Cool Stools

Category: Health News

The following are a few summary thoughts from a lecture given by Dr. Dennis P. Burkitt, at the second annual Bristol-Myers Symposium on Nutrition Research, December 9 and 10, 1982, in Washington, D.C. Dr. Burkitt, of Gloucester, England, is an honorary senior researcher, especially known for his research indicating the importance of dietary fibre.

“The size of a hospital required for any given community will be directly proportionate to the size of the stools which the population passes. The average American passes from 2 ½ – 4 oz of stool a day; a mere 2 oz in the elderly. In the third world they pass 1 – 1 ½ lb per day ! And this is highly important. In these less mechanized, sophisticated nations, the degenerative diseases (cancer, arthritis, heart disease, diverticulitis, diabetes, appendicitis, obesity, and constipation, etc) are almost non-existent!

“Colon cancer incidence is directly related to the transit time (time it takes the food you eat to be passed from the body). A bulky stool will pass easily out of the colon, (as toothpaste will from a full tube of paste). It is the pentose fraction of dietary fibre that has the most profound effect on the stool size. Pentose is highest in unrefined cereal foods (breads, dry and soft cooked cereals, crackers, etc.). That is why we put maximum
emphasis on unrefined cereals. Potatoes are also an excellent food if they don’t come near grease in the preparation, or in the eating of them. One loaf of good whole grain bread bulks your stool equivalent to eight loaves of white bread!

“Fibre also lowers the blood cholesterol. Your chance of a long and healthy life are more closely related to your stool out-put than to your serum cholesterol level, blood pressure, glucose tolerance curve, or the other things the laboratories measure. We’ve got to get down to what causes disease in the first place!

“Try to picture a room with water flowing from a faucet, overflowing from the basin and flooding the floor. Two gentlemen are faced with the problem of keeping the floor dry. They decide to spent 18 hours a day mopping the floor, to get better and better mops, pails and sponges etc. But it never seems to occur to them that it might be better to turn off the faucet! The faucet stands for the real causes of sickness, the moppers represent the average doctors, hospitals and all that goes with them. The moppers are much more successful financially, than the faucet turners, for preventive medicine teaches people how to get well, and stay well, through simple and inexpensive means, within the reach of all.”

Dr. Burkitt confesses that he too, was a contented mopper and took many mopping courses (which may have their place in caring for certain emergencies). He is now a happy faucet turner, and urges other physicians to join the team! In this proud ’scientific’ age, we need to be careful that we don’t become eligible for the comment from the poet Ogden Nash, ‘We are making great progress, but we are heading in the wrong direction’. (Lucy Fuller, Whole Foods For Whole People, p.17 & 18)

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