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Mr. Nishio's Formula for Happiness　　　

You can’t prevent cancer by getting checkups　（11/15/2006）

Doctor Mitsuishi, whom I introduced in my last article, died of pneumonia at the age of 95, after catching a cold on a skiing trip.

“He had absolutely no cancer, and all his internal organs were normal. He proved, with his own body, that cancer can be prevented by following the Mitsuishi theory”.
So said the doctor who investigated Mitsuishi’s body, as requested in his will.

It’s an amazing thing to live to 95 with no cancer anywhere in the body. Here is one illustration of that: On my desk I have the spring 2005 edition of NHK’s Tameshite Gatten (Try making a change) magazine. The feature headline reads “’Cancer is nothing to be afraid of’ We describe the Gatten-style ‘thorough cancer prevention technique’”.

Part 1 is “Read this to prevent cancer” and Part 2 is “Eat to prevent cancer”, giving a clear explanation of free radicals and the like. Part 3, entitled “Use the latest knowledge to prevent cancer”, says “take a regular annual checkup”. To summarize, they were saying “the machines have improved, so examinations are simple. If cancer can be detected early, the cure rate is high, so there’s no need to worry”. I don’t know whether to laugh at this or cry, but it goes on to say “the director general, hospital director, deputy hospital director and emeritus hospital director have all experienced the early stages of cancer”. The emeritus hospital director has “had cancer twice”! What do you think of that?
It seems that the doctors are not serious about cancer prevention.

I am, to put it bluntly, a coward. I am weak against pain, and even against itching. That’s why I’m scared of cancer. Actually, it’s more the western medical approach to cancer, which involves immediately cutting the cancer out, striking it with chemotherapy and burning it with radiation, that I find scary.
So after I came to America and became a Kumon instructor in 1983, I thought that getting sick in any way would be terrible and began studying prevention. I began doing a few good things for my health.
But, my study was inadequate and my implementation weak, so in 1997 I was diagnosed with leukemia.
That leukemia prompted me to get serious about learning preventive medicine.

What gave me the greatest pleasure, though, was that I understood how to live in a way that would make me happy. That way of life involves doing things like publishing this website and exchanging views with people of many different professions from many different countries.

But let’s get back to the subject. Shortly before his death, Doctor Mitsuishi published a revised edition of his book “Standard medical knowledge is littered with lies”.
Anyone seriously looking for a fit and lively life should buy the book and read it over and over. Now I’m just going to pick out a few parts to tell you about.

When he turned 60 (in 1961), he consulted an ophthalmologist at a university hospital because his eyes were terribly blurry. The diagnosis from the senior professor was that “You will lose your vision due to cataracts within two or three years. Visit me again when that happens”.
At that time, medicine had no technique for fixing cataracts. As a physicist, Doctor Mitsuishi hypothesized that if he approached the matter from a direction ignored by physicians, he might be able to reach different and unconventional conclusions.

“According to the literature, cataracts are caused by vitamin C deficiency. But my wife, who had been eating the same meals as me for decades, and presumably had the same vitamin C intake, did not get cataracts. Why was that? Could it be that I got cataracts because my eyes require more vitamin C than those of other people? My eyes were damaged because of that deficiency. If that is the case, if I almost soak myself in vitamin C, I could halt the progression of the cataracts, even if I can’t completely cure them. At least I would have a strong possibility of avoiding total blindness.
Following this hypothesis, I began injecting myself with vitamin C. The results go without saying".
His eyes, which were supposed to be blind within two or three years, carried on serving their purpose well for another 35 years.

It should be clear to anyone who thinks about it for a moment that regular checkups and comprehensive examinations don’t prevent diseases but only discover them earlier. Normally by the time an early discovery is made, there are already over a billion cancer cells. Even supposing the cancer is discovered early, and the cancer cells are cut out, burned with radiation and shrunk with chemotherapy, the cancer will just reappear more rapidly than before, at a new location, unless the root cause of the cancer is addressed. That happens because the treatment suppresses immune function.

Hideo Makuuchi, author of “Win with your food”, has this to say about the danger of the current direction of Japanese medical treatment.
“By now, I have met hundreds of breast cancer patients, but not one of them had received dietary guidance (counseling on how to reconsider what they eat) from any local medical agency.
He had been providing dietary consultations for about 20 years at the Obitsusankei Hospital in Kawagoe, Saitama prefecture, and at Shohakudo Clinic in Tokyo.

Mr. Shoichi Watanabe, who wrote the foreword to “Standard medical knowledge is littered with lies” for Doctor Mitsuishi, says “I have Doctor Mitsuishi to thank for the way I can eat eggs without worrying, I don't have to be fussy about salt intake, and I can enjoy sweet cakes".
So what are Doctor Mitsuishi’s “three holy weapons” for disease prevention?
I will tell you that in my next article.

Research into Carcinogenesis is Moving from the Realm of Medicine
to the Realm of Physics!　　　　（11/01/2006）

In this article I will introduce the theories of Iwao Mitsuishi, from “Cancer Can Be Prevented”. He was a professor of Keio University and of Tsuda College, who passed away in 1997 at the age of 95.

Professor Mitsuishi is the author of over 300 works in fields ranging from natural sciences to psychology, including “Brain cells can come back”, and 18 physics textbooks for elementary, junior high and high schools and universities. He began studying medicine when he reached the age of 60, examining health issues at the genetic level and expounding the theory that “health is self-regulating at the cellular level”.

He used rats and other animals in carcinogenesis experiments. Animal trials work on the macro scale (visible to the eye), not on the micro scale (things which are not visible even through an electron microscope).
The first people to succeed in inducing cancer artificially in an animal were Japanese. They were Doctors Katsusaburo Yamawaki and Kouzou Ichikawa of the University of Tokyo. They patiently applied coal tar every single day to the ears of rabbits. They did so because the leading authority on the subject at the time, a German doctor, hypothesized that “cancer is caused by stimulus”. Many scientists were performing animal trials, attempting to verify that hypothesis.
Doctor Yamawaki was one of them. He was the only one to succeed. Other researchers gave up after continuing for 100 days, but Doctor Yamawaki continued for a year. That was the condition for success.
The news that cancer can be induced artificially caused a commotion among cancer researchers. Experiments to induce cancer in animals began in many places. The discovery was valued so highly, it was said that Doctor Yamawaki would have been awarded a Nobel Prize, if he had been European.
That was in 1915. Cancer research began a new era from that time.

The first person to attempt to look at the problem of cancer on the micro scale was Schmidt of Germany. He asked whether carcinogenesis was caused by electrons. That was in 1938, over half a century ago.
At that time, however, genetic DNA was unknown, so the relationship between electrons and carcinogenesis was not verified.

Doctor Kenichi Fukui of Kyoto university announced the Frontier Orbital Theory in 1952. Doctor Fukui is well known for winning a Nobel Prize for that theory.
To summarize his theory briefly, electrons move from objects with high energy to objects with low energy, just as the flow of water from a high place to a low one can be explained as movement from high energy to low.

In 1953, the joint research of the American Watson and the Englishman Crick explained that DNA is the carrier of genetic information.
Doctor Fukui assigned a graduate student, Chikayoshi Nagata, the research theme of solving the question of carcinogenesis with electron theory. He also consulted with Director Waro Nakahara of the National Cancer Center, who established a department of biophysics and invited Doctor Nagata to it.
From that time on, it is fair to say that “the issue of carcinogenesis has been transferred from doctors to physicists”. That was an absolutely epoch-making event.

“Nature”, the British science magazine, is the world’s oldest and most authoritative. Its April 1985 edition published a paper by Doctor Nagata and his group stating that “cigarette smoke cuts the chains of DNA in human cells". That put an end to the controversy over the mechanism of carcinogenesis due to smoking.
It was achieved through experiments on cultured human cells. If some kind of damage to DNA molecules is required for carcinogenesis, the question is what substance within cigarette smoke is the culprit? Doctor Nagata isolated the cause as hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) in the smoke, not tar, nicotine or other constituents.
Around ten years after Doctor Nagata announced this rule of carcinogenesis, the Millers of America confirmed the result, making it unshakable.
Cancer, the terrifying disease that threatens our lives, begins in the micro-scale world, invisible even through an electron microscope. In short, it comes from the tiny but vital event of one molecule in a cell picking up one electron.
That leads on to the January 1993 article in Newsweek.
Also, the hydrogen peroxide identified by Doctor Nagata as the villain in carcinogenesis is one of the four types of free radical.

So, the title of my next article will be “You can’t prevent cancer by getting checkups. This is what you do to prevent cancer”. That is Doctor Mitsuishi’s theory, and we will examine it in the context of his way of life.

I decided to pursue a way of life that keeps me healthy!　　　　（10/20/2006）

While I was working for 13 years as a teacher after graduation, I caught a cold every year when they were going around. I thought “I catch it from the students, so it can’t be helped. When I start feeling symptoms I’ll hurry to hospital and get a shot. Pills have side effects, so I’ll try to avoid them”, and I didn’t think about prevention at all. (At school there are substitute teachers and the students are happy to study alone). That led to me taking countless sick days off.

After I moved to LA and became a Kumon instructor, taking time off became a real problem. It inconvenienced many students and parents, and at first I had no staff to take my place.
I was determined not to catch colds, because I couldn’t afford to take time off. I started eating brown rice, and when there were colds going around, I was diligent in gargling and washing my hands frequently. That kept me free of colds for over a decade.

In 1992, however, I was terribly shocked by the sudden death of a close friend.
Until then I’d had the rosy image of staying healthy and continuing my Kumon work until I was about a hundred, and some time after I turned a hundred, after writing “full marks” on a student’s Kumon print, I’d drop my red pen and die with a smile on my face.

My friend had been hospitalized with a cold, for an expected stay of a week, but then he passed away all alone, and neither he nor his family saw it coming.
“This is terrible. Why do people get sick? What can we do to prevent it?". With those questions in mind, I bought a lot of books and started studying in search of “a way of life that prevents illness".

In the fall of 1993, one of the parents from my Kumon school asked if I would like to go to a talk on health delivered by a professor from San Francisco Navy University at a hotel nearby. I was delighted to attend. The talk was about preventing illness, but it focused on the important role of vitamins. After the speech, the speaker gave me detailed answers to my questions on the causes of lifestyle diseases, with the aid of a Newsweek special report entitled “The Vitamin Revolution” and a number of color photographs.
Part of that article appears below.


How Antioxidants Work 　（Newsweek, June 7, 1993）


Free Radical


Active hydrogen is the ultimate antioxidant for nipping the radical chain reaction in the bud. That’s in the realm of physics (quantum mechanics), not medicine. Next time, I’ll give a brief explanation of 80 years of research in quantum mechanics.

The Odor of Flatulence and Stool Vanished!　　　　（10/10/2006）

My wife has a sensitive nose. Even from a considerable distance, she says “that smells” as soon as I break wind. When I was healthy I didn’t mind when she said that, but since my leukemia diagnosis I’ve become more sensitive to the word “smell”. My wife kept saying it after I broke even the least amount of wind, as if priding herself on her sense of smell.

That’s why I was delighted after I started drinking Kangen Water, because in less than two weeks, my wife stopped noticing my gas. I noticed that my flatulence and stool had become almost odorless.



In “You Can Beat Cancer With Hydrogen Water" Professor Hidemitsu Hayashi wrote the following about malodorous stool:
"I was vaguely thinking something like this: “When cancer, or hepatic cirrhosis, or diabetes enter their terminal stages, will I end up producing such foul-smelling stool?", but the truth was quite the reverse. I didn’t produce such odorous stool because I had cancer. Over ten or twenty years, malodorous stool leads to cancer in the person.
In short, the indole, phenol, nitrosamine and other carcinogens in that malodorous stool leads to cancer in that person. For hepatic cirrhosis and diabetes too, the suffers are driven to their diseases by the hydrogen sulfide, ammonia and other pathogens in their stool”.

He encountered that “Water” in February 1985, and the very next month, he abandoned his general practice and began traveling around the country, collecting testimonials of people’s experiences. Half a year later, he says that the hypertension, diabetes, gout, hyperlipidemia, chronic hepatitis and other conditions that he had suffered for years all cleared up.
In October 1965, the Japanese Ministry of Health and Welfare reported in Pharmaceutical Bulletin No.763 that the water was “effective as a beverage in improving abnormal gastrointestinal fermentation”.


The difference between normal and abnormal fermentation

Most people have an image of bacteria – microorganisms – as scary, bad things that cause disease. That is understandable, because humanity has spent so long fighting against disease without knowing what causes it. Bacteria which invade the body from outside, such as cholera, typhus and tubercule bacillus are enemies which must be fought and expelled from the body.

On the other hand, the human intestine is home to 1,000 trillion microorganisms of 100 kinds. Professor Teruo Higa of Ryukyu University in Okinawa calls those microorganisms with beneficial effects on the human body “Effective Microorganisms” (EM). He has been using them for agriculture, environmental improvement and medicine. I have been taking those EM bacteria for many years, and I know how important the action of microorganisms is. Professor Higa divides the microorganisms in the intestines into good and bad types, And states that the majority of bacteria are opportunistic organisms.

In a healthy person, good bacteria such as lactobacillus dominate, and opportunistic bacteria act in good ways, manufacturing vitamins, hormones, oxygen and the like, and aiding absorption from the intestines. The bad bacteria gain strength and power in a sick person, and the opportunistic bacteria act on their side, causing abnormal fermentation in the intestine. When abnormal fermentation happens, it generates large amounts of free radicals, as well as a range of other harmful substances. When the harmful substances move around the entire body, still more free radicals are generated in great quantities in the body.

Free radicals are the cause of 90% of adult-onset diseases. So how do free radicals cause diseases?
That will be my next topic, with reference to “The Vitamin Revolution”, which was published in Newsweek on the 7th of June 1993.


I'm so glad I got leukemia!　（09/08/2006）

I'm now 65 years old. When I was in fifth grade, inspired by my home room teacher Mr. Tani, I decided to become a teacher. I became a teacher at a private school in Itabashi, Tokyo.

In 1974 I was shocked to hear a book titled "The Secret of Kumon Method Math" written by Mr. Toru Kumon, which led me to leave my teaching job and set up the Nishio Academy in Kamifukuoka, Saitama Prefecture.

My younger brother wanted to run a continuation school, so I transferred the academy to him and moved to Los Angeles, where I have been a Kumon instructor for 23 years. Together with my wife, and supported by a dedicated staff, we teach around 600 students. Nine years ago I was diagnosed with chronic myeloid leukemia.

I was close to death on two occasions. Now, though, I am hard at work, ten hours a day!
I'm glad I became a teacher!
I'm glad I quit being a teacher!
I'm glad I came to America and became a Kumon instructor!
But the best thing of all is that I got leukemia!!

Why?
I will now explain myself, little by little.

What do we learn for?

While I was a teacher, twice a year, on the first class in April and the last in March, I always talked to junior high and high school children about the purpose of learning.

The students of one of my classes in the second year of high school, ten years younger than me, still hold reunions for me when I go back there. I'm very grateful for that.

When I am asked "what is learning for?", I have always answered "to achieve happiness".
That is my "formula for happiness". First, you must have a good knowledge of the subjects. The subjects are people and human relationships, and also nature. That is why universities are divided between humanities and sciences.

But overspecialization will not make you happy. Those who go into sciences must read literature, and those who go for humanities mustn't ignore natural sciences.

If you have a deep and true understanding of the subjects, and add, subtract, multiply and divide them, the answer will surely come. The answer is certainly to be found in the formula for happiness. That's why you have to read a lot of books.

What I was saying boiled down to that kind of thing. It's rather abstract, but the broad thrust of it is certainly right.

How to get good results

I would now like to add the formula proposed by Mr. Kazuo Inamori, chairman emeritus of Kyocera Corp.
"The result of life and work = approach x ability x passion"

At Kumon group orientations twice a month, I tell all kinds of people that the most important thing for producing good results is the approach.

While ability and passion differ between people, it is no more than the difference between plus one and plus ten. Approach, on the other hand, is like the difference between -100 and +100. If the approach is negative, the result of life will be negative.

These days, I have the health to work ten hours a day, a job worth doing for the rest of my life, and the pleasure of flying freely around the world, business class, about three times a year.

I want to live a significant life among a wider circle of people, with the freedom of time and money. At least, I want to enjoy discussing the formula for happiness with people regularly, once in two weeks.