Dr David Glass - MBChB, FCOG (SA)
Last week we gave an introduction to the importance of the gut in health and immunity. We discovered that it is also related to the brain in fact some researchers claim it produces more neurotransmitters than the brain, and thus has a profound effect upon brain function. We did a brief overview of the anatomy and physiology of the gastro-intestinal tract (GIT). This week we want to present a short history lesson about discoveries relating to lifestyle diseases and diet. We will report the role of three influential clinicians/researchers who elucidated the role of dietary fibre in the causation of disease, comparing Western diets with that of more traditional African societies.
Three names that stand out in history are Dr Denis Burkitt, Dr Hugh Trowell, and Dr ARP Walker.
Dr Burkitt, a surgeon in Uganda, was best known for identifying a particular lymphoma caused by the Epstein-Barr virus in people with chronic malaria, and affecting many people in that part of the world. The tumour was eventually named after him Burkitts lymphoma. But not only was Dr Burkitt a competent surgeon head of surgery for almost 20 years at Makerere University in Kampala, one of Africas leading universities at the time he was also a keen observer and researcher of the differences in the patterns of diseases between the West and more traditional societies.
He identified dietary fibre deficiency as a significant contributor to the high risk of coronary heart disease, obesity, diabetes, dental caries, various vascular disorders, appendicitis and large bowel conditions such as cancer and diverticulosis found in the West.
Simply grouping these diseases together as having a common cause was groundbreaking.
In fact Burkitt came to be known as the Fibre Man and later in his life travelled around the world lecturing on this hypothesis. He died in 1993 after having received many awards and citations. Here is a video of an interview with him.
Dr Hugh Trowell also worked in East Africa as a specialist physician for 30 years and together with Burkitt studied the differences in disease patterns between the West and Africa. He was also the pioneer in the identification of the childhood nutritional deficiency condition called kwashiorkor, and later published original work on the cause and cure of adult-onset diabetes. He died at the age of 84 in 1989. He and Burkitt co-authored the seminal book Refined Carbohydrate Foods and Disease; Some Implications of Dietary Fibre, published in 1975 (the year I graduated from medical school). He was honoured with an OBE from the Queen. Dr Trowell, as with Dr Burkitt was a deeply spiritual man, and after his retirement became an ordained Anglican minister.
Dr ARP (Alec) Walker was a giant in medical research in South Africa. Although not a medical doctor, he worked extensively in diagnostic laboratory and nutritional research. He had a total of 900 published journal articles and letters attached to his name, and I believe he was the head of the South African Institute for Medical Research for many years. In fact he published over 500 articles after the age of 60. There is very little on the internet about him as a person but very much about his research. He died at the age of 94, on the 21st May 2007 (almost exactly 13 years ago) one year after retiring from his post in the National Health Laboratory Service in Johannesburg! Denis Burkitt acknowledged him as the originator of the fibre deficiency/disease theory, but the three doctors worked closely together. There were others involved in the development of this theory, but the above 3 men were the main proponents.
The importance of dietary fibre will become obvious in further articles, but it is noteworthy that the processing of foods as found in many Western foods is responsible for stripping this vital ingredient and thus contributing greatly to many of the Western chronic diseases, now also affecting formerly traditional societies in Africa and the East.
Dietary fibre is found exclusively in plant-origin foods, and is completely absent in animal products such as meat, dairy products and eggs. This is one of the main drawbacks in ketogenic diets, such as the Banting and Atkins diets.
Doctors tend to downplay the observations and research done by people in the past as being unsophisticated, but many of these scientists had keen observation powers and much patience and persistence. Dr ARP Walker also considered South Africa to be a wonderful living laboratory as Western society and traditional African society intersected, and as Westernisation impacted traditional lifestyles, it was possible to monitor and record the changes in disease prevalences resulting from these societal changes.
So, the take-home message for this week is dietary fibre is important. In fact the greatest nutritional deficiency in the West is fibre deficiency. Make sure you get enough each day around 30 gms per person. It may be worth gradually increasing this to allow your bowels to adapt, otherwise you may suffer from a lot of bloating and gas to begin with. Next week we will tackle the controversial concept of leaky gut.
Stay safe.
Kind regards,
Dave Glass
Dr David Glass MBChB, FCOG (SA)
Dr David Glass graduated from UCT in 1975. He spent the next 12 years working at a mission hospital in Lesotho, where much of his work involved health education and interventions to improve health, aside from the normal busy clinical work of an under-resourced mission hospital.
He returned to UCT in 1990 to specialise in obstetrics/gynaecology and then moved to the South Coast where he had the privilege of, amongst other things, ushering 7000 babies into the world. He no longer delivers babies but is still very clinically active in gynaecology.
An old passion, preventive health care, has now replaced the obstetrics side of his work. He is eager to share insights he has gathered over the years on how to prevent and reverse so many of the modern scourges of lifestyle obesity, diabetes, ischaemic heart disease, high blood pressure, arthritis, common cancers, etc.
He is a family man, with a supportive wife, and two grown children, and four beautiful grandchildren. His hobbies include walking, cycling, vegetable gardening, bird-watching, travelling and writing. He is active in community health outreach and deeply involved in church activities. He enjoys teaching and sharing information.
Read the rest here:
Turning the Tide: The importance of fibre in your diet - South Coast Herald
