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I was standing in the checkout line at a
grocery store in 1984 when a book on the magazine rack caught my attention. The title
was "Life Extension - A Practical Scientific Approach" by Durk Pearson
and Sandy Shaw (although interesting, the book is now obsolete). Although I was skeptical at first, there was something about the
title that drew my attention. I opened the book to the middle and read a
paragraph... It made sense. I split the difference and opened the book to between the middle and the front... It made sense. Again,
this time midway between the middle and the end... It made sense. After seven
attempts... No hype... Just sound scientific principles... I bought the book.
What I discovered was that scientific research leads the
medical establishment by some ten to twenty years. Recently, with the advent of
the Internet, the lag has decreased to five to fifteen years. There is a
sizeable advantage to keeping your eye on the research community in order to be
aware of cutting edge medical technologies. Some of the "modern" ideas
such as taking antioxidants to retard aging and disease have been known by
researchers for decades but are just recently becoming known and accepted by the
medical community and the public.
There are some impediments to the quest for this "advance"
knowledge... Constant effort is required to stay up-to-date on the latest
discoveries... It is difficult to get a comprehensive overview of the
research. It seems that each researcher has a personal focus... A special area
of interest... What I call tunnel vision. One thinks the biggie is
antioxidants... Another focuses on insulin control... While liver function is
the cure-all according to other research! Each researcher has a piece of the
picture but each piece is only a part of the whole. It became apparent to me
that someone needed to put it all together.
Today in America we are facing an epidemic of obesity,
depression, diabetes, heart disease and autoimmune diseases. In studying the
research on each of these problems, I became aware that there are common aspects
to each of them. Depression, although not completely understood, has a
connection with stress and neurotransmitters such as serotonin and dopamine.
Stress plays a part in autoimmune diseases as well. There is a link between
obesity, diabetes and heart disease. Arthritis, asthma and heart disease are now
known to be inflammatory in nature.
There are too many common threads running through these seemingly unrelated
diseases to be coincidence.
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