people have recommended that I read Henry Bieler’s masterwork, Food is Your Best Medicine (affiliate links: UK, US).  It was certainly a completely different perspective and I am still not certain what I think about it.

Food is better than medicine so stop eating that rubbish in cereal packets

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So what is the different perspective?

Well, Dr Henry Bieler decided quite early on in his esteemed medical career as a general practitioner that what his colleagues were doing was not in the spirit of medicine.  He recoiled at the way in which patients presented themselves with symptoms and the other doctors consulted a directory and prescribed variously coloured pills, which sometimes helped and sometimes didn’t.  What’s more, the pills often had side effects that required other remedies themselves!

Dr Bieler decided that there must be a better way.  He thought long and hard and came back to Louis Pasteur.

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Why Pasteur?  Who was he, anyway?

Louis Pasteur was a French chemist and microbiologist who is famous for pasteurisation, which is the process that most milk is treated by in the UK.  By heat treating the milk to a certain temperature and then cooling it very quickly, pasteurisation slows microbial growth.  This means that the milk ferments less quickly and keeps for longer in your fridge.

However, he also popularised the germ theory of disease.  The germ theory of disease was radical at the time but has now become commonly accepted.  Simply put, it proposes that small micro-organisms are responsible for some of the diseases we suffer from.  If they are introduced into our systems, either by breathing them in or swallowing something they are living on, we become sick.

Hence, we often talk about “catching bugs” and “catching a cold”.

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Why are we talking about the germ theory of disease?

Because there are degrees of adherence to the theory.

• Hardline germ theorists – at one end of the spectrum there are people who believe that the presence of the germ is the only factor (unless you have antibodies).  So if you are exposed to the germ, you get ill, no questions asked.  Most modern physicians and certainly the health media falls into this category.
• Hardline physical state theorists – at the opposite end of the spectrum is Bieler.  He believed that it was the state that the body was in that was important.  He suggested that germs accompany disease, like scavengers of disease, as maggots eat dead flesh.  They move into diseased environments because those are comfortable homes for them.
• Middle-of-the-roaders – in the middle are various people, including the famous American health authority John Shaw Billings, who proposed that “it is important to remember that the mere introduction of germs into the living organism does not ensure their multiplication, or the production of disease.  The condition of the organism has much influence on the result.”

It was a revelation to me to realise that I had never thought about this spectrum before.  If you had asked me before I read this book I would have considered myself to be a hardline germ theorist, like most people.  However, I had never stopped to consider why sometimes I catch every cold going and other times I don’t.

What’s more, I believe that stress influences susceptibility to colds and flu.  I’m going to write more about this next month, I think.  And I also believe that vitamin and mineral deficiencies can also lead to colds.  So if I look back at the definitions, that probably makes me a middle-of-the-roader. I guess most of us fall into that camp if we are pushed.

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So what does Bieler think?

Dr Bieler started with the theories of Thomas Sydenham, an English physician from the seventeenth century with a reputation for immense practicality, who shunned most of the ridiculous practices of his peers and focussed on simply doing what he new worked.  He claimed that disease is nothing more than the body trying to rid itself of dangerous and unhealthy material.

He also looked at the works of Rudolf Virchow, a German contemporary of Louis Pasteur.  Rudolf said that “germs seek their natural habitat – diseased tissue – rather than being the cause of diseased tissue.  As mosquitos seek stagnant water but do not cause the pool to become stagnant.”

Obviously, that’s quite a radical viewpoint because it throws the responsibility for our health back onto us instead of our doctors.

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So where does he go with this idea?

Dr Bieler believes that our suffering is caused by our bodies’ attempts to remove toxins.  Under normal circumstances, he explains, our liver should naturally and easily remove all toxins.  However, when the liver is not able to perform its role adequately, the body looks to other avenues.  So the toxins are expelled in any way possible.  The lungs and skin are two other options and when toxins come out of these, it results in either bronchitis or acne.

Do you remember how your mother used to tell you that eating sweets gave you spots?  Well, according to Dr Bieler, she was right…

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And what then?

Dr Bieler identifies our different levels of defence against toxins in poor quality food as follows:

• Small intestine – obviously, when you eat something rancid or irritating, the body tries to get rid of it as quickly as possible.  However, the small intestine also filters out less dangerous material before sending on its way to the liver.  I thought it was interesting that this phase of Dr Bieler’s theoretical structure is supported and developed by the Paleo Diet proponents and their argument that most people are gluten intolerant.  Paleo dieters argue that gluten causes leaky gut, which is where the gut becomes more permeable than it should be and allows poisonous substances to enter the bloodstream.
• Liver – the liver is the great chemical factory in the body and breaks down the molecules of food we eat into their component parts into pieces that the body can use for fuel.  However, according to Dr Bieler, it can be overwhelmed by the toxins that we eat.
• Endocrine glands – Dr Bieler suggests that when our liver is overloaded, the body turns to the endocrine glands for help, predominantly the adrenals, the thyroid or the pituitary.  Which gland your body turns to first will depend largely on which is relatively strongest.

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So how do you beat disease and get good health?

Dr Bieler believes that you have to identify the diet that works for you, although he suggests that most people will do well on plenty of water, vegetables and some rare meat.  He is scathing of additives, preservatives, salt, sugar, starches, pasteurised milk and anything that we have made in a factory.

Interestingly, he doesn’t like cooking particularly and prefers rare meats to well-cooked meats for the digestion.

Otherwise, it’s pretty much the Paleo Diet and from what we know about Palaeolithic populations, they didn’t suffer very much from disease and certainly didn’t have any of the diseases of civilisation… Whether they were significantly more resistant to germs is another matter, though.