All People Are the Same; Only Their Habits Differ

It always frustrates me when someone patronizingly tells me that (even the basic universal) rules do not work the same way for everyone. That we are all different and medicines work differently for everyone.

While I would partly agree with that second part, some fundamental laws in this world still apply to all.

Fundamental facts

For example, fat binds with toxins. This is general, natural law applicable to no matter what kind of person we are talking about. If we want to speed up the elimination of toxins from the body, supplying it with enough (raw) fats can help a lot.

And it sounds crazy to claim that such fundamental principles do not apply to everyone because we all have our peculiarities. Yeah, maybe … if you’d cut your finger, and motor oil would come out.

But, then you’d be a huge exception (… that confirms the rule, LOL).

That brought that interesting definition of poison to my mind. At some point, I thought I had discovered a new crazy theory.

How can a substance be toxic to one organism if another organism feeds on it? Or, how can a substance be healthy for an organism in a certain micro amount but fatal when slightly bigger? What otherwise healthy or beneficial substance is not harmful or dangerous in excessive amounts? Are poisonous mushrooms really poisonous?

After much thought, I emerged victorious, concluding that toxic substances do not exist. Until I realized that Paracelsus had already said that. His famous maxim reads:

“All things are poison, and nothing is without poison; the dosage alone makes it so a thing is not a poison.”

Wait a minute… does that mean that isolated substances do not produce the same effect as when in their natural (bioactive) form? Because they do not retain the right bioactive proportion with other ‘supporting’ substances?

For example, in addition to vitamin C, lemon contains a bunch of enzymes to ensure that vitamin C gets absorbed into our system. In its isolated form as a food supplement — apart from the fact that it is not stable at higher temperatures — its usefulness is highly questionable.

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If I return to the original argument, the following pattern of generalization often appears.

In a debate about healthy eating, a friend warned me that milk is not safe to consume. She drank it all her life and now has severe problems with osteoporosis.

I challenged her with two questions to validate or disprove her assumptions.

The first question was, how does she know that milk is the cause of osteoporosis? She replied that doctors claim that milk causes osteoporosis. At this point, I did not want to get into a polemic about the time doctors spend on nutrition during their studies and where they got that information.
The second related question was what kind of milk she had been drinking all her life. Doubting about what this had to do with osteoporosis, she replied that it was the usual milk, the kind you get in all the shops. Yes, the one processed at ultra-high temperatures and containing additives to assure a questionably long shelf life.

Again, I believe it holds true that we are all basically the same people. It’s just that our habits are quite different.

In this respect, I have found a case casting some doubt on our knowledge of genetics. It is actually an interesting story.

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Mother fried the eggs for the whole family. They were delicious, with a crispy, browned edge. She taught her children too, how to bake such delicious eggs. And they passed the recipe down from generation to generation.

Long afterward, one of her grandchildren was diagnosed with gastrointestinal cancer. Doctors went to investigate, among other things, the incidence of the disease in the family.

They found that almost everyone — his parents, uncles, aunts, and their parents, had died of the same disease.

The picture became frighteningly clear. The apparent proof of genetic predisposition to gastrointestinal cancer in the family.

But they did not know about the grandmother’s fried eggs recipe. Those delicious, crispy, nicely browned edge fried eggs.

The burnt (carcinogenic) indigestible proteins were that ‘genetic predisposition.’

My point here was not to blame it on the fried eggs. I wanted to present a shadow of a doubt. And that apart from different habits, we are all still the same.

Conclusion

Is it safe to conclude that the same laws (and medicines) have the same properties? And that effects depend more on the quantity one needs?

I think one cannot claim burnt protein is harmless (to anyone). It might lead to cancer.

Similarly, long shelf-life milk cannot be considered harmless — for any of us. Just think about it, there is no such thing as a free lunch!

This means the basic rules of life are the same for all of us. Running away from them, excusing how everyone is their own universe, is wrong.

It is like saying:

You don’t know what is wrong with me… I don’t know what to do… hence I don’t have to change anything.

And the worst part there is to refuse to eat your own words.

But, in the modern world, change grows exponentially. That means we will be proven wrong more often. But we forget that is the price we have to pay to advance.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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