Diet & Health
The Milk Myth
Do all children need cow’s milk to grow strong bones and teeth? Is cow’s milk good for everyone? Problems from milk drinking involve iron deficiency, anemia, allergies, early heart attacks, chronic cramps, and diarrhea. Over thirty million Americans are allergic to milk because of low levels of an enzyme called lactase in their intestines. The body will not digest lactose milk sugar, unless sufficient amounts of lactase are present. At five years old the amount of lactase begins to lessen and by adulthood many lose the ability to produce lactase. Eighty percent of Japanese, Filipinos, and Arabs have lactose intolerant reactions. Seventy to eighty percent of...
Read MoreChocolate vs. Carob
It is at least vaguely understood by most people that the use of beverages containing methylxanthines (rhymes with Ethel Francine) such as caffeine, theobromine, and theophylline cause physical or physiologic damage. It is not well known, however, that these ill effects are serious, sometimes calamitous, and may involve any organ or tissue from scalp to sole. The reason for this widespread damage is to be found in the chemical nature of methylxanthines, their ability to alter the very protoplasm of cells, and to attach or concentrate in cells for an unknown period of time. Methylxanthines are found in coffee, tea, colas, and chocolate. The subject of this discussion is...
Read MoreCheese
Very few things are sacrosanct in this day, and cheese must now be classed among those things that have lost their halo. Cheese has been used for at least 4,000 years, and has been widely acclaimed as a healthful food. Some have claimed unusual hardiness and advanced old age for cheese users. Only recently has it been learned that cheese is not the wonder food that many had thought. There may be real dangers in its use. All dairy products have become more suspect recently, from the association of the saturated fat of milk with the elevation of the blood cholesterol, to the transmission of many animal diseases to man through dairy products. Most of the diseases...
Read MoreProteins
A balanced diet is one that takes no more than about 10% of its calories from protein, no more than about 15-20% of its calories from fats, and the rest in carbohydrates. Too much protein causes harmful amounts of ammonia to accumulate in the body. Ammonia has the quality of slowing the growth of cells in cell cultures. It appears clear that in a given tissue, ammonia will slow the growth of normal cells, but hardly affects the growth of cancer cells, apparently giving cancer cells an advantage over normal cells. It may be that the ammonia production from a high protein diet is the very thing that increases the risk of cancer from a diet high in protein. It can be...
Read MoreAGING
Here are some things that don’t change much with age. The basic personality does not, the vocabulary continues to grow, and reasoning and problem solving are retained. While there is a decline in memory, impairment of memory is not the rule; meaning that what is remembered is remembered accurately. You should be able to enjoy moderately vigorous activity well into your 80s. A. Psychological Factors How long a person will live is in part measure predictable from how conscientious a person is in childhood. A study done on bright children by H.S. Friedman in 1993 showed that there was a strong association between how conscientious the person was in studies,...
Read MoreAbout
Agatha Thrash M. D. graduated from the Medical College of Georgia and did specialty training in Pathology at Emory University. She was certified by the American Board of Pathology, and practiced hospital and private pathology for about 15 years, and Forensic pathology part time for about 35 years. She serves on staff at Uchee Pines Institute practicing natural medicine for the last 37 years. She ran a home birth service in Russell County, Alabama for ten years, and served as the Public Health officer head of the Lay Midwife Association of Russell County. During this time she has written a number of books about natural medicine, and hundreds of counseling papers on a variety of topics for patients. She lectures widely in Natural Remedies and Nutrition.