The Optimum Nutrition Bible - By Patrick Holford - A Piatkus Book

Optimum Living Made Easy

Optimum nutrition is a revolution in health care. It means giving yourself the best possible intake of nutrients to allow your body to be as healthy as it possibly can.

Based on the latest research, this bestselling book by one of the world's leading nutrition experts reveals precisely why optimum nutrition - rather than a so-called well-balanced diet - should be your goal.

• Increase your energy and control your weight
• Delay ageing and improve your skin
• Choose foods that heal rather than kill
• Improve your digestion and detoxify your body
• Boost your immune system
• Improve your mood, mind and memory
• Prevent serious diseases such as cancer, diabetes and heart disease

All this is achievable. Through easy-to-follow questionnaires and a simple step-by-step plan, The Optimum Nutrition Bible  shows you what to eat and which nutrients to supplement in order to create a personal programme unique to your needs - one that will help you live a healthier, happier life.

'The book you have to read if you care about your health' - Sunday Times

'One of the top-ten self-help books of all time' - Independent

'Patrick Holford is one of the world's leading authorities on new approaches to health and nutrition' - Daily Mail

The Optimum Nutrition Bible

Contents

• Acknowledgements
• Guides to abbreviations, measures and references
• Introduction

Part 1: What is optimum?

• Health - who wants to be average?
• Defining optimum nutrition
• From monkeys to man - nutrition and evolution
• You are unique
• Synergy - the whole is greater
• Anti-nutrients - avoiding the vitamin robbers

Part 2: Defining the perfect diet

• The myth of the well-balanced diet
• The protein controversy
• The fats of life
• Sugar - the sweet truth
• Stimulants - are you addicted?
• The vitamin scandal
• Elemental health from calcium to zinc
• Toxic minerals from aluminium to mercury
• Antioxidants - the power of prevention
• Homocysteine - your most important health statistic
• Living food - the phytochemical revolution
• Your body is 66 per cent water
• Food combining - facts and fallacies
• Eat right for your blood type

Part 3: The wonderful world within

• You are what you eat
• Improving your digestion
• Secrets for a healthy heart
• Boosting your immune system
• Balancing hormones naturally
• Bone health - a skeleton in the cupboard
• Skin health - eat yourself beautiful

Part 4: The benefits of optimum nutrition

• Improving intelligence, memory and mood
• Increasing your energy and resistance to stress
• Achieving peak physical performance
• Turning back the clock
• Conquering cancer
• Fighting infections naturally
• Unraveling allergies
• Detoxing your body
• Breaking the fat barrier
• Solving the riddle of eating disorders
• Mental Health - the nutrition connection

Part 5: Nutrition for all ages

• Birthrights and wrongs
• Superkids - nourishing the next generation
• Puberty, PMS, the menopause and the andropause
• Preventing the problems of old age

Part 6: Your personal nutrition programme

• Working out your optimum nutrition
• Your optimum diet
• Your optimum supplement programme
• Everything you need to know about supplements
• Building your own supplement programme
• Choosing the best supplements
• Vitamins and minerals - how much is safe?

Part 7: A to Z of nutritional healing

Acne — Alcoholism — Allergies — Alzheimer's and dementia — Anaemia— Angina and atherosclerosis — Arthritis— Asthma — Breast cancer — Bronchitis — Burns, cuts and bruises — Cancer — Candidiasis — Colds and flu — Colitis — Constipation — Chronic Fatigue — Crohn's disease — Cystitis — Depression — Dermatitis — Diabetes — Diverticulitis — Ear infections — Eczema — Fibromyalgia — Gallstones — Gout — Hair problems — Hangovers — Hay fever — Headaches and migraines — Herpes — High blood pressure — HIV infections and AIDS — Indigestion — Infections — Infertility — Inflammation — Irritable bowel syndrome — Kidney stones — Menopausal symptoms — Muscle aches and cramps — Obesity — Osteoporosis — PMS — Prostate problems — Psoriasis — Schizophrenia — Sinusitis — Sleeping problems — Thyroid problems — Ulcers — Varicose veins

Part 8: Nutrient fact file A to Z

Vitamins - minerals - essential fats - semi-essential nutrients

Part 9: Food fact file

Which protein foods? - Which fats and oils? - Which carbohydrates? - Gllycemic load (GL) of common foods - Gllycemic load (GL) of common drinks - How much fibre? - Balancing acid/alkaline foods -Which foods are rich in phyto-estrogens? - Which antioxident-rich foods? - The best fruit and vegetables

• Recommended reading
• Resources
• References
• Index

The Optimum Nutrition Bible

Introduction

This book, now available in fifteen languages, is the cutting edge in how to keep yourself looking good, feeling great and living long. First written in 1997 to sum up twenty years' research at the Institute for Optimum Nutrition (ION), 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 wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't let you know about it. Many discoveries have been made — the secret to successful weight loss, preventing Alzheimer's, reversing depression without drugs, 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 I have received over a thousand exuberant testimonials from people whose lives have literally been transformed through optimum nutrition — people like you.

That's my job — to 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 practically apply in your life. When you are 100 per cent healthy and free from pain, discomfort, tiredness and the need for drugs, I've 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 'soya sausages', followed by a handful of vitamin pills, how most disease was the result of sub-optimum 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 wheat-free, virtually 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 14 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 no longer needed so much sleep, my mind was much sharper and my body 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 psycho therapy combined. A pioneer in this field, Dr Carl Pfeiffer, an American doctor and psychiatrist, was claiming an 80 per cent remission rate. So too was Dr Abram Hoffer, a director of psychiatric research in Canada — and the first man ever to carry out a 'double-blind' study in the history of psychiatry. 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 surviving were very slim - ten years at the absolute most, and only then 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 micro-nutrients - essential substances we need to nourish us - most 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 5,000 patients and published forty-year follow-ups, told me he had an 80 per cent cure rate. I asked him to define cure and he said, 'Free of symptoms, socialising with family and friends and paying income tax!' Dr Abram Hoffer, now over ninety years old, is still working, helping and advising people in 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 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, twice Nobel prize winner Dr Linus Pauling, coined the phrase 'orthomolecular medicine'. Linns Pauling was to chemistry what Einstein was to physics. Pauling, who died in 1994, has been voted the second most important scientist of twentieth century. He is the only man to have won two unshared Nobel prizes - he also had forty-eight PhDs! By giving the body the right (ortho) molecules, he asserted, most disease would be eradicated. 'Optimum nutrition,' he said, 'is the medicine of tomorrow.'

In 1984, with Linus Pauling's help and support, I founded the ION in London to research and promote this idea. ION, which is an independent, non-profit educational charity, is now the leading school for training nutritional therapists in Europe. Roughly speaking, we were ten years ahead on most major health issues.

• Our first campaign was to help ban lead in petrol because we knew from the science that it was damaging children's minds.
• In 1986 we helped put zinc on the map and made people 'think zinc' by extolling the virtues of Britain's most commonly deficient mineral.
• In 1987 we helped run the first trial — published in the Lancet and filmed by the BBC's Horizon — that proved vitamin supplements can boost IQ.
• In the 1990s we showed that antioxidants reduce cancer and slow ageing.
• In 1993 we went public against hormone replacement therapy (HRT), saying that it causes breast cancer, a fact now well proven.
• In 1995 we said there were better natural remedies for depression than drugs, and that many SSRI anti-depressants increased the risk of suicide and aggression. Last year doctors were rightly advised not to prescribe them to anyone under the age of eighteen.

In recent years I've been explaining why your homocysteine level is your greatest single health statistic, why Alzheimer's disease is preventable, why milk consumption is undeniably linked to breast and prostate cancer risk and why the 'glycemic load' of a food is the best predictor of weight gain. Maybe you haven't heard about the last four, but you will. In short, we've been ten years ahead of what is destined to become public knowledge — knowledge that could add ten years to your life.

The purpose of this book is to show you how to achieve vibrant health and resistance to disease through optimum nutrition. Part 1 explains the principles of optimum nutrition, which necessitates a whole new definition of health, healthcare and medicine. Part 2 defines the perfect diet — not easy to acquire overnight, but good to aspire to. Parts 3, 4 and 5 prove the benefits of optimum nutrition based on the latest breakthroughs in nutritional science. Part 6 shows you how to put optimum nutrition into practice with a step-by-step guide to help you improve your diet and design your own supplement programme. Part 7 is an A to Z guide to specific health problems and how to heal them with optimum nutrition. Part 8 is an A to Z guide to nutrients; what they do, signs and causes of deficiency, what to eat and what to supplement. Part 9 gives you food facts and tables to help put optimum nutrition into practice.

Twenty-five years have passed since I discovered optimum nutrition. In that time thousands of scientific papers have been published proving its potency, and virtually none that negate it. I am now completely convinced that the concept of optimum nutrition is the greatest step forward in medicine for over a century, no less important than Louis Pasteur's discovery of disease-causing 'germs' or the discovery of genes, and that, if applied from an early age, it is a guarantee for a long and healthy life.

Wishing you the very best of health, Patrick Holford

About the author Patrick Holford BSc, DipION, NTCRP: is a pioneer in approaches to health and nutrition and is widely regarded as Britain's leading spokesman on nutrition and mental health issues. He is also the author of over 30 health books, translated into over 20 languages and selling over a million copies worldwide.

Patrick Holford started his academic career in the field of psychology, and was a student of Dr Carl Pfeiffer and Dr Abram Hoffer, two leading authorities in the field of mental health and nutritional.

In 1984 Patrick founded the Institute for Optimum Nutrition (ION), an independent educational trust for the furtherance of education and research in nutrition, now the largest training school in the UK to offer degree-accredited training in nutritional therapy. During his years at ION, Patrick was involved in groundbreaking research showing that multivitamins can increase children's IQ scores -  research that was published in the Lancet and subject of a Horizon documentary in the 1980s. He also ran a campaign raising the awareness of the importance of zinc, antioxidants , essential fats and homocysteine-lowering  B vitamins such as folic acid.

He is Chief Executive of the Food for the Brain Foundation, an educational charity and director of the Brain Bio Centre, the Foundation's treatment centre. He is an honorary fellow of the British Association for Applied Nutrition and Nutritional Therapy, as well as a member of the Nutrition Therapy Council.