Jeffrey Bland (PhD) in a 2009 Bastyr lecture presents and advocates Roger Williams' ideas—especially genetropic (genetotropic) disease and biochemical individuality—as foundational to understanding chronic disease and nutritional needs. Bland summarizes Williams' credentials (discoveries: pantothenic acid, biotin; co-discoverer of folic acid; ACS president 1957) and cites Williams' Lancet article (1949/1950) introducing genetotropic disease: the idea that genetic uniqueness creates higher nutrient requirements for some individuals. Bland also explains Nutra-circles, a visual tool for nutrient density showing ~50 essential nutrients ("the fabulous 50") relative to RDA, and uses examples (average American diet, dog food, enriched vs whole wheat flour) to show nutrient gaps and processing effects.
Chapters
So from garage. Now let me move to my second founding person, Roger Williams. Now you see him there in 1957, he was a chemist, biochemist of great esteem, actually. The discoverer of panethenic acid, the discoverer of biotin, one of the co discoverers of folic acid. So this guy has pretty good Credentials. Published over 300 articles and was the president of the American chemical Society in 1957. The most esteemed, you know, kind of association of chemists in the United States. So what did he believe? He believed that this individuality concept of Garrod was so important that it could describe why people got illnesses for which you couldn't find the bug that caused it. And he produced a concept called genetotropic disease. Now this is a core concept that I don't believe is taught like it should be in all of our academic institutions. It's a profound concept. Published in the Lancet for the first time in 1949. Genetotropic disease. What does that mean? Genetotropic disease is a disease that occurs as a consequence of the genetic uniqueness of the person not getting adequate nutrients to meet their needs. So their metabolism is less functional than it should be. That produces the outcome called a dysfunction, which we later call a disease. So he would say chronic diseases are a manifestation of genetic tropic imbalances. Now I had the privilege of knowing Dr. Williams at the latter portion of his life and I had a conversation with him once and I said, why is it that there's this big controversy about this concept? It seems so obvious and so real. And he said, well, Jeff, how do we teach nutrition? How do we teach health sciences to ultimate practitioners? We teach it as the law of the averages. Have you ever heard the 70 kilogram statistical human? The data that we present as clinical examples to people comes from this mythic average human being that's in the midline of sub Gaussian distribution curve of characteristics. And he says, if we look at nutrition, nutrition is for real people, statistical humans are of little interest. That was a quote. Now that's a profoundly simple sound mic. That's a haiku, because from that you can build a whole curriculum, can't you? And that curriculum will differ from that of a traditional 70 kilogram human curriculum. And it'll lead you to different questions to ask that patient when you're doing your knee to knee with them. And it'll lead to different conclusions about outcome. And it maps against Archibald Garrod's biochemical individuality, doesn't it? So Williams, you know, later at the end of his life. And he passed away at 93, by the way, it's interesting, all of these people I'm talking about died in their 90s. And when I talk to him in the later parts of his life about in the late 80s, I said, Dr. Williams, you know, what do your critics say about your ideas today? I mean, you've been advancing these concepts for 50 years. And he said, well, none of my critics are alive. There's proof of the pudding is I'm still here to talk about it. Those guys are all gone. You know, if you're a non believer, take the rapid view of the page, you know. So here is his article in 1950 in the Lancet. The concept of genetic trophic diseases based essentially upon recent findings in genetics and biochemistry which have not been incorporated into medical thought. Now that was 1950. Let me ask you the question. Today it's 2009. How well have the recent findings in genetics and biochemistry been incorporated into medical thought today? Still, it's got a lot of room to go here. Some, you know, know, 69 years later. The concept of genetic tropic disease may lead to an understanding of many diseases whose etiology was obscure, but I think still is obscure until you start looking at this model. And then he goes on in nutrition reviews and he says a genetic tropic disease is one which occurs if a diet fails to provide a sufficient supply of one or more nutrients required at high levels because of the characteristic genetic pattern of the individual. Right, Patterning. So the food of one is a poison of another. Everybody in our field knows that. So you say a person, wheat might be a good food for a lot, but for a person with gluten neuropathy, that's not a good idea. So you can't make a rule that covers everyone. You've got to look at the ruler applied to that individual. And I was very fortunate. I was asked to write the ford for a reprint of his classic book Biochemical Individuality, which was a great privilege when this book was reflected a few years ago to kind of talk about what's happened in the field in the 20 years since 1987. And this concept of biochemical individuality. Now this is a book that Dr. Williams authored that's not well known or as well known. And I don't want to challenge you by asking in your course, have you had a chance to see this book? But this is a treasure trove of information that is not well understood. This is called the Wonderful World within you. And what you're looking at on the right there. Let me ask a question. How many of you have ever seen Nutra circles? Aha. This is worth you having me be like. Because this is the takeaway for having a viewer. This is a powerful concept. I've used this in my teachings now for 30 years, this concept. So once you have these Nutri circles, which Dr. Williams and Don Davis, who is his associate, good friend of mine, actually graduate school with me, what they developed was this visual way of looking at nutritional density, the nutritional quality. So the circle at the periphery on the radial arms are all the essential nutrients. I call them the fabulous 50. Right, the fabulous 50 essential nutrients. So you have the essential amino acids like isoleucine, leucine, phthalates, tryptophan, phenylalanine and so forth. And then after that you've got the minerals, and then after that you've got the vitamins, and then you've got the fatty acids, right? So there's about 50 or so, I'm estimating essential nutrients. Now, in the middle of this bullseye diagram, you'll notice that there is another circle, right? And that, can you see that other circle in the middle, like a bullseye? That is the circle that represents the amount of that nutrient defined by the Food Nutrition Board as the rdn. Okay. The radioharms that come out from the center then represent the amount in 100 grams of the edible portion of that food of that nutrient relative to the rda. Can you see an amino? So anything that goes on the other side of that, if you ate 100 grams of it, would be more than the RDA by how long that line is. Anything inside would not beat the rda. If even eating a quarter pound of it a day, are we. Okay, okay. So we immediately look up there at the top, right? And what do you see? This was the average American diet. We put everything, all the diet of people eat in the United States, you know, wearing blender, and we, you know, macerated it up and we did a chemical analysis. That's what it would look like just for your vitamin mineral, not talking about fat, protein or carbohydrate. Now, what do you immediately see? You immediately see there's a lot of stuff that we call nutrient gaps. Right? Can you see that? That are not even meeting the RDA level. Now, you might question the RDA level, but let's not even go that far. Let's just talk about the RDA level itself. Can you see the gaps? So some things are high, but those are things that have been enriched. Some things are low. Those are things that have been taken out by processing. Are we okay? Now, the bottom one is interesting, right? What do you see immediately visually about the bottom? You see the radial arms are really dense, right? You've got like a much higher nutrient density. And what is the bottom one? Commercial dog food. So my metaphor that I use is now we know why we have tons of pet owners and springy pets. The pets get the quality of nutrition, the owners get the stuff that's left over. So it's a very interesting way of looking grammatically. By the way, you can download these if you just go to Google and do Nutra circles. These are all downloadable. You can put them in your computer and use them if you want. So here's some examples of foods. And again, you can see in color, maybe it's a little bit more easily seen. Red are the ones that are not eating the rda. Blue are the ones that are exceeding the rda. So up there you've got the average American diet. And then dog food, I've just shown you. And then down below you've got all purpose enriched flour and then whole wheat flour. Right? So you can actually see the differences visually in comparing processed food to minimally processed food. Okay. So that's a concept of nutrient density. That's Roger Williams concept as it relates to individuality. And this book was one that I used in my course that I thought I'd ever read, from which Bastyr was born, I might add, back in 1978. Nutrition Against Disease is Dr. William's book that is still a classic if you read it today. I think it's a very, very powerful example of how these things fit together.
