Epigenetics and the Study of Diet and Health
Weston Price's Research Leads to New Findings
Dec 6, 2008
During the 1930s, an extraordinary man named Dr.Weston Price traversed the globe seeking to find the answers to pressing health questions. Price, a well-known dentist and former head of the American Dental Association, was frustrated with what he observed as the limitations of dental science to treat the underlying cause of oral disease. Dr. Price noticed that the rise in consumption of sugar products correlated with the rise of dental disease. He traveled around the world with his wife and studied indigenous cultures, their diets, and their health. His findings, documented in his book Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, are astounding.
Price studied cultures and diets as diverse as an isolated group of Swiss villages and African tribesmen. Each culture he studied was selected based on how remote it was from so-called ‘civilization’ and the modern diet of the 1930s. Price studied the aforementioned Swiss villages, natives of the Hebrides Islands of Scotland and Ireland, and cultures in Africa, Australia and other places around the globe.
Price and his wife documented through photos and research several key findings. Being a dentist, Price observed things like dental arches, the shape and health of teeth and gums, and the overall health of the people. His book is quite lengthy, but his findings may be summed up as follows:
- Groups eating their native diet tended to be healthier, more resistant to all diseases, and have overall better dental health than groups who switched over to a modern diet. So-called degenerative diseases such as arthritis were almost non-existent. Almost all groups ate a combination of fruits, vegetables, and animal products such as meat or milk, but not in the combinations we think of as 'healthy' today. Some groups, such as African tribes, subsisted almost entirely on milk, meat and animal blood, while other groups in the Pacific ate fish, other seafood, sea vegetables and plants harvested in the wild.
- When groups began eating white sugar products, overall health declined, especially dental health. In the group of Swiss villagers, for example, he noted that mothers asked him to fit their daughters with dentures so they could get married – their teeth were already rotted and falling out before the age of 30!
- Even though many groups had no source of toothbrushes, toothpaste or fluoride, if they abstained from white sugar and white flour products, they had few to no cavities or dental problems
- The diets eaten by groups varied considerably, but all groups consumed unadulterated products with a good portion of the foods harvested from the wild or from animals grazed in the wild. For example, the Swiss villagers eating their ancestral diet consumed mostly rye bread and rye flour products and dairy. The dairy products were especially rich in Vitamin A, since the cows grazed on fresh grass on the hillsides of the Swiss valleys. Children eating this diet were healthier and more robust than their counterparts in the so-called modernized Swiss cities.
What Price’s Research Demonstrates
Price’s research seemed to point to several factors that contradict prevailing dietary wisdom. First, the only ‘evil’ dietary culprit implicated in his findings is white products – denatured sugars or flours, products manufactured by mankind. Meat, eggs, and milk, often cited as ‘bad’ for health due to high fat and cholesterol levels, actually seemed to impart better health to people consuming them than white breads and sugary foods. Lastly, even people existing on a mostly vegetarian diet sought out sources of natural animal proteins in the form of seafood and insects when they could find them.
Today’s Research: Epigenetics
Why didn’t Price’s research catch on? Price’s other work, notably on the subject of root canal treatments, alienated many of the other top dentists of the day. Price was adamantly against root canal therapy, even though he had performed the treatment on many patients for many years after his own private research showed that infection remained inside the supposedly sterile root canals inside the tooth. Many dentists and endodontists to this day disagree with these findings and feel that root canal therapy is safe.
Today, many natural health experts are using Price’s work as a springboard in an emerging field called epigenetics. Epigenetics is the study of when and how certain genes turn on and off, leading to disease or health. Many natural health experts believe that environment, diet and chemicals people are exposed to can turn genes on or off.
Whether or not Weston Price’s research identified epigenetic effects or other effects remains to be seen, but today in the emerging world of genetics and health research, Price’s work continues to be studied and analyzed, especially in light of new epigenetic findings.
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