We all differ in countless ways as acknowledged by Hippocrates who said, “Different sorts of people have different types of maladies.” Conventional medicine and most “alternative practices” base their care on the name given to a person’s symptoms rather than to the person having those symptoms. By focusing on symptoms rather than employing care based on causal factors chronically ill people are doomed to lifetimes of suffering.
Primary Cause of Chronic Disease
At conception we receive a genetic heritage from our parents known as our genome. How we express this outwardly is our phenotype, which is modified through environmental factors and our behaviors.
Our genome is found in the chromosomes of each of our trillions of cells. It is estimated that there are 100,000 genes on our 23 pairs of chromosomes making each of us highly unique. As the science of genetics developed it brought about a revolution in understanding as new genes and how they express themselves were discovered. Little practical application of this understanding, however, has filtered into conventional or alternative medicine.
Our genetic variability is astounding. One egg cell has eight million possibilities in terms of its genetic potential, as does each sperm cell, therefore, any two parents produce a combined zygote with any of 64 trillion (eight million times eight million) diploid combinations. It is no wonder that even brothers and sisters can be so different. Looking beyond a single family, each different set of parents generates another 64 trillion possibilities. Each one of us is extraordinarily unique and special.
In order therefore to help patients reverse a chronic disease it is critical to understand their own makeup. The “disease name” is a title for a manifestation of symptoms and does NOT represent the complex factors involved in the patient having those symptoms.
Our appearances differ greatly… some are small, some tall, some fat, some thin. There are color variations of black, brown, white, red, and yellow, different facial features, etc. The outward appearances, however, are but a glimpse of the internal variations. Likewise, the differences between chronically ill patients even those with the same medical” diagnosis” are enormous.
In the 1960’s, Dr. Roger J. Williams, professor of nutritional biochemistry at the University of Texas described “biochemical individuality”:
“From a practical standpoint we cannot neglect the facts of biochemical individuality. Of necessity, for reasons involving inheritance, every individual has nutritional needs, which differ quantitatively, with respect to each separate nutrient, from his neighbors. The list of nutrients in the nutritional chain of life is presumably the same for every individual. If we were to indicate the quantities of each nutrient needed daily, however, these amounts would be distinctively different for each of us. Some individuals, in the case of specific nutrients, may need from two to ten times as much as others. Each individual has a pattern of needs all his own.”[1] We inherit an array of traits that mold our biochemistry at birth and which are continuously affected by environmental and behavioral changes throughout our lives.
[1] Williams, Roger, Ph.D., Nutrition Against Disease, 1971.p. 50
