Weston Price: What Stood The Test of Time?

This is Dr. Weston Price, a dentist. You may guess from the photo, or perhaps already knew, his work is not new in 2023. We usually feature current health experts here, but we’re taking a day to do a blast from the past, because his ideas endure today, and inform a lot of people’s health views. So, he’s a good one to at least know about.

What was his deal?

Dr. Price (1870–1948) wanted to study focal infection theory—the idea that repairing root canals allowed bacterial infections that caused everything from heart disease to arthritis. His solution was that the teeth should be extracted instead.

This theory was popular in the 1920s, was challenged in the 1930s, ignored in the 1940s (the world was a bit busy), and by broad medical consensus anyway, rejected in the 1950s. But, while it was being challenged in the 1930s, Dr. Price decided to find more evidence for its support.

The result was his famous world tour of peoples living traditional lifestyles without the influence of “modern” diet. His findings, and the conclusions he drew from them, extended to far more than just dental health.

What did he find?

Dr. Price found that people living traditional lifestyles, with their traditional diets based on locally-sourced foods, had much better overall health. Of course, he was a dentist and not a general practitioner, so aside from examining their teeth, he largely relied on self-reported diagnoses of illness, or lack thereof.

In short: he found that people in places without modern medical institutions had fewer diagnoses of disease. From this, he concluded that incidence of disease was much lower.

There was also an unexamined element of survivorship bias—an undiagnosed disease is more likely to be fatal, and he questioned only living people, which skewed the stats rather. Nor did he examine infant mortality rate nor adult life expectancy, both of which were not great.

Was it all useless, then?

Actually no! He did hit upon some observations that have stood the test of time:

• He correctly concluded that modern diets with sugar and white flour were ruinous to the health.
• He correctly concluded that locally-sourced food, and grass-fed in the case of pastoral farming, tended to have much more nutritional value than the mass-produced results of intensive farming.
• He correctly concluded that many modern preservation methods robbed foods of their nutrients.
• He correctly concluded that many grains and seeds are more nutritions when fermented/soaked/sprouted.

About that “locally-sourced food”: the reason locally-sourced food tends to be more nutritious is that it has required less in the way of preservation for a long trip around the world, and will also tend to be fresher.

On the other hand, this does mean a lot of the foods that Dr. Price recommends are very much subject to availability. It may well be true that the Inuit people do not eat a lot of fruit and veg (which mostly do not grow there), but if you live in Nevada, maybe locally-sourced whale fat is just as difficult to find.

One person’s “this fatty organ meat contains the vitamin C we need” may be another person’s “that’s great; I have an apple tree in my garden though”.

Want to learn more?

Dr. Price’s most influential work is his magnum opus, “Nutrition and Physical Degeneration”. It’s a fascinating book, but do be warned, it was written by a rich white man in 1939 and the writing is as racist as you might expect. Even when making favourable comparisons, the tone is very much “and here is what these savages are doing well”.

If you don’t fancy reading all that, here are two other sources about Weston Price’s work and conclusions, presented for balance:

• The Weston A. Price Foundation (Official Website)
• Weston Price’s Appalling Legacy (Science-Based Medicine.org)

Enjoy!

How Good Is Your Sleep, Really?

This is Dr. Marie-Pierre St-Onge, Director of Columbia University’s Center of Excellence for Sleep and Circadian Research.

The focus of Dr. St-Onge’s research is the study of the impact of lifestyle, especially sleep and diet, on cardio-metabolic risk factors.

She conducts clinical research combining her expertise on sleep, nutrition, and energy regulation.

What kind of things do her studies look at?

Her work focuses on questions about…

• The role of circadian rhythms (including sleep duration and timing)
• Meal timing and eating patterns

…and their impact on cardio-metabolic risk.

What does she want us to know?

First things first, when not to worry:

❝Getting a bad night’s sleep once in a while isn’t anything to worry about. That’s what we would describe as transient insomnia. Chronic insomnia occurs when you spend three months or more without regular sleep, and that is when I would start to be concerned.❞

But… as prevention is (as ever) better than cure, she also advises that we do pay attention to our sleep! And, as for how to do that…

The Six Dimensions of Sleep

One useful definition of overall sleep health is the RU-Sated framework, which assesses six key dimensions of sleep that have been consistently associated with better health outcomes. These are:

• regularity
• satisfaction with sleep
• alertness during waking hours
• timing of sleep
• efficiency of sleep
• duration of sleep

You’ll notice that some of these things you can only really know if you use a sleep-monitoring app. She does recommend the use of those, and so do we!

We reviewed and compared some of the most popular sleep-monitoring apps! You can check them out here: Time For Some Pillow Talk

You also might like…

We’re not all the same with regard to when is the best time for us to sleep, so:

Use This Sleep Cycle Calculator To Figure Out the Optimal Time for You To Go to Bed and Wake Up

AROUND THE WEB

What’s happening in the health world…

• Aspirin may make your breathing worse
• Taking naps for more than 30 minutes may raise your metabolic disease risk
• How to ease back into exercise after surgery
• Study provides evidence that breathing exercises may reduce your Alzheimer’s risk
• No one in movies knows how to swallow a pill

More to come tomorrow!