How and When to Be Your Own Doctor
by
Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
Part 5 out of 6
extra vitamin C when acutely ill, when they have colds or
communicable diseases such as chicken pox.
Young people require a low dose supplement compared to those of us
middle-aged or older, but it should be a broad formula with the full
range of vitamins and minerals. Some of the best products I have
found over 25 years of research and experimentation with young
people are Douglas Cooper's "Basic Formula" (low dose and excellent
for children) and "Super T Formula" (double the dose of Basic
Formula, therefore better for adolescents and young adults), also
from Douglas Cooper Company; Bronson's "Vitamin and Mineral Formula
for Active Men and Women" and Bronson's "Insurance Formula."
"Vitamin 75 Plus;" and "Formula 2" from Now Natural Foods are also
good and less costly.
Healthy very small children who will swallow pills can take these
same products at half the recommended dose. If they won't swallow
pills the pills can be blended into a fruit smoothie or finely
crushed and then stirred into apple sauce. There are also
"Children's Chewable Multi-Vitamins + Iron" (1-5 years old) from
Douglas Cooper that contains no minerals except iron, Bronson's
"Chewable Vitamins" (make sure it is the one for small children,
Bronson makes several types of chewables) and a liquid vitamin
product from Bronson called Multivitamin Drops for Infants. These
will be a little more costly than cutting pills in half.
There is also an extraordinarily high quality multivitamin/mineral
formula for children called "Children's Formula Life Extension Mix"
from Prolongevity, Ltd. (the Life Extension Foundation), it is in
tablet form, and slightly more expensive.
I hope that my book will be around for several generations. The
businesses whose vitamin products I recommend will not likely exist
in twenty years. Even sooner than that the product names and details
of the formulations will almost certainly be altered. So, for future
readers discovering this book in a library or dusty shelve of a used
book store, if I, at my current level of understanding, were
manufacturing a childrens and young adults vitamin formula myself,
this is what it would contain. Any commercial formulation within 25
percent of these figures plus or minus would probably be fine as
long as the vitamins in the pills were of high quality.
Vitamin C 500 mg B-1 30 mg
Vitamin E 50 iu B-2 30 mg
Vitamin A 500 iu B-3 niacinamide 100 mg
Vitamin D 25 iu B-5 50 mg
Magnesium 100 mg B-6 30 mg
Calcium 400 mg B-12 30 mcg
Selenium 10 mcg Chromium 20 mcg
Manganese 2 mcg Biotin 30 mg
Zinc 5 mg Iodine (as kelp) 5 mg
PABA 20 mg Bioflavinoids 100 mg
Vitamins For An Older Healthy Person
Someone who is beyond 35 to 40 years of age should still feel good
almost all of the time. That is how life should be. But enjoying
well-being does not mean that no dietary supplementation is called
for. The onset of middle age is the appropriate time to begin
working on continuing to feel well for as long as possible. Just
like a car, if you take very good care of it from the beginning, it
is likely to run smoothly for many years into the future. If on the
other hand you drive it hard and fast with a lot of deferred
maintenance you will probably have to trade it in on a new one after
a very few years. Most people in their 70s and older who are
struggling with many uncomfortable symptoms and low energy lament,
'if I'd only known I was going to live so long I would have taken
better care of myself.' But at that point it is too late for the old
donkey; time for a trade in.
Gerontologists refer to combating the aging process as "squaring the
curve." We arrive at the peak of our physical function at about age
eighteen. How high that peak level is depends on a person's genetic
endowment, the quality of the start they received through their
mother's nutritional reserves, and the quality of their childhood
nutrition and life experience. From that peak our function begins to
drop. The rate of drop is not uniform, but is a cascade where each
bit of deterioration creates more deterioration, accelerating the
rate of deterioration. If various aging experiences were graphed,
they would make curves like those on the chart on this page.
Because deterioration starts out so slowly, people usually do not
begin to notice there has been any decline until they reach their
late 30s. A few fortunate ones don't notice it until their 40s. A
few (usually) dishonest ones claim no losses into their 50s but they
are almost inevitably lying, either to you or to themselves, or
both. Though it might be wisest to begin combating the aging process
at age 19, practically speaking, no one is going to start spending
substantial money on food supplements until they actually notice
significant lost function. For non-athletes this point usually comes
when function has dropped to about 90 percent of what it was in our
youth. If they're lucky what people usually notice with the
beginnings of middle age is an increasing inability for their bodies
to tolerate insults such as a night on the town or a big meal. Or
they may begin to get colds that just won't seem to go away. Or they
may begin coming home after work so tired that they can hardly stay
awake and begin falling asleep in their Lazy Boy recliner in front
of the TV even before prime time. If they're not so lucky they'll
begin suffering the initial twinges of a non-life-threatening
chronic condition like arthritis.
The thinnest line demonstrates the worst possible life from a purely
physical point of view, where a person started out life with
significantly lowered function, lost quite a bit more and then hung
on to life for many years without the mercy of death.
If one can postpone the deterioration of aging, they extend and
hopefully square the curve (retard loss of function until later and
then have the loss occur more rapidly). Someone whose lifetime
function resembled a "square curve"(the thickest, topmost line)
would experience little or no deterioration until the very end and
then would lose function precipitously. At this point we do not know
how to eliminate the deterioration but we do know how to slow it
down, living longer and feeling better, at least to a point close to
the very end.
Vitamin supplements can actually slow or even to a degree, reverse,
the aging process. However, to accomplish that task, they have to be
taken in amounts far greater than so-called minimum daily
requirements, using vitamins as though they were drugs, a
therapeutic approach to changing body chemistry profiles and making
them resemble a younger body. For example, research gerontologists
like Walford reason that if pantothenic acid (vitamin B5), in fairly
substantial (but quite safe) doses can extend the life and improve
the function of old rats, there is every indication that it will do
a similar job on humans. Medical researchers and research
gerontologists have noticed that many other vitamin and vitamin-like
substances have similar effects on laboratory animals.
Some will object that what helps rats and mice is in no way proven
to cause the same result on humans. I agree. Proven with full
scientific rigor, no. In fact, at present, the contention is
unprovable. Demonstrable as having a high likelihood's of being so,
yes! So likely so as to be almost incontrovertible, yes! But
provable to the most open-minded, scientific sort--probably not for a
long time. However, the Life Extension Foundation is working hard to
find some quantifiable method of gauging the aging process in humans
without waiting for the inarguable indicator, death. Once this is
accomplished and solidly recognized, probably no rational person
will be able to doubt that human life span can be increased.
Experiments work far better with short-lived laboratory animals for
another reason; we can not control the food and supplement intakes
of humans as we can with caged mice. In fact, there are special
types of laboratory mice that have been bred to have uniformly short
life spans, especially to accelerate this kind of research. With
mice we can state accurately that compared to a control group,
feeding such and such a dose of such and such a supplement extended
the life-span or functional performance by such and such a percent.
A lot of these very same medical gerontologists nourish their own
bodies as thoroughly as the laboratory animals they are studying,
taking broad mixes of food supplements at doses proportional to
those that extend the life spans of their research animals. This
approach to using supplementation is at the other end of the scale
compared to using supplements to prevent gross deficiencies. In the
life extension approach, vitamins and vitamin-like substances are
used as a therapy against the aging process itself.
Will it work? Well, some of these human guinea pigs have been on
heavy vitamin supplementation for over thirty years (as of 1995) and
none seem to be suffering any damage. Will they live longer? It is
impossible to say with full scientific rigor? To know if life
extension works, we would have to first determine "live longer than
what?" After all, we don't know how long any person might have lived
without life extending vitamin supplements. Though it can't be
"proven," it makes perfect sense to me to spend far less money on an
intensive life extension vitamin program than I would certainly lose
as a result of age-related sickness.
Besides, I've already observed from personal use and from results in
my clinical practice that life extension vitamin programs do work.
Whether I and my clients will ultimately live longer or not, the
people who I have put on these programs, including myself and my
husband, usually report that for several years after starting they
find themselves feeling progressively younger, gradually returning
to an overall state of greater well-being they knew five or ten or
fifteen years ago. They have more energy, feel clearer mentally,
have fewer unwanted somatic symptoms.
Sometimes the improvements seem rather miraculous. After a few
months on the program one ninety year old man, an independent-minded
Oregonian farmer, reported that he began awakening with an erection
every morning; unfortunately, his 89 year old cranky and somewhat
estranged wife, who would not take vitamins, did not appreciate this
youthfulness. A few months later (he had a small farm) he planted a
holly orchard. Most of you won't appreciate what this means without
a bit of explanation, but in Oregon, holly is grown as a high-priced
and highly profitable ornamental for the clusters of leaves and
berries. But a slow-growing holly orchard takes 25 years to began
making a profit!
A few older clients of mine reported that they noticed nothing from
the life extension program, but these are unique people who have
developed the ability to dominate their bodies with their minds and
routinely pay their bodies absolutely no attention, driving them
relentlessly to do their will. Usually they use their energies to
accomplish good, Christian works. Eventually, these dedicated and
high-toned people break down and die like everyone else. Will they
do so later on life extending vitamins than they would have
otherwise? I couldn't know because I can't know how long they might
have lived without supplementation and since they refuse to admit
the vitamins do them any good, they won't pay for them.
Many on life extension programs experience a reverse aging process
for awhile. However, after the full benefit of the supplementation
has worked itself through their body chemistry, they again begin to
experience the aging process. I believe the process will then be
slowed by their vitamins compared to what it would have been without
supplements. But I can't prove it. Maybe we will have some idea if
the program worked 20 to 40 years from now.
At this time I know of only two companies that make top quality life
extension vitamin supplement formulas. One is Prolongevity (Life
Extension Foundation), the other, Vitamin Research Products. I
prefer to support what I view as the altruistic motives behind
Prolongevity and buy my products from them. Unfortunately, these
vitamin compounders can not put every possibly beneficial substance
in a single bottle of tablets. The main reason they do not is fear
of the power-grabbing Food and Drug Administration. This agency is
threatening constantly to remove certain of the most useful
life-extending substances from the vitamin trade and make them the
exclusive property of prescription-writing medical doctors. So far,
public pressure has been mobilized against the FDA every time action
was threatened and has not permitted this. If some product were
included in a mix and that product were prohibited, the entire
mixed, bottled and labeled batch that remained unsold at that time
would be wasted, at enormous cost.
Were I manufacturing my own life extension supplement I would
include the following. By the way, to get this all in one day, it is
necessary to take 6 to 12 large tablets daily, usually spread
throughout the day, taken a few at a time with each meal. If you
compare my suggested formulation to another one, keep in mind that
variations of 25 percent one way or another won't make a significant
difference, and adding other beneficial substances to my
recommendations probably is only helpful. However, I would not want
to eliminate anything in the list below, it is the minimum:
Beta-Carotene 25,000 iu Selenium 100 mcg
Vitamin A 5,000 iu Taurine 500 mg
B-1 250 mg Cyctine 200 mg
B-2 50 mg Gluthaianone 15 mg
B-3 niacinamid 850 mg Choline 650 mg
B-5 750 mg Inositol 250 mg
B-6 200 mg Flavanoids 500 mg
B-12 100 mcg Zinc 35 mg
PABA 50 mg Chromium 100 mcg
Folic Acid 500 mcg Molybdenum 123 mg
Biotin 200 mcg Manganese 5 mg
Vitamin C 3,000 mg Iodine (as kelp) 10 mg
Vitamin E 600 iu Co-Enzyme Q-10 60 mg
Magnesium 1,000 mg DMAE 100 mg
Potassium 100 mg Ginko biloba 120 mg
Calcium 1,000 mg Vitamin D-3 200 iu
Please also keep in mind that there are many other useful substances
not listed above. For example, every day I have a "green drink," an
herbal preparation containing numerous tonic substances like ginseng
and also various forms of algae and chlorophyll extracts. My green
drink makes my body feel very peppy all day, so it certainly
enhances my life and may extend it. It costs about $25,00 a month to
enjoy that. I also use various pure amino acids at times.
Phenylalyanine will make me get more aggressive whenever I am
feeling a little lackluster; this nutrient has also been used as an
effective therapy against depression. Melatonin taken at bedtime
really does help me get to sleep and may have remarkable
life-extending properties. Other amino acids help my body
manufacture growth hormones and I use them from the time I begin
training seriously in spring through the end of the summer triathlon
competition season. Pearson and Shaw's book (see Bibliography) is a
good starting point to begin learning about this remarkably useful
subject.
The Future Of Life Extension
I beg the readers indulgence for a bit of futurology about what
things may look like if the life extension movement continues to
develop.
Right now, a full vitamin and vitamin-like substance life extension
program costs between $50 and $100 dollars per month. However,
pharmaceutical researchers occasionally notice that drugs meant to
treat and cure diseases, when tested on lab animals for safety, make
these animals live quite a bit longer and function better. Though
the FDA doesn't allow any word of this to be printed in official
prescribing data, the word does get around to other researchers, to
gerontologists and eventually to that part of the public that is
eagerly looking for longer life. Today there are numerous people who
routinely take prescription medicines meant to cure a disease they
do not have and plan to take those medicines for the rest of their
long, long life.
These drugs being patented, the tariff gets a lot steeper compared
to taking vitamins. (Since they are naturally-occurring substances,
vitamins can't be patented and therefore, aren't big-profit items.
Perhaps that's one reason the FDA is so covertly opposed to
vitamins.) Right now it would be quite possible to spend many
hundred dollars per month on a life extension program that included
most of these potentially beneficent prescription drugs.
As more of life-extending substances are discovered, the cost of
participating in a maximally effective life extension program will
escalate. However, those who can afford chemically enhanced
functioning will enjoy certain side-benefits. Their productive,
enjoyable life spans may measure well over a century, perhaps
approaching two centuries or more. Some of these substances greatly
improve intelligence so they will become brighter and have faster
reaction times. With more time to accumulate more wisdom and
experience than "short livers" these folks will become wiser, too.
They will have more time to compound their investment assets and
thus will become far more wealthy. They will become an obvious and
recognizable aristocracy. This new upper class will immediately
recognize each other on the street because they will look entirely
different than the short-lived poorer folk and will probably run the
political economic system.
And this new aristocratic society I see coming may be far more
pleasant than the one dominated by the oligarchy we now have
covertly running things. For with greater age and experience does
really come greater wisdom. I have long felt that the biggest
problem with Earth is that we did not live long enough. As George
Bernard Shaw quipped when he was 90 (he lived to 96), "here I am, 90
years old, just getting out of my adolescence and getting some
sense, and my body is falling apart as fast as it can."
Vitamin Program For The Sick
No matter which way you look at it or how well insured you may be
against it, being sick is expensive (not to mention what it does to
one's quality of life), and by far the best thing to do is to
prevent it from happening in the first place. However, most people
do not do anything about their health until forced to by some
painful condition. If you are already sick there are a number of
supplements you can take which have the potential to shorten the
duration and severity of the illness, and hopefully prevent a
recurrence.
The sicker you are, the more supplements you will require; as health
is regained, the dosage and variety of substances can be reduced. In
chronic illness, megadoses of many nutrients are usually beneficial.
Any sick adult should begin a life extension vitamin program unless
they are highly allergic to so many things already that they can not
tolerate many kinds of vitamins as well. In addition to the life
extension program, vitamin C should be taken by the chronically ill
at a dose from 10 to 25 grams daily, depending on the severity of
the condition.
Many people want to know whether or not they should take their
regular food supplements during a fast. On a water fast most
supplements in a hard tablet form will not be broken down at all,
and often can be seen floating by in the colonic viewing tube
looking exactly like it did when you swallowed it. This waste can be
avoided by crushing or chewing (yuck) the tablets, before
swallowing. Encapsulated vitamins usually are absorbed, but if you
want to make sure, open the capsule and dump it in the back of your
mouth before swallowing with water. Powdered vitamins are well
absorbed.
On a water fast the body is much more sensitive to any substance
introduced, so as a general rule it is not a good idea to take more
than one half your regular dose of food supplements. Most fasters do
fine without any supplements. Many people get an upset stomach from
supplements on an empty stomach, and these people should not take
any during a water fast unless they develop symptoms of mineral
deficiencies (usually a pre-existing condition) such as leg cramps
and tremors, these symptoms necessitate powdered or well-chewed-up
mineral supplement. Minerals don't taste too bad to chew, just
chalky.
The same suggestions regarding dosage of supplements for a water
fast are also true for a juice fast or vegetable broth fast. On a
raw food cleansing diet the full dose of supplements should be taken
with meals.
There exists an enormous body of data about vitamins; books and
magazine articles are always touting some new product or explaining
the uses of an old one. If you want to know more about using
ordinary vitamins you'll find leads in the bibliography to guide
your reading. However, there is one "old" vitamin and a few newer
and relatively unknown life extending substances that are so useful
and important to handling illness that I would like to tell you more
about them.
Vitamin C is not a newly discovered vitamin, but was one of the
first ever identified. If you are one of those people that just hate
taking vitamins, and you were for some reason willing to take only
one, vitamin C would be your best choice. Vitamin C would be the
clear winner because it helps enormously with any infection and in
invaluable in tissue healing and rebuilding collagen. If I was going
on a long trip and didn't want to pack a lot of weight, my first
choice would be to insure three to six grams of vitamin C for daily
use when I was healthy (I'd take the optimum dose--ten grams a day--if
weight were no limitation). I'd also carry enough extra C to really
beef up my intake when dealing with an unexpected acute illness or
accident.
When traveling to far away places, exposed to a whole new batch of
organisms, frequently having difficulty finding healthy foods, going
through time zones, losing nights of sleep, it is easy to become
enervated enough to catch a local cold or flu. If I have brought
lots of extra vitamin C with me I know that my immune system will be
able to conquer just about anything--as long as I also stop eating
and can take an enema. I also like to have vitamin C as a part of my
first aid kit because if I experience a laceration, a sprain, broken
bone, or a burn, I can increase my internal intake as well as apply
it liberally directly on the damaged skin surface. Vitamin C can be
put directly in the eye in a dilute solution with distilled water
for infections and injuries, in the ear for ear infections, and in
the nose for sinus infections. If you are using the acid form of C
(ascorbic acid) and it smarts too much, make a more dilute solution,
or switch to the alkaline form of C (calcium ascorbate) which can be
used as a much more concentrated solution without a stinging
sensation. Applied directly on the skin C in solution makes a very
effective substitute for sun screen. It doesn't filter out
ultraviolet, it beefs up the skin to better deal with the insult.
I believe vitamin C can deal with a raging infection such as
pneumonia as well or better than antibiotics. But to do that, C is
going to have to be administered at the maximum dose the body can
process. This is easily discoverable by a 'bowel tolerance test'
which basically means you keep taking two or three grams of C each
hour, (preferably in the powdered, most rapidly assimilable form)
until you get a runny stool (the trots). The loose stool happens
when there is so much C entering the small intestine that it is not
all absorbed, but is instead, passed through to the large intestine.
At that point cut back just enough that the stool is only a little
loose, not runny. At this dose, your blood stream will be as
saturated by vitamin C as you can achieve by oral ingestion.
It can make an important difference which type of vitamin C is taken
because many people are unable to tolerate the acid form of C beyond
8 or 10 grams a day, but they can achieve a therapeutic dose without
discomfort with the alkaline (buffered) vitamin C products such as
calcium ascorbate, sodium ascorbate, or magnesium-potassium
ascorbates.
Vitamin C also speeds up the healing of internal tissues and damaged
connective tissue. Damaged internal tissues might include stomach
ulcers (use the alkaline form of vitamin C only), bladder and kidney
infections (acid form usually best), arthritic disorders with damage
to joints and connective tissue (alkaline form usually best). Sports
injuries heal up a lot faster with a therapeutic dose of vitamin C.
As medicine, vitamin C should be taken at the rate of one or two
grams every two hours (depending on the severity of the condition),
spaced out to avoid unnecessary losses in the urine which happens if
it were taken ten grams at a time. If you regularly use the acid
form of vitamin C powder, which is the cheapest, be sure to use a
straw and dissolve it in water or juice so that the acid does not
dissolve the enamel on your teeth over time.
And this is as good a point as any to mention that just like
broccoli is not broccoli, a vitamin is not necessarily a vitamin.
Vitamins are made by chemical and pharmaceutical companies. To make
this confusion even more interesting, the business names that appear
on vitamin bottles are not the real manufacturers. Bronson's
Pharmaceuticals is a distributor and marketer, not a manufacturer.
The same is true of every vitamin company I know of. These companies
buy bulk product by the barrel or sack; then encapsulate, blend and
roll pills, bottle and label, advertise and make profit. The point
of all this is that some actual vitamin manufacturers produce very
high quality products and others shortcut. Vitamin distributors must
make ethical (or unethical) choices about their suppliers.
It is beyond the scope of this book to be a manual for going into
the vitamin business. However, there are big differences in how
effective vitamins with the same chemical name are and the
differences hinge on who actually brewed them up.
For example, there are at least two quality levels of vitamin C on
the market right now. The pharmaceutical grade is made by Roche or
BASF. Another form, it could be called "the bargain barrel brew," is
made in China. Top quality vitamin C is quite a bit more costly; as
I write this, the price differential is about 40 percent between the
cheap stuff and the best. This can make a big difference in bottle
price and profit. Most of the discount retail vitamin companies use
the Chinese product.
There's more than a price difference. The vitamin C from China
contains measurable levels of lead, cadmium, mercury, iron and other
toxic metals. The FDA allows this slightly contaminated product to
be sold in the US because the Recommended Daily Allowance for
vitamin C is a mere 60 milligrams per day. Taken at that level, the
toxic metals would, as the FDA sees it, do no harm. However, many
users of vitamin C take 100--200 times the RDA. The cheap form of C
would expose them to potentially toxic levels of heavy metal
poisons. The highly refined top-quality product removes impurities
to a virtually undetectable level.
I buy my C from Bronson who ethically gives me the quality stuff. I
know for a fact that the vitamin C sold by Prolongevity is also top
quality. I've had clients who bought cheaper C than Bronson's and
discovered it was not quite like Bronson's in appearance or taste.
More importantly, it did not seem to have the same therapeutic
effect.
The distributors I've mentioned so far, Bronson, NOW, Cooper,
Prolongevity and Vitamin Research Products are all knowledgeable
about differences between actual manufacturers and are ethical,
buying and reselling only high quality products. Other distributors
I believe to be reputable include Twin Labs, Schiff and Plus. I know
there are many other distributors with high ethic levels but I can
not evaluate all their product lines. And as I've mentioned earlier,
businesses come and go rather quickly, but I hope my book will be
read for decades. I do know that I would be very reluctant to buy my
vitamins at a discount department store or supermarket; when
experimenting with new suppliers I have at times been severely
disappointed.
Co-enzyme Q-10. This substance is normally manufactured in the human
body and is also found in minuscule amounts in almost every cell on
Earth. For that reason it is also called "ubiquinone." But this
vitamin has been only recently discovered, so as I write this book
Co-enzyme Q-10 is not widely known.
Q-10 is essential to the functioning of the mitochondria, that part
of the cell that produces energy. With less Q-10 in heart cells, for
example, the heart has less energy and pumps less. The same is true
of the immune system cells, the liver cells, every cell. As we age
the body is able to make less and less Q-10, contributing to the
loss of energy frequently experienced with age, as well as the
diminished effectiveness of the immune system, and a shortened life
span.
Q-10 was first used for its ability to revitalize heart cells. It
was a prescription medicine in Japan. But unlike other drugs used to
stimulate the heart, at any reasonable dose Q-10 has no harmful side
effects. It also tends to give people the extra pick up they are
trying to get out of a cup of coffee. But Q-10 does so by improving
the function of every cell in the body, not by whipping exhausted
adrenals like caffeine does. Q-10 is becoming very popular with
athletes who measure their overall cellular output against known
standards.
Besides acting as a general tonic, when fed to lab animals,
Co-Enzyme Q-10 makes them live 33 to 45 percent longer!
DMAE is another extremely valuable vitamin-like substance that is
not widely known. It is a basic building material that the body uses
to make acetylcholine, the most generalized neurotransmitter in the
body. Small quantities of DMAE are found in fish, but the body
usually makes it in a multi-stage synthesis that starts with the
amino acid choline, arrives at DMAE at about step number three and
ends up finally with acetylcholine.
The body's nerves are wrapped in fatty tissue that should be
saturated with acetylcholine. Every time a nerve impulse is
transmitted from one nerve cell to the next, a molecule of
acetylcholine is consumed. Thus acetylcholine has to be constantly
replaced. As the body ages, levels of acetylcholine surrounding the
nerves drop and in consequence, the nerves begin to deteriorate.
DMAE is rapidly and easily converted into acetylcholine and helps
maintain acetylcholine levels in older people at a youthful level.
When laboratory rats are fed DMAE they solve mazes more rapidly,
remember better, live about 40 percent longer than rats not fed DMAE
and most interestingly, when autopsied, their nervous systems
resemble those of a young rat, without any evidence of the usual
deterioration of aging. Human nervous systems also deteriorate with
age, especially those of people suffering from senility. It is
highly probable that DMAE will do the same thing to us. DMAE also
smoothes out mood swings in humans and seems to help my husband,
Steve, when he has a big writing project. He can keep working
without getting 'writers block', fogged out, or rollercoastering.
DMAE is a little hard to find. Prolongevity and VRP sell it in
powder form. Since the FDA doesn't know any MDR and since the
product is not capped up, the bottle of powder sagely states that
one-quarter teaspoonful contains 333 milligrams. Get the hint? DMAE
tastes a little like sour salt and one-quarter teaspoonful dissolves
readily in water every morning before breakfast, or anytime for that
matter. DMAE is also very inexpensive considering what it does. A
year's supply costs about $20.
Lecithin is a highly tonic and inexpensive food supplement that is
underutilized by many people even though it is easily obtainable in
healthfood stores. It is an emulsifier, breaking fats down into
small separate particles, keeping blood cholesterol emulsified to
prevent arterial deposits. Taken persistently, lecithin partially
and slowly eliminates existing cholesterol deposits from the
circulatory system.
In our cholesterol-frightened society lecithin should be a far more
popular supplement than it currently is. It is easy to take either
as a food in the granular form or when encapsulated. Lecithin
granules have very little flavor and can be added to a home-made
vinegar and oil salad dressing, where they emulsify the oil and make
it blend with the vinegar, thickening the mixture and causing it to
stick to the salad better. Lecithin can also be put in a fruits
smoothie. A scant tablespoon a day is sufficient. Try to buy the
kind of lecithin that has the highest phosphatidyl choline content
because this substance is the second benefit of taking lecithin.
Phosphatidyl choline is another precursor used by the body to build
acetylcholine and helps maintain the nervous system.
Algae. Spirulina or sun dried chlorella are also great food
supplements. Both make many people feel energized, pepped-up. It is
possible to fast on either product and still maintain sufficient
energy levels to take of minimal work responsibilities. Algae
reduces appetite and as a dietary supplement can assist in weight
loss. It contains large amounts of highly-assimilable protein due to
it's high chlorophyll content, as well as a large amount of beta
carotene. It also assists in detoxification of the lymphatic system.
It can be purchased as tablets or powder. Take a heaping teaspoon
daily, or at least six tablets.
Chapter Seven
The Analysis of Disease States: Helping the Body Recover
From the Hygienic Dictionary
Diagnosis. [1] In the United States, making a diagnosis implies that
you are a doctor duly licensed to engage in diagnostic function....
The making of a diagnosis is reserved only for doctors.... The
term "analysis" does not have such an explicit legal definition.
Thus, it is the term of choice of iridologists and the one most
often used by them. It is essential for the survival and promotion
of iridology that those who choose to engage in its practice avoid
naming any disease condition. As we have seen, to do so is to
infringe on rights reserved exclusively for doctors and can land the
iridologist, sooner or later, in a snarl of legal troubles.
It is better for the iridologist to refrain from suggesting to a
person that he has any particular disease, letting such diagnostics
remain the province of licensed doctors. In so doing, the
iridologist will avoid transgressing the law and stepping on the
toes of those who are legally qualified to diagnose.
It is indeed unfortunate that one of the greatest pitfalls awaiting
the iridologist is the temptation to name diseases. The feelings of
satisfaction and power resulting from conferring a name are deeply
rooted in the human psyche. For example, the Bible tells us that
man's first task on Earth was to name the animals, thus giving him
power and dominion over them.
Strong is the temptation to name diseases because nearly everyone
has come to expect that his malady has a name. Patients have come to
expect, and doctors have been trained to make, a diagnosis. . . .
"After all," the patient may reason, "how can you hope to deal with
my condition if you aren't knowledgeable enough to call it by name?"
It is not necessary to name diseases in order to exercise dominion
over them. _Dr. Bernard Jensen, Visions of Health._
In self defense, I must make it very clear from the first word that
hygienists and most other naturopaths of various persuasions, and
especially I myself, have never in the past, never!, and do not now,
diagnose, treat or offer to cure, disease or illness. Diagnosis and
curing are sole, exclusive privileges of certified, duly-licensed
medical doctors and may only be done with a grant of Authority to do
so from the State. Should an unlicensed person diagnose, offer to
treat or attempt to cure disease or illness, they will have
committed a felonious act. With big penalties. Therefore, I do not
do it.
When one of my clients comes to me and says that a medical doctor
says they have some disease or other, I agree that the medical
doctor says they have some disease or other, and I never dare say
that they don't. Or even confirm on my own authority that I think
they do have some disease or other.
What I can legally do for a client is to analyze the state of their
body and its organs, looking for weaknesses and apparent allergies.
I can lawfully state that I think their liver tests weak, the
pancreas appears not to be functioning well in terms of handling
meat digestion, that the kidney is having a hard time of it. I can
say I see a lump sticking out of their body when one is obviously
sticking out of their body; I can not say that lump is cancerous but
I can state that the cells in that lump test overly strong and that
if I myself had a mass of growing cells testing overly strong and if
I believed in the standard medical model, then I would be rushing my
overly strong testing cells to an oncologist. But I don't dare say
the person has a cancer. Or diabetes. Or is getting close to kidney
failure. That is a diagnosis.
To me, diagnosis is a form of magic rite in which the physician
discovers the secret name of the devil that is inhabiting one's body
and then, knowing that secret name, performs the correct rite and
ritual to cast that demon out. I don't know why people are made so
happy knowing the name of their condition! Does it really matter?
Either the body can heal the condition or it can't. If it can, you
will recover (especially if you give the body a little help). If the
body can't heal a condition you will die or live a long time being
miserable. No "scientific" medical magic can do better than that.
By describing a disease in terms of its related organ weaknesses,
instead of pinning a Latin name on it, I am able to assist the body
to achieve recovery in a superior way that the physician rarely
does. By discovering that the body with the lump of overly strong
cells also has a weak spleen, liver and thymus gland, I can take
actions to strengthen the spleen, liver and thymus. If the body can
strengthen its spleen, liver and thymus, then the overly strong
cells miraculously vanish. But of course I and what I did did not
cure any disease. Any improvements that happen I assign (correctly)
to the body's own healing power.
The way I analyze the organic integrity of the body is through a
number of related methods, including the general appearance of the
body, the patient's health history, various clues such as body and
breath odor, skin color and tone, and especially, biokinesiology,
the applied science of muscle testing. Biokinesiology can be used to
test the strength or weakness of specific organs and their function.
A weak latissimus dorsi muscle indicates a weak pancreas, for
example. Specific acupuncture points can be tested in conjunction
with muscle strength to indicate the condition of specific organs or
glands. The strength of the arm's resistance to downward pressure
could be calibrated with a spring scale and precisely gauged, but
experienced practitioners have no need for this bother, because they
are able to pick up subtle changes in the arms resistance that are
not apparent to the testee. Thus muscle testing becomes an art
form, and becomes as effective as the person using it is sensitive
and aware.
Biokinesiology works because every organ and gland in the body is
interconnected with other parts of the body through nerve pathways
and nerve transmissions, which are electrical and can be measured
through muscle testing. This may seem too esoteric for the
"scientific" among you, but acupuncture points and energy
manifestations around and in the body--are now accepted phenomena,
their reality demonstrated by special kinds of photography.
Acupuncturists, who heal by manipulating the body's energy field
with metal needles, are now widely accepted in the western
hemisphere. Kinesiology utilizes the same acupuncture points (and
some others too) for analytic purposes so it is sometimes called
"contact reflex analysis."
I have studied and used Kinesiology for 25 years with the majority
of my clients with very good success. There are some few people who
are very difficult to test because they are either too debilitated,
lack electrical conductivity, or their state of mind is so skeptical
and negative about this type of approach that they put up an
impenetrable mental barrier and/or hold their body so rigidly that I
can hardly determine a response. A skilled can overcome the obstacle
of a weak body that can barely respond, but the person who is
mentally opposed and determined to prove you wrong should not be
tested. If you proceed it is sure to have an unsatisfactory outcome
for all concerned. For even if I manage to accurately analyze the
condition of a skeptical client, they will never believe the
analysis and will not follow suggestions.
The "scientific," open-minded, "reasonable" client can be better
approached using an academic-like discussion based on published
literature that demonstrates how people with similar symptoms and
complaints do very well on a particular dietary regimen and
supplements. This type of person will sometimes follow dietary
recommendations to the last letter, because their scientific
background has trained them to be obedient.
When a client comes to me, I like to take a real good look at who is
sitting in front of me. I take my leisure to find out all about
their history, their complaints, their motivation to change, their
experience with natural healing, their level of personal
responsibility, whether or not they have to work, whether or not
they can take time out to heal, will they fast or take supplements,
do they have sufficient finances to carry a program through to a
successful completion, do they have people closely connected to them
that are strongly opposed to alternative approaches, can they
withstand some discomfort and self-denial, do they have toxic
relationships with other people that are contributing to their
condition, are they willing to read and educate themselves in
greater depth about natural healing, etc. I need to know the answers
to these questions in order to help them choose a program which is
most likely to succeed.
Even though fasting is the most effective method I know of, it is
not for people who are compelled to keep up a work schedule, nor is
it for people who are very ill and do not have anyone to assist them
and supervise them. Nor is it for people who do not understand
fasting and are afraid of it. People who have associates that are
opposed to it, and people who do not have a strongly-functioning
liver or kidneys should not fast either. Seriously ill people that
have been on a meat-heavy diet with lots of addicting substances
need a long runway into a fast so as to not overwhelm their organs
of elimination. Does the person in front of me have an eating
disorder, or an otherwise suicidal approach to fasting, etc. Clearly
fasting is not for everyone, and if I recommend it to the wrong
person, the result will be a bad reputation for a marvelous tool.
Given that many clients can not fast without a lot of preparation,
the majority of my clients start out with a gentle detox program
that takes considerably more time, but works. These gradients have
been outlined under the healing programs for the chronically ill,
acutely ill, etc.
To help rebuild poorly functioning organs, I sometimes use a
specialized group of food supplements called protomorphogens. These
are not readily available to the general public and perhaps should
not be casually purchasable like vitamins, because, as with many
prescription drugs, supervision is usually necessary for their
successful use. If the FDA ever succeeds at making protomorphogens
unavailable to me, I could still have very good results. (At this
time the Canadian authorities do not allow importation of
protomorphogens for resale, though individuals can usually clear
small shipments through Canada Customs if for their own personal
use.) But protomorphogens do facilitate healing and sometimes permit
healing to occur at a lower gradient of handling. Without them a
body might have to fast to heal, with the aid of protomorphogens a
person might be able to get better without fasting. And if
protomorphogens are used (chewed up--ugh!) while fasting, healing is
accelerated.
Protomorphogens are made from freeze-dried, organically-raised
animal organ meats (usually calf or lamb) combined with very
specific vitamins, herbs and other co-factors to potentiate the
effect. I view protomorphogens as containing nutritional
supplementation specific for the rebuilding of the damaged organ.
Doctor Royal Lee, a medical genius who developed protomorphogens
therapy in the 50s and who spent several stints in prison in
exchange for his benevolence and concern for human well-being, also
founded the company that has supplied me with protomorphogens. After
decades of official persecution and denial of the efficacy of
protomorphogens by the power structure, it looks like they are about
to finally have their day. As I write this book cutting-edge medical
research companies are developing therapies using concentrated
animal proteins (protomorphogens) to treat arthritis, multiple
sclerosis, eye inflamations and juvenile diabetes. The researchers
talk as though they are highly praiseworthy for "discovering" this
approach.
Unfortunately, this development is likely to cut two ways. On one
hand, it vindicates Dr. Lee; on the other, when these drug companies
find a way to patent their materials, they may finally succeed at
forcing protomorphogens (currently quite inexpensive) off the
non-prescription market and into the restricted and profitable
province of the MD.
I divide clients into two basic types: simple cases and complex
ones. When I was treating mental illness, occasionally I had a
client who had not been sick for too long. I could usually make this
client well quite easily. But if the person had already become
institutionalized, had been psychotic for many years, had received
much prior treatment, then their case had been made much more
difficult. This sort had a poor prognosis. A very similar situation
exists with physical illnesses. Many people get sick only because
they lack information about how to keep themselves healthy and about
what made them sick. Once they find out the truth, they take my
medicine without complaint and almost inevitably get better very
rapidly. Some of these people can be quite ill when they first come
to me but usually they have not been sick for very long. Their
intention when coming into my office is very positive and have no
counter intentions to getting better. There are no spiritual or
psychological reasons that they deserve to be sick. If this person
had not found me, they almost certainly would have found some other
practitioner who would have made them well. This type of person
honestly feels they are entitled to wellness. And they are.
However, some of the sick are not sick for lack of life-style
information; they suffer from a mental/spiritual malady as well, one
that inevitably preceded their illness by many years. In fact, their
physical ailments are merely reflections of underlying problems.
This patient's life is usually a snarl of upsets, problems, and
guilty secrets. Their key relationships are usually vicious or
unhealthy. Their level of interpersonal honesty may be poor. There
are usually many things about their lives they do not confront and
so, can not change. With this type of case, all the physical healing
in the world will not make them permanently better because the
mental and emotional stresses they live under serve as a constant
source of enervation.
Cases like this usually do not have only one thing wrong with them.
They almost always have been sick for a long time; most have been
what I call "doctor hoppers," confused by contrary diagnoses and
conflicting MD opinions. When I get a case like this I know from the
first that healing is going to be a long process, and a dubious one
at that. On the physical level, their body will only repair one
aspect of their multiple illnesses at a time. Simultaneously, they
must be urged to confront their life on a gentle gradient. There is
usually a lot of backsliding and rollercoastering. The
detoxification process, physical and psychological, can take several
years and must happen on all the levels of their life. This kind of
case sees only gradual improvement interspersed with periods of
worsening that indicate there remains yet another level of mental
unawareness that has to be unraveled.
Few medical doctors or holistic therapists really understand or can
help this kind of case. To do so, the doctor has to be in touch with
their own reactive mind and their own negative, evil impulses (which
virtually all humans have). Few people, including therapists, are
willing to be aware of their own dark side. But when we deny it in
ourselves, we must pretend it doesn't exist in others, and become
its victim instead of conquering it. Anyone who denies that they
have or are influenced by their own darker aspects who seem to be
totally sweet and light, is lying; proof of this is that they still
are here on Earth.
All this generalizing about diagnostic methods and clinical
approaches could go on for chapters and more chapters, and writing
them would be fine if I were teaching a group of health clinicians
that were reading this book to become better practitioners. But I'm
sure most of my readers are far more interested in some complaint of
their own or in the health problem of a loved one, and are intensely
interested in one might go about handling various conditions and
complaints, what types of organ weaknesses are typically associated
with them, and what approaches I usually recommend to encourage
healing. And, most importantly, what kind of success or lack of it
have I had over the past twenty five years, encouraging the healing
of various conditions with hygienic methods.
In the case studies that follow I will mostly report the simpler,
easier-to-fix problems because that is what most people have; still,
many of these involve life-threatening or quality-of-life-destroying
illnesses. I will tell the success story of one very complicated,
long-suffering case that involved multiple levels of psychological
and spiritual handling as well as considerable physical healing.
Arthritis
Some years back my 70 years old mother came from the family
homestead in the wilds of northern British Columbia to visit me at
the Great Oaks School. She had gotten into pathetic physical
condition. Fifteen years previously she had remarried. Tom, her new
husband, had been a gold prospector and general mountain man, a
wonderfully independent and cantankerous cuss, a great hunter and
wood chopper and all around good-natured backwoods homestead
handyman. Tom had tired of solitary log cabin life and to solve his
problem had taken on the care and feeding of a needy widow, my mom.
He began doing the cooking and menu planning. Tom, a little older
than my mother, had no sense about eating but could still shoot
game. Ever since their marriage she had been living on moose meat
stews with potatoes and gravy, white flour bread with jam, black tea
with canned milk, a ritual glass of brandy at bedtime, and almost no
fresh fruit or vegetables.
In her youth, my mother had been a concert pianist; now she had such
large arthritic knobs on all of her knuckles that her hands had
become claws. Though there was still that very same fine upright in
the cabin that I had learned to play as a child, she had long since
given up the piano. Her knees also had large arthritic knobs; this
proud woman with a straight back and long, flowing strides was bent
over, limping along with a cane. She was also 30 pounds overweight
and her blood pressure was a very dangerous 210 over 140, just
asking for a stroke.
Instead of a welcoming feast, the usual greeting offered to a loved
one who has not been seen for a few years, I immediately started her
on a juice fast. I gave her freshly prepared carrot juice (one quart
daily) mixed with wheat grass juice (three ounces daily) plus daily
colonics. She had no previous experience with these techniques but
she gamely accepted everything I threw her way because she knew I
was doing it because I loved her and wanted to see her in better
condition. She also received a daily full body massage with
particular attention to the hand and knees, stimulating the
circulation to the area and speeding the removal of wastes. Every
night her hands and knees were wrapped in warm castor oil compresses
held in place with old sheeting.
I did not use any vitamins or food supplements in her case. I did
give her flavorful herbal teas made of peppermint and chamomile
because she needed the comfort of a hot cupa; but these teas were in
no way medicinal except for her morale.
In three weeks on this program, Grannybelle, as I and my daughters
called her, had no unsightly knobs remaining on either her knuckles
or knees and she could walk and move her fingers without pain within
a normal range of movement. The big payoff for me besides seeing her
look so wonderful (20 years younger and 20 pounds lighter) was to
hear her sit down and treat us to a Beethoven recital. And her blood
pressure was 130 over 90.
Breast Cancer
I have worked with many young women with breast cancer; so many in
fact, that their faces and cases tend to blur. But whenever I think
about them, Kelly inevitably comes to mind because we became such
good friends. Like me, Kelly was an independent-minded back country
Canuck. At the age 26, she received a medical diagnosis of breast
cancer. Kelly had already permitted a lumpectomy and biopsy, but had
studied the statistical outcomes and did not want to treat her
illness with radical mastectomy, radiation and chemotherapy because
she knew her odds of long-term survival without radical medical
treatment were equal to or better than allowing the doctors to do
everything possible. Nor did she want to lose even one of her
breasts. She knew how useful her breasts were because she had
already suckled one child, not to mention their contribution to
one's own self-image as a whole person. I admired Kelly's unusual
independent-mindedness because she comes from a country where
universal health coverage is in place; her insurance would have paid
all the costs had she been willing to accept conventional medicine,
but Canadian national health insurance does not cover alternative
therapy.
Kelly stayed with me for nearly two months as a residential faster,
because she needed to be far from the distractions of a troubled
family life. With financial support from her parents and child-care
from her friends she was able to take time out to give the recovery
of health top priority in her life without worrying about whether
her small son was being well cared for. This peace of mind was also
very important to her recovery.
Analysis with biokinesiology showed a pervasively weak immune
system, including a weak thymus gland, spleen, and an overloaded
lymphatic system. Her liver was weak, but not as weak as it might
have been, because she had become a vegetarian, and had been working
on her health in a haphazard fashion for a few years. Kelly's body
also showed weaknesses in pancreatic and adrenal function as well as
a toxic colon. Most immediately worrisome to her, biokinesiology
testing showed several over-strong testing lumpy areas in the
breasts and over-strong testing lumpy lymph nodes in the armpits.
Cancerous tumors always test overly strong
Kelly's earlier life-style had contributed to her condition in
several ways. She had worked for years in a forestry tree nursery
handling seedling trees treated with highly toxic chemicals. She had
worked as a cook in a logging camp for several seasons, eating too
much meat and greasy food. And she had also spent the usual number
of adolescent and young adult years deeply involved in recreational
drug use and the bad diet that went with it.
Kelly started right in on a rigorous water fast that lasted for one
entire month. She had a colonic every day, plus body work including
reflexology, holding and massage of neurolymphatic and neurovascular
points, and stimulation of acupuncture points related to weak organ
systems and general massage to stimulate overall circulation and
lymphatic drainage. She took protomorphogens to help rebuild her
weakened organs; she took ten grams of vitamin C every day and a
half-dose of life extension vitamin mix in assimilable powdered
form; she drank herbal teas of echinacea and fenugreek seeds and
several ounces of freshly squeezed wheat grass juice every day.
Twice each day she made poultices out of clay and the pulp left over
from making her wheat grass juice, filled an old bra with this
mixture and pressed it to her breast for several hours until the
clay dried. Shortly, I will explain all the measures in some detail.
These physical therapies were accompanied by counseling sessions
dealing with some severe and long-unresolved problems, response
patterns and relationships that triggered her present illness. Her
son's father (Kelly's ex) was suppressive and highly intimidating.
Fearful of him, Kelly seemed unable to successfully extricate
herself from the relationship due to the ongoing contact which
revolved over visitation and care of their son. But Kelly had grit!
While fasting, she confronted these tough issues in her life and
unflinchingly made the necessary decisions. When she returned to
Canada she absolutely decided, without any nagging doubts,
reservations or qualifications, to make any changes necessary to
ensure her survival. Only after having made these hard choices could
she heal.
I one respect, Kelly was a highly unusual faster. Throughout the
entire month on water, Kelly took daily long walks, frequently
stopping to lie down and rest in the sun on the way. She would climb
to or from the top of a very large and steep hill nearby. She never
missed a day, rain or shine.
At the end of her month on water Kelly's remaining breast lumps had
disappeared, the lymphatic system and immune system tested strong,
as well as the liver, pancreas, adrenals, and large intestine. No
areas tested overly strong.
She broke the fast with the same discipline she had conducted it, on
carrot juice, a cup every two hours. After three days on juice she
began a raw food diet with small servings of greens and sprouts well
chewed, interspersed at two hour intervals with fresh juicy fruits.
After about ten days on "rabbit food," she eased into avocados,
cooked vegetables, nuts, seeds, and whole grains and then went home.
As I write this, it is eight years since Kelly's long fast. She
still comes to see me every few years to check out her diet and just
say hello. She has had two more children by a new, and thoroughly
wonderful husband and suckled them both for two years each; her
peaceful rural life centers around this new, happy family and the
big, Organic garden she grows. She religiously takes her life
extension vitamins and keeps her dietary and life-style
indiscretions small and infrequent. She is probably going to live a
long, time.
I consider Kelly's cluster of organ weaknesses very typical of all
cancers regardless of type or location, as well as being typical of
AIDS and other critical infections by organisms that usually reside
in the human body without causing trouble (called "opportunistic").
All these diseases are varieties of immune system failure. All of
these conditions present a similar pattern of immune system
weaknesses. They all center around what I call the "deadly
triangle," comprised of a weak thymus gland, weak spleen, and a weak
liver. The thymus and spleen form the core of the body's immune
system. The weak liver contributes to a highly toxic system that
further weakens the immune system. To top it off, people with cancer
invariably have a poor ability to digest cooked protein (animal or
vegetable) (usually from a weak pancreas unable to make enough
digestive enzymes) and eat too much of it, giving them a very toxic
colon, and an overloaded lymphatic system.
Whenever I analyze someone with this pattern, especially the entire
deadly triangle, I let the person know that if I had those
particular weaknesses I would consider my survival to be at
immediate risk I'd consider it an emergency situation demanding
vigorous attention. It does not matter if they don't yet have a
tumor, or fibroid, or opportunistic infection; if they don't already
have something of that nature they soon will.
Here's yet another example of why I disapprove of diagnosis. By
giving the condition a name like "lymphoma" or "melanoma", "chronic
fatigue syndrome" "Epstein-Barr syndrome" or "AIDS," "systemic yeast
infection", "hepatitis" or what have, people think the doctor then
understands their disease. But the doctor rarely understands that
all these seemingly different diseases are essentially the same
disease--a toxic body with a dysfunctional immune system. What is
relevant is that a person with the deadly triangle must strengthen
their immune system, and their pancreas, and their liver, and
detoxify their body immediately. If these repairs are accomplished
in time, the condition goes away, whatever its Latin name may have
been.
Now, about some of the adjuncts to Kelly's healing. Let me stress
here that had none of these substances or practices been used, she
probably still would have recovered. Perhaps a bit more slowly.
Perhaps a bit less comfortably. Conversely, had Kelly treated her
cancer with every herb, poultice and vitamin known to man but had
neglected fasting and colonics, she might well have died. It has
been wisely said that intelligence may be defined as the ability to
correctly determine differences, similarities, and importances. I
want my readers to be intelligent about understanding the relative
importances of different hygienic treatment and useful supporting
practices.
Echinacea and chaparral leaves, red clover flowers, and fenugreek
seeds are made into medicinal teas that I find very helpful in
detoxification programs, because they all are aggressive blood or
lymph cleansers and boost the immune response. These same teas can
be used to help the body throw off a cold, flu, or other acute
illness but they have a much more powerful effect on a fasting body
than on one that is eating. Echinacea and chaparral are
extraordinarily bitter and may be better accepted if ground up and
encapsulated, or mixed with other teas with pleasant flavors such as
peppermint or lemon grass. These teas should be simmered until they
are at the strongest concentration palatable, drinking three or four
cups of this concentrate a day. If you use echinacea, then chaparral
probably isn't necessary and visa versa. Red clover is another blood
cleanser, perhaps a little less effective but it has a pleasant,
sweet taste and may be better accepted by the squeamish.
If there is lymphatic congestion I always include fenugreek seed tea
brewed at the strength of approximately one tablespoon of seeds to a
quart of water. Expect the tea to be brown, thick and mucilaginous,
with a reasonably pleasant taste reminiscent of maple syrup.
Kelly used poultices of clay and wheat grass pulp on her lumps,
somewhat like the warm castor oil poultices I used on my mother's
arthritic deposits. Poultices not only feel very comforting, but
they have the effect of softening up deposits and tumors so that a
detoxifying, fasting body is more able to re absorb them. Poultices
draw, pulling toxins out through the skin, unburdening the liver.
Clay (freshly-mixed potters clay I purchase from a potters' guild),
mixed with finely chopped or blended young wheat grass (in
emergencies I've even used lawn grasses) makes excellent drawing
poultices. Without clay, I've also used vegetable poultices made of
chopped or blended comfrey leaves, comfrey root, slightly cooked
(barely wilted) cabbage leaves, slightly steamed onion or garlic
(cooked just enough to soften it). These are very effective to
soften tumors, abscesses and ulcers. Aloe poultices are good on
burns. Poultices should be thought of as helpful adjuncts to other,
more powerful healing techniques and not as remedies all by
themselves, except for minor skin problems.
Poultices, to be effective, need to be troweled on half an inch
thick, extending far beyond the effected area, covered with cheese
cloth or rags torn from old cotton sheets so they don't dry out too
fast. Fresh poultices needs to be applied several times daily. They
also need to be left on the body until they do dry. Then poultices
are thrown away, to be followed by another as often as patience will
allow. Do not cover poultices tightly with plastic because if they
don't dry out they won't draw much. The drawing is in the drying.
Sometimes poultices cause a tumor or deposit to be expelled through
the skin rather than being adsorbed, all with rather spectacular pus
and gore. This phenomena is actually beneficial and should be
welcomed because anytime the body can push toxins out through the
skin, the burden on the organs of elimination are lessened.
Wheat grass juice has a powerful anti-tumor effect, is very
perishable, is laborious to make, but is worth the effort because it
contains powerful enzymes and nutrients that help detoxify and heal
when taken internally or applied to the skin. As a last resort with
dying patients who can no longer digest anything taken by mouth I've
implanted wheat grass juice rectally (in a cleansed colon). Some of
them haven't died. You probably can't buy wheat grass juice that
retains much medicinal effect because it needs to be very fresh and
should be drunk within minutes of squeezing. Chilled sharply and
immediately after squeezing it might maintain some potency for an
hour or two. Extracting juice from grass takes a special press that
resembles a meat grinder.
The wheat is grown in transplant or seedling trays in bright light.
I know someone who uses old plastic cafeteria trays for this. The
seed is soaked overnight, spread densely atop a tray, covered
shallowly with fine soil, kept moist but not soggy. When the grass
is about four inches high, begin harvesting by cutting off the
leaves with a scissors and juicing them. If the tray contains
several inches of soil you usually get a second cutting of leaves.
You need to start a new tray every few days; one tray can be cut for
three or four days. (Kulvinskas, 1975)
More wheat grass juice is not better than just enough; three ounces
a day is plenty! It is a very powerful substance! The flavor of
wheat grass juice is so intense that some people have to mix it with
carrot juice to get it down. DO NOT OVERUSE. The energizing effects
of wheat grass can be so powerful that some people make a regular
practice of drinking it. However, I've seen many people who use
wheat grass juice as a tonic become allergic to it much as
antibiotic dependent people do to antibiotics. Better to save wheat
grass for emergencies.
I also have treated my own breast cancers--twice. The first time I
was only 23 years old. One night I noticed that it hurt to sleep the
way I usually did on my left side because there was a hard lump in
my left breast. It was quite large--about the size of a goose egg.
Having just completed RN training two years prior, I had been well
brain washed about my poor prognosis and knew exactly what requisite
actions must taken.
I scheduled a biopsy under anesthetic, so that if the tumor was
malignant they could proceed to full mastectomy without delay. I was
ignorant of any alternative course of action at the time.
I might add that before I grew my first tumor I had been consuming
large amounts of red meat in a mistaken understanding gained in
nursing school that a good diet contained large amounts of animal
protein. In addition to the stress of being a full time psychology
graduate student existing on a very low budget, I was experiencing I
very frustrating relationship with a young man that left me
constantly off center and confused.
A biopsy was promptly performed. The university hospital's SOP
required that three pathologists make an independent decision about
the nature of a tumor before proceeding with radical surgery. Two of
the pathologist agreed that my tumor was malignant, which
represented the required majority vote. But the surgeon removed only
the lump, which he said was well encapsulated and for some reason
did not proceed with a radical mastectomy. These days many surgeons
routinely limit themselves to lumpectomies.
I never did find out why I awakened from general anesthetic with two
breasts, but I have since supposed that due to my tender age the
surgeon was reluctant to disfigure me without at least asking me for
permission, or giving me some time to prepare psychologically. When
I came out of anesthesia he told me that the lump was malignant, and
that he had removed it, and that he needed to do a radical
mastectomy to improve my prognosis over the next few years. He asked
me to think it over, but he signed me up on his surgery list for the
following Monday.
I did think it over and found I was profoundly annoyed at the idea
of being treated like I was just a statistic, so I decided that I
would be unique. I made a firm decision that I would be well and
stay well--and I was for the next fifteen years. The decision healed
me.
When I was 37 I had a recurrence. At the time I had in residence
Ethyl and Marge, the two far-gone breast cancer cases I already told
you about. I also had in residence a young woman with a breast tumor
who had not undergone any medical treatment, not even a lumpectomy.
(I will relate her case in detail shortly.) I was too identified
emotionally with helping these three, overly-empathetic due to my
own history. I found myself taking on their symptoms and their pain.
I went so far into sympathy as to grow back my tumor--just as it had
the first time--a lump mushroomed from nothing to the size of a goose
egg in only three weeks in exactly the same place as the first one.
Just out of curiosity I went in for a needle biopsy. Once again it
was judged to be malignant, and I got the same pressure from the
surgeon for immediate surgery. This time, however, I had an
alternative system of healing that I believed in. So I went home,
continued to care for my very sick residents, and began to work on
myself.
The first thing I had to confront about myself was that I was being
a compassionate fool. I needed to learn how to maintain my own
personal boundaries, and clearly delineate what stuff in my mind and
my body was really mine and what was another's. I needed to apply
certain mental techniques of self-protection known to and practiced
by many healers. I knew beyond doubt that I had developed
sympathetic breast cancer because a similar phenomena had happened
to me before. Once, when I had previously been working on a person
with very severe back pain with hands-on techniques, I suddenly had
the pain, and the client was totally free of it. So I protected
myself when working with sick people. I would wash my hands and arms
thoroughly with cold water, or with water and vinegar after contact.
I would shake off their "energy," have a cold shower, walk bare foot
on the grass, and visualize myself well with intact boundaries.
These prophylaxes had been working for me, but I was particularly
vulnerable to people with breast cancer.
I also began detoxification dieting, took more supplements, and used
acupressure and reflexology as my main lines of attack. My healing
diet consisted of raw food exclusively. I allowed myself fruits (not
sweet fruits) and vegetables (including a lot of raw cabbage because
vegetables in the cabbage family such as cauliflower and broccoli
are known to have a healing effect on cancer), raw almonds, raw
apricot kernels, and some sprouted grains and legumes. I drank
diluted carrot juice, and a chlorophyll drink made up of wheat grass
and barley green and aloe vera juice. I took echinaechia, red
clover, and fenugreek seeds. I worked all the acupuncture points on
my body that strengthen the immune system, including the thymus
gland, lymph nodes, and spleen. I also worked the meridians, and
reflex points for the liver, and large intestine. I massaged the
breast along the natural lines of lymphatic drainage from the area.
Last, and of great importance, I knew that the treatment would work,
and that the tumor would quickly disappear. It did vanish totally in
three months. It would have gone away quicker if I had water fasted,
but I was unable to do this because I needed physical strength to
care for my resident patients and family.
Eighteen years have passed since that episode, and I have had no
further reappearance of breast tumors. At age 55 I still have all my
body parts, and have had no surgery except the original lumpectomy.
Many, viewing my muscles and athletic performance, would say my
health is exceptional but I know my own frailties and make sure I do
not aggravate them. I still have exactly the same organ deficiencies
as other cancer patients and must keep a very short leash on my
lifestyle.
If for some reason I wanted to make my life very short, all I would
have to do would be to abandon my diet, stop taking supplements, eat
red meat and ice cream every day and be unhappy about something.
Incidentally, I have had many residential clients with breast cancer
since then, and have not taken on their symptoms, so I can assume
that I have safely passed that hurdle.
I've helped dozens of cases of simple breast cancer where my
treatment began before the cancer broadly spread. Kelly's case was
not the easiest of this group, nor the hardest. Sometimes there was
lymphatic involvement that the medical doctors had not yet treated
in any way. All but one of my early-onset breast cancer cases
recovered. I believe those are far better results than achieved by
AMA treatment.
Before I crow too much, let me stress that every one of these women
was a good candidate for recovery--under 40 years old, ambulatory and
did not feel very sick. And most importantly, every one of them had
received no other debilitating medical treatment except a needle
biopsy or simple lumpectomy. None of these women had old tumors
(known about for more than six months) and none of the tumors were
enormous (nothing larger than a walnut).
Clearly, this group is not representative of the average breast
cancer case. Hygienic therapy for cancer is a radical idea these
days and tends to attract younger people, or older, desperate people
who have already been through the works. In every one of my simple
cases the tumors were reabsorbed by the body during the thirty days
of water fasting and the client left happy.
Except one. I think I should describe this unsuccessful case, this
"dirty case," so my readers get a more balanced idea of how fearsome
cancer really isn't if the sick person can clearly resolve to get
better and has no problem about achieving wellness.
Marie was an artisan and musician from Seattle who grew up back East
in an upper-middle class dysfunctional family. She was in her late
twenties. She had been sexually abused by an older brother, was
highly reactive, and had never been able to communicate honestly
with anyone except her lesbian lover (maybe, about some things).
Three years prior to coming to see me Marie had been medically
diagnosed as having breast cancer and had been advised to have
immediate surgery. She ignored this advice; Marie never told her
friends, said nothing to her family and tried to conceal it from her
lover because she did not want to disrupt their life together.
On her own, she did begin eating a Macrobiotic diet. In spite of
this diet, the tumor grew, but grew very slowly. After two years the
tumor was discovered by her lover, who after a year of exhausting
and upsetting arguments, forced Marie to seek treatment. Since Marie
adamantly refused to go the conventional medical route, she ended up
on my doorstep as a compromise.
By this time the tumor was the size of a fist and had broken through
the skin of the left breast. It was very ugly, very hard.
Biokinesiology showed the usual deadly triangle and other associated
organ weakneses typical of cancer. Marie began fasting on water with
colonics and poultices and bodywork and counseling and supplements.
At the end of the water fast, Marie looked much healthier, with
clear eyes and clear skin and had a sort of shine about her, but the
tumor had only receded enough for the skin to close over it; it was
still large, and very hard. To fully heal, Marie probably needed at
least two more water fasts of equal length interspersed with a few
months on a raw food diet. But she lacked the personal toughness to
confront another fast in the near future. Nor was she emotionally up
to what she regarded as the deprivation of a long-term raw foods
healing diet.
So I advised her to seek other treatment. Still unwilling to accept
standard medical management of her case, Marie chose to go to the
Philippines to have "psychic surgery." She was excited and
optimistic about this; I was interested myself because I was dubious
about this magical procedure; if Marie went I would have a chance to
see the results (if any) on a person I was very familiar with. Marie
had her tickets and was due to leave in days when her lover, against
Marie's directly-stated wishes, called her parents and informed them
of what was happening.
The parents had known nothing of Marie's cancer and were shocked,
upset, outraged! They had not known Marie was a lesbian, much less
that their daughter was flirting with (from their view) obvious
quackery. Their daughter needed immediate saving and her parents and
brother (the one who had abused her) flew to Oregon and surprisingly
appeared the next day in a state of violent rage. They threatened
lawsuits, police, incarceration, they threatened to have their
daughter civilly committed as unable to take care of herself. They
thought everything Marie had done for the last three years was my
fault. I was lucky to stay out of jail. Of course, all of this was
why Marie had not told them in the first place; she had wanted to
avoid this kind of a scene.
Marie did not have enough personal integrity to withstand the
domination of her immediate family. They put her in a hospital,
where Marie had a radical mastectomy, chemotherapy and radiation.
Assured that they had done everything that should have been done,
the self-righteous parents went back home. Marie never recovered
from chemotherapy and radiation. She died in the hospital surrounded
by her lesbian friends who took dedicated, ever-so-sympathetic turns
maintaining an emotional round-the-clock vigil.
Marie's death was partly my fault. She was an early case of mine. At
the time I did not yet understand the total effect of lack of ethics
and irresponsibility on illness. Had Marie really wanted to live in
the first place, she would have sought treatment three years
earlier. In our counseling sessions she always evaded this question
and I had not been wise enough to pin her down with my knee on her
chest and make her answer up. Marie had too many secrets from
everybody and was never fully honest in any of her relationships,
including with me. I think she only came to Great Oaks at her
lover's insistence and to the day she died was trying to pretend
that nothing was wrong.
All Marie really wanted from her life was to be loved and have a lot
of loving attention. In the end, her dramatic death scene gave her
that, which is probably why she manifested cancer and kept it and
eventually, died from it.
The name for this game is "secondary gain." A lot of sick people are
playing it. Their illness lets them win their deepest desire; they
get love, attention, revenge, sympathy, complete service, pampering,
create guilt in others. When sick people receive too much secondary
gain they never get well.
One of the hardest things about being a healer is that one
accumulates an ever-enlarging series of dirty, failed cases like
this one. It is depressing and makes a person want to quit
doctoring. Whenever I get involved with a case I really want them to
get better. My life is put entirely out of joint for several months
dealing with a residential faster. My schedule is disrupted; my
family life suffers; my personal health suffers. No amount of mere
money could pay for this. And then some of these people go and waste
all my help to accomplish some discreditable secret agenda that they
have never really admitted to themselves or others.
Constant Complaints
Alice was a middle-aged woman who couldn't understand why she had
always felt tired, even when she was young. Her life had been this
way ever since she could remember. Most puzzling to her was why her
life was so Job-like. She did everything the proper way. Doing
things correctly was important to her, and fitted her Puritan
background. Alice supported all the right causes, did good works,
was active in a Unitarian church and bought all her food at the
healthfood store--and made sure it was organically grown.
But in spite of Alice's righteous living, her existence was a
treadmill of constant, minor complaints. She was constantly
exhausted, so much so she had difficulty getting up in the morning
and feared she might have chronic fatigue syndrome (whatever that
is). Alice suffered bouts of depression over thoughts like these,
and had many acute illnesses like colds that hung on interminably
and would not go away. She had a constant post-nasal drip. Though
she enjoyed life, her body was a millstone around her neck.
I've had a lot of clients exactly like Alice. Sometimes they
complain of headaches; sometimes constant yeast or bladder
infections. Whatever the complaints, the symptoms are rarely severe
enough to classify themselves as someone who is seriously ill, but
their symptoms rarely go away and they almost never feel good.
Medical doctors rarely find anything wrong with them, though they
will frequently prescribe an antibiotic to treat a somewhat constant
infection, or an antihistamine for sinus symptoms. Getting a new
prescription drug makes the complaint go away for a short time until
their resistance is lowered again and the very same complaint
returns. These people frequently depend on over the counter pills
and are routinely prescribed sleeping remedies and antidepressants.
If instead of this route they will but take my medicine they are
usually easy to fix and afterwards are amazed that it was all that
simple and that so much of their life has been less than it could
have been.
Alice had been through the medical doctor route. She had become
quite familiar with antibiotics for her colds and flu, and also took
synthetic thyroid hormone--the doctor had diagnosed her fatigue as
being caused by an underactive thyroid, which was partly correct--but
the thyroid medication didn't give her much more energy. Alice had
been supporting this medical doctor in grand style for over thirty
years but never obtained the relief she sought.
I put Alice through my usual two hour first-time-visit thorough
analysis. For two weeks before coming to see me she had saved tiny
samples of everything she ate, wrapped them in plastic film,
carefully labeled, and put them in the freezer. Along with these
food samples and a typed list of all these foods, she brought a big
box full of her condiments, herb teas, vitamins, spices,
prescription medications, over the counter drugs, oils, grains,
breads, crackers and small samples of her usual fresh vegetables and
fruits. Even her water. Her entire kitchen! By biokinesiology we
proceeded to test all of her foods for allergic reactions. I also
tested the integrity of her organs and glands and in the process,
got a detailed medical history and list of her complaints.
Alice had exhausted adrenals, and they probably had been that way
for thirty years. Her pancreas was now too weak to digest the
legumes that made up a large part of her vegetarian diet. She was
allergic to wheat, soy, and dairy products and had especially been
eating dairy in the mistaken notion that it was necessary to keep up
her protein intake. Really very typical. So many health food store
shoppers these days mistakenly believe that, because they are
vegetarian and do not eat meat, they especially need to boost their
protein intake with dairy and soy. Unfortunately, so many North
Americans are highly allergic to dairy and unfortunately, soy
products are as hard or harder to digest than cooked meats.
Alice was especially shocked to discover that she was allergic to
such foods as cabbage family vegetables, alfalfa sprouts and citrus.
Most people don't think that anyone could be allergic to something
as healthy as alfalfa sprouts. The doctor was right about one thing;
her thyroid was underperforming. He had not noticed that her heart
was weak.
Medical doctors rarely discover an organ weakness until that organ
actually begins to catastrophically fail. A busy honest doctor will
usually tell the complaining patient there is nothing wrong with
them: go home, take two aspirin, accept the fact that your body is
not perfect and don't worry about it. A hungry doctor will be
delighted to perform countless lab tests, seeking any possible
reason for the complaint. This can go on as long as the patient has
money or as long as the insurance company will pay. They rarely find
anything "wrong" and the patient is far better off if the doctor
doesn't discover something "serious" to treat because their
treatment may carry with it consequences far more severe than the
complaint. For example, I have seen dozens of people whose lives
were virtually ruined after surgical treatment for chronic back
pain.
Biokinesiology is actually a far more sensitive system of analysis
than lab tests. It picks up weaknesses at a very early stage so
total organ failure can be prevented. Rarely will any of the organ
weaknesses I discover be confirmed by a medical doctor. First I put
Alice on a six week cleanse. She did one week on fresh, raw food;
one week on dilute carrot juice with some green leafy vegetables
juice too; one week on water fasting; and then she repeated the
series. After six weeks of detoxification, I gave Alice a life
extension megavitamin formula, discovered she could not handle the
acid form of vitamin C (that she had already been taking) and had
her start on protomorphogens to rebuild her weakened endocrine
system, her exhausted adrenals and weak pancreas. She also began
taking pancreatic enzymes when she ate vegetable protein. She was
put on a maintenance diet that eliminated foods she was allergic to;
the diet primarily consisted of whole grains, nuts, cooked and raw
vegetables, and raw fruits. On her maintenance diet Alice had a
profound resurgence of energy and rediscovered a sense of well-being
she had not known for decades. She began to feel like she had when
she was a child. Her constant sinus drip was gone. She was able to
stop taking synthetic thyroid hormones and instead, supported her
endocrine system with protomorphogens.
A Rampaging Infection
At the age of 40, John, an old bohemian client of mine, came into a
moderate inheritance and went "native" in the Fiji Islands in the
South Pacific. He spent about four months hanging out with the
locals. Life there was so much fun that John completely forgot that
his body was actually rather delicate, that many of his organs were
weak, and that to feel good, he had to live a fairly simon-pure
life.
But the jovial, accepting, devil-may-care Fijians enjoyed a constant
party, even more so because John's money allowed the Fijians to
manifest powerful, tropical, home-grown strains of recreational
herbs to smoke in abundance, beer and rum and worse, the Fijians
(and John) constantly used a very toxic though only mildly-euphoric
narcotic called kava, something Europeans usually have no genetic
resistance to. The Fijians (and John) also ate a lot of
freshly-caught fish fried in grease, well-salted, and huge,
brain-numbing bowls of greasy starches, foods that they call i'coi,
or "real food" as opposed to things like fruit and vegetables that
aren't real food because they don't knock you to the floor for hours
trying to digest them in a somnambulant doze.
John miraculously kept up with this party for a few months and then,
while scuba diving, got some small coral scratches on his leg. These
got infected. The infections got worse. Soon he had several huge,
suppurating, ulcerous sores on his legs and worse, the infections
became systemic and began spreading rapidly. He was running a fever
and was in considerable pain. So John booked an emergency ticket
home and fled to find Doctor Isabelle. When I met his plane he was
rolled out in a wheelchair, unable to walk because of pain and
swelling in his legs.
John was violently opposed to ordinary medical treatment; he
especially would not have taken antibiotics even if he had died
without them because previous courses of antibiotics had been the
precipitant of life-threatening conditions that first brought John
to my care. John used his last strength to get to me because he knew
that had a hospital gotten its clutches on him the medical doctors
would have done exactly as they pleased.
I gave John a colonic, a gentle, mental spanking, and put him to bed
without any supper. He started water fasting and did colonics every
day. He began gobbling vitamin C (as calcium ascorbate) a few grams
every hour. I put huge poultices on his sores made of clay and
chopped lawn grass (we needed a week or so before a tray of wheat
grass would be ready). John's sores were amazing. Every day a new
one seemed to appear on a different part of the body. The old ones
kept getting bigger and deeper. The largest original ones were about
three inches in diameter, smelled horribly and had almost eaten the
flesh down to the bone. His pain was severe; there was no position
John could assume that didn't irritate one sore or another, and it
was a good thing my house was remote because John frequently
relieved his pain by screaming. John was never delirious, but he was
always original. He did not have to scream, but enjoyed its relief
and howled quite dramatically. I wore earplugs.
After about two weeks of water fasting, John counted up the total of
his sores. There were forty three. Seven or eight of them were
enormous, two or three inches in diameter and well into the flesh,
but the last ones to appear were shallow, small and stayed small.
After that point no more new ones showed up and the body began to
make visible headway against the infection. Very slowly and then
more and more rapidly, the sores began to close up and heal from the
edges. John's fever began to drop. And he had less pain. I should
mention that John brought an extremely virulent and aggressive
pathogenic organism into our house to which we Americans had no
resistance. Both my husband and I were attacked where the skin had
been broken. However, unlike John, in our cases, our healthy bodies
immediately walled-off the organism and the small, reddened
pustules, though painful, did not grow and within a week, had been
conquered by our immune systems. And after that we had an immunity.
After about three weeks of his fasting we were thoroughly tired of
hearing John's cathartic howls, tired of nursing a sick person. We
needed a break. John at this point could walk a bit and was feeling
a lot better. John had previously water fasted for 30 days and knew
the drill very well. So we stocked up the vitamin C bottle by his
bed and went to town for the weekend to stay in a motel and see a
movie. As they say in the Canadian backwoods, we were bushed.
John had promised to be good. But as soon as we left he decided that
since he felt so very much better, he could break his fast. He knew
how to do this and fortunately for him, (it was very much premature
for John to eat) did it more or less correctly, only eating small
quantities of raw fruits and vegetables. But by the time we got back
home three days later, John had relapsed. The pain was rapidly
getting much worse; the sores were growing again and a few small new
ones appeared. Dr. Isabelle again took away his food and gave him
another verbal spanking a little more severe than the one he'd had a
few weeks earlier and put him to bed again without his supper.
After two more weeks on water, John had gained a great deal on the
sores. They were filling in and weren't oozing pus, looked clean and
the new forming meat looked a healthy pink instead of purple-black.
But John had been very slender to start with and by now he was
getting near the end of his food reserves. He probably couldn't have
fasted on water for more than one more week without starvation
beginning. But this time, when he broke his fast, it was under close
supervision. I gave him dilute juice only, introduced other
sustenance very cautiously and made absolutely sure that
reintroducing nourishment would not permit the organism to gain.
This time it didn't. John's own immune system, beefed up by fasting,
had conquered a virulent organism that could have easily killed him.
Before the era of antibiotics, before immunizations to the common
childhood illnesses, people frequently died of infections as
virulent as the one that attacked John. They usually died because
they "ate to keep up their strength." Most of these deaths were
unnecessary, caused by ignorance and poor nursing care. For example,
standard medical treatment for typhoid fever used to consist of
spoon-fed milk--sure to kill all but the strongest constitution. Even
without the assistance of massive doses of vitamin C, if people
would but fast away infections they could cure themselves of almost
all of them with little danger, without the side effects of
antibiotics or creating mutated antibiotic-resistant strains of
bacteria.
Dr. John Tilden, a hygienist who practiced in the '20s, before the
era of antibiotics, routinely fasted patients with infectious
illnesses. Supporting the sick body with wise nursing, he routinely
healed scarlet fever, whopping cough, typhoid, typhus, pneumonia,
peritonitis, Rocky Mountain fever, tuberculosis, gonorrhea,
syphilis, cholera, and rheumatic fever. The one common infection he
could not cure was diphtheria involving the throat. (Tilden,
Impaired Health, Vol. II).
Recently, medical gerontologists have discovered another reason that
fasting heals infections. One body function that deteriorates during
the aging process is the production of growth hormone so the effects
of growth hormone have been studied. This hormone also stimulates
the body to heal wounds and burns, repair broken bones, generally
replace any tissues that have been destroyed and, growth hormone
stimulates the immune response. Growth hormone also maintains muscle
tone and its presence generally slows the aging process.
Growth hormone might make a wonderful life-extension supplement; on
it a middle-aged person might readily maintain the muscle tone of
youth while slowing aging in general. Unfortunately, growth hormone
cannot at this time be inexpensively synthesized and is still far
too costly to be used therapeutically except to prevent dwarfism.
However, any technique that encourages a body to produce more of
this hormone would be of great interest to life extensionists.
The body only produces growth hormone at certain times and only when
certain nutrients are present in the blood. Gerontologists call
these nutrients "precursors." The precursors are two essential amino
acids, argenine and ornithine and certain vitamins such as C and B6.
But having the precursors present is not enough. Growth hormone is
only manufactured under certain, specific circumstances: for about
one hour immediately after going to sleep and then only if the blood
supply is rich with argenine and ornithine but contains few other
amino acids; it is also manufactured during heavy aerobic exercise
that goes on for more than thirty minutes; and growth hormone is
produced at an accelerated rate when fasting. (Pearson and Shaw,
1983). I did not know this when I was fasting John, but now, I would
give argenine and ornithine to someone with a serious infection as
well as massive quantities of vitamin C.
Chronic Back Pain
Barry was a carpenter who couldn't afford to lose work because he
was unable to bend or twist or lift. He frequently had bouts of
severe back pain that made working almost impossible. Upon analysis
by biokinesiology I found that he had a major problem with large
intestine weakness and secondarily, adrenal weakness.
Constipation frequently causes back pain. The muscles of the back
have nerve pathway connections to the large intestines; weakness in
the intestine causes weakness of the back and makes it prone to
injury. But the problem is the intestine, not the back. And the only
way to make the back stay better is to heal the intestine. Many
athletes have very similar problems. For example, they get knee
injuries and think there is something wrong with their knee. Or they
get shoulder injuries and think their shoulder is weak. These people
are only half right. Yes, their knee or their shoulder is weak. But
it could become strong and almost uninjurable if the underlying
cause of the weakness is corrected.
The knee for example, has nerve pathway connections to the adrenal
glands and kidneys. The shoulder has similar connections to the
thyroid. The foot is weakened by the bladder. The treatment should
first be on the weakened gland or organ and secondarily, on the
damaged muscle tissue. I have solved numerous sports-related knee
problems with protomorphogens for the adrenals and elimination of
food allergies that make the adrenals work overtime. I have fixed
bad shoulders by rebuilding the thyroid.
In Barry's case, it was the intestine. I asked him about his bowel
function and he said that he was never constipated, had "a daily
bowel movement without a lot of straining." But having given some
6,000 colonics, I knew better. There should have been no straining;
Barry was trying very hard to be regular--he should not have had to
effort. Fortunately, it struck him as true that he needed to
detoxify and I managed to convince him to water fast. He probably
figured, why not since he couldn't work anyway. Barry was a tall,
skinny man to start with and you would think he hardly carried any
fat at all, but he fasted on water for 30 days, receiving a colonic
every day, while I did bodywork on his damaged back. He sure was
constipated and couldn't deny the evidence that floated by through
the sight tube of the colonic machine. By the end of the fast his
colon was fairly repaired and free of old fecal material. And Barry
had become a tall, gaunt-looking guy who had lost about 20 pounds
you wouldn't think he had to spare.
After a few weeks of careful weaning back on to food, Barry felt
pretty good, terrific even. He had no back pain and found out for
the first time what not being constipated meant. It no longer took
"not very much effort" to move his bowels; they moved themselves.
That was ten years ago. A few months ago, Barry looked me up, just
to say thanks and to let me know that he had not had any more back
problems and had generally felt good because he had more or less
stayed on the improved diet I had instructed him about during his
fast.
Painful Menstruation
Elsie was twenty. She came to see me because I had helped Elsie's
mother overcome breast cancer many years earlier. Elsie began to
have very painful periods with profuse bleeding and abdominal pain.
Her nutrition had been generally good because her mother couldn't
survive on the average American diet and had long ago converted her
family to vegetarianism. And like her mother, Elsie had been taking
vitamins for many years.
A medical doctor diagnosed Elsie as having endometriosis, meaning,
the lining of her uterus had migrated to the fallopian tubes, where
it continued to bleed regularly into the abdominal cavity, following
the same hormonal cycle as the endometritial tissue that lines the
uterus. The doctor offered to try hormonal manipulation and if this
proved unsuccessful, offered a hysterectomy. That would certainly
eliminate the symptoms!
But Elsie did not wish to eliminate her ability to have children and
preferred not to risk throwing her hormones off balance. So she came
to me. My analysis showed that she had weak ovaries and weak uterus.
These were secondary to a toxic colon, toxic because she had a weak
gall bladder and weak pancreas that reduced her digestive capacity
and turned her improperly combined Organic, vegetarian legume-rich
diet into toxemia. Checking her foods for allergies I discovered the
normal pattern: Elsie was intolerant to dairy, wheat, eggs, corn,
soy and concentrated sugars.
Being no stranger to fasting (her mother had fasted at length ten
years previously) Elsie undertook a 30 day cleanse on vegetable
juice with daily enemas, taking vitamins in powdered form. After the
fast I put her on protomorphogens for her reproductive organs and
pancreas. The gall bladder had healed by itself during fasting--gall
bladders usually heal easily. Her maintenance diet included using
pancreatic enzyme supplements when eating vegetable proteins and
Elsie eliminated most fats so her gall bladder would not be
stressed. The fasting also overcame her allergic reactions to corn
and wheat but she was still unable to handle soy products, eggs or
dairy. After six months Elsie no longer needed protomorphogens, had
no abdominal pain and her periods were normal.
You may well be wondering how or why detoxification of the bowels
allowed the body to repair the uterus. The large intestine is a sort
of nest that cradles the reproductive organs, including the ovaries,
uterus, and in the case of the male, the prostate gland. A toxic
colon is like having one rotten apple in a basket, it contaminates
the whole batch. Many problems in the abdominal area are caused by a
toxic colon, including chronic back pain, ovarian cysts,
infertility, birth abnormalities, bladder infections and bladder
cancer, painful menstruation, fibroids and other benign growths as
well as malignant ones, and prostatitis or prostate cancer. Detoxing
the body and cleaning out the colon should be a part of the healing
of all of these conditions.
Irritable Bowels
Some peoples' lives don't run smoothly. Jeanne's certainly didn't.
She was abandoned to raise three little kids on welfare. Her college
diploma turned out to be useless. Jeanne used to help me at Great
Oaks in exchange for treatment. During those early years she had
done a 30 day juice fast with colonics. Twenty years later at age
60, having survived three children's growing up, surviving the
profound, enduring loss of one who died as an adult, after starting
up and running a small business that for many years barely paid its
way, and experiencing an uninsured fire that took her house, she
began to develop abdominal pains the doctors named "irritable bowel
syndrome" or "colitis." The MD offered antibiotics and
antispasmodics but Jeanne had no insurance, the remedies were
unaffordable. She also retained considerable affinity for natural
medicine.
Prior to these symptoms her diet had been vegetarian, and had
included large quantities of raw fruits and vegetables and whole
grains. But the bran in bread was irritating to her bowels, she
could no longer digest raw vegetables or most raw fruit.
Jeanne's vital force was low; her healing took time. She started on
a long fast supported by powdered vitamins, vegetable broth and herb
teas, but after three weeks was too weak to do her own enemas at
home and could not shop for vegetables to cook into broth. So she
had to add one small serving of cooked vegetable per day, usually
broccoli or steamed kale. This lasted for one more week but Jeanne,
having no financial reserves, had to return to work, and needed to
regain energy quickly. Though not totally healed, she progressed to
a maintenance diet of cooked grains and vegetables and food
supplements, very much like a Macrobiotic diet. She felt better for
awhile but wore down again after another stressful year.
Her abdominal pains gradually returned though this time she noticed
they were closely associated with her stresses. About one year after
ending her first fast, as soon as she could arrange to take time
off, she began another. This time to avoid extreme weakness, she
took vegetable broth from the outset, as well as small amounts of
carrot juice and one small serving of cooked vegetable a day for
three weeks. Again, this rest allowed the digestive tract to heal
and the pain went away. She returned to her Macrobiotic diet with
selected raw foods that she could now handle without irritating her
bowel.
She was now healthier then she had been in many years. With improved
energy and a more positive attitude, Jeanne returned to University
at age 65 and obtained a teaching certificate. Now she is making
good money, doing work she enjoys for the first time in 35 years. I
hope she has a long and happy life. She is entitled to one!
A Collection of Gallbladders
Gallbladder cases are rather ho-hum to me; they are quick to respond
to hygienic treatment and easy to resolve. I've fixed lots of them.
But an inflamed gallbladder is in no way ho-hum to the person
afflicted with it. I've been frequently told that there are no worse
pains a body can create than an inflamed gallbladder or the
sensations accompanying the passing of a gall stone. I hear from
kidney patients that passing a kidney stone is worse but I've never
had a patient who experienced both kinds of stones to give me an
honest comparative evaluation.
The only thing dangerous about simple gallbladder problems is
ignoring them (between the bouts of severe pain they can cause)
because then the inflamed gallbladder can involve the liver. I
already told the story of how my own mother lost half her liver this
way.
The condition is usually caused by a combination of hereditary
tendency, general toxemia, and/or a high-fat diet, especially one
high in animal fats. The liver makes bile that is stored in the
gallbladder, to be released on demand into the small intestine to
digest fat. A toxic, overloaded liver makes irritating
sediment-containing bile that inflames the gallbladder and forms
stones. A high-fat diet forces the liver to make even more of this
irritant.
A toxic, overloaded, inflamed, blocked gallbladder is capable of
causing an enormous array of symptoms that can seem to have no
connection at all to their cause. In part these same symptoms are
caused by a toxic, constipated colon that, in part, got that way
because of poor fat digestion over a long time. These symptoms
include: severe back pain; headache; bloating; burping; nausea;
insomnia; intestinal gas; generalized aches and pains.
Medical doctors used to remove a troublesome gallbladder without
hesitation; it was an organ they considered to be highly
dispensable. Without one, the bile duct takes over as a bladder but
its capacity is much smaller so the person's ability to digest fats
has been permanently crippled, leading to increased toxemia and
earlier aging if fats are not eliminated from the diet. These days
the medicos have a new, less invasive procedure to eliminate stones;
they are vibrated and broken-up by ultrasonics without major
surgery. Inflamed gallbladders are usually removed because
gallbladder inflammations resist treatment by antibiotics.
There are several very effective natural gallbladder remedies. The
best is a three week fast, taking the juice of one or two lemons
every day, along with colonics. The lemon juice tends to clear the
bile duct. The fast allows the gallbladder to heal from
inflammation. In cases that aren't too severe I have had very good
results simply eliminating fats from the diet and using a food
supplement derived from beet tops called AF Betafood. However, in
all these cases, once the gallbladder is no longer "acting up," the
person must stay on a low fat diet. Any fats they do eat must be
vegetable and in small quantities.
By healing their gallbladders and cleansing their colons, several of
my clients have resolved severe, debilitating back pain, pain so
severe that the suffers were becoming bedridden. Medical doctors
don't associate gallbladder disease with back pain.
The Frightening Heart
Heart disease is one of the major causes of death among North
Americans. It evokes images of resuscitation, of desperate races
against time, trying to restart an arrested heart before the brain
dies. It makes people think of horribly expensive surgery, last
wills and testaments, terrible, paralyzing pain. Heart disease is a
great profit center for the medical profession.
Most heart problems are very easy to fix by holistic approaches,
even many hereditary weaknesses and malfunctions can be healed, if
the work is done before too much organic damage occurs. But it
rarely is easy to get the people to take the necessary medicine;
everything in their lives must change--and fast.
First of all, people with heart problems must rapidly reach and
maintain normal weight. This can be done by fasting or by dietary
change, usually by eliminating all fats, sugars and refined
starches. Alcohol and tobacco must instantly and forever become only
past memories. It is almost as essential to eliminate flesh protein
foods and dairy. Should that prove entirely too painful, fish in
small quantities and only one or two times a week is tolerable.
For starters, a long fast, especially one involving lots of bed
rest, is ideal. This gives the heart a chance to heal while the body
weight is adjusted. A period of intense rest even without water
fasting will accomplish almost as much. Even someone with the
potential for heart disease who has not yet had a heart attack would
be well-served to spend a month in bed, losing weight on juice, or
sitting in a rocker on the porch eating only raw foods. After the
weight is down to normal or close to normal and the heart tests
stronger, an exercise program should be started.
Back to Full Books
|