108 Achieving pH Balance to Treat Specific Ailments
on, when, after hearing that schizophrenics are often allergic to wheat,
and knowing that an allergy to gluten ran in her family, she gave up all
wheat products. It’s amazing how quickly the body returns to normal
even when affl icted with a seemingly incurable disease once the offend-
ing food allergens are removed.Depression
There is a theory supported by numerous studies that everyone has ups
and downs in moods irrespective of circumstances, that our overall
sense of well-being is preset by our genes. In a study by the National
Health and Nutrition Examination, the state of happiness of six thou-
sand men and women was tracked over ten years. The results showed
that those who were happiest in the beginning of the study were also
the happiest at the end of the ten-year study. They never seemed to be
affected by misfortune for any considerable length of time. The study
concluded that those who have a high set point for happiness rebound
from tragedy within six months to a year, whereas unhappy people
who experience a loss fall into a depression that persists over time. By
the same token, unhappy people after they, say, win the lottery or get
a job promotion, lose their happy feelings by the end of a year.^9 The
conclusion drawn from this and similar studies is that the threshold of
happiness is as genetically determined as the color of the eyes or the
shape of the nose.
The studies on which this conclusion is based, however, focused on
individual differences in mood. If we compare groups of people, spe-
cifi cally technologically advanced cultures with preliterate ones, a dif-
ferent scenario emerges. While unhappy individuals are common in
modern society, in preindustrial cultures happiness was the rule.
European and American explorers in Africa, in the Australian out-
back, and in the Arctic who kept diaries wrote about the continual
joking and laughter among the native porters they hired to carry their
luggage. Likewise, movies of the Eskimos and Australian aborigines
before they adopted the ways of the Europeans reveal people who
laughed together continually as they went about their daily tasks.
Such consistently high levels of happiness are a phenomenon peculiar
to preindustrial cultures. That they don’t exist in “civilized” society