Delaying the course of what is known as the universal degenera-
tive process means an individual need not expect a life of slow
declines and failing capacities — as they often saw with their parents
and grandparents. Instead, robust health can be maintained into old
age. The bottom-line benefits? Better, cheaper and user-friendly
health care. The National Science Foundation agrees: “Postponing
universal decline would lower, strikingly, per-capita costs for older
persons, starting with the 45 to 49 cohort. Chronic costs would be
delayed and their duration reduced. Individuals would tend to stay
healthy longer and decline more abruptly.”
Many people are slowly dying of the very diseases they were led
to believe could be conquered through research and development of
new drugs while waiting for this idea to be realized. Along the way,
quality of life crashes. The world is no closer to a cure for cancer, heart
disease, Alzheimer’s and most other killers, while we’ve known how
to prevent and postpone them, in most cases, for decades.
A Classic Case History
All this philosophy sounds great, but is it real? Many in all areas of
health care say yes. Let’s look at an example of a person who is born
relatively healthy, then falls into a long period of dysfunction with
subtle but growing symptoms, ending with a diagnosis of disease.
This case history is drawn from many cases I’ve read about and vir-
tually a summation of most patient histories I’ve taken. This person is
carbohydrate intolerant and will follow the current health-care
model.
Some babies begin life with stress. Our future patient may have
been adversely affected by being fed formula or sugar water shortly
after birth, or by excess maternal stress. This stress, coupled with
genetic programming (perhaps a grandparent was diabetic), may pre-
dispose the baby to develop a less-stable blood-sugar mechanism,
adversely affecting the nervous system.
Within the first three years of life the baby’s nervous, hormonal,
immune and digestive systems develop significantly. Also during this
time, psychological makeup is developed. The nervous system, at any
stage of development, is especially vulnerable to periods of low blood
sugar, sure to occur in this child. During the early years of life, a num-
238 • IN FITNESS AND IN HEALTH