Thyroid Problems 79
catching manure-saturated runoff water from cultivated fi elds. While
the water was relatively clean at the top of the mountain, as it fl owed
downward it gradually fi lled with organic pollutants so that the lower
a village was situated the more polluted the water and the greater the
incidence of goiters. It would be hard to fi nd a cause of goiter among
the people in these nine villages other than the amount of pollution in
their water supply, since the incidence of goiter in each village corre-
lated directly with the degree of pollution in the water they used.
In the United States there isn’t a problem with organic water pollut-
ants, since chlorine, a poisonous gas added to the water supply, kills off
the bacteria that live off organic waste. There is no mineral, however,
that neutralizes the toxic chemicals that have infi ltrated the groundwa-
ter tables. Examples of water contamination by chemical wastes are
resorcinol and dihydroxol, by-products of coal-mining operations in
Kentucky. These have been discovered in the water supplies in towns
in the Appalachian Mountains, where there is a high incidence of goi-
ter, especially among children. Fluoridated water is also an inhibitor of
thyroid function. Because the thyroid absorbs waterborne pollutants so
easily, it’s diffi cult to maintain normal thyroid function unless water
used for drinking and cooking has been distilled or comes from under-
ground springs that are tested regularly.
There isn’t a mental or physical health problem in existence that
can’t be caused by an underactive thyroid—and therefore not one that
can’t be improved by normalizing thyroid function. The prime factor
in maintaining a normal thyroid is the original source of energy that
maintains every living thing on earth: direct sunlight, which is con-
verted into chemical energy (ATP). ATP is imbedded in the glucose
molecules of the food we eat. It provides the raw material for cellular
respiration. We obtain a supply of chemical energy when we eat, say, a
banana. After it is digested, some of the glucose molecules in the banana
are carried by the bloodstream to the mitochondria in the cells, where
they are split up to release their energy. This chemical energy is con-
verted to heat energy. But for this respiratory process to take place, red
light, the longest light wave of the sun, must be present. Gaining entry
into the body through the eyes and skin, the red spectrum rays of sun-
light are carried by the blood to the pineal gland. The pigment in the