Fungus and Live blood interpretations

Here's another question I received yesterday from Diana.

Dr Robert O. Young’s main thrust seems to be that fungus in the blood can mutate in acidic conditions and become virus or bacteria. He therefore suggests that we consume absolutely nothing that is in any way ‘fungal’ – even vinegar. What are your thoughts about this?

A good question. I admit to have been quite enamoured with Dr Young’s theories for some years. The theory, of course, is not new, and I discuss it at length in my Alkaline Defence Program (downloadable free here) It’s a tempting idea because it is really saying that if you keep the blood at the right pH then you will never have the conditions for this transformation to occur. I still like it, and I know Dr Young says he has 60,000 live blood tests to prove his theories, but to tell you the truth, the jury is out for me. 

The reason for this is simple. Although he claims proof via the blood tests, there is considerable controversy of the relevance of live blood testing results. Please note; I didn’t say live blood testing was wrong, or faulty; I’m just saying that the interpretation of the test results is the key. Just because Dr Young says a certain result means something does not give it scientific proof, which only comes from properly conducted trials.. and that’s the problem; I’ve never found any. So I am left with my acceptance of a theory that makes sense to me, but doesn’t appear to have any scientific track record.

So.. look at it, see the results, compare them to what you know about yourself if you are being tested, and make your own mind up. I still feel good about the results – but have a problem with his extrapolation of the results into a statement that we should never eat anything with mould in or on it. The reason I have this problem is because mould in the form of lacto-fermented food has been with us as long as we can remember. Fermented food or drink has been made by traditional cultures from coconut juice, herbs, roots, tubers and fruit. Soaked grains are another form of lacto-fermentation, and making lacto-fermented beverage from grains greatly increases their nutritive ability. They supply us with abundant vitamins, enzymes, beneficial bacteria and lactic acid.

Sauerkraut is making a welcome comeback for health-oriented consumers. It’s a simple and effective supply of lactobaccili. Then there’s my favourite, kefir, which actually takes up residence as a beneficial fungus in the bowel. There is also a thriving industry of probiotics based on the theory that modern diet depletes the digestive system of beneficial flora.

There is a theory popular at the moment that the best way to get enzymes is by eating only raw because enzymes are destroyed in cooking. Certainly high temperatures destroy some nutrients, but cooking also makes minerals more available and makes protein more digestible by slowly ‘peeling back’ the layers so that digestive enzymes can do their job far more easily. So lacto-fermented foods and beverages will overly compensate for any enzyme loss experienced through cooking.

The real question about Dr Young’s claim that we should eat no flora/fungus/mould is whether abstaining from these foods actually does harm, and again, I have no evidence of the correlation of live blood interpretations and fungus intake. All I have is Dr Young’s word, which I have to say, gets a bit loose when he labels vinegar as mould. Most modern vinegar is simple acetic acid.

It doesn’t take a doctor or a scientist to understand that we are composed of flesh, bone, organs.. and flora. Gut bacteria may not just be helping digest food but could be exerting some control over the metabolic functions of other organs like the liver, says a new study.

These findings offer new understanding of the symbiotic relationship between humans and their gut microbes and how changes to the microbiota (microbial flora harboured by healthy individuals) can impact overall health.

'The gut microbiota enhances the host's metabolic capacity for processing nutrients and drugs,' says Sandrine Claus of the Imperial College of London, study author, the journal mBio reports.

Claus and her colleagues exposed germ-free mice to bedding that had previously been used by conventional mice with normal microbiota and followed their metabolic profiles for 20 days to observe changes as they became colonized with gut bacteria.

Over the first five days after exposure, the mice exhibited a rapid increase in weight, according to an Imperial College statement.

Colonization also triggered a number of processes in the liver in which sugars (glucose) are converted to starch (glycogen) and fat (triglycerides) for short-term and long-term energy storage.

Statistical modelling between liver metabolic functions and bug populations determined that the levels of glucose, glycogen and triglycerides in the liver were strongly associated with a single family of bugs called Coriobacteriaceae.

So it’s clear that maintaining adequate flora in the gut is an essential part of life and vitality. And reducing our intake of any form of flora/mould/fungus seems antithetical to life as it is and has been for thousands of years. It’s a symbiotic and ongoing relationship within each of us.

It’s my layman’s guess that Dr Young has fallen into the trap that so many of his scientific community have fallen into. I wonder if his study of the blood hasn’t caused him to neglect other aspects of the body’s workings and inter-relationships. We do see this happen so often when eager scientists specialising in one aspect of health try to make their niche ‘bigger’ and more important than it really is. After all, the bigger and more important the scientist can make his niche findings, the more chance he has of more funding. Dr Young is not, as far as I know, engaged in any published paper work, but he is a businessman and the acceptance of his theories does, like his peers, affect his future funding.

So it’s all very nice of uneducated me to question Dr Young’s years of study. On the net that’s so easy these days. I do respect him and his work, but the fundamental rule of science is that any theory is only possibly right until proven wrong. That’s the wonderful basis of our science; you come to a finding, you publish it, and it is peer reviewed, and if reviewed favourably, it is accepted as possible truth until someone else pops up with a better idea. The relationship between ingestion of flora and negative health results has not, at least where I can see, been scientifically proven by the good Dr Young.

I hope that the lesson of all this for myself is not to take the word of anyone just because they have letters after their name. I have a brain, and it works quite well when and if I choose to use it.