So, I have come to a different perspective on food and diet than I had 50 years ago when I took up a rigorous, self-aware, contemplative life when I also took up a 100% raw, organic, vegan diet. I recall the first summer after taking up that diet and feeling very healthy and energized by it, a raw food friend gave me a ride from Tucson to southern California where we traveled around to raw food meeting, groups and communities.
Along the way we stopped at Hidden Valley Health Ranch to meet Dr. Bernard Jenson, one of the major proponents of raw food and iridology diagnostics. He gave weekly public lectures on diet and health. His lecture seemed to be focused upon us. He told the story of his wife dying of cancer, and after her death he went to a steak house and had a steak.
At the time, there was a lot of judgement in the raw, organic health movement against people who went back to the old diet, such as Jensen did. But, now 50 years later, after developing diabetes, hypertension and COPD, I had to go Keto to reduce my carbohydrate intake, which never lowered my blood sugar, and Metformin only gave me diarrhea.
Meanwhile I was living most of the time in Prescott, AZ and having terrible allergies there, so I finally started taking antihistamines, and noticed the very next day my blood sugar was significantly lower. I'm a retired research scientist, and science is all about data-driven investigation. So, by the time I started taking antihistamines for my chronic allergies in the region I had about 7 years of blood sugar data with occasional normal, or extremely high blood sugar readings while living on a zero carb diet, which baffled me until I started taking antihistamines which lowered my blood sugar.
So, I started taking antihistamines to lower my blood sugar and found I could drop my blood sugar 100 units by taking Benadryl every 4 hours. I told my doctors this and they completely ignored my comment as if I had said something really stupid. So, I Googled allergies and diabetes, and found that there is actually research since the 50s showing a relationship between allergies and diabetes.
So, a year and a half later I develop a terrible lung infection when the local forest service was conducting a control burn that had filled Prescott with smoke, and the lung infection wouldn't go away. I saw my doctor, he gave me a referral to a pulmonologist who gave me a COPD diagnosis. After that I bought an air purifier with a HEPA filter and found a small amount of relief. After a month I felt I should have had more recovery so I added an activated charcoal pre-filter and had more recovery, but my recovery seemed still too slow, and I was still being brought into the ER unconscious on a weekly basis every time I went grocery shopping. So, I bought an N-95 respirator with activated charcoal and stopped collapsing unconscious on my weekly grocery trips.
I was also prescribed a CPAP machine, which plugged my airways within an hour of its use. I asked my pulmonologist for a filter for it, and he said there was none, so I plumbed both HEPA and activated charcoal filters to it, and began to have significant recovery.
Here is where I also need to say that within the first 6 months after I moved to Prescott, AZ 12 years ago I began having health events that brought me into the ER monthly. After 6 months my arthritis had gone way overboard, I had gained 50lbs with no change in my diet, and I received a diabetes diagnosis and hypertension. within three months after starting to use the air purifiers I had lost the weight, my blood sugar was nearly normal and my COPD was under control with no need to use an inhaler and I stopped needing to go to the ER for health traumas.
So, my conclusion is air pollution is the primary cause of disease and the gluttony, obesity and diabetes that is recorded in the USA is most likely due to the level of air pollution present in this country due to industrialization. And, a simple solution for people suffering from chronic degenerative disease is the use of air purifiers; however, just HEPA is not enough, and even adding activated charcoal to the air purifier is insufficient, but something called "multigas" filtration is a much better solution. The multigas feature of some air purifiers is not just activated charcoal, but a second molecular sieve called Zeolite and potassium permanganate. These multigas air purifiers are designed to also remove acid gases and VOCs, not just PM2.5 particulate.
