Antioxidants

Can We Live Past 120?

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About 15 years ago my friend, a self avowed health nut loaned me a tape based on a presentation by Dr. Joe Wallach extolling the virtues of natural healing and the alternatives available to us. His estimate is that we have the ability to live 120-140 years. Before you roll your eyes, let me give you some background information on Dr. Wallach.

Joe Wallach grew up on a farm in the Midwest and questioned the different way farmers cared for their livestock as opposed to how we humans cared for ourselves because he noted that livestock never came down with the same illnesses as humans because farmers always found ways to prevent disease with nutrition. Dr. Wallach went on to study agriculture and eventually became a Veterinarian. He worked in Africa with Marlin Perkins of Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom for 2 years specializing in the treatment of rhinos and elephants. During that time, a special grant was setup to study the effects of the environment on animals at the St. Louis Zoo, and subsequently other zoos in the area. Over the next 12 years, Dr. Wallach performed 17,500 autopsies on animals and 3,000 on people that lived in the area.

His next stage in life was what he described as a “license to kill”, he became a Physician. In the course of his practice, he wrote seventy-five scientific articles, wrote 8 multi-author textbooks plus one on his own, 1700 newspaper interviews television appearances and the gamut of media, but his message of applying the same successful dietary knowledge of preventative nutrition used for animals to humans fell on deaf ears. That was in the 1960s, fortunately more people are listening today, and we generally call them liberals.

Dr. Wallach challenged conventional medicine and supported his hypothesis that the average lifespan of the population during his studies was 75.5 years of age while that of a medical doctor was only 58. In his studies, he learned that the main difference in longevity was that people who received their water supply from glaciers or had their fields flooded, both sources depositing and re enriching mineral depleted soil, received the essential nutrients, improving their health, and ultimately their longevity. The primary reason for the increased longevity in areas with mineral rich soils is because our bodies need about 90 nutrients and they are most readily available through plants grown in this wonderful soil. Most soil throughout the world is tremendously depleted so Dr. Wallach strongly recommends supplementing our diet, specifically with colloidal minerals (the only kind we can readily absorb)

Some of his conclusions were:

• A senior that dies, after a fall in fact dies form osteoporosis

• Arthritis can be cured by ingesting cartilage
• Kidney stones are caused by a calcium deficiency.
• A copper deficiency will cause grey hair, skin wrinkles and other aging symptoms
• Diabetes, Cardio Myopathy, Alzheimer’s, cancer and even male pattern baldness are preventable through diet and nutrition

I deal extensively with seniors and quite often I am amazed when I ask health related questions and look at their lifestyles. Approximately half of them have the triple American whammy: diabetes, hypertension, and high cholesterol. Looking around at their environment there is an abundance of processed food, cakes, ice cream, white bread and the smell of grease, evidence of their cooking habits. They have obviously put their faith in the ability of their medications to keep them alive. As they get older, the dosages increase and their livers and kidneys need even more drugs to make them work. The other half of seniors I meet are remarkably disease free, have diets rich in fruit and vegetables and exercise on a regular basis.

Recently, I listened to a talk radio show and the topic focused on African Americans in the southern states, notably Georgia, who regularly ate small amounts of dirt. I have also read that poor Hatian people sometimes make cookies out of dirt that are duly baked and consumed, supposedly to stave off hunger. This is known as pica and originated in Africa, more as a dietary supplement. . This condition also occurs during pregnancy as the body’s way of getting needed minerals for the developing fetus. According to Dr. Wallach, our bodies will let us know to a large extent what we need, we just need to learn how to listen and that is where his conclusions are so important. We as humans have the ability to make choices (unlike the farm animals), unfortunately we seem to look for the easy path, not addressing the underlying causes.

You can learn more about the work of Dr. Wallach through this link or you can purchase his book, Dead Doctors Don’t Lie at Amazon.com.

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