Holford - The New Optimum Nutrition Bible

Copyright 2004 Patrick Holford

Original edition first published in 1997 by Piatkus Books Ltd
5 Windmill Street, London W1P 1HF

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Crossing Press, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com
www.tenspeed.com

Crossing Press and the Crossing Press colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Holford, Patrick.
The new optimum nutrition bible / Patrick Holford.
p. cm.
Updated ed. of: The optimum nutrition bible. c1999.
1. Nutrition. 2. Food habits. 3. Diet. 4. Health. I. Holford, Patrick. Optimum nutrition bible. II. Title.
RA784.H5855 2005
613.2dc22

2005016070

eISBN: 978-0-307-78588-6

v3.1

This book is dedicated
to youthe promoter of
your own health.

This book would not have been possible without the help and support of many people. Thanks also to Kate Neil for contributing to . Finally, Id like to thank Gabrielle, my wife, for putting up with the early mornings and late nights!

Abbreviations and measures

1 gram (g) = 1,000 milligrams (mg) = 1,000,000 micrograms (mcg, also written g).

All vitamins are measured in milligrams or micrograms. Vitamins A, D, and E used to be measured in International Units (IUs), a measurement designed to standardize the various forms of these vitamins that have different potencies.

100 IUs of vitamin A = 30.3 mcg

100 IUs of vitamin D = 2.5 mcg

100 IUs of vitamin E = 67 mg

1 pound (lb.) = 16 ounces (oz.)

2.2 lb = 1 kilogram (kg)

1 pint = 0.6 liters

1.76 pints = 1 liter

In this book calories means kilocalories (kcals).

References and further sources of information

Hundreds of references from respected scientific literature have been used in the writing of this book. Details of specific studies referred to are listed on . If you want to stay up to date with all that is new and exciting in this field, I recommend you subscribe to my 100% Health newsletter, details of which are on the website.

This book, now available in thirteen languages and twenty-five countries, is the cutting edge in how to keep yourself looking good, feeling great, and living long. First written in 1998 to sum up twenty years of research at the Institute for Optimum Nutrition, an independent educational charity, this edition is completely revised, expanded, and updated.

A lot has happened to our understanding of health, disease, and nutrition in the last five years, and I wouldnt be doing my job if I didnt let you know about it. Many discoveries have been made: the secrets to successful weight loss, preventing Alzheimers, reversing depression without drugs, and why breast and prostate cancer incidence keeps going up and how to do your best to avoid them. Many more propositions have been proven: that optimum nutrition dramatically increases energy, lowers cholesterol better than any drug, and halves the recovery time from infections, to name a few. Since the first edition of this book appeared, I have received over a thousand exuberant testimonials from people whose lives have literally been transformed through optimum nutritionpeople like you.

Thats my jobto help you be free of pain and full of health so you can enjoy your life to the full. I spend my time studying literally hundreds of pioneering science and medicine journals and speaking to the pioneers and trying out new approaches, then turning it all into easy-to-understand language that you can apply practically in your life. When you are 100 percent healthy and free from pain, discomfort, tiredness, and the need for drugs, Ive done my job. But first, let me tell you how I got started.

In 1977 I met two extraordinary nutritionists, Brian and Celia Wright. They explained to me, over an enormous bowl of salad and some soy sausages, followed by a handful of vitamin pills, how most disease was the result of suboptimum nutrition. I found this hard to swallow but, being an adventurous spirit, asked them to devise me a diet. There I was, a university student studying psychology, eating a virtually wheat-free, vegetarian diet with masses of fruit and vegetables, and taking a handful of supplements shipped from America since they were not available in Britain at that time. It was a far cry from the usual fish-and-chips and a pint of bitter! My colleagues, friends and family thought I was crazy. But I persisted.

Within two months I lost fourteen pounds in weight, which has never returned; my skin, which had resembled a lunar landscape, cleared up; my regular migraines virtually vanished; but most noticeable of all was the extra energy I had. I no longer needed so much sleep, my mind was much sharper, and my body was full of vitality. I started to investigate this optimum nutrition. Being a psychology student, I looked up research on the greatest problem in mental health today, schizophrenia. There, in the scientific journals, was clear proof that optimum nutrition produced results better than drugs and psychotherapy combined. A pioneer in this field, Dr. Carl Pfeiffer, an American doctor and psychiatrist, was claiming an 80 percent remission rate. So too was Dr. Abram Hoffer, a director of psychiatric research in Canadaand the first man in the history of psychiatry to carry out a double-blind study. I was fascinated and before long went to America and Canada to see for myself.

Pfeiffer, a brilliant man who spent most of his life studying the chemistry of the brain, had a massive heart attack when he was fifty. His chances of survival were very slimten years at the absolute most, and only if he had a pacemaker fitted. He decided not to, and spent his next thirty years pursuing and researching optimum nutrition. It is my firmly held belief, he told me, that with an adequate intake of micronutrientsessential substances we need to nourish usmost chronic diseases would not exist. Good nutritional therapy is the medicine of the future. We have already waited too long for it.

Dr. Abram Hoffer, who has now treated over five thousand patients and published forty-year follow-ups, told me he had an 80 percent cure rate. I asked him to define cure, and he said, Free of symptoms, socializing with family and friends, and paying income tax! Now eighty-seven years old, he still practices four days a week on Vancouver Island, Canada. I was deeply impressed by these two men and became their student.

The optimum nutrition approach is not new; many great visionaries have embraced it. In 390 B.C . Hippocrates said, Let food be your medicine and medicine be your food. Edison in the early twentieth century said, The doctor of the future will give no medicine but will interest his patients in the care of the human frame, diet and the cause and prevention of disease. In 1960 one of the geniuses of our time, Dr. Linus Pauling, coined the phrase orthomolecular medicine. Linus Pauling was to chemistry what Einstein was to physics. Pauling, who died in 1994, has been voted the second-most-important scientist of the twentieth century. He is the only man to have won two unshared Nobel Prizeshe also had forty-eight Ph.D.s! By giving the body the right (ortho) molecules, he asserted, most disease would be eradicated. Optimum nutrition, he said, is the medicine of tomorrow.