Galina Shatalova
I am re-reading old articles I wrote a long time ago and still find them fascinating. Here is one about diet, the issue we should be able to focus upon with much more care and diligence now. Really: You are NOT eating even MORE unconsciously, ARE you??
and philosophy developed by Russian physician Dr. Galina Shatalova. She does not only believe that "we are gorging ourselves to death" (German title of her book) but also that our body is designed to live vitally for at least 150 years. Shatalova insists that a healthy human body is designed to process live plant foods and, lo and behold, does not need more than 250 - 400 calories to maintain its basic metabolic needs.
Unless, she says, the body is already sick, though still appearing healthy, but shows signs of trouble by the fact that it needs up to 1200 to 1700 calories per day. Foods eaten beyond those low basic metabolic needs burden a healthy system with additional eliminatory tasks and therewith shorten the human lifespan.
Understandably challenging the most basic ideas of modern medicine, such as an average need of 2000 calories for an average-size human being, does not endear Dr. Galina, as she is affectionately called, to her colleagues even in Russia where research of things "non-traditional" are more commonplace.
Even in the West, there has been increasing interest in research regarding the connection of caloric restriction and increased life-expectancy. While those ideas are not as novel any more as they were a few decades ago when research and observations confirmed that war-time hunger actually increased - not decreased - health and longevity, Dr. Galina's research takes all this quite a bit further.
And the unusual and courageous physician is not shy about proving her claims, even those hard to swallow by her contemporaries. "We need less than a tenth of the water we are told to take in under stressful situations," she admonishes. And to prove her point, she invited a group of athletes to participate in a seven-day super-marathon of 500 kilometers, 70-72 km per day, with the restricted caloric and water intake she advocates. This kind of demand upon the human system is considered extremely stressful with more than just the stress of an average marathon.
As per traditional thinking, the athletes use up to 6000 calories on such a day, she explains. Accordingly and in keeping with the ideas of "balanced" nutrition, their meals consisted of 190 grams of protein, 2000 grams of fat and 900 grams of carbohydrates, all adding up to those 6000 calories.
The athletes of her own group took in 28 grams of protein, 25 grams of fat and 180 carbohydrates, which added up to 1200 calories - fresh vegetables and fruits in whole form rather than juice and whole grains. In the final analysis, her athletes were much less compromised from the stress and more vital at the end of the race than their "carbo-loaded" colleagues. And amazingly, they also did not lose any weight.
During another set of experiments she actually included herself when she was over seventy years old and produced even more amazing results: four marches through the desert, 30 - 35km per day for four days during stressful conditions such as dry, hot summer desert. One point of the research was to prove that the large amounts of water-intake considered essential to maintain temperature regulation was unnecessary (with the traditional assumption being that the sweating action is necessary for skin-cooling).
Shatalova, however, theorized that the additional stress of processing that much water actually over-heated and weakened the system rather than supporting it. Indeed, she proved that they could do well on a tenth of the normal water-ration in the hot desert. She says that this information has been known for millennia. Even Caesar knew to pick his foot-soldiers by testing them via a long foot-march without a drop of water and would later watch which one of them would gorge themselves with water thereafter. Those who were drinking thirstily would be excluded as poor prospects.
The goodly doctor also has uncommon ideas about breathing which she explains intelligently as well. We are used to thinking of a healthy person needing about 18 - 20 breaths per minute, whereas she found that people who are healthily aligned with themselves need no more than 4 - 6 breaths. Again, she claims, not only have humans agreed that such a high breath-rhythm is normal, they likewise have not asked the question of true energy exchange. We still subscribe to an idea, she scoffs, that tells us that we breathe to bring in oxygen for oxidation into the system and then eliminate carbon dioxide thereafter as a metabolic end-product.
Alas, she says, what a primitive model of Man. How little we must love this crown of creation, this microcosm called Man, if we insist on putting it upon "the level of an earthworm". These long-term errors in thinking and resulting behaviors have led to disturbances in the chemical make-up of our cells, and, filled with waste products, we fall prey to the long list of modern-day illnesses.
To assure proper digestion, assimilation and elimination, she advocates leaving four hours in between meals, so that different stages of digestive tasks do not effectively cancel each other's efforts.
When any dietary changes are contemplated or instituted, especially severe caloric or water restrictions, it is always wise to consult with your qualified health professional. Our system is a tightly calibrated miracle of webs of bio-chemical and bio-electric relationships and dependencies which cannot be thoughtlessly changed without due diligence, no matter how intelligent an approach might sound. Slow and thoughtful approaches always do work best, so that the human system can adjust its inner "alchemies" in accordance with our changing commitments and life- styles.
The Russian author Vladimir Megre also comments on the climate-adaptations of animals. But human beings as well, he adds, have been equipped with such powers since primordial times, but in our technological environment we lose those abilities, since they remain unused. Since humans have become too complacent to adapt, they create prostheses for themselves: air conditioning systems, heating elements and new types of clothing materials."
When explaining how little clothing the Russian hunters really wear, because of the heat their activity level confers, he also mentions that "...their inner feeling-world is much more intense than ours." (ring- ingcedarsofrussia.org) How interesting to think that our emotional "heat" has to do with such adaptations as well, and I am certain, so does their way of thinking. For me, the thought of a cold shower brings more joy than the thought of a hot shower, because the hot water feels depleting to me while the cold feels refreshing and strenghtening. I am sure if I thought that cold showers "make you sick", I would abhor them. So, my body adjusts itself to my beliefs.
While we are talking about other types of adaptations here, the human system does the exact same thing when it comes to food-intake. Many people who have had weight-problems have heard that fasting changes their metabolic rate so that even when they eat less food, they still gain weight. That is indeed a wonderful - though painful - example of how the human body can learn very quickly to adapt to different food-situations: "If there is less food," it must think, "I better learn how to sort through this stuff much more carefully and use everything I can find". So it learns to thrive on much less - which is not good in the case of an over- weight person.
Understanding that our bodies can adapt in many unexpected ways does help us to let go of ancient, inculcated fears and to reclaim our natural heritage as spiritual beings expanding and evolving in a brilliant universe of untold possibilities.
Are we Really Gorging Ourselves to Death?
© By Regina B.Jensen, PhD
Difficult to translate but close to the meaning, this title is taken from the name of a controversial book and philosophy developed by Russian physician Dr. Galina Shatalova. She does not only believe that "we are gorging ourselves to death" (German title of her book) but also that our body is designed to live vitally for at least 150 years. Shatalova insists that a healthy human body is designed to process live plant foods and, lo and behold, does not need more than 250 - 400 calories to maintain its basic metabolic needs. Unless, she says, the body is already sick, though still appearing healthy, but shows signs of trouble by the fact that it needs up to 1200 to 1700 calories per day. Foods eaten beyond those low basic metabolic needs burden a healthy system with additional eliminatory tasks and therewith shorten the human lifespan.
Understandably challenging the most basic ideas of modern medicine, such as an average need of 2000 calories for an average-size human being, does not endear Dr. Galina, as she is affectionately called, to her colleagues even in Russia where research of things "non-traditional" are more commonplace.
Even in the West, there has been increasing interest in research regarding the connection of caloric restriction and increased life-expectancy. While those ideas are not as novel any more as they were a few decades ago when research and observations confirmed that war-time hunger actually increased - not decreased - health and longevity, Dr. Galina's research takes all this quite a bit further.
But her most basic complaint is the lack of a true scientific theory of nutrition. Indeed, we cannot even develop such a theory, she says, unless we first ask certain essential questions, such as: What ARE we, Plant- or Omni-vore? What IS our place in Nature? While Shatalova agrees that the consumption of animal proteins has helped humankind to proceed upon its evolutionary path, she questions whether remaining upon a certain developmental plateau does not keep us from continuing on toward our ultimate destiny.
She thinks it is time to find our "home" in the true ecological niche which nature has reserved for us. The forward-thinking physician challenges people to reconsider the common theory of "balanced nutrition" and asks: "Is food the only source with which humans can provide for their energy needs?" If we thought logically, Dr. Galina is sure we would find that we are literally immersed in seas of energy, whether or not they have been acknowledged by modern science. Cosmic radiation, Solar energies, energy from ocean water and the energy of the physical vacuum around us. Defenders of the theory of caloric exchange, namely that of heat and the process of oxidation and other related metabolic activities necessary to "unlock" the chemical bonds of our food-stuffs, usually raise their eyebrows right about now.
But, she says, life itself proves their ideas to be wrong. Comparing the blood-hemoglobin to the plant's chlorophyll, celebrated Swiss physician Maximilian Bircher-Benner theorized already at the beginning of the last century that even in the animal, a utilization of solar energy for those chemical processes in the human body should be possible. Bircher-Benner, Dr. Galina relates, suggested to categorize foods in accordance with their ability to store the energy of the sun, not in accordance with their ability to produce heat. The three groups when approached in that way were completely reversed in their scales of value.
And the unusual and courageous physician is not shy about proving her claims, even those hard to swallow by her contemporaries. "We need less than a tenth of the water we are told to take in under stressful situations," she admonishes. And to prove her point, she invited a group of athletes to participate in a seven-day super-marathon of 500 kilometers, 70-72 km per day, with the restricted caloric and water intake she advocates. This kind of demand upon the human system is considered extremely stressful with more than just the stress of an average marathon.
As per traditional thinking, the athletes use up to 6000 calories on such a day, she explains. Accordingly and in keeping with the ideas of "balanced" nutrition, their meals consisted of 190 grams of protein, 2000 grams of fat and 900 grams of carbohydrates, all adding up to those 6000 calories.
The athletes of her own group took in 28 grams of protein, 25 grams of fat and 180 carbohydrates, which added up to 1200 calories - fresh vegetables and fruits in whole form rather than juice and whole grains. In the final analysis, her athletes were much less compromised from the stress and more vital at the end of the race than their "carbo-loaded" colleagues. And amazingly, they also did not lose any weight.
During another set of experiments she actually included herself when she was over seventy years old and produced even more amazing results: four marches through the desert, 30 - 35km per day for four days during stressful conditions such as dry, hot summer desert. One point of the research was to prove that the large amounts of water-intake considered essential to maintain temperature regulation was unnecessary (with the traditional assumption being that the sweating action is necessary for skin-cooling).
Shatalova, however, theorized that the additional stress of processing that much water actually over-heated and weakened the system rather than supporting it. Indeed, she proved that they could do well on a tenth of the normal water-ration in the hot desert. She says that this information has been known for millennia. Even Caesar knew to pick his foot-soldiers by testing them via a long foot-march without a drop of water and would later watch which one of them would gorge themselves with water thereafter. Those who were drinking thirstily would be excluded as poor prospects.
The goodly doctor also has uncommon ideas about breathing which she explains intelligently as well. We are used to thinking of a healthy person needing about 18 - 20 breaths per minute, whereas she found that people who are healthily aligned with themselves need no more than 4 - 6 breaths. Again, she claims, not only have humans agreed that such a high breath-rhythm is normal, they likewise have not asked the question of true energy exchange. We still subscribe to an idea, she scoffs, that tells us that we breathe to bring in oxygen for oxidation into the system and then eliminate carbon dioxide thereafter as a metabolic end-product.
Alas, she says, what a primitive model of Man. How little we must love this crown of creation, this microcosm called Man, if we insist on putting it upon "the level of an earthworm". These long-term errors in thinking and resulting behaviors have led to disturbances in the chemical make-up of our cells, and, filled with waste products, we fall prey to the long list of modern-day illnesses.
To assure proper digestion, assimilation and elimination, she advocates leaving four hours in between meals, so that different stages of digestive tasks do not effectively cancel each other's efforts.
When any dietary changes are contemplated or instituted, especially severe caloric or water restrictions, it is always wise to consult with your qualified health professional. Our system is a tightly calibrated miracle of webs of bio-chemical and bio-electric relationships and dependencies which cannot be thoughtlessly changed without due diligence, no matter how intelligent an approach might sound. Slow and thoughtful approaches always do work best, so that the human system can adjust its inner "alchemies" in accordance with our changing commitments and life- styles.
The Russian author Vladimir Megre also comments on the climate-adaptations of animals. But human beings as well, he adds, have been equipped with such powers since primordial times, but in our technological environment we lose those abilities, since they remain unused. Since humans have become too complacent to adapt, they create prostheses for themselves: air conditioning systems, heating elements and new types of clothing materials."
When explaining how little clothing the Russian hunters really wear, because of the heat their activity level confers, he also mentions that "...their inner feeling-world is much more intense than ours." (ring- ingcedarsofrussia.org) How interesting to think that our emotional "heat" has to do with such adaptations as well, and I am certain, so does their way of thinking. For me, the thought of a cold shower brings more joy than the thought of a hot shower, because the hot water feels depleting to me while the cold feels refreshing and strenghtening. I am sure if I thought that cold showers "make you sick", I would abhor them. So, my body adjusts itself to my beliefs.
While we are talking about other types of adaptations here, the human system does the exact same thing when it comes to food-intake. Many people who have had weight-problems have heard that fasting changes their metabolic rate so that even when they eat less food, they still gain weight. That is indeed a wonderful - though painful - example of how the human body can learn very quickly to adapt to different food-situations: "If there is less food," it must think, "I better learn how to sort through this stuff much more carefully and use everything I can find". So it learns to thrive on much less - which is not good in the case of an over- weight person.
Understanding that our bodies can adapt in many unexpected ways does help us to let go of ancient, inculcated fears and to reclaim our natural heritage as spiritual beings expanding and evolving in a brilliant universe of untold possibilities.
© Regina B. Jensen, Ph.D.
© ringingcedarsofrussia.org
© Galina Shatalova; Litur, Ekaterinburg (Celebnoe Pitanie)
© ringingcedarsofrussia.org
© Galina Shatalova; Litur, Ekaterinburg (Celebnoe Pitanie)
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