September, 2004

Dear Ministry Partner,

Is there a reason for so much degenerative disease in America? Does God just not like us compared to people in Third World countries? Does God sovereignly decree that 300,000 Americans need to have heart bypass surgery each year, or is there something we can do about it? Do 1 out of every 3 Americans get cancer just by "luck of the draw" or are there under-lying causes which can be addressed? What can we do about this "epidemic" so it doesn't affect us?

There are two kinds of diseases: infectious and degenerative. Infectious diseases are things you can "catch" from other sources. Thanks to modern medical science and wide-spread vaccinations, most common infectious diseases that once killed many people are no longer a major threat to Americans (except for pneumonia & STD's). However, degenerative diseases have taken their place. The national Centers for Disease Control lists the top 2 causes of death for adults in America as heart disease and cancer (murder is way down the list at number 14). We don’t "catch" degenerative diseases like heart attacks and cancer from other people. So why are they so common in America as compared to less developed nations?

The first insight we can get is from other countries that have so few cases of degenerative diseases compared to America. To make a long story short, it is basically related to diet and nutrition. In Third World countries, their diet is much "closer to the earth". They grow much of their own food, and eat it raw or prepared in a very simple manner. Their foods retain most of the vitamins and minerals — which are lost when our American foods are highly refined and processed. Because of the relative expense of meat, Third World people mainly eat vegetables and fruits, with small amounts of meat and very little sugar. In addition, people in Third World countries traditionally do not have so many chemical additives in their foods. There has been documented research that as these Third World countries began to prosper and adopt "civilized" food practices, their rates of heart disease and cancer and other degenerative diseases began to go up much like America. Along these lines, I have heard that in 1900, only 1 in 200 Americans came down with cancer. Today, it is 1 in 3 Americans that develop cancer. Something must have changed!

This leads to the second insight for our health which has to do with the mineral content of the soils, which in turn controls the vitamin and mineral content of the foods grown in that soil. In Third World countries, if the soil gets depleted, the farmer just starts farming new land down the road. But in America, farmable land is fairly expensive and has already been farmed in most cases for decades if not hundreds of years. There are over 70 minerals that plants can pull out of the soil through their roots during each yearly growing cycle. But have you ever noticed how many minerals are in a bag of commercial fertilizer to be added back into the soil? There are just 3 components — nitrogen (from urea or ammonia), phosphorous, and potassium (from potash) — which are represented by 3 numbers on the bag of fertilizer showing the relative percentages, like 12-15-10. (Defending farmers, they would go broke buying lots of minerals to add back to the soil.) But does it strike you that if plants are pulling over 70 nutrients out of the soil, and man is only putting 3 nutrients back in, that after a few decades the plants we are eating from that soil have far fewer minerals than the plants that were eaten by Adam, Methuselah, and Noah? In fact, I have read about laboratory analysis of common grocery store vegetables, and the most minerals found were about 20 (often less). So if our bodies were designed by God to be getting over 70 minerals in the foods we eat, but we are now only getting 20 or less, doesn’t it make sense that we might suffer some mild forms of nutritional deficiencies? And different regions have specific mineral depletions. For example, the soils of North Dakota where my wife was born are high in selenium, while the soils in China are low in selenium. Another striking example of the difference minerals make is the taste of fruits and vegetables like a tomato from a commercial farm as opposed to one "home grown in a garden".

This leads to the obvious conclusion that Americans need to have better nutrition to avoid many degenerative diseases — whether it is osteoporosis from a calcium deficiency, intestinal cancer from a lack of fiber, loss of the sense of taste and smell from a zinc deficiency, or the many health complications from simply too much fat or calorie intake. (And to complicate the situation, as people get older they tend to absorb only half as much of the nutrients in their intestinal tract.) For busy Americans who don’t have the time to get the perfect combination of all the correct fresh fruits and vegetables, the most practical answer is nutritional supplements. And one of the side benefits of nutritional supplements is a decrease in appetite cravings which usually results in weight loss and easier weight management. These food cravings are often caused by a specific mineral deficiency. In fact, veterinarian doctors have extensive training in animal nutrition to recognize, for example, that when a horse is "cribbing" (chewing on the boards of its stall), the animal needs minerals added to its feed bucket. Mineral deficiencies are why poor children in America ate the lead-based paint off their houses, and poor Middle Eastern children ate clay. Judi and I have taken nutritional supplements for years, and I can testify that a "chocolate craving" vanished when I started taking a mineral supplement. In fact, the Complete Book of Minerals for Health says that a phosphorus deficiency results in continuous craving for food — possibly a factor in so many weight-control issues in America.

So it becomes apparent that vitamin and mineral supplements can be very valuable. (And note that vitamins are useless unless the body has minerals to process them.) Not all vitamin and mineral supplements are created equal. In fact, the cheap one-a-day versions usually do not deliver what a person really needs. They usually contain "metallic" minerals which are only about 10% absorbed in the short trip through the human intestinal tract. Minerals that are "chelated" are better absorbed at about 40% or so. But "plant-based" minerals are absorbed at over 90%. What if you could get the same "plant-based" minerals that Adam, Methuselah, and Noah got from their soil? The mineral supplement that Judi and I take very likely does that. It comes from a 30 foot thick bed of fossilized plant material (called humic shale) in Utah, and has over 70 different colloidal minerals in it. For the Bible-believing Christian, the way these immense beds of plants got suddenly covered and fossilized was by Noah’s flood. So if you get your minerals from these fossilized plants, you are literally eating the same "foods" that Adam, Methuselah, and Noah ate. Revelation 22:2 says "the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations." If you take the same mineral supplements that we take, you are likely partaking of the same "leaves of the trees" that were eaten by Adam, Methuselah, and Noah. It is interesting to note that this verse is in the past tense in all major translations -- and certainly no one will need to eat plants in Heaven to be healed. So is it possible that God is communicating that He has provided special healing vitamins, minerals, and nutrients here on earth through various plants that are available to eat?

I am aware that it takes some effort and a small amount of expense to take vitamin and mineral supplements. People don't like to put forth the extra effort, and we sometimes don't see much "difference" in the short-run. But consider this passage of scripture from Genesis 3:17-19. "Cursed is the ground for your sake; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life... you shall eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground." As Christians, we are delivered from the curse of the Law, but not from the curse of the Fall. The curse of the Fall is why we still die, even though we get born-again! This is a fallen world, and it still takes "effort" to live a successful life. This is the biggest error I have seen in the modern faith movement. I consider myself a faith person, but Christians I have known are now dead because they practiced faith without corresponding work (James 2:26). And Hosea 4:6 says, "God's people are destroyed for lack of knowledge." We've got to stop the dying, and start putting forth the extra "work" to be healthy.

Certainly we appreciate the tremendous things that medical science provides, but it is even better to be so healthy that you don’t require medical intervention or even supernatural healing! God is a God of healing. He has made that clear in both Old & New Testaments. But Proverbs 18:9 in the Amplified translation also says, "He who does not use his endeavors to heal himself is brother to him who commits suicide." This certainly implies we should do what we can do, then we should trust God to do what we cannot do. Or, "Having done all... stand." (Eph. 6:13).

Preserving Christians,

Dale & Judi Leander