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(NaturalNews) There is a long and fascinating history of relationships between nutritional deficiencies and chronic disease. One of the most well known is probably scurvy -- a disease where your bones lose their rigidity due to a deficiency in vitamin C. The historical accounts of this condition mostly involve sailors who, when long sailing voyages, were overcome by this nutritional deficiency. And it actually took hundreds of years before the right scientist came along and discovered that this was caused by a simple nutritional deficiency that could be cured by eating fruits high in vitamin C such as limes. Hence the name 'limeys' for sailors.

That's just one example of a disease caused by nutritional deficiencies. There are many other diseases such as rickets and beriberi that are also caused by nutritional deficiencies. Asian people who historically ate polished, processed rice (white rice) frequently got beriberi, a disease caused by a deficiency in vitamin B1 (thiamin). Until the nutritional causes of beriberi were established, however, physicians of ancient Asia thought the disease was some sort of plague.

In America, the term 'redneck' actually comes from a vitamin B deficiency that causes heightened susceptibility to sunburns. Interestingly, most Americans are, today, deficient in B vitamins as well, which is why they are so easily susceptible to sunburns. As explained in Staying Healthy With Nutrition by Dr. Elson Haas, M.D.:

For a long period of history, the niacin deficiency disease, pellagra, was a very serious and fatal problem. Characterized as the disease of the "three Ds," pellagra causes its victims to experience dermatitis, diarrhea, and dementia. The fourth D was death. As described previously, the classic B3 deficiency occurs mainly in cultures whose diets rely heavily on corn and where the corn is not prepared in a way that releases its niacin. One of the first signs of pellagra, or niacin deficiency, is the skin's sensitivity to light, and the skin becomes rough, thick, and dry (pellagra means "skin that is rough" in Italian). The skin then becomes darkly pigmented, especially in areas of the body prone to be hot and sweaty or those exposed to sun. The first stage of this condition is extreme redness and sensitivity of those exposed areas, and it was from this symptom that the term "redneck," describing the bright red necks of eighteenth-and nineteenth-century niacin-deficient fieldworkers, came into being.

Colonial Americans Rejected the Wisdom of American Indians

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Related Articles: • Disease Economy: How the United States economy runs on "treating" chronic disease • Disease names like diabetes and osteoporosis are misleading and misinform patients about disease prevention • Psychiatry and disease mongering: Road Rage Disorder is latest spontaneously "discovered" disease	Take Action: Support NaturalNews.com Email this article to a friend Share this article on: NewsVine | digg | del.icio.us Permalink to this article: http://www.NaturalNews.com/023580_disease_nutrition_corn.html Reprinting this article: Non-commercial use OK, cite NaturalNews.com with clickable link. Embed article link: (copy HTML code below): <a href = "http://www.NaturalNews.com/023580_disease_nutrition_corn.html">The Nutritional Origin of the Term "Red Neck" and Other Fascinating Historical Facts About Vitamin Deficiencies</a>