Bio-Rational nutrition
May 1, 2002

Would you like to cure any diseases you have, prevent future diseases, and slow down the aging process? Of course you would. And so would everyone else. The demand is universal and has built medicine and health into mammoth industries. But we all know that most often they fail us. We get sick too often, we get old too fast, and we often die far to early. Is there a better way?

Yes, and it will be found in the bio-rational approach to health. It’s a new way of looking at the problems of disease and aging through the lens of our evolution, and with the new tools of molecular biology and DNA sequencing.

We are all human beings, yet how different we are. We have different skin color, eyes, height, body morphology, teeth and, yes, fingerprints. The differences are so obvious we take them for granted.

On the other hand, it’s important to realize that we are just as varied internally. Just as no two individuals share the same fingerprints, none of us share exactly the same vein and artery systems, nervous systems, endocrine systems, or digestive systems. Each of our internal cellular structures is as minutely different and as precisely designed as our fingerprints.

It is illogical to think, therefore, that each person’s processing system, their “metabolism,” would be exactly the same.

Herein lies one of the fallacies and perhaps the primary failure of both the conventional and holistic medical systems in the treatment of different individuals. Each of our bodies is an elaborate and finely tuned mechanism for gathering essential nutrients, processing them into components, and utilizing them for energy, cell replacement, fighting disease and injury. All of our systems are identical in function and require the same basic building blocks, the vitamins, minerals, proteins, carbohydrates and fats, but because each of our systems is unique, the quantity and balance required is different for each of us.

Because we differ at the molecular level in both our needs and cellular processes, it is proven that one individual’s need for a particular nutrient can and will be substantially different from any others. Every person needs similar nutrients, as all bodies have the same basic design. But just as one internal combustion engine runs perfectly on kerosene, another on high-octane gasoline, and another on alcohol.

In spite of the obvious truth that we each have different metabolisms, the health and nutrition industries have in the past and continue to promote the “one size fits all” solution. The medical establishment, working with the regulators, agree on a Recommended Daily Allowance or RDA for each of the “essential” nutrients they identify, and our children are taught in school that all they need for health are these minimum daily requirements, which they’ll get if they eat balanced portions of the four basic food groups each day. Many doctors and medical schools today still pooh-pooh the need for a carefully constructed diet and nutrient supplementation, suggesting that it’s plenty if their patients simply take a “good” vitamin and or mineral supplement. One-A-Day brand vitamins are the norm.

It’s just not true. Bio-chemically, the metabolism of every human is as different as their fingerprints.

The variation begins with our individual genotype, the DNA ladder of some three billion rungs groups of which make up the 30,000 to 100,000 genes that lie coiled in the chromosomes of each one of our cells.

Most educated people today accept the general tenets of Darwinian theory. As is reiterated throughout this site, the process of survival and competition for mating opportunities leads to a selection of physical and behavioral characteristics that have the higher probability of both surviving and procreating. From this it follows that the winning characteristics in each generation depend on the environment of the animal. The Arctic cold endured by Eskimo populations coupled with the scarcity of vegetables and the abundance of meat and fish will favor those body types and metabolisms that readily process and store animal fats. Variations that don’t will lose the marathon for survival in frigid climates. On the other hand, the abundant vegetation of the temperate plains and the tropics coupled with more wary and leaner game will favor those metabolisms that through recombination and mutations better process vegetable matter and fiber.

It’s known to veterinarians and zoologists that a diet that makes one animal healthy, will kill a different species. Feed a tiger nothing but grass and it will die. Feed a horse nothing but meat, and it will die. Reverse the diets, and both thrive. A particular diet, or a particular nutrient will cure one person’s illness, leave another’s unaffected, and cause a third person to get worse. William Wolcott and Trish Fahey state the fact succinctly in
The Metabolic Typing Diet: “Any food or nutrient can have virtually opposite biochemical influences in different people.”