Two popular books on the market have generated interest and hope for people experiencing cancer: Sharks Don’t Get Cancer and Sharks Still Don’t Get Cancer, both written by I. William Lane. Irrespective of the benefits of shark cartilage on treating cancer, I felt skeptical about the titles of the books. After all, since all major bodies of water have become basins of pollution (from agricultural and industrial runoff to oil spills and the wholesale dumping of municipal garbage at sea) most, if not all, form of ocean life would be prone to developing cancer, including sharks.
How is it then that sharks can defy the laws of nature? Well, they can’t. Sharks do get cancer. In an article by William Lane himself about his research on shark cartilage, he writes that sharks rarely get cancer – rarely. It is common knowledge that many species of animals rarely get cancer, which doesn’t place sharks in extraordinary company. Sharks, along with all other forms of aquatic life, are prone to experiencing cancer.
What is the correlation between animals, diet, and cancer? Let’s look at the three basic groups of land animals: domesticated, semi-domestic, and wild.
Domesticated Animals
Domesticated animals include dogs, cats, birds confined to cages, aquarium fish as well as horses, cows, chickens and other farm animals. These animals – particularly house pets – experience the same range of illnesses as people, from cancer and diabetes to asthma and osteoporosis. Far removed from the foods available to them in their natural habitats, their rates of degenerative illnesses far exceed our own because of the quality of food they are fed.
Glancing at the ingredients contained in Gainesburgers (a popular food for dogs) reveals blue, red and yellow dyes, propylene glycol (shift one of its hydroxyl ions and you get anti-freeze, a popular food for cars), artificial flavors and a meal composed of 27% refined sugar.
Semi-Domestic Animals
Semi-domestic animals include raccoons, skunks, squirrels, deer, urban birds and the like. They are not truly wild because they have, in varying degrees, come to depend upon humans for food and shelter and have adapted themselves to living among us. Their health is severely compromised by drinking from poor-quality water sources and eating foods foraged from a heavily sprayed and altered habitat. Raccoons enjoy the bounty of overturned garbage cans. Squirrels feed off grasses, seeds, nuts, and fruits exposed to urban spraying of pesticides, fungicides and herbicides. Deer, accustomed to living along the forest’s edge, are migrating into suburban areas (or are suburban areas migrating toward the deer?) and feeding from manicured grass and shrubs. Displaced from their natural habitats, it is no wonder that diseases periodically sweep through these animal populations.
One would think that farm animals would be more robust than house pets, but this is not always the case. I once lived in the Adirondack Mountains in New York State. Friends of mine down the road raised organic chickens and turkeys. It takes a full three months to raise a chick to maturity, but the commercial poultry industry manages to do this in just 15 days. How? By adding growth hormones to the chicks’ commercial feed. The problem is, as generations pass, the constitutional health of their breeds diminishes, and it becomes a challenge just keeping those chicks alive for those 15 days. So the industry has taken to adding antibiotics to their feed as well. When infections do kick in, they spread not only through the hen house but across state lines, decimating tens of thousands of chickens at a time, so tenuous is their existence (and so tenuous is ours when we consume them on a regular basis).
As we venture further into the wild, and way from urban and suburban influences, we discover animals living within their natural habitats living healthier, more robust lives.
Buffaloes Don’t Get Cancer
An edition of The New York Times Sunday Magazine featured a story on the growing popularity of buffalo meat and its economic potential for cattlemen in the American Southwest. It also inadvertently shed light on the nature of diet, health, and natural resistance. The author pointed out that buffaloes are so hardy that ranchers don’t need to add hormones, artificial growth stimulants or antibiotics to their feed. A spokesman for the Bison Association (I don’t think bison are allowed to join) said that, “Bison are not susceptible to cancer… they’re the only mammal that isn’t. We don’t know why yet; the research has not been done.”
The research has been done – in that very article – but the author, cattlemen, and food processors fail to recognize it. The author notes that buffaloes descended from animals that migrated from Siberia onto the North American continent about 100,000 years ago. “Buffaloes lived on wild and draught-resistant Western grasses, native shrubs, flowers and weeds.” He adds that buffaloes are still fed on those native foods except for the three months prior to slaughter, when they are nourished with grain. This is perhaps the one example of a domesticated mammal eating foods indigenous to its species and living healthy, disease-resistant lives.
I pity the poor buffaloes for their robust health. If the processing of shark cartilage is any indication, the scientific community must be poking, prodding and opening buffaloes up for inspection right down to their very genes. And I am certain that researchers will find something to appreciate and report about their genes. But they will fail to appreciate the living buffalo, the relation to its environment – particularly diet – and they will utterly fail to recognize the reasons behind the buffaloes’ constitutional strength.
Health From the Ground Up
Discussion of diet and health usually begins with the quality of the food on our plate, but we need to back up one step to understand the foundation of health: living soil.
During the first half of this century, soil scientists Albert Howard discovered a secret to health through trial and error in his agricultural work for the Crown throughout India and Singapore. He was later knighted for his work, which is summed up in his two books, The Soil and Health and An Agricultural Testament. Sir Howard discovered, and confirmed through his fieldwork, the disease-resisting power of natural living soil. Observing that untouched forest and field required neither heavy dressings of fertilizer nor blankets of chemical sprays to maintain their health and fertility, Sir Howard fashioned a soil composting system based upon the grades of soil found on a typical forest floor.
The Forest Floor
Broken by the canopy of leaves overhead, oxygen-rich rainwater falls and percolates down through the soil – highly charged water, unlike the flat chemicalized tap water we pour onto our houseplants. Lifting up the mantle of last year’s leaves, you will discover a cool, moist and vibrant world beneath. Suddenly exposed to bright light and dry air, small visible animals scurry for cover, as earthworms slip back into their holes. This soil pulsates with life. Do you know that once ounce of fertile soil contains over one mile of protein-rich fungus and 20 times as many microbes as there are men, women, and children on our planet? Or that a single rye plant grown in fertile soil was found to have over 14 miles of roots and root hairs? That worms leave one ton of nitrogen-rich castings in every acre of living soil?
The dynamics, or “ki,” of living soil is a world unto itself. Moist, rich and sweet-smelling soil crumbs composed of minerals and clay, “glued” together by specks of decaying organic matter and animal protein… the stuff of food for plants. Plants cultivated in such soil naturally resist disease. Sir Howard confirmed this time and again by introducing numerous infectious diseases into his plant populations. The diseases wouldn’t take. He then experimented with animals that had fed upon plants grown in this living soil. He exposed cattle to the most highly infectious diseases plaguing cattle in India at the time: septicemia, rinderpest, and foot-and-mouth disease. Again, the diseases wouldn’t take and his cattle remained healthy and strong while surrounding populations of cattle were decimated by these same diseases. He then observed that his workers, who also lived off food grown in this soil, lived free of illnesses.
Sir Howard classified soil diseases into two broad categories: overly acidic soil and overly alkaline soil. Employing the art of physiogamy, or, visual diagnosis (he would have preferred to call it simply the art of observation), he could determine, from the symptoms displayed by each plant, the specific causes of illness, relating it always to the diet… of the plant! He would readjust the diet by amending the soil naturally in order to reestablish its health and natural resistance.
The Nature of Disease
Soil and Health concludes with a chapter titled “The Nature of Disease.” Howard reflects on what he had observed regarding diseases of the soil, animals and humans. He asks the question, “Is there any underlying cause for all this disease?” he finds an answer in ab ook written by Dr. J.E.R. McDonagh, The Universe Through Medicine, published in 1940. Sir Howard asked Dr. McDonagh to sum up his philosophy detailed inn that book. Dr. McDonagh contributed the following passage to Sir Howard’s book:
“The Nature of Disease. Every body in the universe is a condensation product of activity [energy]. Every body pulsates; that is to say it undergoes alternate expansion and contraction. The rhythm is actuated by climate. Protein in the sap of plants and in the food of animals is such a body, and it is also the matrix of the structures of the former, and of the organs and tissues of the latter..
“If the sap in the plant does not obtain from the soil the quality of nourishment it requires, the protein over-expands. This over expansion renders the action of climate an invader; that is to say climate, instead of regulating the pulsation, adds to the expansion.”
Dr. McDonagh goes on to explain how this over-expansion of the plant protein gives rise to the creation of viruses and the gradual degeneration of health, first in the plants feeding from the deficient soil, progressing to the animals and people consuming the plants.
Sir Howard’s work provided the inspiration for J. I. Rodale, the founding of Rodale Press and the beginning of organized organic agriculture throughout the Americas, Europe and the Far East, but I believe there is a fundamental difference between macrobiotic-quality soil and today’s organic movement. I spoke with a grandson of J.I. Rodale who is actively involved in the organic agriculture movement in the United States. While acknowledging Howard’s influence on his grandfather and the organic movement worldwide, he was himself was personally unaware of the startling discoveries Sir Howard made regarding the health of the soil and natural resistance. That message, which undoubtedly inspired the original Rodale, has been lost. It’s significance as it relates to agriculture and animal and human health has been – for the most part – lost, including even within the organic movement.
Macrobiotic/Organic Agriculture
Organic agriculture refrains from employing the use of artificials, but – like conventional agriculture – continues to buy in to the concept of herbicides, fungicides and pesticides, albeit using more natural forms of control. Macrobiotics takes in one fundamental step further. As reflected in the work of Sir Albert Howard, plants grown in soil with strong ki naturally resist disease and pests. Natural pest management becomes unnecessary, and farming no longer requires piecemeal applications of organic-based pesticides or predator-control techniques. Infestations decline the better fed the plants. Infestations and declining plant health are recognized as symptoms of a deeper underlying problem – the health of the soil.
A Few Tips
1. Higher species of animals have evolved over millions of generations under conditions of natural light, pure unadulterated foods and pure, clean water. Environmental influences that range over such a vast span of time work the body like the hands of a sculptor and we can safely assume that the very essence of who we are has been defined by that relationship. Any deviation from this natural order invites a measure of stress and, eventually, disease.
2. Recognize that all animals, in their natural habitats, evolved with foods perfectly suited for their needs to maintain health and natural resistance. Bees have their nectar, deer have their browse, birds have their seeds and berries… and each food an animal eats in the wild is completely suited to it, benefiting it in countless ways, harming it in none. Humans, too, have been included in this beautiful and inticate design. Once we recognize that health is our birthright, the next question to ask is: Exactly what are those foods best suited for people?
3. Avoid “controversial” foods. Debates continue over whether to consume milk and dairy products, and scientific studies waver between the value/danger of eating meat, refined sugar, table salt, artificial sweeteners, colorings and the like. This sends a strong signal that these foods in question should be avoided altogether. Just as you will never find research that concludes nectar is harmful for bees, nuts too rich for squirrels, and cow’s milk unsuitable for calves, you will likewise never see studies discouraging the consumption of grains, beans, sea vegetables and land vegetables for people. These foods are not controversial, and this goes without question. The other foods are tasty, colorful, convenient and, when eaten regularly, harmful to our physical, emotional, and spiritual health. Besides, with the whole foods industry maturing so quickly, we can have our cake and eat it too. Just be certain that the cake is made with care and purpose.
4. Don’t justify eating a food simply because it contains one or two essential vitamins or minerals. After all, you can justify eating most anything because you will always find something in a food item – any food item – essential for health. Each food you eat should benefit you in countless ways, harming you in none. Take for example, collard greens. Don’t eat them simply because they contain an abundant source of calcium. Don’t eat them simply for the chlorophyll, protein, fat, carbohydrates, phosphorus, sodium, potassium, vitamin A, thiamin, riboflavin, niacin, iron and fiber they contain. Eat collards because of the synergetic value of all these elements combined, in addition to the energy it imparts, especially when grown in living soil. There are subtle energies affecting the health of the plant, which is passed on to us when we eat it.
We haven’t yet arrived at growing and consuming food that naturally resists disease or tangibly benefiting from the consumption of such strengthening foods. Food grown in living soil creates healthy and disease-resistant plants that, in turn, strengthen and protect the animals and people who feed upon them. Each plant and every animal is provided with food perfectly suited for its needs. All animals eat seasonal, locally grown foods. This is truly health from the ground up.
The mechanism by which plants resist disease is simply their robust health. This immunity is passed on to the animals and people consuming them. In this way, plants, animals and humans require less and less infusions of medical intervention, including even alternative medical treatment. In a word: macrobiotics.
