CAREY REAMS ON HYPOGLYCEMIA
The below article has been pieced together from three sources and appears to be complete:
a 1978 interview with ACRES USA...
the Healthview Newsletter (no longer published)...
an inhouse newsletter published by Dr. Douglas Jesse...
Taking but a single health topic. here is what Carey Reams has to say about hypoglycemia.
ACRES USA: How widespread is hypoglycemia?
REAMS: At least 20 million hypoglycemics is the estimate of Dr. Carlton Fredericks, president of the International Academy of Preventive Medicine. The problem is that the symptoms are almost identical with those of many varieties of mild, or even serious mental disturbances. Most doctors improperly diagnose hypoglycemia as a psychiatric disorder, a neurosis or worse. So they reach for a bottle of sedatives. Those few doctors who do suspect hypoglycemia use the glucose tolerance test. Unfortunately, this test is deeply flawed and cannot be relied upon.
ACRES USA: What is hypoglycemia?
REAMS: Hypoglycemia is a particularly nasty disease in its effects on the sufferer. The dominant characteristics include tiredness and lack of energy, unusual nervousness and irritability, dizziness, and often the most excruciating headaches. It doesn't sound like much, but when you have hypoglycemia, it's almost impossible to perform well either on your job or in your marriage. On the one hand, you don't have enough energy to do an adequate job or to cope with the strains of normal life. On the other hand, your nervousness and irritability makes you unpleasant to be with. I've treated many hypoglycemics, even young men and women in their 20s, who were unable to hold down a job because of their disease. I'm convinced that hypoglycemia is one of the leading causes of divorce. If the disease makes you difficult to work with, it must make you almost impossible to live with.
ACRES USA: What are the other symptoms of hypoglycemia?
REAMS: Well, insomnia is one. That of course adds to the victim's lack of energy and nervousness. The inability to tolerate even mildly loud noises is another. If someone you know reacts particularly negatively---maybe starting to cry---to a dog’s barking or bottle dropping into a garbage can, that person may well suffer from hypoglycemia. Hypoglycemics are also highly prone to allergies. Asthma attacks, too, can be precipitated by low blood sugar. One of the more exotic symptoms of low blood sugar is heart palpitations. You can feel your heart skip a beat and slow down. It feels as if your heart is trying to stop, Although these palpitations aren't quite as intense as real angina pains, they're understandably frightening, particularly since the hypoglycemia has made the person quite nervous to begin with. Dizziness and light-headedness are other symptoms of hypoglycemia: These can be particularly dangerous if you drive your car a lot. In a few cases, the dizziness is so extreme the person blacks out. Hypoglycemia frequently goes undiagnosed. The symptoms are all commonplace, like fatigue or headaches, so that most people don't even know something is the matter with them. If they do go to a doctor, in many cases they won't get relief beyond an aspirin because the doctors simply aren't trained to spot it.
ACRES USA: What causes low blood sugar?
REAMS: The true cause of hypoglycemia is a liver malfunction. In hypoglycemia, the liver malfunction affects you in several ways. To begin with, the liver is supposed to stabilize your blood sugar in several different ways: by storing sugar when there's too much and releasing it when more is needed; by maintaining the right chemical balance for insulin---which is essential for proper maintenance of blood sugar levels; and by regulating the production of insulin by the pancreas. In hypoglycemia, the liver fails to properly convert excess sugar into reserve sugar, called glycogen. Because of this the liver doesn't have enough reserve sugar to release when it's needed. Moreover, the liver frequently allows the chemical balance of the blood to become too alkaline. This sharply increases the potency of the body's insulin, which in turn then drives blood sugar levels down abnormally low. In other cases, the liver allows the blood to become too acidic. This decreases insulin's potency, allowing the blood sugar to go too high. If you were healthy, your body would adjust the blood sugar back to normal. But when you're hypoglycemic, your body overreacts and forces the blood sugar below normal. So in either case, an improper chemical balance in the blood-caused by a malfunctioning liver allows blood sugar levels to go below normal. In addition, when the liver malfunctions it fails to detoxify and remove various waste products from the body. These build up in the blood and also interfere with insulin's ability to control blood sugar levels. Finally, when the liver malfunctions it allows the pancreas to produce too much insulin---which causes low blood sugar. This is the main reason for hypoglycemia.
ACRES USA: Why does hypoglycemia cause so many problems?
REAMS: The liver malfunction causes low blood sugar. When your blood sugar is too low, your brain becomes starved for energy. This is because the brain burns only sugar, unlike other parts of the body which can burn either fats or sugars for energy. Natural consequences of a lack of fuel in the brain include the migraine headaches, dizziness, and the symptoms of mild mental disturbance. When the liver isn't working properly, nutrients are not absorbed. So the patient is undernourished and it's not surprising that he or she feels tired all the time. Likewise, when the .liver doesn't work properly, it fails to produce enough hydrochloric acid for proper protein digestion. Urea, a waste product, builds up. This causes tension and insomnia. In turn, this leads to more fatigue, more headaches and more irritability---a vicious cycle. Finally, when the liver is weak, the body becomes hypersensitive to certain starches because it can't metabolize them properly. It's not necessarily all starches that cause problems, just some of them. Depending on the patient, it could be wheat, oats, potatoes or something else. Whatever the food, when the hypersensitive patient eats it, it breaks down too quickly into sugar. The blood sugar level first soars too high then plummets too low. This leads, as I pointed out earlier, to still more headaches and fatigue.
ACRES USA: What are the main reasons for this liver malfunction?
REAMS: You could be deficient in chlorophyll, oxygen, or calcium---three nutritional elements essential for the liver. When, for instance, the liver lacks calcium, it can't produce enough hydrochloric acid to digest food properly. Another reason for a sluggish liver is that the person may be eating large amounts of certain foods which put stress on the liver. I'm referring to foods such as nuts & nut butters, meat, whole milk, and cheese. These foods require lots of hydrochloric acid for their digestion. The liver, which must produce the acid, wears down trying to meet the demand. Finally, the liver may malfunction because a person fails to drink enough pure water to keep the liver cleansed of wastes.
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http://www.brixman.com/hypoglycemia.html
