Dr William Howard Hay, creator of
the Hay diet, was born in Hartstown, Pennsylvania, USA in 1866. He graduated from the University of New York
in 1891, and practised medicine for the next sixteen years.
He then became very ill, and was
diagnosed as having Bright’s Disease, high blood pressure and a dilated heart,
and thought his career was over. He
decided to treat his symptoms himself by eating a healthy, natural diet, and after
three months, he felt much improved, to the surprise of his doctors. His experience strengthened his belief that
the medical establishment was approaching the treatment of disease in the wrong
way; that it should be attempting to remove the cause of illness rather than
treating the end-results of a condition.
By 1911, Dr Hay was convinced that
he had discovered a succesful treatment for diabetes. For the next four years, he treated his patients through diet,
and successfully demonstrated that people could achieve optimum health with the
correct diet, providing there was no irreversible organic change. He thus developed over the years the dietary
system now known as the ‘Hay Diet’.
His assertion was that disease had
one underlying cause: an incorrect chemical balance in the body, caused by the
production and accumulation of acid end-products of digestion and metabolism,
which the body is unable to eliminate.
The result of this is a reduction in the body’s alkaline reserve, which
causes a breakdown in good health. He
maintained that there were four main causes of this accumulation of acid
end-products: over consumption of meat; over-consumption of refined
carbohydrates, e.g., white flour and refined sugar; ignorance of the laws of
chemistry in respect of the digestion of foods; and constipation. He taught his patients that, although people
could build up a tolerance of incompatible foods, they did so at the expense of
the body’s vitality. He also taught the
importance of daily baths, exercise, fresh air, rest, and sunshine.
Despite Dr Hay’s enormously
successful treatment of many seriously ill patients with his system, it was
criticised vehemently by the medical establishment, which, at that time, was
focussed on the germ theory of disease, and the increasing use of drug
treatment. However, he defended his
system courageously, continuing to treat patients, and lecture, until his death
in 1940.
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