《扑灭地狱之火》
D:2022.09.14>
hapter 6
A New Lesson from Charles Darwin
After dealing with my own eczema
for a few months, I wondered whether
any noteworthy names in history had
this disease. My curiosity was really
twofold. First, I just wanted to get a
feel for how long this condition has
plagued humans. Is this a recent
“modern” disease, or has it been
around for a longer time?
Second, maybe some historical figure
kept a food diary that would provide
some clues as to what’s causing it.
Maybe there is something we can spot.
Well, I quickly discovered that Charles Darwin had this disease, and
more, actually much more. He had chronic eczema from before 1836 and
suffered from it for the remainder of his life—for over 40 years.
But, eczema was only one of his conditions. It would appear that he
suffered from multiple diseases actually. It looks as if there’s been some
interest from the present day scientific community in correctly
diagnosing Darwin’s disease(s). Here’s a link to a 2005 paper from two
researchers, Anthony K. Campbell and Stephanie B. Matthews at the
Wales College of Medicine entitled Darwin’s illness revealed 23 .
23 http://pmj.bmj.com/content/81/954/248.full
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Their conclusion is that Darwin had suffered for these 40 years from
Lactose Intolerance. They state: “Darwin’s symptoms match exactly
those we have described for systemic lactose intolerance.” Bingo! There
you have it; puzzled solved.
Well, I am not a doctor, and I have absolutely no medical experience
whatsoever; and I have never had any Lactose Intolerance. But, I think
these folks are completely wrong in their diagnosis. They (and we) have
missed some bigger clues that Darwin left us.
Here’s a list of Darwin’s symptoms from their paper.
Chronic fatigue and exhaustion
Severe gastrointestinal problems, including pain
Nausea
Frequent vomiting
A swimming head
Severe headaches
Trembling
Insomnia
Joint pain
Rashes and eczema
Mouth ulcers
Boils
Tooth and gum problems
Heart palpitations
Poor resistance to infections
Depression
The authors claim this is a perfect match for lactose intolerance. Wow!
That’s a pretty horrible sounding condition. All of that from drinking
milk? How could that be? The actual documented symptoms I found for
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lactose intolerance are more like abdominal cramps, bloating, gas,
diarrhea, and nausea 24 .
The reason lactose intolerance is the wrong diagnosis is obvious. First,
and fore-mostly, this is the Charles Darwin we’re talking about. Let’s
give this man a wee little bit of credit. This guy was an amazingly
observant and intelligent biologist and geologist. Of course, that does not
make him immune to lactose intolerance, but it does tell us he wasn’t
completely daft, either. What about the diarrhea symptom? It isn’t on
Darwin’s list of symptoms. Isn’t that like the key symptom of lactose
intolerance?
A few years ago, I had a guy putting a new roof on our house, and he
told me one day about being lactose intolerant. He was about 40 years
old, and he said that this condition developed in his 20s. I asked him how
he knew he was lactose intolerant. He explained to me that it becomes
abundantly clear that there’s a big problem, and that most people will
make the cause and effect connection. He stated that if he drank a glass
of milk, he’d be heading to the toilet in about two hours to deal with it. I
don’t think he had a medical diagnosis for this condition. It sounded as if
he just figured it out on his own, as most people probably do. This guy
was in great health and worked all day long, up and down ladders, etc.
There was absolutely nothing wrong with him. He just couldn’t drink
milk or eat dairy products. No problem at all, life was just fine, as it is
for most people with lactose intolerance, once they know what it is.
So, if this man and thousands of others, can fairly quickly make this
connection between drinking milk and soon thereafter needing the toilet,
then there’s no way in hell Charles Darwin would not have figured this
out in more than 40 years.
24 http://www.healthline.com/symptom/lactose-intolerance
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The second and equally obvious clue is that Darwin was suffering from
very bad health while on his famous Beagle voyage. This was a voyage
in the hot tropical sun, and much of the time he spent aboard ship. Of
course, there was no refrigeration in 1830, and there would have been no
way to preserve milk or dairy products aboard a ship. Therefore, these
symptoms were simply not from lactose. No way, nearly impossible.
But Darwin did leave us some very big clues indeed. First, specifically
regarding eczema. It’s interesting to know that eczema was somewhat
common in the 1830s, especially among the upper classes of English
society. This means that today eczema is probably not being caused by
modern day toxins, such as herbicides, pesticides etc. However, these
modern-day toxins may still play a bit of a role.
Darwin sought out some of the very same therapies used today to relieve
his eczema symptoms such as hydrotherapy. He also had chronic
inflammation on the face and grew his beard to hide this. Even more
important than that, he had eczema as a teenager and suffered outbreaks
of eczema on his face and lips 25 . The only time he was really able to put
it into remission is when he went on trips to Russia.
Darwin also made the connection between eating foods and worsening
conditions, but he couldn’t pin down an exact cause. Of course, Darwin
was limited in his resources and didn’t have modern science or Google to
help him. He also suffered from significant periods of psychosis and
severe social anxiety. In addition to the above-documented symptoms,
Darwin also determined that he was quite sensitive to sunlight and
avoided the sun.
He did make an amazing, and I’d like to say a brilliantly amazing
observation. He determined that his only really safe food was raisins. At
25 http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/darwins-enigmatic-health
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one point, he lived on nothing but raisins for something like five weeks
straight! How the heck did he figure this out? Of all the real foods on the
planet, there are about five of any substance that has zero vitamin A, and
one of them is raisins.
However, once again, this raisin-only diet was aboard ship. I don’t know
if he repeated it once back in England. So, maybe the raisin-only diet
was not a brilliant feat of elimination but made much simpler because he
had a very limited selection of foods available. A much bigger question
is if he ate the liver of fish while aboard the Beagle. Did he eat the organ
meat (liver) of other animals such as the turtles? What we do know is
that he ate Atlantic saltwater fish, which is generally high in vitamin A
by itself.
So, what were Darwin’s symptoms really of? I think it was chronic
subclinical vitamin A toxicity. If you really must give it a named modern
disease, then Celiac or Crohn’s diseases are good possibilities.
Source 1: http://www.healthline.com/health/hypervitaminosis-a#Symptoms3
Symptoms of acute vitamin A toxicity include:
drowsiness
irritability
abdominal pain
nausea
vomiting
increased pressure on the brain
Symptoms of chronic vitamin A toxicity include:
blurry vision or other visual changes
swelling of the bones
bone pain
poor appetite
dizziness
nausea and vomiting
sensitivity to sunlight
oily skin and hair
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itchy or peeling skin
cracked fingernails
skin cracks at the corners of your mouth
mouth ulcers
hair loss
respiratory infection
confusion
Source 1: http://livertox.nih.gov/VitaminARetinoids.htm (NIH)
severe headache
nausea
vertigo
blurred vision
muscle aches and lack of coordination
followed by skin desquamation and alopecia (hair loss)
dry skin
cheilosis (fissures in the corners of the mouth)
gingivitis
muscle and joint pains
fatigue, mental dullness
depression
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Let’s match these symptoms with Darwin’s.
Table 2 Darwin's Symptoms and Vitamin A toxicity
Vitamin A Toxicity Symptoms Darwin’s Symptoms
Skin desquamation Eczema
Fatigue, mental dullness Chronic fatigue and exhaustion
Abdominal pain Severe gastrointestinal problems/pain
Nausea Nausea
Vomiting Frequent vomiting
Vertigo, mental dullness A swimming head
Severe headache Severe headaches
Trembling
Commonly documented with
eczema
Insomnia
Bone pain Joint pain
Skin desquamation &
alopecia
Rashes and eczema
Mouth ulcers Mouth ulcers
Gingivitis Tooth and gum problems
Heart palpitations
Respiratory infection Poor resistance to infections
Confusion, vertigo Social anxiety
Sensitivity to sunlight Sensitivity to sunlight
Depression Depression
Now we have a near perfect (and realistic) match on these symptoms.
Maybe if I looked a little more, I’d find trembling and heart palpitations
on the match list. Actually, vitamin A toxicity is still a bit of a superset
of Darwin’s symptoms. The mouth ulcers were a very big, and early,
warning sign of this toxicity (firsthand experience).
Let me tell you without any doubt whatsoever, and also from direct
firsthand experience, and as documented above, eczema on the lips is
none other than vitamin A poisoning!
In my personal experience, I slowly built up to this subclinical toxicity
level of vitamin A over a period of five to 10 years. I did it on a perfectly
normal diet, too. I know about most of these symptoms firsthand, but
they built up very slowly over time, so slowly I really didn’t think about
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it too much. However, there’s no question about it. When I adopted my
vitamin A elimination diet, almost all of the symptoms receded very
quickly. It was then hugely more obvious that I was suffering from most
of the above-documented symptoms.
I also noticed a bit of hand trembling while being in this toxic state.
However, I don’t think I experienced heart palpitations. But I could
easily see heart palpitations happening as part of an anxiety attack.
How did Darwin get into this condition? The same way I did. And the
same way the 30+ million people with eczema, and the 700,000 people
with Crohn’s, and 5+ million people with Alzheimer’s have today.
Diet! Mostly, ordinary diets, too. It just takes lots of cold saltwater fish,
or milk, and brightly colored fruits and vegetables, etc. That’s all you
need.
Since Darwin had such severe eczema at an early age, he had to have
done something really wrong. I believe it was probably due to regular
liver consumption. Organ meat was popular with the well to do in
England at the time. Darwin was a self-proclaimed glutton, who prided
himself on eating the entire animal. There was an interesting newspaper
article from this era with a bit of a prophetic warning. A doctor who had
treated the king of England for his eczema wrote it. He described the
king being bedridden, with his hands constantly wrapped in bandages
and sometimes even bound to prevent scratching. The doctor’s basic
message was: don’t be too envious of living like the king, and his diet
rich in soft organ meats. If you live like the king you may die like the
king too, and it isn’t a pretty way to go.
What I personally now know, and what Darwin documented; is that once
you saturate your body’s store of vitamin A, it’s extremely unlikely
you’re going to randomly get out from under it. He now had chronic
diseases that plagued him through to the end of his life.
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Modern medicine labels eczema, Crohn’s, lupus, arthritis, etc. as
autoimmune diseases. I don’t think that makes any sense whatsoever, for
all kinds of reasons. These are really auto-poisoning via chronic and
subclinical toxicity to vitamin A. Oddly or not, I have little doubt that
Alzheimer’s is a member of this illustrious autoimmune disease club too.
The myth in the medical literature is that you need massive doses of
vitamin A to get into this state. The bigger myth is that you’ll quickly
recover after you stop overdosing.
Well, no you don’t, and it depends. It’s mathematical. That vitamin A
you’ve accumulated is not going away. Once you’ve accumulated too
much, you reach a tipping point or a threshold. And then you more or
less fall over a cliff into serious disease from this deadly toxin. A better
metaphor might be to call it a trapdoor.
You’ve saturated your body’s storage capacity. Once you’ve fallen
through that trapdoor, there’s almost no getting out. Even a few
micrograms of vitamin A consumption are enough to keep you in a toxic,
or near toxic, state. You’ll continue to be in this toxic state for the rest of
your life if you don’t take evasive action. You need to go to zero, or near
zero, consumption. But, instinctively, and based upon current nutritional
advice, you’re probably going to do just the opposite. You’re now sick,
so you’re probably going to eat even more healthy foods. Please pass the
raisins Mr. Darwin, thanks very much.
Naturally, I have a ton of respect and admiration for what Darwin
accomplished. I have little doubt that if he were alive today, he would
have been able to determine the true root cause of this scourge quite
quickly. Sadly, it has been almost 200 years since Darwin documented
his symptoms and his struggle with eczema. Modern medicine has not
even begun to solve this disease. It has only just become far more
prevalent in our society. Something is indeed hugely wrong.
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The lessons I think we can learn today from Darwin are:
1. He was really suffering from subclinical vitamin A toxicity
for most of his life.
2. He stayed in this state for 40 years and without modern-day
supplements, it was just diet.
3. He had resulting eczema as a symptom of this for most of his
life too.
4. Eczema is not a specific autoimmune disease at all; it’s most
likely just another symptom of subclinical vitamin A toxicity.
5. Eczema is not caused by a modern day toxin; or pollutant.
I don’t want to call this Hypervitaminosis A. That isn’t the case at all.
Hyper implies very high doses of vitamin A being consumed. This
situation is much different. It’s really getting into the state of vitamin A
saturation and then remaining slightly or moderately above that level.
Therefore, the term Insidious-vitaminosis A seems more appropriate.
Why do so many young people experience Crohn’s and other
autoimmune diseases at around 20 years of age? There’s something
special about this number. It is not a coincidence. It’s obvious once you
understand what’s really going on here. Yet, it’s also somewhat
complicated, too.
Aside: Ironically, I think there is something absolutely stunning about
Crohn's disease that it would have startled Darwin. So much so, that it
may have altered his view of evolution too.
