86 Diet Wise
His parents brought Ryan to see me to ask if I could help. These
were heady pioneer days and my frequent appearances in the press and on
TV and radio, featuring some surprising recoveries, allowed many intelligent
parents to reasonably question whether a prognosis of “incurable” was
really correct. Given the gloomy outlook for Ryan, I was willing to try.
Looking back, I was being remarkably cocky, maybe even arrogant,
but in fact it wasn’t even difficult. Within two weeks on the program in this
book Ryan was on the road to recovery. The first exciting report was that
his parents saw Ryan running alongside a friend on his bicycle. That didn’t
sound like progressive muscular weakness! In fact he made such a good
recovery that one day not long afterwards Ryan climbed the Walter Scott
Monument in Edinburgh, Scotland. The structure is 200 feet high and has
287 steps. There is an official certificate for those who climb to the top and
Ryan was the proud possessor of one.
At the time, even I had to admit it shouldn’t have happened. But I did recognize
this is the power of the body load model. If you reduce the body’s burden by whatever
means, then partial or complete recovery is likely to take place. Diet is the most dramatic
unburdening route I know, and relatively easy to do, once you have absorbed the contents
of this book. Being truly diet wise is very powerful and can help you with so many health
issues in life.
A quarter of a century on, I would now think in terms of genetic
food programming. Genes and minor gene variants called SNPs (single
nucleotide polymorphs) mean that we are all virtually unique in our responses
to food. But as I have hinted earlier, we now know that gene expression in
turn can be influenced by environmental exposures to many substances,
including what we eat. Almost certainly in this case I was able to down-
regulate Ryan’s dystrophic gene and so put his lethal illness into reverse.
To generalize from this exciting new theory of gene control, it
means if you find and follow your own personalized diet, as I explain in
these pages, then you are in fine shape to live far longer and conquer major
killers, such as cancer and heart disease. Your good genes will flourish and
your bad genes will regress. At last I’m sure you are beginning to understand
why Luigi Cornaro (page 6) lived against all odds to reach the age of ninety-
eight years, at a time when few survived their fortieth birthday and when
it was quite exceptional even to reach the Biblical three score years and
ten. Cornaro not only lived a long time but was remarkably fit and well,
providing he remained diet wise!
Now it is time to take stock of your own health status and get
started on changing it for the better. What follows in the next chapter is a
survey of symptoms, arranged by target organ...