On Sun, 13 Aug 2000 17:46:10 -0400, matesz <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>On Fri, 11 Aug 2000, Amadeus Schmidt wrote:
>> >Diabetes known in the ancient world and described in medical
>> >writings.
>>I haven't found any text like you report.Can you point toward some texts?
>
>Todd Moody may have said this:
>> It should have been a very common disease, for a populaten with > 90%
>> of food of grain or legume. But i looks like it was rare.

It was me too.

Rachel:
>Chinese medical texts from thousands of years ago make extensive mention of
>symptoms of diabetes.  An entire school of Chinse medicine (a school of
>thought or approach) arose in which they only treat
ed spleen/pancreas
>problems (which indicate symptoms of diabetes).

This is interesting.
It tells us, that such a disease was known in chinese society.

However it doesn't tell us much about how frequent such diseases
occured. China as a fully developped society had medical treatements for
many sorts of diseases.
Have you read the book "Sinuhe, the Egypt" (from Mika Waltari)?
Nice reading.
This book (essay) tells quite much about the medical achievements in old
egypt. They had a school for almost any disease you could imagine.
Even for making holes into heads. For sake of removing tumors.
If they could treat it, is doesn't mean it was frequent.
Just that enough humans concentrated together to get *notice* of a disease.

If a rare disease happened in a group of a dozend h/g's - the person
would just suffer or die (attributed to a "unknown" cause, like a demon).


> What the Chinese refer to as
>the Spleen is actually the Pancrease in western terms.
Do you think you understand TCM enough to make such a statement?
Is it ignoring all the energy flow concepts?

> Treatment protocals
>and herbal remedies to treat these problems were popular, widely used, and
>in demand due to the effects of a high grain, low protein style of diet.

Rice is much lower in protein and fat and higher in carbohydrate as any
other of the other 6 old main grains.
Western "herbal" treatment for carbohydrate diseases (also from modern times
cruelties like "pies, pastries, chips, crackers, candies...")
is oats.
Whatever reason for . I just notice that Oats has 7% of fat and much of its
carb is in form of fructose, which doesn't elevate insulin much (can be
ingested without). If fruit is what we *really* are adapted to (hint:
vitamin C) - fruit has much fru
ctose.

You needn't go back 3000 years to find a grain based society.
Rural europe (U.S. others may tell) up to say 100 years ago was entirely
grain based (a piece of meat once or twice a week doesn't change that).
Where are all the diabetes reports?
And now, though the protein supply in western countries is changed to meat
and 40% of calories are from fat, now diabetes has the richest harvest.
(oops very rich .. first search first hit:
http://www.cyberdiet.com/modules/diabetes/statistics_on_diabetes.html )

Humans are unable to burn carbohydrates whithout the coenzymes used to
derive energy out of it.
Thiamin niacin pyridoxin are absent or very low in your horror list above.

Amadeus