THE THEORY OF NUTRITIONAL BALANCING SCIENCE

by Lawrence Wilson, MD

© January 2010, The Center For Development

This article originally appeared in the Healthscope Magazine, 1981, published by the Eck Institute of Applied Nutrition and Bioenergetics, Ltd. It has been expanded.

Many important scientific breakthroughs occur in the gray area between traditional sciences. Such is the case with nutritional balancing science.

Incorporating knowledge from the fields of biochemistry, physiology, nutrition, stress theory, pathology and psychology, this science is a synthesis that draws together many ideas. It also clarifies previously unexplained phenomena and presents a new and expanded approach to healing.

It involves a precise means of assessing and monitoring the condition of the body chemistry. It also includes a new set of rules for interpreting hair mineral test results. Finally, it offers specific applications of diet, supplementary nutrients, detoxification protocols, mental and emotional suggestions and more to raise one’s energy level and restore a more balanced chemistry.

THE SCIENTIFIC BASIS OF NUTRITIONAL BALANCING

Nutritional balancing draws from many branches of science, as mentioned above. However, its essence is based on a set of little known and poorly understood concepts elaborated only within the past 80 years.

To appreciate the research that has gone into the development of nutritional balancing science, at least some familiarity with these concepts is helpful. They Include:

1. General Systems Theory.

2. Cybernetics, the science of communication and control in complex self-regulating systems.

3. The General Adaptation Syndrome and Stress Theory of Disease.

4. Bioenergetics or Vitality.

5. The Concept of Preferred Minerals.
6. Biochemical Individuality.

7. Metabolic Typing.

8. Orthomolecular Medicine.

9. The Mineral Balancing System.

10. Wellness.

11. Biological Transmutation of the Elements.

12. Predictive Medicine.

13. Restorative and Functional Medicine.

14. Holism.

15. Hair Mineral Analysis by spectroscopy.

Here are more details about each of these principles.

GENERAL SYSTEMS THEORY

Definition. A system is a group of items, all of which affect each other. While not a rigorous definition, it adequate for our purpose.

In the early 20^th century, great minds realized the importance of viewing many complex phenomena as “systems”. Among the pioneers was Ludwig Von Bertalanffy, author of General System Theory, Foundations, Development and Applications (1968).

While we take the word ‘system’ for granted, today, it is a relatively new word in common parlance. Understanding the laws of systems, however, is essential to understanding nutritional balancing science.

Conventional allopathic medicine, by contrast, and even most nutrition science, often still thinks in terms of body parts and individual functions much more than in terms of the entire human system.

Facts About Systems. We will only discuss a few essential properties and facts about systems in this article. One of these is that systems are of different types.

Open systems are those in which the boundaries and all the parts are not known. A prime example is our universe. We don’t know how big it is, really, so we don’t know its boundaries. Also, we don’t know much about many of its features or parts.

Open systems are exciting on a theoretical level, but very difficult to work with. We know so little about our universe, for example, or on a smaller scale, the human brain, that exploring it carefully is difficult at best.

Open systems, you might say, are hard to get our minds around at all. However, the definition is important because humans are open systems to a degree as well. The more spiritually developed a person is, the more he or she is not ruled by the whims of the body. This is the open nature of human beings. However, for the most part, humans are considered closed systems.

Closed systems are those in which all or most of the parts are understood and often facts are clear about the boundaries of the system as well. Thus, living organisms are generally considered closed systems under this definition. Closed systems are much easier to study and analyze, which is fortunate for us.

Self-regulating systems. These are systems that have so much feedback in them that they can self-correct to maintain equilibrium or homeostasis.

Our bodies definitely are members of this group of systems, as are animals and even plants to some degree.

Systemic events. These are events within a system that affect the entire system or most of it, at least. An example is the big bang that created an entire universe. For a person, a systemic event is going to sleep or catching pneumonia.

Primarily Local events. These are events within a system that have much less effect o the entire system. An example would be the effect on the entire universe of the birth of a baby somewhere on planet earth. In a human body, a local event might be a slight rise in temperature due to going outside on a warm day.

Systems always have both types of events at all times. It is important to realize this and be able to distinguish primarily local from more important systemic events.

Laws of systems. Dr. Von Bertalanffy and other pioneers of systems theory discovered basic laws of all systems. We will focus on laws related more to health and healing in this article:

1. The behavior of the whole is more than the sum of its parts. This can also be stated that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

This is the hardest one for medical doctors and most people to appreciate. Our education system, including medical schools, fail to teach it. But it is true, nevertheless and needs to be taught widely.

It kicks in, for example, when silly human beings think they understand something large like the environment or a human being just because they understand parts of the system. They wrongly believe they know everything about the system, which they do not.

The Soviet Union and Nazi Germany are examples on a governmental level. They decided that by controlling everyone and killing those who would not go along, everything would work in their favor. Instead, they self-destructed, with our help, or course. They lost out to another systems principle, the one that follows.

Thus, parts of a system can be money, power, guns and so forth or parts can mean the liver, kidneys, spleen and the rest. The principle is the same in any case.

2. One cannot predict the behavior of the whole from just knowing the parts. (This follows from principle #1 above). This means that our world, which is a system, is inherently unpredictable.

It is actually a great spiritual truth that is found in different words in the bible and every spiritual teaching, in fact. It may be stated that God is in charge, or Allah is in charge, not us puny humans. Smart people figured out this principle thousands of years ago. However, it, too, is seldom mentioned in the schools.

In the healing field, this principle implies that just knowing everything about the stomach will not tell you about the whole person. Neither will full body scans of all the parts. It just doesn’t work that way.

Inventing new scanners and other tests is great, but it still will never explain a whole human being.

This is not bad or good. It is just the truth about many aspects of complex, self-regulating systems.

General applications of this principle. It is worth mentioning how systems principles apply elsewhere. In business, this fact is called “the unseen hand of the market”. The most brilliant financial minds will tell you they are sometimes wrong. Government planners are wrong very often for this reason and are so arrogant they refuse to admit it most of the time.

In the environmental movement and weather prediction, it is called “the unpredictability of mother nature”.

Medicine, in its arrogance, mainly, gives it an esoteric Latin word, calling the unknown and unpredictable “idiopathic”, “essential” or using other terms as well for common conditions including hypertension. They mean, in simple English, we just don’t know the cause.

However, instead of adopting system behaviors, they continue to deal mainly in parts only. This is why their success with systemic illnesses is limited.

Local and systemic events. Having said this, of course, an x-ray of a broken leg will help a doctor set the led properly. This is because a broken leg is, in systems terms, mainly a local event. It does not, hopefully, affect the entire person. If it did, it would be a different kind of event, in systems terms. Since it is not, it can be dealt with locally.

Thus one key to working with a person as a system is to know when an event is local and when it is systemic. Admitedly, this is not always easy. Modern medicine has made great strides in this area, however, which is why emergency medicine saves many lives every year.

Other areas of medicine, however, continue to confuse these two types of events often. Local events, like a broken leg, are treated systemically with drugs that are not needed and are toxic. Systemic events like cancer and heart disease are treated locally, with poor results in many cases.

Principle 3. If one knows some behaviors of the whole, one can often predict behaviors of the parts. This is a critical principle of systems.

If one knows, for example, that human beings need eight or nine hours of sleep nightly, then one will know that if one does not get the rest one needs, the brain will not function correctly, the muscles may be weaker the next day and so forth.

The point is that by focusing on whole system behaviors, we can learn a lot about the behavior of the parts of the human system.

This brings up the question of what are some whole system behaviors of human beings. An obvious answer is in what is called lifestyle. This includes one’s rest and sleep habits, diet, exercise and activity patterns and others. Social interaction patterns are others, thinking and attitudes are others. By knowing these, we ca predict a lot about the behaviors of various parts of the human system.

I am continually amazed that most medical doctors and even some naturopathic doctors don’t ask about these simple whole system behaviors. They could learn so much, so fast about a person and his or her likely health conditions.

Principle 4. If one knows some of the behaviors of the whole system and most of the parts, one can infer or learn the behaviors of the rest of the system.

This may be the most critical systems principle of all. It is the method used in nutritional balancing, acupuncture and other system sciences of healing.

In short, the behavior of the whole human being that is most important is living versus dying. The kidney is important, the brain is very important, but if the patient dies, then those are useless.

So we must ask, what are the next most important behaviors of the whole system do we or can we know about? Obviously there are many. We have mentioned some basic ones, such as the person’s diet, liestyle, rest level and many more like this.

What about others? This is where nutritional balancing excels. Dr. Paul Eck realized, perhaps unconsciously, that to fine-tune a healing program he needed whole system behaviors. The ones he found are called the metabolic or oxidation rate and type, the stage of stress and the levels and ratios between various minerals in the body.

There are a million others, such as the blood sugar level, the blood pressure and more. However, this brings us to another principle of systems.

5. Systems have various degrees of local and systemic or whole system behaviors and events. Fatigue, for example, is a systemic event because it will affect all parts of a person’s life eventually. A broken finger is much more local because it rarely affects the whole person that much, though it could if it becomes infected. If the infection spreads to the whole body, it is definitely no longer a local event.

These may sound very theoretical, but as you will see, we use them with our system of nutritional balancing. Basically, we figure out whole behaviors of the body such as metabolic type, transmutations and others and then we can figure out how to proceed simply, powerfully and safely to alter specific behaviors such as blood sugar, blood pressure, inflammation and many others.

Systems principles explain seeming paradoxes. For example, in some nutritional balancing regimens, minerals that read high on the hair test are supplemented. Meanwhile, minerals that are low are left alone.

Sometimes the patient is made to feel worse, such as with a four lows pattern on a hair analysis. The person is already tired and we give more calcium and magnesium and zinc, which tend to make one feel tired. Meanwhile, foods and supplements that give a sense of well-being are to be avoided. This is also the case with the four lows pattern, for example.

A mineral level or ratio that appears at first glance to be alarmingly abnormal, may be considered evidence of positive progress. Meanwhile, normal looking levels may indicate serious imbalances.

It all depends on what is going on in the entire chart.

To repeat the principle, only by starting with the behavior the whole system, can the behavior of the parts be correctly interpreted.

Implications. Systems theory has tremendous implications. I will only give a few simple ones. Our entire lives are a system. We therefore ought to look at every aspect of life and make sure that they are integrated. These include one’s job, relationships, health program, lifestyle, attitudes, emotional control and spiritual outlook.

Many people have focused on just a few of these, but the rest are out of balance, causing unhappiness and ill health.

Another implication is the body must be approached as a system. This means not just looking at a stomach problem in the stomach, but considering structural, nutritional, electrical, emotional and other aspects simultaneously for the best results.

A final implication is that any therapy must be viewed systemically, meaning to ask what the effects are on the whole person, not just a symptom. For example, an antibiotic is very effective against certain bacteria. However, it has negative consequences for the intestinal flora, often, and at times for the liver and other organs.

Therefore, from a systems point of view, it is much less helpful than an alternative such as colloidal silver that has many fewer negative systemic effects, also called side effects.

CYBERNETICS

Definition. Cybernetics, which many equate with computer science, is a study of complex, self-regulating systems. It is sometimes called the science of communication and control in animal and machine.

It is the brilliant work of Dr. Norbert Weiner at MIT and others who lived in the mid-twentieth century in America. Dr. Weinger wrote about it in two popular books, Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (1948) and The Human Use of Human Beings (1950). He and many others also wrote innumerable technical papers about it.

It began as a way to program automatic tracking systems for machine guns on warships during the second World War. However, it applies to all self-regulating systems including computers, robotics and, of course, human beings.

It focuses not on things as much as on the relationships between unstable things or parts of complex systems and their communication links.

We will only touch on it because of it s immense complexity. However, we derive some important language form cybernetics. The words homeostasis and feed back loops are these important terms.

1. Homeostasis is the process of maintaining internal system equilibrium or balance in the face of dynamic or constantly changing outer conditions.

In the case of a radar-controlled self-tracking machine gun on a destroyer, the outer changing conditions are the ship rolling on the sea and the plane that is the target flying by overhead. The gun must stay trained on the plane in spite of these conditions.

In the case of the body, the outer conditions include changes in temperature, for example, that require the body to heat itself up or cool itself down all the time.

In fact, there are thousands of changing conditions around any physical organism, from invasions of germs to accidents, wounds, hunger, thirst and more. Throughout the body must keep itself balanced or in homeostasis.

In fact, homeostasis is about the most fundamental processes of life, even if the word was coined to describe a war machine.

2. Feedback loops are the special communication links needed to maintain homeostasis. Feedback loops, additionally, can be of two major types.

Negative feedback loops. Negative loops are those that cause a return toward balance or toward the way things were before the element in question was disturbed or changed.

Therefore, negative feedback loops tend to move any system toward stability, balance and in the case of our bodies, toward a return to excellent health.

For example, if one does not sleep enough on a given night, the body will signal us with fatigue to sleep more to return the body to a rested state of balance. Fatigue acts as a negative feedback mechanism, in other words, that helps us return to stability and balance or health.

Positive feedback loops cause an element in a complex system that is disturbed to become more disturbed or further away from balance. This means that positive loops destabilize and are sometimes called 'vicious cycles'. If allowed to continue for any length of time, they tend to destroy one’s health.

Serious illness, for example, is generally caused by positive feedback loops. For example, let us discuss a heart attack.

A heart attack often starts with a mild blockage or mild spasm of a coronary artery that restricts blood flow to a small area of the heart. However, this can cause intense chest pain and discomfort.

The body responds with a surge of adrenalin that unfortunately constricts the coronary arteries further. This further restricts blood flow and causes more pain. If too little blood reaches the heart muscle, it begins to die.

If the situation is not reversed at once, the vicious cycle kills the person instantly for practical purposes.

Not all heart attacks kill because the positive feedback loop is broken somehow, perhaps by the person becoming unconscious and relaxing or by an injection of magnesium sulfate in the emergency room, or because the body can compensate for the infracted or dead heart tissue enough that the heart continues to beat and maintain life.

One could view life and death as a battle between negative feedback loops trying to keep us in balance and positive loops that kill.

A nutritional example. When a person has low calcium and magnesium, he feels irritable and anxious. By a positive loop, those feelings cause adrenal stimulation that causes calcium and magnesium to go even lower.

This is a vicious cycle that eventually results in an altered state of body chemistry called fast oxidation.

However, if one eats a food with calcium and magnesium which one may crave due to a negative feedback loop, it reverses the positive loop or vicious cycle and the person calms down and adrenal activity lessens.

In this way, all of life is a series of communications and feedback loops that must operate correctly or life ends rather quickly. This is the importance of cybernetic thinking and our healing.

Life is a series of homeostatic states. Life is just a series of homeostatic states as our bodies respond or adapt to stress. The early stages of homeostasis are much healthier ones characterized by better vitality and more ability to respond to stress. As one ages, homeostasis is harder to maintain and the body begins to develop more problems.

Disease a failure of homeostasis. Disease and death occur when the homeostatic or balancing mechanisms no longer maintain the body. Then breakdowns begin occur that can end in total shutdown or death..

The goal of nutritional balancing, in the broadest sense, is to assist the body to break out of positive feedback loops and restore functioning of the negative loops. That, in turn, will move the body back toward a more optimum or ideal condition of homeostasis.

THE GENERAL ADAPTATION SYNDROME or G.A.S.

Definitions. The General Adaptation Syndrome or GAS is a unified concept about how our bodies respond to stress. It is closely related to and part of the stress theory of disease.

Stress is a general term for the process by which organisms face changes in their environment which force the organism to alter itself in thousands of ways in response.

Stressors are factors that impinges on an organism forcing that organism to adapt or change itself in order to survive and thrive in their environment.

Adaptation is the process whereby a complex self-regulating system or organism responds to its environment to maintain homeostasis.

Adaptations are the changes that an organism makes in thousands of parameters in order to compensate or cope with the effects of stress.

Credit for this theory of disease goes directly to Dr. Hans Selye, MD. He first presented the theory in the 1950s and wrote a number of books about it such as The Stress of Life, Stress Without Distress and Calciphylaxis. He was quite a genius and receives little credit for his unified theory of disease in animals and human beings.

Dr. Selye found that experimental animals, when subjected to repeated shock treatment and other stressful situations, responded in specific, predictable ways. Dr. Selye called the responses the stages of stress. These he named the alarm, resistance, and exhaustion stages.

Each stage of stress is a lower energy and less desirable than the previous one and each represents the best the animal can do to maintain itself under conditions of increasing or continuing stress.

Stress. Dr. Selye’s theory is the first ever unified concept of disease. It showed that many symptoms or diseases can be linked to one single factor that he called stress.

While the entire world has incorporated this word into its daily vocabulary, very few people understand exactly what stress is or how it works. Hair analysis can change all that and provide tremendous insight into human and animal functioning as a result.

Examples of Adaptation. For example, when it is too hot outside, we sweat to lower our body temperature. When it is too cold outside, we shiver to warm up. When a bacteria invades the body, we often feel tired so we will rest. Also, we may run a fever to help kill off the invading germs faster.

Each adaptation, such as sweating, is actually a very complicated process all by itself. Sweating, for example, is governed by many feedback loops and systems so that, for example, we don’t sweat out all of our water and minerals and so that we stop sweating when the body temperature returns to normal.

Many factors can send a person into a lower energy stage of stress or less healthful homeostatic state. These include nutritional depletion, accumulation of toxic chemicals and toxic metals, structural and other imbalances in the body.

This process is reflected in our symptoms and even our mental attitudes such as depression, anxiety and others. The relationships between the stage of stress, oxidation types and personality is covered in an articles entitled Personality And Hair Mineral Analysis.

This idea of viewing people as being in a stage of stress, also called the oxidation type, is a key to learning nutritional balancing science and hair analysis interpretation. It makes it much more simple and orderly.

Importance of the adrenal glands. The G.A.S. begins as a response of the central nervous system. This, in turn, affects the sympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system.

The sympathetic system affects certain glands, principally the adrenal medulla and adrenal cortex to some degree, and the thyroid gland. This is why Dr. Paul Eck became so interested in these glands and their effects on our health.

The goal is a healthier stage of stress. The goal of nutritional balancing, in broad terms, is to move an organism away from the stage of exhaustion and back toward the more desirable stages of stress.

An even more desirable outcome is a balanced or flexible state in which the organism is not required to adapt very much at all. This is optimum homeostasis and is really what spiritual development involves.

BIOENERGETICS OR VITALITY

Definition. Vitality or adaptive energy is a mysterious life force or energy that is enhanced or depleted in all life forms by various foods, activities and by time.

This is another basic concept about life, in general. It has been given many names throughout the ages such as chi, qi, prana, orgone energy, adaptive energy, life force and others. Here are a few basic principles of vitality.

1. Life force or adaptive energy is central to health. It is the common denominator of health. This energy is required for all body functions. Therefore, any ailment or symptom can occur due to fatigue or low vitality. This is the most important implication of the vitality principle.

2. Energy is enhanced when the body does not have to adapt. All adaptation uses up energy that could otherwise be used for other things.

This means that adapting to cold, heat, noise, infection, lack of rest, improper food or other stress of any kind is not helpful for one’s health.

An exception is that some temporary stress due to exercise or activity is good for building the bones and muscles, but not for much else. This, and nothing else, should be the function of exercise of activity.

Excessive exercise does not build vitality. All other activity that produces excessive stress, such as vigorous exercise done to exhaustion, is ultimately not helpful for one’s health.

This is very different from other systems of healing that encourage a lot of exercise, for example.

Similarly, any activity that depletes energy is not helpful. Even too much thinking is not helpful for health, although some thinking is essential, of course. Thinking is a very calorie intensive activity. The point is that people who work too hard may endanger their health.

3. Vitality is not the same as “being energetic”. Many people zoom around all day and even part of the night. However, on hair mineral tests we find that many of them do not have a high vitality level, which we measure using various ratios mentioned below.

Many so-called vital people live on stimulants, for example, such as coffee or other caffeinated foods or drinks. It is important to realize that vitality is not the same as being energetic, which is often just being stimulated.

Many things can stimulate a person, such as anger, fear, sexual drive, music on their radio, various foods such as sugars, drugs such as ADD drugs and more.

4. Vitality is not easy to measure. The section above illustrates that a person who seems vital or energetic may not be, while a person who is tired may be quite so. This is a confusing topic that is discussed more in the article entitled Vitality on this website.

Building Vitality. The importance of building adaptive energy or vitality in the body in order to restore and maintain health is a central concept in nutritional balancing science. We do it by balancing the oxidation rate and renourishing the body.

Lifestyle modifications also play a central role for some people. These include getting enough rest, proper activity, early to bed and more.

Detoxification is central for most people today, as the presence of toxic metals and chemicals require that the body adapt to them in order to continue to function.

Reducing medication and other toxic exposures is also important for many people, although essential medication is important not to discontinue until it is hopefully no longer needed such as blood pressure medication of insulin for a person with diabetes.

Attitude change is also important to build vitality. Negative thinking, depressive thinking and similar attitudes can destroy one’s vitality quickly in some cases. This is why we always recommend the Roy Masters meditation and other methods to build self-confidence and a positive outook.

THE CONCEPT OF PREFERRED MINERALS

Definition. Thousands of enzymes in our bodies require specific minerals for their activity or functioning. However, if the ideal or preferred mineral is not available to the body, another mineral can usually be substituted in the enzyme.

This is in part a physics principle. Cadmium, for example, has a molecular shape similar to zinc. Lead has a molecular shape and other properties similar to calcium. Because of these properties, cadmium can substitute for zinc in certain key enzymes in our bodies. Lead can substitute for calcium as well.

Sometimes, several minerals can substitute for a preferred mineral. For example, zinc is the preferred mineral in over one hundred critical enzymes in our bodies. If it is not present in sufficient quantity, or becomes depleted due to stress, for example, the body can substitute mercury, cadmium, arsenic and possibly others for it. Of course, they do not work as well, but the body can continue to function at a lower level of efficiency.

An adaptive mechanism to preserve life. The purpose of the substitution is to allow life to continue in the face of nutritional deficiencies. Thus it is an adaptive mechanism.

As a rule, the affected enzyme will perform its job far less efficiently with the substitute mineral than it would if the ideal or preferred mineral were present in the enzyme binding site. Thus mineral substitution is always a bad thing, relatively, and leads to every disease condition imaginable.

A automobile analogy. A simple analogy occurs if one is stuck out in the desert and the car fan belt breaks. One might try taking off one’s clothing belt and putting it in place of the correct part. It may well keep the car going, but is usually far less efficient and leads to breakdown if not replaced with the correct part.

When too many preferred minerals have been replaced by substitutes the enzyme efficiency of the body becomes so low that life is not sustainable. Then cancer and very serious problems occur.

This is like having too many replacement parts in the car that are not the right parts. When this happens in our bodies, overall vitality declines and illness and death ensue.

Aging and preferred minerals. The scenario above is what always occurs with age. As nutritional deficiencies develop and mineral substitution goes on for years, the body eventually ages and dies.

Nutritional balancing restores preferred minerals. One way to understand nutritional balancing and some other natural healing approaches is that they aim to remove less preferred minerals. Toxic metals such as lead, cadmium, arsenic and mercury are to be replaced with vital or preferred minerals in thousands of enzyme binding sites and other locations in the body.

This will slowly restore the original efficiency of the enzymes and tissues and health improves automatically and often dramatically. Illnesses, depression, cancer and more just melt away, without any attempt to “treat the disease”.

This is a very powerful way to understand healing of many types. Nutritional balancing uses very specific methods to help support the body while the toxic metal is being eliminated so that the replacement process occurs smoothly, rapidly and safely. For this reason, it tends to be far safer than, for example, random chelation with drugs or even with natural chelating agents.

Instead of just using one method to remove toxic metals, for instance chelation, nutritional balancing relies on at least eight methods used together at the same time to remove and replace toxic metals with preferred minerals. These methods are discussed in detail in an article on this website entitled Toxic Metals.

BIOCHEMICAL INDIVIDUALITY

Definition. Biochemical Individuality is the concept that all bodies have different nutritional and other needs. These depend on one’s age, lifestyle, health condition and many other factors.

This very important nutritional principle was put forth by Dr. Roger Williams, PhD. He worked at the University of Texas for many years and authored many publications, among them Biochemical Individuality (1956).

Dr. Williams was a famous nutritional theorist and scholar who discovered pantothenic acid (vitamin B5) and wrote many scientific papers.

The principle has many implications. For example, measures such as the RDA (recommended daily allowance) or MDR (minimum daily requirement) mean little or nothing in practice. Their only value is as a minimal baseline assessment of human nutritional needs.

Sadly, most of Europe and Asia have adopted the MDRs as their nutritional standards and don’t even allow supplements to contain much more than a small multiple of these levels. This could happen easily in America as well if people do not object strenuously. It would be another health disaster, in my opinion.

Another implication of this axiom is that all nutritional balancing programs must be tailored for each individual. This, of course, we do and is a critical step in getting well. For this reason, just following general nutrition guidelines in a book, for example, is often not enough to become well.

Another implication is that each person must understand his or her own needs. One must not just copy the diet, lifestyle of other nutritional program of a friend or even a family member.

This means that one must find out how much rest one really needs, for example, and not just guess based on anyone’s opinion. The same goes for food needs.

The exception to the principles is that a professional with years of experience or someone with lots of research data can estimate needs fairly well. That is what we attempt to do in all cases.

Patients have to be warned that taking extra vitamins or herbs, or altering dosage levels can easily spoil the entire program because the program is designed specially for that individual.

However, at times, clients must modify even our nutritional balancing programs to fit their needs. This can be very critical for healing. A wise practitioner understands this principle and will modify his or her recommendations based upon feedback from the patient or client.

Biochemical individuality applies to drugs, too, to a lesser degree. One reason for drug medicine failures and side effects is that some need far more than others. This fact can make drug therapy quite dangerous if one is dealing with pharmaceutical products that are somewhat toxic.

METABOLIC TYPING

Definition. Human beings can be classified into various body types or other types, biochemically, physically, psychologically or in other ways. This concept is most helpful to simplify and avoid mistakes in recommending diets, nutritional supplements, detoxification protocols, and for psychological and personality assessment and more.

Metabolic typing is a refinement of the idea of biochemical individuality. It counters the idea that we are all random and unique by suggesting that within the variability of human beings are certain patterns of nutrient needs and other parameters.

It is very much a systems concept that is essential for nutritional balancing science and many other natural healing approaches.

Examples of metabolic typing systems abound. They include the ancient Chinese idea of yin and yang, the Ayurvedic three doshas, Hippocrates melancholic and phlegmatic and others.

Watson’s Oxidation Types. A modern metabolic classification system was developed by George Watson, PhD. He was a researcher at the University of California Los Angeles in the mid-twentieth century.

He happened upon a discovery that paved the way for a gigantic leap in understanding human physiology. Dr. Watson’s books are fascinating and easy reading. They can usually be found in used book stores. They are Nutrition and Your Mind (1972) and Personality Strength and Psychochemical Energy (1979).

Fast and slow oxidation. The two basic types he identified he first called type one and type two. Later he realized that one group metabolized fats better than carbohydrates, and the other was the reverse.

He then changed the names to fast and slow oxidizers. The word oxidation means to mix with oxygen or to burn.

He theorized a third group, the sub-oxidizers, who did not fit into either the fast or slow categories.

His original work used odor tests. Later he added blood tests of pH and carbon dioxide levels.

Watson’s concept is so important for nutritional balancing that the details of the system, as modified by Dr. Paul Eck and others, is described in a separate article entitled Fast and slow Oxidation.

Foods and nutrients and the oxidation types. Dr. Watson’s greatest contribution, perhaps, was his research on the effects of common food groups and supplementary nutrients on the oxidation rate and oxidation type. This is discussed in the same article on oxidation.

ORTHOMOLECULAR NUTRITION

Definition. This is the principle of using natural or physiological substances such as vitamins and minerals, given in the amounts the body needs, to correct disease conditions.

This term was coined by the late Dr. Linus Pauling, PhD, winner of two Nobel prizes. It was a radical idea when it was proposed, but has since been vindicated clearly. Thus it does not seem as odd or radical today.

This is also a refinement of the biochemical individuality concept because it postulates that each person may need different amounts of certain nutrients to correct his or her body chemistry.

Dr. Abram Hoffer, MD, PhD. The best known application of this theory of medicine was pioneered by dr. Abram Hoffer, MD, author of Orthomolecular Nutrition, several other books and many scientific papers.

Dr. Hoffer was a psychiatrist who noticed that after the Korean war ended, prisoners of war who had been starved in the North Korean concentration camps had mental symptoms that suggested deficiencies of B vitamins thiamine, niacin and pyridoxine at times as well.

As a result, he prescribed standard doses of vitamins to help the men. However, there was little response! Then, by chance, a patient took a much larger dose of the vitamins and made a complete recovery.

Dr. Hoffer immediately tried the same idea on the other patients and had similarly fantastic responses. Although he was ostracized by his colleagues, he continued to obtain excellent results in some cases of schizophrenia, other pychoses, depression and other mental illnesses by giving very high doses of basic vitamins. In this way the science of orthomolecular psychiatry and orthomolecular medicine was born.

Dr. Hoffer has written several popular books and many journal articles. He founded the Journal of Orthomolecular Psychiatry, which, in 1986, was renamed the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine.

I had the good fortune to meet Dr. Hoffer, a very humble and brilliant man. He allowed me to contribute an article to his journal entitled “Determination Of Oxidation Types By Means Of Tissue Electrolyte Ratios”. It appeared in 1986, Vol. 1, #2. pp. 126-131. It is reprinted in the 2010 edition of Nutritional Balancing And Hair Mineral Analysis, and is also on this website.

I also helped author an article for the same issue of the journal regarding the effects of washing hair at the hair testing laboratory. The official author was Dr. Raymond Leroy, DSc., chief chemist at Accutrace Laboratories where the studies were done.

Nutritional balancing is a type of orthomolecular approach. However, it differs from others in several important respects:

1. Nutritional balancing is not a symptom-based approach. Most orthomolecular nutrition is based on overcoming symptoms only. Few tests are used and large doses are required. Also, the patient must usually remain on the vitamin regimen forever or symptoms will return because underlying imbalances are not addressed in many, though not all cases.

In contrast, in nutritional balancing, diet, supplementary nutrients and lifestyle are generally not used to alleviate symptoms directly. They are employed to delicately move the organism to a more desirable oxidation state. In other words, we use a balancing approach, not a symptom-based approach to healing the body.

2. Nutritional balancing vitamin and mineral doses are usually not as high as in traditional orthomolcular approaches. Dr. Eck did not like using very high dosages of nutrients, even vitamin C. He reasoned that these are drug dosages, basically, when used at these doses. They are less safe and, though they can remove symptoms, they rarely balance the body. Also, they are rarely necessary if we can restore the biochemical pathways instead of just bridging over the trouble spots with megadoses of nutrients.

However, he knew that many people have impaired digestion and absorption of nutrients. Therefore, the nutrient dosages we do use are still far higher than the minimum daily requirements so that the patient at least gets a physiological dose delivered to the tissues.

3. As a result, with nutritional balancing one rarely needs to stay on the nutrients forever. Balancing the oxidation rate and removing toxic metals and toxic chemicals usually results in greater energy production. This, in turn, allows and facilitates normal healing processes. Since the problem actually disappears, there is usually no need to keep taking the vitamins, at least not a full program, to maintain optimum health.

THE MINERAL SYSTEM.

Definition. Each mineral in the soil, in plants and in animal bodies affects the levels of all the other minerals.
This amazing discovery was the work of Dr. William Albrecht, a soil scientist who worked at the University of Missouri in the early twentieth century. He designed the “mineral wheel” illustrating some of these complex interactions.
His work is collected in The Albrecht Papers, some of which are highly technical. Dr. Albrecht is widely published in other agricultural journals as well.
This forms a system of minerals that is essentially self-balancing or self-regulating in the soil and human beings. It was a great systems conceptual breakthrough that is used in agriculture and now can be used in nutritional balancing and nutritional science.
Dr. Paul Eck stumbled upon Albrecht’s work and used the concepts to explain many paradoxes that he encountered in understanding how to interpret hair tissue mineral analyses. For example, to raise the calcium level one must give copper, not calcium. To raise the sodium level, one gives manganese and so forth.
The interactions are quite complex, though we don’t need too much complexity to make use of the system. The relationships of the minerals in the soil are somewhat similar to the interaction of minerals in human and animal bodies, though they are not identical.

THE WELLNESS MODEL OF HEALTH

Definitions. Wellness if the idea that health is not simply the absence of diagnosed disease. Instead, it is a positive concept, perhaps related to vitality or high resistance to illness.

This is a wonderful idea, but has not been elaborated in a rigorous scientific way that I am aware of. It is the opposite of most allopathic, homeopathic and herbal medicine, that usually defines health as the absence of signs or symptoms of disease.

The closest thing I have found to it is the idea of “high resistance to disease”, another ambiguous phrase that doctors use to describe, for example, people who do not get the flu during an epidemic or pandemic.

Wellness = high vitality. From my perspective, wellness is, first and foremost, an energetic concept. It is not enough, it states, that the body is free of obvious disease. The ideal state is one of what might be called “superior resistance to disease and everything else that can harm it”.

This is another way of saying the same thing as the stress theory states in more technical language. It is saying that the optimum state called wellness is one of extremely high adaptive energy in which the body does not have a problem handling stress.

Similarly, the principle of nutritional balancing programs is to produce the highest possible level of energy and well-being, far above simple absence of disease. Only in this way can a person express himself and enjoy life to the fullest.

THE BALANCE MODEL OF HEALTH

This is another concept that has not been elaborated fully, to my knowledge. It asserts that health is about balance more than anything else. One thinks of the balance of yin and yang in Chinese terms, or the balance of hot and cold, dilation and contraction of blood vessels, contraction and relaxation of muscles and so forth.

Although the above is vague, the concept certainly carries some importance and is made us of in nutritional balancing science. For example, we know that when the oxidation rate is balanced, the energy efficiency of the body is maximized and therefore this is health-promoting. Also, when the levels of the minerals in the mineral system are balanced, health also seems better.

BIOLOGICAL TRANSMUTATION

Definition. Biological transmutation of the elements is the idea that living organisms can change one element into another at common body temperatures and pressures.

This theory has been known for thousands of years and is one of the alchemical principles of old. However, modern research, especially by Dr. C. Louis Kervan, has confirmed the principle in a few cases.

Dr. Kervan wrote Biological Transmutations (1966). I have a recent translation by Beekman Publishers, NY, 1998.

The book gives careful explanations of Dr. Kervan’s experiments. For example, chickens excrete more calcium in their egg shells than they ingest. This can be easily proven in the field, as can all of Dr. Kervan’s experiments.

Dr. Kervan also discovered some of the actual chemical reactions that lead to the transmutations in animals and human beings.

His work is ignored, but bears a striking resemblance to the hair analysis work in many ways. While Dr. Paul Eck believed the ratios of the electrolytes in the hair tissue mattered greatly, Dr. Kervan showed that these ratios actually represent transmutations in progress.

This is a very profound concept that is far beyond the scope of this article. For more information, see Dr. Kervan’s books.

PREDICTIVE MEDICINE

Definition. This is the concept that with the proper understanding, one should be able to predict that if a condition, situation or lifestyle continues, an outcome will occur.

The main textbook about this science is entitled Predictive Medicine : A Study in Strategy by E. Cheraskin, MD and W. M. Ringsdorf, MD. It was quite a sensation when it first appeared in 1973.

Though the idea has attracted little attention, the concept is valid and would save America and other nations billions of dollars annually if it were studied more, I believe.

This idea takes prevention a step further. Not only can we prevent illness. We should be able to predict it years ahead of time so that steps can be taken to avoid it altogether.

The concept of predictive medicine is an outgrowth of engineering principles. For instance, one can predict where a missile will land if one knows enough about its trajectory, weight, power of the motor and other factors.

It may sound odd to talk this way about illness, but it is not. There are parameters of the body that can be measured easily, with a hair analysis, for example. These can be used to literally calculate how they will affect a person in the future with fair accuracy.

Today the closest medical science to predictive medicine is epidemiology. This is the study usually of large populations and their illness trends. For example, studies have shown that smoking is associated with lung cancer, that drinking alcohol is associated with liver disease and that obesity is associated with diabetes and joint problems.

This is a start on predictive medicine. However, epidemiology mainly studies established diseases, not parameters of health and disease.

Nutritional balancing science is very much a predictive approach. By correlating thousands of hair mineral test patterns, levels and ratios, trends or associations with many important illnesses have been identified. The trend can appear on the test years before symptoms manifest.

This allows one to avoid the illness altogether, before it even appears in a subclinical form. This is really the ultimate in primary prevention of disease.

RESTORATIVE OR FUNCTIONAL MEDICINE

Definitions. Modern concepts of medicine are at times called restorative, functional or given other names such as complementary or holistic. These are fairly vague terms that I include here for completeness mainly. I like that they emphasize healing as a way to restore the functioning of the body, however, not just remove symptoms, which is less clear. However, I don’t find them useful in a specific theoretical way as the names seem obvious to me.

They all can apply, however, to nutritional balancing science to one degree or another. They do not need more explanation as I don’t feel they offer any new theoretical information beyond what has been discussed above.

HOLISM

Definition. Every aspect of a person’s life, including health history, genetics, diet, lifestyle, occupation, relationships, attitudes, recreational thoughts and activities and more will influence health and healing.

This is related to some of the other concepts such as wellness and biochemical individuality. However, it is far more comprehensive in its scope. Health must be seen as a dynamic interaction of many factors playing out in a person’s life each day. Health is not a static concept, in other words.

This principle is very important in the interpretation of a hair analysis. It is best is to know about a person’s diet, lifestyle and even his or her perceptions and attitudes for the best hair test interpretation.

However, if this information is not present, one can still do an excellent interpretation, but it will not be as comlete or accurate in some cases. the reason is that in some cases, the emotions, for example, or a dietary indiscretion, play a large role in the person’s overall holistic picture. In other cases, these play a minor role, while an illness, a toxic substance in the body or a biochemical imbalance is the major factor present.

This is a subtle subject and goes to the interpretation of the test, mainly. However, it is an important theoretical principle, which is why it is included in this article.

Additional important conceptual information about hair analysis interpretation is found in the second and third chapters of Nutritional Balancing and Hair Mineral Analysis by this author.

HAIR MINERAL ANALYSIS

Definition. This is a tissue mineral biopsy that uses hair as the biopsy material. The science of mineral balancing would not have been possible before the perfection of the technique of accurate, reliable mineral testing of human and animal tissues.

This occurred in the early twentieth century. Newer computerized testing instruments introduced in the late 1960s greatly decreased the cost of testing and improved the accuracy and reliability of the test.

Hair is only one tissue that could be used to test minerals. Testing hair is simple, non-invasive and easily performed in a medical office or even at home. Hair is also a rapidly growing tissue and one that is kept relatively clean by most people. Other reasons for using hair are discussed in the text, Nutritional Balancing and Hair Mineral Analysis.

This book is mainly the research of Dr. Paul Eck, a pioneer in hair analysis research. He is the originator and main proponent of nutritional balancing science. The book is dedicated to his memory, as he passed on in 1996. When performed and interpreted properly, hair mineral testing is one of the most cost-effective, powerful, predictive and best testing procedures available today.

I do not recommend its use for cancer patients or for advanced cases of multiple sclerosis and probably also not for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. However, for most other conditions, including most mental/emotional health conditions, it is superb when performed and interpreted correctly.

The hair mineral test gives a unique type of reading because It measures activity within the tissues without requiring expensive biopsies or other procedures. It is also unique in that Dr. Eck’s interpretation method allows one to assess how the body is responding to stress. This is quite unusual in medicine.

Since most metabolic activity occurs within the tissues rather than in the blood, the hair test provides a different point of view, whose possible application In medical science has hardly begun to be explored. For much more information about hair mineral analysis, read Introduction To Hair Analysis.

INTEGRATION OF CONCEPTS

Dr. Eck synthesized these and many other natural healing principles. Here are a few of the most important combinations of the above principles of healing:

Oxidation types, Yin-Yang Balance and the Stages of Stress. Dr. Watson’s metabolic types represent the stages of stress according to Hans Selye. The rough correlations are:

· Fast oxidizer = alarm stage of stress = more yang

· Mixed oxidizer = resistance stage of stress = somewhat yin

· Slow oxidizer = exhaustion stage of stress = more yin

It is not quite so simple, especially with mixed oxidizers, however, as they can be of various qualities. But the basic idea is true.

Vitality and the stages of stress. The alarm stage of stress, being the earliest stage, has the highest adaptive energy or vitality. Then comes resistance and finally exhaustion stage. After this, disease and death occur rapidly.

Vitality and Energy Efficiency. Watson also found there Is lower energy production in the cells when the oxidation rate is either too slow or too fast. This was a great insight.

Vitality and Age. A child in fast oxidation generally is more vital than a person in fast oxidation who is 85 years old.
However, if the child’s oxidation rate is badly out of kilter but the older person’s oxidation rate is quite balanced or normal, then the older person could be burning energy more efficiently than the child, even though the child has better vitality, in part due to age alone.
This is confusing, but helps us understand cancer, for example, in a one-year-old baby while an older person might be cancer-free. Cancer is the most reliable illness associated with lowered vitality, though this is not always its cause.

Hair analysis measures the oxidation type, oxidation rate, stage of stress, vitality and much more.
Dr. Eck spent many years testing various mineral levels, ratios and patterns in order to arrive at the test parameters that he felt correlated well with the oxidation types and stages of stress. These are described below and discussed in more detail in other articles on this website.

Important testing considerations. In order to do this, the hair must be 1) cut properly, 2) sampled in the right place and be clean, 3) not washed at the laboratory and 4) interpreted correctly using the right normal values and more.

Most problems with hair testing come from various breaches in this protocol.

Imperfections in Hair Analysis. The hair is not a perfect test for many reasons. For one thing, it is an average of three months or so of metabolism and cannot measure in an immediate or instantaneous way. Also, it depends on proper hair sampling and testing. In addition, the values can be skewed by environmental conditions at times, by the presence of drugs in the system, by emotional stress at times and other factors.
So far, however, it offers the simplest way to make the assessments we want. Research is ongoing to properly find the best ideal or normal values and other parameters to use in calculating the oxidation type and more.

Hair analysis for research and monitoring. The hair test also provides a way to monitor progress and compare ongoing symptoms with various states of body chemistry. It is thus an excellent research tool as well.

The mineral system applies to hair analysis. Dr. Paul Eck was aware of Albrecht’s brilliant work on the minerals in soil. He adapted it for human beings and animals and used the concept to help him understand paradoxes that occurred with hair mineral testing in human beings.
For example, he found that giving calcium to a person would not raise the hair tissue calcium level. However, giving copper would raise the hair tissue calcium level, even if the copper level did not increase.
This is just one example of a seeming paradox that is explained by the mineral system of the body.

Personality and Nutrition. Another major synthesis by Dr. Eck was also based on the work of Dr. Watson and others. The oxidation types, stages of stress, energy level, mineral ratios, levels and patterns offer valuable information about psychological and personality, in addition to physical conditions. This fascinating subject is covered in more depth in an article on this website entitled Personality and Nutrition. The textbook, Nutritional Balancing and Hair Mineral Analysis, also contains three chapters on various aspects of hair analysis and personality.

HAIR TISSUE PARAMETERS TO ASSESS THE OXIDATION TYPES

Fast oxidation = Ca/K less than 4:1 AND Na/Mg greater than 4.17:1.

Slow oxidation = Ca/K greater than or equal to 4:1 AND Na/Mg less than or equal to 4.17:1.

Mixed oxidation = Ca/K greater than 4:1 AND Na/Mg greater than 4.17:1 OR Ca/K less than 4:1 AND Na/Mg less than 4.17:1.

Fast mixed oxidation = If, in a mixed oxidizer, the fast ratio is more extreme.

Simple calculation: If, in a mixed oxidizer, Ca/K minus Na/Mg is greater than zero. For example, if Ca/K is 10 and Na/Mg is 6, the difference is 4, a positive number. This indicates fast mixed oxidation.

Slow mixed oxidation = If, in a mixed oxidizer, the slow ratio is more extreme.

Simple calculation: If, in a mixed oxidizer, Ca/K minus Na/Mg is less than zero. For example, if Ca/K is 5 and Na/Mg is 7, the difference is -2, a negative number. This indicates slow mixed oxidation.

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