Glen Matten - The Health Delusion: How to Achieve Exceptional Health in the 21st Century

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Text Glen Matten and Aidan Goggins, 2012

The moral rights of the authors have been asserted.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any mechanical, photographic or electronic process, or in the form of a phonographic recording; nor may it be stored in a retrieval system, transmitted or otherwise be copied for public or private use, other than for fair use as brief quotations embodied in articles and reviews, without prior written permission of the publisher.

The information given in this book should not be treated as a substitute for professional medical advice; always consult a medical practitioner. Any use of information in this book is at the readers discretion and risk. Neither the authors nor the publisher can be held responsible for any loss, claim or damage arising out of the use, or misuse, or the suggestions made or the failure to take medical advice.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978-1-84850-686-2 in print

ISBN 978-1-8485-0884-2 in Mobipocket format

ISBN 978-1-84850-885-9 in ePub format

Interior images: Ross Harvey Photography

To Olly and future generations to come.
Glen

To my parents, who didnt need years of higher education to realize we need to get back into balance.
Aidan

I first met Aidan Goggins and Glen Matten when they became students on the Nutritional Medicine MSc degree course that we run at the University of Surrey. We set up the course in 1998 because we perceived a great desire on the part of the public to know how to use nutrition to benefit health, yet recognized the fact that doctors receive virtually no training that equips them to give such advice. Since that time, we have taught many doctors and other health professionals how to use the peer-reviewed literature on nutrition and health to give a strong evidence base for their recommendations to patients and to those who want to optimize their own health and that of their families.

Aidan and Glen were both excellent students and wholeheartedly adopted our evidence-based approach, which has no time for anecdote or flaky science. Their desire to pass on to the public what they have learned, and to expose the fallacies and misconceptions that exist in nutrition and health, have spurred them on to write The Health Delusion. I wholeheartedly endorse their efforts and hope that this book will contribute to a fuller understanding of how nutritional information based on good science can be used to optimize health and reduce risk, both for this generation and the next.

Margaret P. Rayman, BSc, DPhil (Oxon), RPHNutr
Professor of Nutritional Medicine
University of Surrey
November 2011

I believe that if you show people the problems and you
show them the solutions they will be moved to act.

BILL GATES, FOUNDER OF MICROSOFT, AUTHOR AND
PHILANTHROPIST (B. 1955)

The Health Delusion couldnt be more straightforward. It has one simple aim: to bring you better health. After all, good health is something that weve all come to expect in todays high-tech society, and who would argue with that? Unless, that is, we place this most valuable of things in the wrong hands. As well see, thats when it can all go badly awry. The end result is that the messages we receive are tainted and flawed and, rather than promoting our health, they end up detracting from it. So, before we rush headlong into helping you achieve our most simple of goals the best possible health for you and your family weve got to ask some pretty big questions. And thats where our story begins.

The first question we need to answer is, where has it all gone wrong? The advancements of the last century happened at breakneck speed, catapulting us into an age of breathtaking technology. The world we live in today would have been all but unimaginable just a few generations ago. Things once deemed impossible are now part and parcel of our everyday lives. The shackles that have held mankind back since time immemorial have been thrown off, and the possibilities of what we can now achieve appear limitless. Were not just talking about space travel or the cyber age, but medicine too. Health problems that were previously considered life threatening are now little more than minor irritants. Our lifespan is greater than it has ever been and continues to increase. When it comes to our health, we are fortunate indeed to live in this golden age of medical progress.

But theres a snag. Scratch away at this shiny veneer of health in the twenty-first century and what do we see? Sure, were living longer, but can we honestly say that were living healthier? Despite all the mind-bending advancements of modern medicine, a stark fact remains: if you are a healthy adult in todays society, youre in the minority. Does that really sound like the definition of a healthy society to you?

Dont just take our word for it the statistics speak for themselves. More than one in three people has cardiovascular disease, one in six has high cholesterol and an incredible six in every ten has raised blood pressure. One in ten has diabetes and almost another four out of those ten are on the verge of getting it. If you see two women over 50, one of them is going to have an osteoporotic fracture. If all that isnt bad enough, two out of every five people will be diagnosed with cancer at some stage in their lives. These are devastating maladies that blight the quality of our lives and contribute to our premature demise. Does this unprecedented level of chronic illness and human suffering seem compatible with a high-tech golden age of medicine? We dont think so.

Lets get one thing clear: the crippling burden of chronic disease isnt a failure of modern medicine. Medicine has set out its stall, and thats to look after those who need it. It prevents the progression of disease and postpones death, and its pretty good at it, too. To qualify for medicine, we must first develop the ailments, the maladies, the symptoms and the risk factors. And this is where medicine belongs, as the last resort. As youll see, all too often we place our faith in pharmaceutical drugs to solve our health problems, blissfully unaware of the true causes of ill health.

Worse still, well show you how the drug companies attempts to medicate great swathes of society have mostly been an astounding failure. Instead of increasing our wellbeing, all they usually end up doing is leading us down a slippery slope of deteriorating health and drug dependence.

Heres the thing. Its this space, the bit between being healthy and the early development of disease, where the big problem lies. As for the answer, well, that can be found a little closer to home in fact, for most, a little too close to home for comfort. Boil it down to basics and what we find is that our modern diet and lifestyle have become monumentally out of sync with what the body requires to stay fit, healthy and free of disease. Yet theres something that just doesnt stack up with all this, which brings us on to another of our big questions: how can our diet and lifestyle be to blame when were so health obsessed?