The illustration of the three dolls goes back to an article written by Jacques May in 1960. It is a beautiful illustration of the human condition. Here is how it was originally written:
"It is as though I had on a table three dolls, one of glass, another of celluloid, and a third of steel, and I chose to hit the three dolls with a hammer, using equal strength. The first doll would break, the second would scar, and the third could emit a pleasant sound."
This is a very simple little illustration pregnant with meaning and significance. What it tells me is that humans have a genetic and developmental difference which can increase or decrease the effects of environmental stressors such as emotional trauma, toxic exposures, or encounters with disease organisms. One size fits all may be appropriate for the size of a football, but it has no place in the practice of nutrition or medicine. There are vast differences in individuals and what "works" for one may not work for another. One of the sages of ancient Greece said, "One man's meat is another man's poison." Thus gluten consumption may build one person's health and destroy the health of another individual. Functional medicine is an effort to find the root causes of disease rather than addressing symptoms which could have a variety of causes.
Francis M. Pottenger, Jr.
The story of the three dolls always makes me think of the work of Francis M. Pottenger, Jr. Pottenger fed cats varying diets and observed the long term effects on health. Animals fed sufficient diets remained in a state of robust health from generation to generation. They were steel dolls. Animals were malnourished simply by cooking their meals. This resulted in a second generation that were celluloid dolls. The signs of malnutrition began to appear including loss of calcium from the bones, bleeding gums, arthritic disorders, and loss of energy and stamina. Offspring of nutritionally inadequate animals were glass dolls. They could not produce healthy offspring and Pottenger could only keep lines of malnourished cats going for three or four generations.
Pottenger found that nutritional degeneration was reversible with great difficulty with healthy foods alone. I have always felt that this is where the value of superior supplementation comes in. It can accelerate the restoration of health by addressing issues such as inflammation or digestive failure.
Sir Robert McCarrison
Sir Robert McCarrison was an English physicial who was head of nutrition for the nation of India. His research studies focused on feeding rats the diets of different people groups in the nation of India. He found that he could replicate the diseases of different people groups in India when rats ate the same diets. His most dramatic experiment was the feeding of rats the standard British diet of his day. The rats began killing and eating each other. He had to separate the animals to complete his experiment. Both mental and physical health are dependent upon an adequate intake of essential nutrients and avoiding environmental toxins.
Plus and Minus
Humans are exposed to many negative contributions to health-- toxic exposures, poor dietary choices, and emotional trauma to name a few. Fortunately, there are also positive contributions that can be made to health--clean environments, positive associations, good diets and nutritional supplementation.
An illustration is a study in which rats were exposed to the levels of air pollution characteristic of Tokyo and Los Angeles years ago. The rats developed bronchitis and bronchopneumonia among other problems. However, when the animals were supplemented with relatively large amounts of vitamin E these health problems did not appear. The positive benefit of vitamin E counteracted the effects of smog.
Years ago I spoke for a group and the head of a research company asked me to visit his company. He shared a study they had conducted with lead poisoning which was in all the gasoline in America at the time. This companies studies showed that lead in the bodies of rats blocked the ability of red blood cells to flow through the smaller capillaries in the body. They had discovered that if they supplemented the animals with vitamin E the red blood cells retained the ability to flow through the smallest of capillaries even if they had been exposed to lead. Lead initiated a process called "tanning" which hardened the membrane of cells so that they were no longer flexible. Simple adding vitamin E blocked the hardening of the cell walls and allowed the red blood cells to continue their nutritional function of delivering oxygen to all the tissues of the body.
The nutritional requirements of the body have been described by Roger Williams as the "Chain of Life." Think of the potential for benefit by providing optimal sources of all of these essential nutrients. This is why I always encourage broad spectrum supplementation with ProVitality+ or some other broad spectrum multiple before adding specific nutrients to address specific conditions. Nutrition can transform a glass doll to a celluloid doll and a celluloid doll to a steel doll! This is done with plants and animals on a routine basis. Why are we so reluctant to do it for human beings?
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