When we settle on a solution we have simultaneously chosen what we
consider the real, underlying cause of the problem. If our chosen reason was thereal reason. then our solution results in a real cure. If we picked wrongly, ourattempt at solution may result in no cure, or create a worse situation than we hadbefore. The American Medical Association style of medicine (a philosophy I will
henceforth call allopathic) has a model that explains the causes of illness. Itsuggests that anyone who is sick is a victim. Either they were attacked by a “bad”organism—virus, bacteria, yeast, pollen, cancer cell, etc.—or they have a “bad”organ—liver, kidney, gall bladder, even brain. Or, the victim may also have beencursed by bad genes. In any case, the cause of the disease is not the person andthe person is neither responsible for creating their own complaint nor is the victimcapable of making it go away. This institutionalized irresponsibility seems usefulfor both parties to the illness, doctor and patient. The patient is not required to doanything about their complaint except pay (a lot) and obediently follow theinstructions of the doctor, submitting unquestioningly to their drugs and surgeries.The physician then acquires a role of being considered vital to the survival ofothers and thus obtains great status, prestige, authority, and financial
remuneration. Perhaps because the sick person is seen to have been victimized, and it is
logically impossible to consider a victimizer as anything but something evil, thephysician’s cure is often violent, confrontational. Powerful poisons are used torejigger body chemistry or to arrest the multiplication of disease bacteria or tosuppress symptoms; if it is possible to sustain life without them, “bad,” poorly-functioning organs are cut out. I’ve had a lot of trouble with the medical profession. Over the years doctors
have made attempts to put me in jail and keep me in fear. But they never stoppedme. When I’ve had a client die there has been an almost inevitable coroner’sinvestigation, complete with detectives and the sheriff. Fortunately, I practice inrural Oregon, where the local people have a deeply-held belief in individual libertyand where the authorities know they would have had a very hard time finding ajury to convict me. Had I chosen to practice with a high profile and had I locatedGreat Oaks School of Health in a major market area where the physicians wereable to charge top dollar, I probably would have spent years behind bars as didother heroes of my profession such as Linda Hazzard and Royal Lee. So I have acquired an uncomplimentary attitude about medical doctors, a
viewpoint I am going to share with you ungently, despite the fact that doing so willalienate some of my readers. But I do so because most Americans are entirelyenthralled by doctors, and this doctor-god worship kills a lot of them. However, before I get started on the medicos, let me state that one area exists
where I do have fundamental admiration for allopathic medicine. This is itshandling of trauma. I agree that a body can become the genuine victim of fastmoving bullets. It can be innocently cut, smashed, burned, crushed and broken.Trauma are not diseases and modern medicine has become quite skilled at puttingtraumatized bodies back together. Genetic abnormality may be anotherundesirable physical condition that is beyond the purview of natural medicine.However, the expression of contra-survival genetics can often be controlled by
nutrition. And the expression of poor genetics often results from poor nutrition,
and thus is similar to a degenerative disease condition, and thus is well within thescope of natural medicine. Today’s suffering American public is firmly in the AMA’s grip. People have
been effectively prevented from learning much about medical alternatives, havebeen virtually brainwashed by clever media management that portrays othermedical models as dangerous and/or ineffective. Legislation influenced by theallopathic doctors’ union, the American Medical Association, severely limits orprohibits the practice of holistic health. People are repeatedly directed by thosewith authority to an allopathic doctor whenever they have a health problem,question or confusion. Other types of healers are considered to be at bestharmless as long as they confine themselves to minor complaints; at worst, whennaturopaths, hygienists, or homeopaths seek to treat serious disease conditionsthey are called quacks, accused of unlicensed practice of medicine and if theypersist or develop a broad, successful, high-profile and (this is the very worst)profitable practice, they are frequently jailed. Even licensed MDs are crushed by the authorities if they offer nonstandard
treatments. So when anyone seeks an alternative health approach it is usuallybecause their complaint had failed to vanish after consulting a whole series ofallopathic doctors. This highly unfortunate kind of sufferer not only has adegenerative condition to rectify, they may have been further damaged by harshmedical treatments and additionally, they have a considerable amount ofbrainwashing to overcome. The AMA has succeeded at making their influence over information and media
so pervasive that most people do not even realize that the doctors’ union is thesource of their medical outlook. Whenever an American complains of somemalady, a concerned and honestly caring friend will demand to know have theyyet consulted a medical doctor. Failure to do so on one’s own behalf isconsidered highly irresponsible. Concerned relatives of seriously ill adults who
decline standard medical therapy may, with a great show of self-righteousness,
have the sick person judged mentally incompetent so that treatment can be forcedupon them. When a parent fails to seek standard medical treatment for their child,the adult may well be found guilty of criminal negligence, raising the interestingissue of who “owns” the child, the parents or the State. It is perfectly acceptable to die while under conventional medical care. Happens all the time, in fact. But holistic alternatives are represented as stupidlyrisky, especially for serious conditions such as cancer. People with cancer see nochoice but to do chemotherapy, radiation, and radical surgery because this is thecurrent allopathic medical approach. On some level people may know that theseremedies are highly dangerous but they have been told by their attendingoncologist that violent therapies are their only hope of survival, however poor thatmay be. If a cancer victim doesn’t proceed immediately with such treatment theirofficial prognosis becomes worse by the hour. Such scare tactics are commonamongst the medical profession, and they leave the recipient so terrified that theymeekly and obediently give up all self-determinism, sign the liability waiver, andsubmit, no questions asked. Many then die after suffering intensely from thetherapy, long before the so-called disease could have actually caused theirdemise. I will later offer alternative and frequently successful (but not guaranteed)approaches to treating cancer that do not require the earliest-possible detection,surgery or poisons. If holistic practitioners were to apply painful treatments like allopaths use, ones
with such poor statistical outcomes like allopaths use, there would most certainlybe witch hunts and all such irresponsible, greedy quacks would be safelyimprisoned. I find it highly ironic that for at least the past twenty five hundredyears the basic principle of good medicine has been that the treatment must firstdo no harm. This is such an obvious truism that even the AMA doctors pledge todo the same thing when they take the Hippocratic Oath. Yet virtually every actiontaken by the allopath is a conscious compromise between the potential harm of
the therapy and its potential benefit. In absolute contrast, if a person dies while on a natural hygiene program, they
died because their end was inevitable no matter what therapy was attempted.Almost certainly receiving hygienic therapy contributed to making their last daysfar more comfortable and relatively freer of pain without using opiates. I havepersonally taken on clients sent home to die after they had suffered everything thedoctors could do to them, told they had only a few days, weeks, or months tolive. Some of these clients survived as a result of hygienic programs even at thatlate date. And some didn’t. The amazing thing was that any of them survived atall, because the best time to begin a hygienic program is as early in thedegenerative process as possible, not after the body has been drasticallyweakened by invasive and toxic treatments. Later on, I’ll tell you about some ofthese cases. Something I consider especially ironic is that when the patient of a medical
doctor dies, it is inevitably thought that the blessed doctor did all that could bedone; rarely is any blame laid. If the physician was especially careless or stupid,their fault can only result in a civil suit, covered by malpractice insurance. But let aholistic practitioner treat a sick person and have that person follow any of theirsuggestions or take any natural remedies and have that person die or worsen andit instantly becomes the natural doctor’s fault. Great blame is placed and thepractitioner faces inquests, grand juries, manslaughter charges, jail time and civilsuits that can’t be insured against. Allopathic medicine rarely makes a connection between the real causes of a
degenerative or infectious disease and its cure. The causes are usually consideredmysterious: we don’t know why the pancreas is acting up, etc. The sick aresympathized with as victims who did nothing to contribute to their condition. Thecure is a highly technical battle against the illness, whose weapons are defined inLatin and far beyond the understanding of a layperson. Hygienic medicine presents an opposite view. To the naturopath, illness is not a
perplexing and mysterious occurrence over which you have no control or
understanding. The causes of disease are clear and simple, the sick person is
rarely a victim of circumstance and the cure is obvious and within the competenceof a moderately intelligent sick person themselves to understand and helpadminister. In natural medicine, disease is a part of living that you are responsiblefor, and quite capable of handling. Asserting that the sick are pitiable victims is financially beneficial to doctors. It
makes medical intervention seem a vital necessity for every ache and pain. Itmakes the sick become dependent. I’m not implying that most doctors knowinglyare conniving extortionists. Actually most medical doctors are genuinely well-intentioned. I’ve also noticed that most medical doctors are at heart very timidindividuals who consider that possession of a MD degree and license proves thatthey are very important, proves them to be highly intelligent, even makes themfully qualified to pontificate on many subjects not related to medicine at all. Doctors obtain an enormous sense of self-importance at medical school,
where they proudly endured the high pressure weeding out of any free spiritunwilling to grind away into the night for seven or more years. Anyone incapableof absorbing and regurgitating huge amounts of rote information; anyone with adisrespectful or irreverent attitude toward the senior doctor-gods who arrogantlyserve as med school professors, anyone like this was eliminated with especialrapidity. When the thoroughly submissive, homogenized survivors are finallylicensed, they assume the status of junior doctor-gods. But becoming an official medical deity doesn’t permit one to create their own
methods. No no, the AMA’s professional oversight and control system makescontinued possession of the license to practice (and the high income that usuallycomes with it) entirely dependent on continued conformity to what is defined bythe AMA as “correct practice.” Any doctor who innovates beyond strict limits oruses nonstandard treatments is in real danger of losing their livelihood and status. Not only are licensed graduates of AMA-sanctioned medical schools kept on
a very tight leash, doctors of other persuasions who use other methods to heal thesick or help them heal themselves are persecuted and prosecuted. Extension of
the AMA ’s control through regulatory law and police power is justified in the
name of preventing quackery and making sure the ignorant and gullible publicreceives only scientifically proven effective medical care. Those on the other side of the fence view the AMA’s oppression as an
effective way to make sure the public has no real choices but to use uniondoctors, pay their high fees and suffer greatly by misunderstanding of the truecause of disease and its proper cure. If there are any actual villains responsible forthis suppressive tragedy some of them are to be found in the inner core of theAMA, officials who may perhaps fully and consciously comprehend thesuppressive system they promulgate. Hygienists usually inform the patient quite clearly and directly that the
practitioner has no ability to heal them or cure their condition and that no doctorof any type actually is able to heal. Only the body can heal itself, something it iseager and usually very able to do if only given the chance. One pithy old sayingamong hygienists goes, “if the body can’t heal itself, nothing can heal it.” Theprimary job of the hygienic practitioner is to reeducate the patient by conductingthem through their first natural healing process. If this is done well the sick personlearns how to get out of their own body’s way and permit its native healing powerto manifest. Unless later the victim of severe traumatic injury, never again will thatperson need obscenely expensive medical procedures. Hygienists rarely make sixfigure incomes from regular, repeat business. This aspect of hygienic medicine makes it different than almost all the others,
even most other holistic methods. Hygiene is the only system that does notinterpose the assumed healing power of a doctor between the patient andwellness. When I was younger and less experienced I thought that the mainreason traditional medical practice did not stress the body’s own healing powerand represented the doctor as a necessary intervention was for profit. But afterpracticing for over twenty years I now understand that the last thing most peoplewant to hear is that their own habits, especially their eating patterns and foodchoices, are responsible for their disease and that their cure is to only be
accomplished through dietary reform, which means unremittingly applied self-
discipline. One of the hardest things to ask of a person is to change a habit. The reason
that AMA doctors have most of the patients is they’re giving the patients exactlywhat they want, which is to be allowed to continue in their unconsciousirresponsibility. The Cause Of Disease
Ever since natural medicine arose in opposition to the violence of so-called
scientific medicine, every book on the subject of hygiene, once it gets past itsobligatory introductions and warm ups, must address The Cause of Disease. Thisis a required step because we see the cause of disease and its consequent cure ina very different manner than the allopath. Instead of many causes, we see onebasic reason why. Instead of many unrelated cures, we have basically oneapproach to fix all ills that can be fixed. A beautiful fifty cent word that means a system for explaining something is
paradigm, pronounced para-dime. I am fond of this word because it admits thepossibility of many differing yet equally true explanations for the same reality. Ofall available paradigms, Natural Hygiene suits me best and has been the one I’veused for most of my career. The Natural Hygienist’s paradigm for the cause of both degenerative and
infectious disease is called the Theory of Toxemia, or “self-poisoning.”
Before explaining this theory it will help many readers if I digress a brief
moment about the nature and validity of alternative paradigms. Not too manydecades ago, scientists thought that reality was a singular, real, perpetual—thatNatural Law existed much as a tree or a rock existed. In physics, for example,the mechanics of Newton were considered capital “T” True, the only possibleparadigm. Any other view, not being True, was False. There was capital “N”natural capital “L” law. More recently, great uncertainty has entered science; it has become
indisputable that a theory or explanation of reality is only true only to the degree it
seems to work; conflicting or various explanations can all work, all can be “true.”At least, this uncertainty has overtaken the hard, physical sciences. It has not yetdone so with medicine. The AMA is convinced (or is working hard to convinceeveryone else) that its paradigm, the allopathic approach, is Truth, is scientific,and therefore, anything else is Falsehood, is irresponsibility, is a crime against thesick. But the actual worth or truth of any paradigm is found not in its “reality,” but in
its utility. Does an explanation or theory allow a person to manipulate experienceand create a desired outcome. To the extent a paradigm does that, it can beconsidered valuable. Judged by this standard, the Theory of Toxemia must be fartruer than the hodgepodge of psuedoscience taught in medical schools. Keep thatin mind the next time some officious medical doctor disdainfully informs you thatTheory of Toxemia was disproven in 1927 by Doctors Jeckel and Hyde. Why People Get Sick
This is the Theory of Toxemia. A healthy body struggles continually to purify
itself of poisons that are inevitably produced while going about its business ofdigesting food, moving about, and repairing itself. The body is a marvelouscreation, a carbon, oxygen combustion machine, constantly burning fuel, disposingof the waste products of combustion, and constantly rebuilding tissue by replacingworn out, dead cells with new, fresh ones. Every seven years virtually every cell inthe body is replaced, some types of cells having a faster turnover rate than others,which means that over a seven year period several hundred pounds of dead cellsmust be digested (autolyzed) and eliminated. All by itself this would be a lot ofwaste disposal for the body to handle. Added to that waste load are numerousmild poisons created during proper digestion. And added to that can be anenormous burden of waste products created as the body’s attempts to digest theindigestible, or those tasty items I’ve heard called “fun food.” Add to that burdenthe ruinous effects of just plain overeating. The waste products of digestion, of indigestion, of cellular breakdown and the
general metabolism are all poisonous to one degree or another. Another word forthis is toxic. If these toxins were allowed to remain and accumulate in the body, itwould poison itself and die in agony. So the body has a processing system toeliminate toxins. And when that system does break down the body does die inagony, as from liver or kidney failure. The organs of detoxification remove things from the body’s system, but these
two vital organs should not be confused with what hygienists call the secondaryorgans of elimination, such as the large intestine, lungs, bladder and the skin,because none of these other eliminatory organs are supposed to purify the bodyof toxins. But when the body is faced with toxemia, the secondary organs ofelimination are frequently pressed into this duty and the consequences are thesymptoms we call illness. The lungs are supposed to eliminate only carbon dioxide gas; not self-
generated toxic substances. The large intestine is supposed to pass only insolublefood solids (and some nasty stuff dumped into the small intestine by the liver).Skin eliminates in the form of sweat (which contains mineral salts) to cool thebody, but the skin is not supposed to move toxins outside the system. But whentoxins are flowed out through secondary organs of elimination these areas becomeinflamed, irritated, weakened. The results can be skin irritations, sinusitis or awhole host of other “itises” depending on the area involved, bacterial or viralinfections, asthma. When excess toxemia is deposited instead of eliminated, theresults can be arthritis if toxins are stored in joints, rheumatism if in muscle tissues,cysts and benign tumors. And if toxins weaken the body’s immune response,cancer. The liver and the kidneys, the two heroic organs of detoxification, are the most
important ones; these jointly act as filters to purify the blood. Hygienists pay a lotof attention to these organs, the liver especially. In an ideal world, the liver and kidneys would keep up with their job for 80
years or more before even beginning to tire. In this ideal world, the food would of
course, be very nutritious and free of pesticide residues, the air and water would
be pure, people would not denature their food and turn it into junk. In this perfectworld everyone would get moderate exercise into old age, and live virtuallywithout stress. In this utopian vision, the average healthy productive life spanwould approach a century, entirely without using food supplements or vitamins. Inthis world doctors would have next to no work other than repairing traumaticinjuries, because everyone would be healthy. But this is not the way it is. In our less-than-ideal world virtually everything we eat is denatured,
processed, fried, salted, sweetened, preserved; thus more stress is placed on theliver and kidneys than nature designed them to handle. Except for a few highlyfortunate individuals blessed with an incredible genetic endowment that permitsthem to live to age 99 on moose meat, well-larded white flour biscuits, coffee withevaporated milk and sugar, brandy and cigarettes (we’ve all heard of someonelike this), most peoples’ liver and kidneys begin to break down prematurely. Thusdoctoring has become a financially rewarding profession. Most people overburden their organs of elimination by eating whatever they
feel like eating whenever they feel like it. Or, they irresponsibly eat whatever isserved to them by a mother, wife, institution or cook because doing so is easy orexpected. Eating is a very habitual and unconscious activity; frequently wecontinue to eat as adults whatever our mother fed us as a child. I consider itunsurprising that when people develop the very same disease conditions as theirparents. they wrongly assume the cause is genetic inheritance, when actually itwas just because they were putting their feet under the same table as theirparents. Toxemia also comes about from following the wrongheaded recommendations
of allopathic-inspired nutritional texts and licensed dietitians. For example, peoplebelieve they should eat one food from each of the four so-called basic foodgroups at each meal, thinking they are doing the right thing for their health byhaving four colors of food on every plate, when they really aren’t. What they haveactually done is force their bodies to attempt the digestion of indigestible food
combinations, and the resulting indigestion creates massive doses of toxins. I’ll
have a lot more to say about that later when I discuss the art of food combining. The Actual Food Groups*
Starches Proteins Fats Sugars Water y Vegetables
bread meats butter honey zucchini
potatoes eggs oils fruit green beans
noodles fish lard sugar tomatoes
manioc/yuca most nuts nuts molasses peppers
baked goods dry beans avocado malt syrup eggplant
grains nut butters maple syrup radish
winter squash split peas dried fruit rutabaga
parsnips lentils melons turnips
sweet potatoes soybeans carrot juice Brussels sprouts
yams tofu beet juice celery
taro root tempeh cauliflower
plantains wheat grass juice broccoli
beets “green” drinks okra
spirulina lettuce
algae endiveyeast cabbage
dairy carrots
* Standard dietitians divide our foods into four  basic food groups and
recommend the ridiculous practice of mixing them at every meal. This guaranteesindigestion and lots of business for the medical profession. This chart illustrates theactual food groups. It is usually a poor practice to mix different foods from onegroup with those from another. The Digestive Process
After we have eaten our four-color meal—often we do this in a hurry, without
much chewing, under a lot of stress, or in the presence of negative emotions—wegive no thought to what becomes of our food once it has been swallowed. Wehave been led to assume that anything put in the mouth automatically gets digestedflawlessly, is efficiently absorbed into the body where it nourishes our cells, withthe waste products being eliminated completely by the large intestine. This visionof efficiency may exist in the best cases but for most there is many a slip betweenthe table and the toilet. Most bodies are not optimally efficient at performing allthe required functions, especially after years of poor living habits, stress, fatigue,and aging. To the Natural Hygienist, most disease begins and ends with our food;most of our healing efforts are focused on improving the process of digestion. Digestion means chemically changing the foods we eat into substances that can
pass into the blood stream and circulate through the body where nutrition is usedfor bodily functions. Our bodies use nutritional substances for fuel, for repair andrebuilding, and to conduct an incredibly complex biochemistry. Scientists are stillbusily engaged in trying to understand the chemical mysteries of our bodies. Butas bewildering as the chemistry of life is, the chemistry of digestion itself is actuallya relatively simple process, and one doctors have had a fairly good understandingof for many decades. Though relatively straightforward, a lot can and does go wrong with digestion. The body breaks down foods with a series of different enzymes that are mixedwith food at various points as it passes from mouth to stomach to small intestine.An enzyme is a large, complex molecule that has the ability to chemically changeother large, complex molecules without being changed itself. Digestive enzymesperform relatively simple functions—breaking large molecules into smaller partsthat can dissolve in water. Digestion starts in the mouth when food is mixed with ptyalin, an enzyme
secreted by the salivary glands. Pylatin converts insoluble starches into simple
sugars. If the digestion of starchy foods is impaired, the body is less able to
extract the energy contained in our foods, while far worse from the point of viewof the genesis of diseases, undigested starches pass through the stomach and intothe gut where they ferment and thereby create an additional toxic burden for theliver to process. And fermenting starches also create gas. As we chew our food it gets mixed with saliva; as we continue to chew the
starches in the food are converted into sugar. There is a very simple experimentyou can conduct to prove to yourself how this works. Get a plain piece of bread,no jam, no butter, plain, and without swallowing it or allowing much of it to passdown the throat, begin to chew it until it seems to literally dissolve. Pylatin worksfast in our mouths so you may be surprised at how sweet the taste gets. Asimportant as chewing is, I have only run into about one client in a hundred thatactually makes an effort to consciously chew their food. Horace Fletcher, whose name has become synonymous with the importance of
chewing food well (Fletcherizing), ran an experiment on a military population inCanada. He required half his experimental group to chew thoroughly, and theother half to gulp things down as usual,. His study reports significant improvementin the overall health and performance of the group that persistently chewed.Fletcher’s report recommended that every mouthful be chewed 50 times for half aminute before being swallowed. Try it, you might be very surprised at what abeneficial effect such a simple change in your approach to eating can make. Notonly will you have less intestinal gas, if overweight you will probably find yourselfgetting smaller because your blood sugar will elevate quicker as you are eatingand thus your sense of hunger will go away sooner. If you are very thin and havedifficulty gaining weight you may find that the pounds go on easier becausechewing well makes your body more capable of actually assimilating the caloriesyou are consuming. A logical conclusion from this data is that anything that would prevent or
reduce chewing would be unhealthful. For example, food eaten when too hottends to be gulped down. The same tends to happen when food is seasoned withfresh Jalapeño or habaneo peppers. People with poor teeth should blend or mashstarchy foods and then gum them thoroughly to mix them with saliva. Keep inmind that even so-called protein foods such as beans often contain large quantitiesof starches and the starch portion of protein foods is also digested in the mouth. Once the food is in the stomach, it is mixed with both  hydrochloric acid,
secreted by the stomach itself, and pepsin, an enzyme. Together these breakproteins down into water-soluble amino acids. To accomplish this the stomachmuscles agitate the food continuously, somewhat like a washing machine. Thisextended churning forms a kind of ball in the stomach called a bolis. Many things can and frequently do go wrong at this stage of the digestive
process. First, the stomach’s very acid environment inactivates pylatin, so anystarch not converted to sugar in the mouth does not get properly processedthereafter. And the most dangerous misdigestion comes from the sad fact thatcooked proteins are relatively indigestible no matter how strong the constitution,no matter how concentrated the stomach acid or how many enzymes present. It isquite understandable to me that people do not wish to accept this fact. After all,cooked proteins are so delicious, especially cooked red meats and the harderfleshed, more flavorful fishes. To appreciate this, consider how those enzymes that digest proteins work. A
protein molecule is a large, complex string of amino acids, each linked to the nextin a specific order. Suppose there are only six amino acids: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6.So a particular (imaginary) protein could be structured: 1, 4, 4, 6, 2, 3, 5, 4, 2, 3,6, 1, 1, 2, 3, etc. Thus you should see that by combining a limited number ofamino acids there can be a virtually infinite number of proteins. But proteins are rarely water soluble. As I said a few paragraphs back,
digestion consists of rendering insoluble foods into water-soluble substances sothey can pass into the blood stream and be used by the body’s chemistry. Tomake them soluble, enzymes break down the proteins, separating the individualamino acids one from the other, because amino acids are soluble. Enzymes thatdigest proteins work as though they are mirror images of a particular amino acid.They fit against a particular amino acid like a key fits into a lock. Then they breakthe bonds holding that amino acid to others in the protein chain, and then, what Ifind so miraculous about this process, the enzyme is capable of finding yet anotheramino acid to free, and then yet another. So with sufficient churning in an acid environment, with enough time (a few
hours), and enough enzymes, all the recently eaten proteins are decomposed intoamino acids and these amino acids pass into the blood where the bodyrecombines them into structures it wants to make. And we have health. But whenprotein chains are heated, the protein structures are altered into physical shapesthat the enzymes can’t “latch” on to. The perfect example of this is when an egg isfried. The eggwhite is albumen, a kind of protein. When it is heated, it shrivels upand gets hard. While raw and liquid, it is easily digestible. When cooked, largelyindigestible. Stress also inhibits the churning action in the stomach so that otherwise
digestible foods may not be mixed efficiently with digestive enzymes. For all thesereasons, undigested proteins may pass into the gut along with the undigestedstarches. Starches convert best to sugars under the alkaline conditions found inthe mouth. Once they pass into the acid stomach starch digestion is not asefficient. If starches reach the small intestine they are fermented by yeasts. Theproducts of starch fermentation are only mildly toxic. The gases produced byyeast fermentations usually don’t smell particularly bad; bodies that regularlycontain starch fermentation usually don’t smell particularly bad either. In otherwise
healthy people it can take many years of exposure to starch fermentation toxins to
produce a life-threatening disease. But undigested proteins aren’t fermented by yeasts, they putrefy in the gut (are
attacked by anaerobic bacteria). Many of the waste products of anaerobicputrefaction are highly toxic and evil smelling; when these toxins are absorbedthrough the small or large intestines they are very irritating to the mucousmembranes, frequently contributing to or causing cancer of the colon. Proteinputrefaction may even cause psychotic symptoms in some individuals. Meateaters often have a very unpleasant body odor even when they are not releasingintestinal gasses. Adding a heavy toxic burden from misdigested foods to the normal toxic load
a body already has to handle creates a myriad of unpleasant symptoms, andgreatly shortens life. But misdigestion also carries with it a double whammy;fermenting and/or putrefying foods immediately interfere with the functioning ofanother vital organ—the large intestine—and cause constipation. Most people don’t know what the word constipation really means. Not being
able to move one’s bowels is only the most elementary type of constipation. Amore accurate definition of constipation is “the retention of waste products in thelarge intestine beyond the time that is conducive to health.” Properly digestedfood is not sticky and exits the large intestine quickly. But improperly digestedfood (or indigestible food) gradually coats the large intestine, making an ever-thicker lining that interferes with the intestine’s functioning. Far worse, this coatingsteadily putrefies, creating additional highly-potent toxins. Lining the colon withundigested food can be compared to the mineral deposits filling in the inside of anold water pipe, gradually choking off the flow. In the colon, this deposit canbecome rock-hard, just like water pipe scale. Since the large intestine is also an organ that removes moisture and water-
soluble minerals from the food and moves them into the blood stream, when thelarge intestine is lined with putrefying undigested food waste, the toxins of this
putrefaction are also steadily moved into the bloodstream and place an even
greater burden on the liver and kidneys, accelerating their breakdown,accelerating the aging process and contributing to a lot of interesting andunpleasant symptoms that keep doctors busy and financially solvent. I’ll havequite a bit more to say about colon cleansing later. The Progress Of Disease:
Irritation, Enervation, Toxaemia
Disease routinely lies at the end of a three-part chain that goes: irritation or
subclinical malnutrition, enervation, toxemia. Irritations are something the persondoes to themselves or something that happens around them. Stresses, in otherwords. Mental stressors include strong negative emotional states such as anger, fear,
resentment, hopelessness, etc. Behind most diseases it is common to find aproblematic mind churning in profound confusion, one generated by a characterthat avoids responsibility. There may also be job stress or ongoing hostilerelationships, often within the family. Indigestible foods and misdigestion are also stressful irritations, as are mild
recreational poisons such as “soft” drugs, tobacco and alcohol. Opiates aresomewhat more toxifying, primarily because they paralyze the gut and induceprofound constipation. Stimulants like cocaine and amphetamines are the mostdamaging recreational drugs ; these are highly toxic and rapidly shorten life. Repeated irritations and/or malnutrition eventually produce enervation. The
old-time hygienists defined enervation as a lack of or decline in an unmeasurablephenomena, “nerve energy.” They viewed the functioning of vital organs as beingcontrolled by or driven by nerve force, sometimes called life force or élan vital.Whatever this vital force actually is, it can be observed and subjectively measuredby comparing one person with another. Some people are full of it and literallysparkle with overflowing energy. Beings like this make everyone around them feel
good because they somehow momentarily give energy to those endowed with
less. Others possess very little and dully plod through life. As vital force drops, the overall efficiency of all the body’s organs
correspondingly decline. The pancreas creates less digestive enzymes; the thymussecretes less of its vital hormones that mobilize the immune system; the pituitarymakes less growth hormone so the overall repair and rebuilding of cells andtissues slows correspondingly; and so forth. It does not really matter if there is oris not something called nerve energy that can or cannot be measured in alaboratory. Vital force is observable to many people. However, it is measurableby laboratory test that after repeated irritation the overall functioning of theessential organs and glands does deteriorate. Enervation may develop so gradually that it progresses below the level of
awareness of the person, or times of increased enervation can be experienced asa complaint—as a lack of energy, as tiredness, as difficulties digesting, as a newinability to handle a previously-tolerated insult like alcohol. Long-term consumption of poor-quality food causes enervation. The body is a
carbon/oxygen engine designed to run efficiently only on highly nutritious food andthis aspect of human genetic programming cannot be changed significantly byadaptation. Given enough generations a human gene pool can adapt to extractingits nutrition from a different group of foods. For example, a group of isolatedFijians currently enjoying long healthy lives eating a diet of seafoods and tropicalroot crops could suddenly be moved to the highlands of Switzerland and forcedto eat the local fare or starve. But most of the Fijians would not have systemsadept at making those enzymes necessary to digest cows milk. So thetransplanted Fijians would experience many generations of poorer health andshorter life spans until their genes had been selected for adaptation to the newdietary. Ultimately their descendants could become uniformly healthy on rye breadand dairy products just like the highland Swiss were. However, modern industrial farming and processing of foodstuffs significantly
contributes to mass, widespread enervation in two ways. Humans will probablyadjust to the first; the second will, I’m sure, prove insurmountable. First,industrially processed foods are a recent invention and our bodies have not yetadapted to digesting them. In a few more generations humans might be able toaccomplish that and public health could improve on factory food. In themeanwhile, the health of humans has declined. Industrially farmed foods have alsobeen lowered in nutritional content compared to what food could be. I gravelydoubt if any biological organism can ever adapt to an overall dietary that containssignificantly lowered levels of nutrition. I will explain this more fully in the chapteron diet. Secondary Eliminations Are Disease
However the exact form the chain from irritation or malnutrition to enervation
progresses, the ultimate result is an increased level of toxemia, placing aneliminatory burden on the liver and kidneys. Eventually these organs begin toweaken. Decline of liver and/or kidney function threatens the stability and purityof blood chemistry. Rather than risk complete incapacitation or death from self-poisoning, the overloaded, toxic body, guided by its genetic predisposition andthe nature of the toxins (what was eaten, in what state of stress), cleverly channelssurplus toxins into its first line of defense—alternative or secondary eliminationsystems. Most non-life-threatening yet highly annoying disease conditions originate as
secondary eliminations. For example, the skin was designed to sweat, eliminationof fluids. Toxemia is often pushed out the sweat glands and is recognized as anunpleasant body odor. A healthy, nontoxic body smells sweet and pleasant (like anewborn baby’s body) even after exercise when it has been sweating heavily.Other skin-like organs such as the sinus tissues, were designed to secrete smallamounts of mucus for lubrication. The lungs eliminate used air and the tissues are
lubricated with mucus-like secretions too. These secretions are types of
eliminations, but are not intended for the elimination of toxins. When toxins aredischarged in mucus through tissues not designed to handle them, the tissuesthemselves become irritated, inflamed, weakened and thus much more subject tobacterial or viral infection. Despite this danger, not eliminating surplus toxinscarries with it the greater penalty of serious disability or death. So the body, in itswisdom, initially chooses secondary elimination routes as far from vital tissues andorgans as possible. Almost inevitably the skin or skin-like mucus membranes suchas the sinuses, or lung tissues become the first line of defense. Thus the average person’s disease history begins with colds, flu, sinusitis,
bronchitis, chronic cough, asthma, rashes, acne, eczema, psoriasis. If thesesecondary eliminations are suppressed with drugs (either from the medical doctoror with over the counter remedies), if the eating or lifestyle habits that created thetoxemia are not changed, or if the toxic load increases beyond the limits of thistechnique, the body then begins to store toxins in fat or muscle tissues or the jointcavities, overburdens the kidneys, creates cysts, fibroids, and benign tumors tostore those toxins. If toxic overload continues over a longer time the body willeventually have to permit damages to vital tissues, and life-threatening conditionsdevelop. Hygienic doctors always stress that disease is remedial effort. Illness comes
from the body’s best attempt to lighten its toxic load without immediatelythreatening its survival. The body always does the very best it can to remedytoxemia given its circumstances, and it should be commended for these effortsregardless of how uncomfortable they might be to the person inhabiting the body.Symptoms of secondary elimination are actually a positive thing because they arethe body’s efforts to lessen a dangerously toxic condition. Secondary eliminationsshouldn’t be treated immediately with a drug to suppress the process. If yousquelch the bodies best and least-life-threatening method to eliminate toxins, thebody will ultimately have to resort to another more dangerous though probablyless immediately uncomfortable channel. The conventional medical model does not view disease this way and sees the
symptoms of secondary elimination as the disease itself. So the conventionaldoctor takes steps to halt the body’s remedial efforts, thus stopping theundesirable symptom and then, the symptom gone, proclaims the patient cured.Actually, the disease is the cure. A common pattern of symptom suppression under the contemporary medical
model is this progression: treat colds with antihistamines until the body getsinfluenza; suppress a flu repeatedly with antibiotics and eventually you getpneumonia. Or, suppress eczema with cortisone ointment repeatedly, andeventually you develop kidney disease. Or, suppress asthma with bronkiodialatorsand eventually you need cortisone to suppress it. Continue treating asthma withsteroids and you destroy the adrenals; now the body has become allergic tovirtually everything. The presence of toxins in an organ of secondary elimination is frequently the
cause of infection. Sinuses and lungs, inflamed by secondary eliminations, areattacked by viruses or bacteria; infectious diseases of the skin result from pushingtoxins out of the skin. More generalized infections also result from toxemia; in thiscase the immune system has become compromised and the body is overwhelmedby an organism that it normally should be able to resist easily. The wise cure ofinfections is not to use antibiotics to suppress the bacteria while simultaneouslywhipping the immune system; most people, including most medical doctors, donot realize that antibiotics also goose the immune system into super efforts. Butwhen one chooses to whip a tired horse, eventually the exhausted animalcollapses and cannot rise again no matter how vigorously it is beaten. The wisecure is to detoxify the body, a step that simultaneously eliminates secondaryeliminations and rebuilds the immune system. The wise way to deal with the body’s eliminative efforts is to accept that
disease is an opportunity to pay the piper for past indiscretions. You should go tobed, rest, and drink nothing but water or dilute juice until the condition has
passed. This allows the body to conserve its vital energy, direct this energy
toward healing the disordered body part, and catch up on its waste disposal. Inthis way you can help your body, be in harmony with its efforts instead of workingagainst it which is what most people do. Please forgive another semi-political polemic here, but in my practice I have
often been amazed to hear my clients complain that they have not the time nor theability to be patient with their body, to rest it through an illness because they havea job they can’t afford to miss or responsibilities they can’t put down. This is asad commentary on the supposed wealth and prosperity of the United States. Inour country most people are enslaved by their debts, incurred because they hadbeen enthralled by the illusion of happiness secured by the possession of materialthings. Debt slaves believe they cannot miss a week of work. People who feelthey can’t afford to be sick think they can afford to live on pills. So people pushthrough their symptoms by sheer grit for years on end, and keep that up until theirexhausted horse of a body breaks down totally and they find themselves in thehospital running up bills to the tune of several thousand dollars a day. But thesevery same people do not think they can afford the loss of a few hundred dollars ofcurrent income undertaking some virtually harmless preventative maintenance ontheir bodies. Given half a chance the body will throw off toxic overburdens and cleanse
itself. And once the body has been cleansed of toxemia, disagreeable symptomsusually cease. This means that to make relatively mild but unwanted symptomslessen and ultimately stop it is merely necessary to temporarily cut back foodintake, eating only what does not cause toxemia. These foods I classify ascleansing, such as raw fruits and vegetables and their juices. If the symptoms areextreme, are perceived as overwhelming or are actually life-threatening,detoxification can be speeded up by dropping back to only dilute raw juices orvegetable broth made only from greens, without eating the solids. In the most
extreme cases hygienists use their most powerful medicine: a long fast on herb
teas, or just water. I will have a lot to say about fasting, later. When acutely ill, the most important thing to do is to just get out of the body’s
way, and let it heal itself. In our ignorance we are usually our own worst enemy inthis regard. We have been very successfully conditioned to think that allsymptoms are bad. But I know from experience that people can and do learn anew way of viewing the body, an understanding that puts them at cause over theirown body. It allows you to be empowered in one more area of life instead ofbeing dependent and at the mercy of other peoples decisions about your body. Finally, and this is why natural medicine is doubly unpopular, to prevent the
recurrence of toxemia and acute disease states, person must discover what theyare doing wrong and change their life. Often as not this means elimination of theperson’s favorite (indigestible) foods and/or (stress-producing) bad habits.Naturally, I will have a lot more to say about this later, too. Chapter Three
Fasting
From The Hygienic Dictionary
Cure. [1] There is no “cure” for disease; fasting is not a cure. Fasting facilitates natural healing
processes. Foods do not cure. Until we have discarded our faith in cures, there can be no intelligentapproach to the problems presented by suffering and no proper use of foods by those who are ill.Herbert Shelton, The Hygienic System, v. 3, Fasting and Sunbathing. [2] All cure starts from within
out and from the head down and in reverse order as the symptoms have appeared. Hering”s Law ofCure. [3] Life is made up of crises. The individual establishes a standard of health peculiarly his own,which must vary from all other standards as greatly as his personality varies from others. Theindividual standard may be such as to favor the development of indigestion, catarrh, gout, rheumaticand glandular inflammations, tubercular developments, congestions, sluggish secretions and excretions,or inhibitions of various functions, both mental and physical, wherever the environmental or habitstrain is greater than usual. The standard of resistance may be opposed so strenuously by habits andunusual physical agencies—that the body breaks down under the strain. This is a crisis. Appetitefails, discomfort or pain forces rest, and, as a result of physiological rest (fasting) and physical rest(rest from daily work and habits), a readjustment takes place, and the patient is “cured.” This is whatthe profession and the people call a cure, and it is for the time being—until an unusual enervation isbrought on from accident or dissipation; then another crisis. These crises are the ordinary sickness ofall communities—all catalogued diseases. When the cold is gone or the hay-fever fully relieved, it doesnot mean the patient is cured. Indeed, he is as much diseased as before he suffered the attack—thecrisis—and he never will be cured until the habits of life that keep up toxin poisoning are corrected. Torecover from a crisis is not a cure; the tendency is back to the individual standard; hence all crises areself-limited, unless nature by maltreatment is prevented from reacting. All so-called healing systemsride to glory on the backs of self-limited crises, and the self-deluded doctors and their credulousclients, believe, when the crises are past, that a cure has been wrought, whereas the real truth is thatthe treatment may have delayed reaction. This is largely true of anything that has been done exceptrest. A cure consists in changing the manner of living to such a rational standard that full resistanceand a balanced metabolism is established. I suppose it is not quite human to expect those of astandardized school of healing to give utterance to discovered truth which, if accepted by the people,would rob them of the glory of being curers of disease. Indeed, nature, and nature only, cures; and asfor crises, they come and go, whether or not there is a doctor or healer within a thousand miles. Dr.John. H. Tllden, Impaired Health: Its Cause and Cure,  1921. The accelerated healing process that occurs during fasting can scarcely be
believed by a person who has not fasted. No matter how gifted the writer, theexperiential reality of fasting cannot be communicated. The great novelist UptonSinclair wrote a book about fasting and it failed to convince the multitudes. Butonce a person has fasted long enough to be certain of what their own body cando to fix itself, they acquire a degree of independence little known today. Many ofthose experienced with fasting no longer dread being without health insurance andfeel far less need for a doctor or of having a regular checkup. They know withcertainty that if something degenerates in their body, their own body can fix it byitself. Like Upton Sinclair and many others who largely failed before me, I am going
to try to convince you of the virtues of fasting by urging you to try fasting yourself.If you will but try you will be changed for the better for the rest of your life. If youdo not try, you will never Know. To prompt your first step on this health-freedom road, I ask you to please
carefully consider the importance of this fact: the body’s routine energy budgetincludes a very large allocation for the daily digestion and assimilation of the foodyou eat. You may find my estimate surprising, but about one-third of a fairlysedentary person”s entire energy consumption goes into food processing. Otheruses for the body’s energy include the creation or rebuilding of tissues,detoxification, moving (walking, running, etc. ), talking, producing hormones, etc.Digestion is one aspect of the body’s efforts that we can readily control, it is thekey to having or losing health. The Effort Of Digestion
Digestion is a huge, unappreciated task, unappreciated because few of us are
aware of its happening in the same way we are aware of making efforts to use ourvoluntary muscles when working or exercising. Digestion begins in the mouth withthorough chewing. If you don’t think chewing is effort, try making coleslaw in
your own mouth. Chew up at least half a big head of cabbage and three big
carrots that have not been shredded. Grind each bit until it liquefies and has beenthoroughly mixed with saliva. I guarantee that if you even finish the chore your jawwill be tired and you will have lost all desire to eat anything else, especially if itrequires chewing. Making the saliva you just used while chewing the cabbage is by itself, a huge
and unappreciated chemical effort. Once in the stomach, chewed food has to be churned in order to mix it with
hydrochloric acid, pepsin, and other digestive enzymes. Manufacturing theseenzymes is also considerable work! Churning is even harder work than chewingbut normally, people are unaware of its happening. While the stomach is churning(like a washing machine) a large portion of the blood supply is redirected from themuscles in the extremities to the stomach and intestines to aid in this process.Anyone who has tried to go for a run, or take part in any other strenuous physicalactivity immediately after a large meal feels like a slug and wonders why they justcan’t make their legs move the way they usually do. So, to assist the body while itis digesting, it is wise to take a siesta as los latinos do instead of expecting theblood to be two places at once like los norteamericanos. After the stomach is through churning, the partially digested food is moved into
the small intestine where it is mixed with more pancreatin secreted by thepancreas, and with bile from the gall bladder. Pancreatin further solubilizesproteins. Bile aids in the digestion of fatty foods. Manufacturing bile andpancreatic enzymes is also a lot of effort. Only after the carbohydrates (starchesand sugars), proteins and fats have been broken down into simpler water solublefood units such as simple sugars, amino acids and fatty acids, can the body passthese nutrients into the blood thorough the little projections in the small intestinescalled villi. The leftovers, elements of the food that can’t be solubilized plus some
remaining liquids, are passed into the large intestine. There, water and the vital
mineral salts dissolved in that water, are extracted and absorbed into the blood
stream through thin permeable membranes. Mucous is also secreted in the largeintestine to facilitate passage of the dryish remains. This is an effort. (Intestinalmucous can become a route of secondary elimination, especially during fasting.While fasting, it is essential to take steps to expel toxic mucous in the colon beforethe poisons are readsorbed.) The final residue, now called fecal matter, issqueezed along the length of the large intestines and passes out the rectum. If all the digestive processes have been efficient there now are an abundance
of soluble nutrients for the blood stream to distribute to hungry cells throughoutthe body. It is important to understand the process at least on the level ofoversimplification just presented in order to begin to understand better how healthis lost or regained through eating, digestion, and elimination. And mostimportantly, through not eating. How Fasting Heals
Its an old hygienic maxim that the doctor does not heal, the medicines do not
heal, only the body heals itself. If the body can’t heal then nothing can heal it. Thebody always knows best what it needs and what to do. But healing means repairing damaged organs and tissues and this takes energy,
while a sick body is already enervated, weakened and not coping with its currentstressors. If the sick person could but somehow increase the body’s energyresources sufficiently, then a slowly healing body could heal faster while aworsening one, or one that was failing or one that was not getting better mightheal. Fasting does just that. To whatever degree food intake is reduced the body’s
digestive workload is proportionately reduced and it will naturally, and far moreintelligently than any physician could order, redirect energy to wherever it decidesthat energy is most needed. A fasting body begins accessing nutritional reserves(vitamins and minerals) previously stored in the tissues and starts converting body
fat into sugar for energy fuel. During a time of water fasting, sustaining the body’s
entire energy and nutritional needs from reserves and fat does require a smalleffort, but far less effort than eating. I would guess a fasting body used about fivepercent of its normal daily energy budget on nutritional concerns rather than the33 percent it needs to process new food. Thus, water fasting puts something like28 percent more energy at the body’s disposal. This is true even though the waterfaster may feel weak, energyless. I would worry if sick or toxic fasters did not complain about their weakness. They should expect to feel energyless. In fact, the more internal healing anddetoxification the body requires, the tireder the faster feels because the body isvery hard at work internally. A great deal of the body’s energy will go towardboosting the immune system if the problem is an infection. Liberated energy canalso be used for healing damaged parts, rebuilding failing organs, for breakingdown and eliminating deposits of toxic materials. Only after most of the healinghas occurred does a faster begin to feel energetic again. Don’t expect to feelanything but tired and weak. The only exception to this would be a person who has already significantly
detoxified and healed their body by previous fasting, or the rare soul that has gonefrom birth through adulthood enjoying extraordinarily good nutrition and withoutexperiencing the stressors of improper digestion. When one experienced faster Iknow finds himself getting “run down” or catching a cold, he quits eating until hefeels really well. Instead of feeling weak as most fasters do, as each of the firstfour or five days of water fasting pass, he experiences a resurgence of more andmore energy. On the first fasting day he would usually feel rotten, which was whyhe started fasting in the first place. On the second fasting day he’d feel more alertand catch up on his paper work. By his third day on only water he would be outdoing hard physical chores like cutting the grass, splitting wood or weeding hisvegetable garden. Day four would also be an energetic one, but if the fastextended beyond that, lowering blood sugar would begin to make him tired andhe’d feel forced to begin laying down. After a day of water fasting the average person’s blood sugar level naturally
drops; making a faster feel somewhat tired and “spacey,” so a typical fasterusually begins to spend much more time resting, further reducing the amount ofenergy being expended on moving the body around, serendipitously redirectingeven more of the body’s energy budget toward healing. By the end of five or sixdays on water, I estimate that from 40 to 50 percent of the body’s availableenergy is being used for healing, repair and detoxification. The amount of work that a fasting body’s own healing energy can do and what
it feels like to be there when it is happening is incredible. But you can’t know it ifyou haven’t felt it. So hardly anyone in our present culture knows. As I mentioned in the first chapter, at Great Oaks School I apprenticed myself
to the traveling masters of virtually every system of natural healing that existedduring the ‘70s. I observed every one of them at work and tried most of them onmy clients. After all that I can say with experience that I am not aware of anyother healing tool that can be so effective as the fast. Essentials of a Successful, Safe Fast
1. Fast in a bright airy room, with exceptionally good ventilation, because
fasters not only need a lot of fresh air; their bodies give off powerfully offensiveodors. 2. Sun bathe if possible in warm climates for 10 to 20 minutes in the morning
before the sun gets too strong. 3. Scrub/massage the skin with a dry brush, stroking toward the heart,
followed by a warm water shower two to four times a day to assist the skin ineliminating toxins. If you are too weak to do this, have an assisted bed bath. 4. Have two enemas daily for the first week of a fast and then once daily until
the fast is terminated. 5. Insure a harmonious environment with supportive people or else fast alone if
you are experienced. Avoid well-meaning interference or anxious criticism at all
cost. The faster becomes hypersensitive to others’ emotions. 6. Rest profoundly except for a short walk of about 200 yards morning and
night. 7. Drink water! At least three quarts every day. Do not allow yourself to
become dehydrated! 8. Control yourself! Break a long fast on diluted non-sweet fruit juice such as
grapefruit juice, sipped a teaspoon at a time, no more than eight ounces at a timeno oftener than every 2 or 3 hours. The second day you eat, add small quantitiesof fresh juicy fruit to the same amount of juice you took the day before no oftenerthan every 3 hours. By small quantities I mean half an apple or the equivalent. Onthe third day of eating, add small quantities of vegetable juice and juicy vegetablessuch as tomatoes and cucumbers. Control yourself! The second week after eating resumed add complex
vegetable salads plus more complex fruit salads. Do not mix fruit and vegetablesat meals. The third week add raw nuts and seeds no more than ½ ounce threetimes daily. Add ¼ avocado daily. Fourth week increase to 3 ounces of rawsoaked nuts and seeds daily and ½ avocado daily. Cooked grains may also beadded, along with steamed vegetables and vegetable soups. The Prime Rules Of Fasting
Another truism of natural hygiene is that we dig our own graves with our teeth. It is sad but true that almost all eat too much quantity of too little quality. Dietaryexcesses are the main cause of death in North America. Fasting balances theseexcesses. If people were to eat a perfect diet and not overeat, fasting wouldrarely be necessary. There are two essential rules of fasting. If these rules are ignored or broken,
fasting itself can be life threatening. But if the rules are followed, fasting presentsfar less risk than any other important medical procedure with a far greaterlikelihood of a positive outcome. And let me stress here, there is no medical
procedure without risk. Life itself is fraught with risk, it is a one-way ticket from
birth to death, with no certainty as to when the end of the line will be reached. Butin my opinion, when handling degenerative illness and infections, natural hygieneand fasting usually offer the best hope of healing with the least possible risk. The first vital concern is the duration of the fast. Two eliminatory processes go
on simultaneously while fasting. One is the dissolving and elimination of theexcess, toxic or dysfunctional deposits in the body, and second process, thegradual exhaustion of the body’s stored nutritional reserves. The fasting body firstconsumes those parts of the body that are unhealthy; eventually these are all gone.Simultaneously the body uses up stored fat and other reserve nutritional elements.A well-fed reasonably healthy body usually has enough stored nutrition to fast forquite a bit longer than it takes to “clean house.”
While house cleaning is going on the body uses its reserves to rebuild organs
and rejuvenate itself. Rebuilding starts out very slowly but the repairs increase atan ever-accelerating rate. The “overhaul” can last only until the body has no morereserves. Because several weeks of fasting must pass by before the “overhaul”gets going full speed, it is wise to continue fasting as long as possible so as tobenefit from as much rejuvenation as possible. It is best not to end the fast before all toxic or dysfunctional deposits are
eliminated, or before the infection is overcome, or before the cause for complainthas been healed. The fast must be ended before all of the body’s essential-to-life
stored nutritional reserves are exhausted. If the fast goes beyond this point,starvation begins. Then, fasting-induced organic damage can occur, and death canfollow, usually several weeks later. Almost anyone not immediately close to deathhas enough stored nutrition to water fast for ten days to two weeks.
Be_your_own_doctor.txt
Summarize the following text section accurately and concisely. Maintain specific details and numerical information, and use anti-repetition mechanisms:

        When we settle on a solution we have simultaneously chosen what we
consider the real, underlying cause of the problem. If our chosen reason was thereal reason. then our solution results in a real cure. If we picked wrongly, ourattempt at solution may result in no cure, or create a worse situation than we hadbefore. The American Medical Association style of medicine (a philosophy I will
henceforth call allopathic) has a model that explains the causes of illness. Itsuggests that anyone who is sick is a victim. Either they were attacked by a “bad”organism—virus, bacteria, yeast, pollen, cancer cell, etc. —or they have a “bad”organ—liver, kidney, gall bladder, even brain. Or, the victim may also have beencursed by bad genes. In any case, the cause of the disease is not the person andthe person is neither responsible for creating their own complaint nor is the victimcapable of making it go away. This institutionalized irresponsibility seems usefulfor both parties to the illness, doctor and patient. The patient is not required to doanything about their complaint except pay (a lot) and obediently follow theinstructions of the doctor, submitting unquestioningly to their drugs and surgeries. The physician then acquires a role of being considered vital to the survival ofothers and thus obtains great status, prestige, authority, and financial
remuneration. Perhaps because the sick person is seen to have been victimized, and it is
logically impossible to consider a victimizer as anything but something evil, thephysician’s cure is often violent, confrontational. Powerful poisons are used torejigger body chemistry or to arrest the multiplication of disease bacteria or tosuppress symptoms; if it is possible to sustain life without them, “bad,” poorly-functioning organs are cut out. I’ve had a lot of trouble with the medical profession. Over the years doctors
have made attempts to put me in jail and keep me in fear. But they never stoppedme. When I’ve had a client die there has been an almost inevitable coroner’sinvestigation, complete with detectives and the sheriff. Fortunately, I practice inrural Oregon, where the local people have a deeply-held belief in individual libertyand where the authorities know they would have had a very hard time finding ajury to convict me. Had I chosen to practice with a high profile and had I locatedGreat Oaks School of Health in a major market area where the physicians wereable to charge top dollar, I probably would have spent years behind bars as didother heroes of my profession such as Linda Hazzard and Royal Lee. So I have acquired an uncomplimentary attitude about medical doctors, a
viewpoint I am going to share with you ungently, despite the fact that doing so willalienate some of my readers. But I do so because most Americans are entirelyenthralled by doctors, and this doctor-god worship kills a lot of them. However, before I get started on the medicos, let me state that one area exists
where I do have fundamental admiration for allopathic medicine. This is itshandling of trauma. I agree that a body can become the genuine victim of fastmoving bullets. It can be innocently cut, smashed, burned, crushed and broken. Trauma are not diseases and modern medicine has become quite skilled at puttingtraumatized bodies back together. Genetic abnormality may be anotherundesirable physical condition that is beyond the purview of natural medicine. However, the expression of contra-survival genetics can often be controlled by
nutrition. And the expression of poor genetics often results from poor nutrition,
and thus is similar to a degenerative disease condition, and thus is well within thescope of natural medicine. Today’s suffering American public is firmly in the AMA’s grip. People have
been effectively prevented from learning much about medical alternatives, havebeen virtually brainwashed by clever media management that portrays othermedical models as dangerous and/or ineffective. Legislation influenced by theallopathic doctors’ union, the American Medical Association, severely limits orprohibits the practice of holistic health. People are repeatedly directed by thosewith authority to an allopathic doctor whenever they have a health problem,question or confusion. Other types of healers are considered to be at bestharmless as long as they confine themselves to minor complaints; at worst, whennaturopaths, hygienists, or homeopaths seek to treat serious disease conditionsthey are called quacks, accused of unlicensed practice of medicine and if theypersist or develop a broad, successful, high-profile and (this is the very worst)profitable practice, they are frequently jailed. Even licensed MDs are crushed by the authorities if they offer nonstandard
treatments. So when anyone seeks an alternative health approach it is usuallybecause their complaint had failed to vanish after consulting a whole series ofallopathic doctors. This highly unfortunate kind of sufferer not only has adegenerative condition to rectify, they may have been further damaged by harshmedical treatments and additionally, they have a considerable amount ofbrainwashing to overcome. The AMA has succeeded at making their influence over information and media
so pervasive that most people do not even realize that the doctors’ union is thesource of their medical outlook. Whenever an American complains of somemalady, a concerned and honestly caring friend will demand to know have theyyet consulted a medical doctor. Failure to do so on one’s own behalf isconsidered highly irresponsible. Concerned relatives of seriously ill adults who
decline standard medical therapy may, with a great show of self-righteousness,
have the sick person judged mentally incompetent so that treatment can be forcedupon them. When a parent fails to seek standard medical treatment for their child,the adult may well be found guilty of criminal negligence, raising the interestingissue of who “owns” the child, the parents or the State. It is perfectly acceptable to die while under conventional medical care. Happens all the time, in fact. But holistic alternatives are represented as stupidlyrisky, especially for serious conditions such as cancer. People with cancer see nochoice but to do chemotherapy, radiation, and radical surgery because this is thecurrent allopathic medical approach. On some level people may know that theseremedies are highly dangerous but they have been told by their attendingoncologist that violent therapies are their only hope of survival, however poor thatmay be. If a cancer victim doesn’t proceed immediately with such treatment theirofficial prognosis becomes worse by the hour. Such scare tactics are commonamongst the medical profession, and they leave the recipient so terrified that theymeekly and obediently give up all self-determinism, sign the liability waiver, andsubmit, no questions asked. Many then die after suffering intensely from thetherapy, long before the so-called disease could have actually caused theirdemise. I will later offer alternative and frequently successful (but not guaranteed)approaches to treating cancer that do not require the earliest-possible detection,surgery or poisons. If holistic practitioners were to apply painful treatments like allopaths use, ones
with such poor statistical outcomes like allopaths use, there would most certainlybe witch hunts and all such irresponsible, greedy quacks would be safelyimprisoned. I find it highly ironic that for at least the past twenty five hundredyears the basic principle of good medicine has been that the treatment must firstdo no harm. This is such an obvious truism that even the AMA doctors pledge todo the same thing when they take the Hippocratic Oath. Yet virtually every actiontaken by the allopath is a conscious compromise between the potential harm of
the therapy and its potential benefit. In absolute contrast, if a person dies while on a natural hygiene program, they
died because their end was inevitable no matter what therapy was attempted. Almost certainly receiving hygienic therapy contributed to making their last daysfar more comfortable and relatively freer of pain without using opiates. I havepersonally taken on clients sent home to die after they had suffered everything thedoctors could do to them, told they had only a few days, weeks, or months tolive. Some of these clients survived as a result of hygienic programs even at thatlate date. And some didn’t. The amazing thing was that any of them survived atall, because the best time to begin a hygienic program is as early in thedegenerative process as possible, not after the body has been drasticallyweakened by invasive and toxic treatments. Later on, I’ll tell you about some ofthese cases. Something I consider especially ironic is that when the patient of a medical
doctor dies, it is inevitably thought that the blessed doctor did all that could bedone; rarely is any blame laid. If the physician was especially careless or stupid,their fault can only result in a civil suit, covered by malpractice insurance. But let aholistic practitioner treat a sick person and have that person follow any of theirsuggestions or take any natural remedies and have that person die or worsen andit instantly becomes the natural doctor’s fault. Great blame is placed and thepractitioner faces inquests, grand juries, manslaughter charges, jail time and civilsuits that can’t be insured against. Allopathic medicine rarely makes a connection between the real causes of a
degenerative or infectious disease and its cure. The causes are usually consideredmysterious: we don’t know why the pancreas is acting up, etc. The sick aresympathized with as victims who did nothing to contribute to their condition. Thecure is a highly technical battle against the illness, whose weapons are defined inLatin and far beyond the understanding of a layperson. Hygienic medicine presents an opposite view. To the naturopath, illness is not a
perplexing and mysterious occurrence over which you have no control or
understanding. The causes of disease are clear and simple, the sick person is
rarely a victim of circumstance and the cure is obvious and within the competenceof a moderately intelligent sick person themselves to understand and helpadminister. In natural medicine, disease is a part of living that you are responsiblefor, and quite capable of handling. Asserting that the sick are pitiable victims is financially beneficial to doctors. It
makes medical intervention seem a vital necessity for every ache and pain. Itmakes the sick become dependent. I’m not implying that most doctors knowinglyare conniving extortionists. Actually most medical doctors are genuinely well-intentioned. I’ve also noticed that most medical doctors are at heart very timidindividuals who consider that possession of a MD degree and license proves thatthey are very important, proves them to be highly intelligent, even makes themfully qualified to pontificate on many subjects not related to medicine at all. Doctors obtain an enormous sense of self-importance at medical school,
where they proudly endured the high pressure weeding out of any free spiritunwilling to grind away into the night for seven or more years. Anyone incapableof absorbing and regurgitating huge amounts of rote information; anyone with adisrespectful or irreverent attitude toward the senior doctor-gods who arrogantlyserve as med school professors, anyone like this was eliminated with especialrapidity. When the thoroughly submissive, homogenized survivors are finallylicensed, they assume the status of junior doctor-gods. But becoming an official medical deity doesn’t permit one to create their own
methods. No no, the AMA’s professional oversight and control system makescontinued possession of the license to practice (and the high income that usuallycomes with it) entirely dependent on continued conformity to what is defined bythe AMA as “correct practice. ” Any doctor who innovates beyond strict limits oruses nonstandard treatments is in real danger of losing their livelihood and status. Not only are licensed graduates of AMA-sanctioned medical schools kept on
a very tight leash, doctors of other persuasions who use other methods to heal thesick or help them heal themselves are persecuted and prosecuted. Extension of
the AMA ’s control through regulatory law and police power is justified in the
name of preventing quackery and making sure the ignorant and gullible publicreceives only scientifically proven effective medical care. Those on the other side of the fence view the AMA’s oppression as an
effective way to make sure the public has no real choices but to use uniondoctors, pay their high fees and suffer greatly by misunderstanding of the truecause of disease and its proper cure. If there are any actual villains responsible forthis suppressive tragedy some of them are to be found in the inner core of theAMA, officials who may perhaps fully and consciously comprehend thesuppressive system they promulgate. Hygienists usually inform the patient quite clearly and directly that the
practitioner has no ability to heal them or cure their condition and that no doctorof any type actually is able to heal. Only the body can heal itself, something it iseager and usually very able to do if only given the chance. One pithy old sayingamong hygienists goes, “if the body can’t heal itself, nothing can heal it. ” Theprimary job of the hygienic practitioner is to reeducate the patient by conductingthem through their first natural healing process. If this is done well the sick personlearns how to get out of their own body’s way and permit its native healing powerto manifest. Unless later the victim of severe traumatic injury, never again will thatperson need obscenely expensive medical procedures. Hygienists rarely make sixfigure incomes from regular, repeat business. This aspect of hygienic medicine makes it different than almost all the others,
even most other holistic methods. Hygiene is the only system that does notinterpose the assumed healing power of a doctor between the patient andwellness. When I was younger and less experienced I thought that the mainreason traditional medical practice did not stress the body’s own healing powerand represented the doctor as a necessary intervention was for profit. But afterpracticing for over twenty years I now understand that the last thing most peoplewant to hear is that their own habits, especially their eating patterns and foodchoices, are responsible for their disease and that their cure is to only be
accomplished through dietary reform, which means unremittingly applied self-
discipline. One of the hardest things to ask of a person is to change a habit. The reason
that AMA doctors have most of the patients is they’re giving the patients exactlywhat they want, which is to be allowed to continue in their unconsciousirresponsibility. The Cause Of Disease
Ever since natural medicine arose in opposition to the violence of so-called
scientific medicine, every book on the subject of hygiene, once it gets past itsobligatory introductions and warm ups, must address The Cause of Disease. Thisis a required step because we see the cause of disease and its consequent cure ina very different manner than the allopath. Instead of many causes, we see onebasic reason why. Instead of many unrelated cures, we have basically oneapproach to fix all ills that can be fixed. A beautiful fifty cent word that means a system for explaining something is
paradigm, pronounced para-dime. I am fond of this word because it admits thepossibility of many differing yet equally true explanations for the same reality. Ofall available paradigms, Natural Hygiene suits me best and has been the one I’veused for most of my career. The Natural Hygienist’s paradigm for the cause of both degenerative and
infectious disease is called the Theory of Toxemia, or “self-poisoning. ”
Before explaining this theory it will help many readers if I digress a brief
moment about the nature and validity of alternative paradigms. Not too manydecades ago, scientists thought that reality was a singular, real, perpetual—thatNatural Law existed much as a tree or a rock existed. In physics, for example,the mechanics of Newton were considered capital “T” True, the only possibleparadigm. Any other view, not being True, was False. There was capital “N”natural capital “L” law. More recently, great uncertainty has entered science; it has become
indisputable that a theory or explanation of reality is only true only to the degree it
seems to work; conflicting or various explanations can all work, all can be “true. ”At least, this uncertainty has overtaken the hard, physical sciences. It has not yetdone so with medicine. The AMA is convinced (or is working hard to convinceeveryone else) that its paradigm, the allopathic approach, is Truth, is scientific,and therefore, anything else is Falsehood, is irresponsibility, is a crime against thesick. But the actual worth or truth of any paradigm is found not in its “reality,” but in
its utility. Does an explanation or theory allow a person to manipulate experienceand create a desired outcome. To the extent a paradigm does that, it can beconsidered valuable. Judged by this standard, the Theory of Toxemia must be fartruer than the hodgepodge of psuedoscience taught in medical schools. Keep thatin mind the next time some officious medical doctor disdainfully informs you thatTheory of Toxemia was disproven in 1927 by Doctors Jeckel and Hyde. Why People Get Sick
This is the Theory of Toxemia. A healthy body struggles continually to purify
itself of poisons that are inevitably produced while going about its business ofdigesting food, moving about, and repairing itself. The body is a marvelouscreation, a carbon, oxygen combustion machine, constantly burning fuel, disposingof the waste products of combustion, and constantly rebuilding tissue by replacingworn out, dead cells with new, fresh ones. Every seven years virtually every cell inthe body is replaced, some types of cells having a faster turnover rate than others,which means that over a seven year period several hundred pounds of dead cellsmust be digested (autolyzed) and eliminated. All by itself this would be a lot ofwaste disposal for the body to handle. Added to that waste load are numerousmild poisons created during proper digestion. And added to that can be anenormous burden of waste products created as the body’s attempts to digest theindigestible, or those tasty items I’ve heard called “fun food. ” Add to that burdenthe ruinous effects of just plain overeating. The waste products of digestion, of indigestion, of cellular breakdown and the
general metabolism are all poisonous to one degree or another. Another word forthis is toxic. If these toxins were allowed to remain and accumulate in the body, itwould poison itself and die in agony. So the body has a processing system toeliminate toxins. And when that system does break down the body does die inagony, as from liver or kidney failure. The organs of detoxification remove things from the body’s system, but these
two vital organs should not be confused with what hygienists call the secondaryorgans of elimination, such as the large intestine, lungs, bladder and the skin,because none of these other eliminatory organs are supposed to purify the bodyof toxins. But when the body is faced with toxemia, the secondary organs ofelimination are frequently pressed into this duty and the consequences are thesymptoms we call illness. The lungs are supposed to eliminate only carbon dioxide gas; not self-
generated toxic substances. The large intestine is supposed to pass only insolublefood solids (and some nasty stuff dumped into the small intestine by the liver). Skin eliminates in the form of sweat (which contains mineral salts) to cool thebody, but the skin is not supposed to move toxins outside the system. But whentoxins are flowed out through secondary organs of elimination these areas becomeinflamed, irritated, weakened. The results can be skin irritations, sinusitis or awhole host of other “itises” depending on the area involved, bacterial or viralinfections, asthma. When excess toxemia is deposited instead of eliminated, theresults can be arthritis if toxins are stored in joints, rheumatism if in muscle tissues,cysts and benign tumors. And if toxins weaken the body’s immune response,cancer. The liver and the kidneys, the two heroic organs of detoxification, are the most
important ones; these jointly act as filters to purify the blood. Hygienists pay a lotof attention to these organs, the liver especially. In an ideal world, the liver and kidneys would keep up with their job for 80
years or more before even beginning to tire. In this ideal world, the food would of
course, be very nutritious and free of pesticide residues, the air and water would
be pure, people would not denature their food and turn it into junk. In this perfectworld everyone would get moderate exercise into old age, and live virtuallywithout stress. In this utopian vision, the average healthy productive life spanwould approach a century, entirely without using food supplements or vitamins. Inthis world doctors would have next to no work other than repairing traumaticinjuries, because everyone would be healthy. But this is not the way it is. In our less-than-ideal world virtually everything we eat is denatured,
processed, fried, salted, sweetened, preserved; thus more stress is placed on theliver and kidneys than nature designed them to handle. Except for a few highlyfortunate individuals blessed with an incredible genetic endowment that permitsthem to live to age 99 on moose meat, well-larded white flour biscuits, coffee withevaporated milk and sugar, brandy and cigarettes (we’ve all heard of someonelike this), most peoples’ liver and kidneys begin to break down prematurely. Thusdoctoring has become a financially rewarding profession. Most people overburden their organs of elimination by eating whatever they
feel like eating whenever they feel like it. Or, they irresponsibly eat whatever isserved to them by a mother, wife, institution or cook because doing so is easy orexpected. Eating is a very habitual and unconscious activity; frequently wecontinue to eat as adults whatever our mother fed us as a child. I consider itunsurprising that when people develop the very same disease conditions as theirparents. they wrongly assume the cause is genetic inheritance, when actually itwas just because they were putting their feet under the same table as theirparents. Toxemia also comes about from following the wrongheaded recommendations
of allopathic-inspired nutritional texts and licensed dietitians. For example, peoplebelieve they should eat one food from each of the four so-called basic foodgroups at each meal, thinking they are doing the right thing for their health byhaving four colors of food on every plate, when they really aren’t. What they haveactually done is force their bodies to attempt the digestion of indigestible food
combinations, and the resulting indigestion creates massive doses of toxins. I’ll
have a lot more to say about that later when I discuss the art of food combining. The Actual Food Groups*
Starches Proteins Fats Sugars Water y Vegetables
bread meats butter honey zucchini
potatoes eggs oils fruit green beans
noodles fish lard sugar tomatoes
manioc/yuca most nuts nuts molasses peppers
baked goods dry beans avocado malt syrup eggplant
grains nut butters maple syrup radish
winter squash split peas dried fruit rutabaga
parsnips lentils melons turnips
sweet potatoes soybeans carrot juice Brussels sprouts
yams tofu beet juice celery
taro root tempeh cauliflower
plantains wheat grass juice broccoli
beets “green” drinks okra
spirulina lettuce
algae endiveyeast cabbage
dairy carrots
* Standard dietitians divide our foods into four  basic food groups and
recommend the ridiculous practice of mixing them at every meal. This guaranteesindigestion and lots of business for the medical profession. This chart illustrates theactual food groups. It is usually a poor practice to mix different foods from onegroup with those from another. The Digestive Process
After we have eaten our four-color meal—often we do this in a hurry, without
much chewing, under a lot of stress, or in the presence of negative emotions—wegive no thought to what becomes of our food once it has been swallowed. Wehave been led to assume that anything put in the mouth automatically gets digestedflawlessly, is efficiently absorbed into the body where it nourishes our cells, withthe waste products being eliminated completely by the large intestine. This visionof efficiency may exist in the best cases but for most there is many a slip betweenthe table and the toilet. Most bodies are not optimally efficient at performing allthe required functions, especially after years of poor living habits, stress, fatigue,and aging. To the Natural Hygienist, most disease begins and ends with our food;most of our healing efforts are focused on improving the process of digestion. Digestion means chemically changing the foods we eat into substances that can
pass into the blood stream and circulate through the body where nutrition is usedfor bodily functions. Our bodies use nutritional substances for fuel, for repair andrebuilding, and to conduct an incredibly complex biochemistry. Scientists are stillbusily engaged in trying to understand the chemical mysteries of our bodies. Butas bewildering as the chemistry of life is, the chemistry of digestion itself is actuallya relatively simple process, and one doctors have had a fairly good understandingof for many decades. Though relatively straightforward, a lot can and does go wrong with digestion. The body breaks down foods with a series of different enzymes that are mixedwith food at various points as it passes from mouth to stomach to small intestine. An enzyme is a large, complex molecule that has the ability to chemically changeother large, complex molecules without being changed itself. Digestive enzymesperform relatively simple functions—breaking large molecules into smaller partsthat can dissolve in water. Digestion starts in the mouth when food is mixed with ptyalin, an enzyme
secreted by the salivary glands. Pylatin converts insoluble starches into simple
sugars. If the digestion of starchy foods is impaired, the body is less able to
extract the energy contained in our foods, while far worse from the point of viewof the genesis of diseases, undigested starches pass through the stomach and intothe gut where they ferment and thereby create an additional toxic burden for theliver to process. And fermenting starches also create gas. As we chew our food it gets mixed with saliva; as we continue to chew the
starches in the food are converted into sugar. There is a very simple experimentyou can conduct to prove to yourself how this works. Get a plain piece of bread,no jam, no butter, plain, and without swallowing it or allowing much of it to passdown the throat, begin to chew it until it seems to literally dissolve. Pylatin worksfast in our mouths so you may be surprised at how sweet the taste gets. Asimportant as chewing is, I have only run into about one client in a hundred thatactually makes an effort to consciously chew their food. Horace Fletcher, whose name has become synonymous with the importance of
chewing food well (Fletcherizing), ran an experiment on a military population inCanada. He required half his experimental group to chew thoroughly, and theother half to gulp things down as usual,. His study reports significant improvementin the overall health and performance of the group that persistently chewed. Fletcher’s report recommended that every mouthful be chewed 50 times for half aminute before being swallowed. Try it, you might be very surprised at what abeneficial effect such a simple change in your approach to eating can make. Notonly will you have less intestinal gas, if overweight you will probably find yourselfgetting smaller because your blood sugar will elevate quicker as you are eatingand thus your sense of hunger will go away sooner. If you are very thin and havedifficulty gaining weight you may find that the pounds go on easier becausechewing well makes your body more capable of actually assimilating the caloriesyou are consuming. A logical conclusion from this data is that anything that would prevent or
reduce chewing would be unhealthful. For example, food eaten when too hottends to be gulped down. The same tends to happen when food is seasoned withfresh Jalapeño or habaneo peppers. People with poor teeth should blend or mashstarchy foods and then gum them thoroughly to mix them with saliva. Keep inmind that even so-called protein foods such as beans often contain large quantitiesof starches and the starch portion of protein foods is also digested in the mouth. Once the food is in the stomach, it is mixed with both  hydrochloric acid,
secreted by the stomach itself, and pepsin, an enzyme. Together these breakproteins down into water-soluble amino acids. To accomplish this the stomachmuscles agitate the food continuously, somewhat like a washing machine. Thisextended churning forms a kind of ball in the stomach called a bolis. Many things can and frequently do go wrong at this stage of the digestive
process. First, the stomach’s very acid environment inactivates pylatin, so anystarch not converted to sugar in the mouth does not get properly processedthereafter. And the most dangerous misdigestion comes from the sad fact thatcooked proteins are relatively indigestible no matter how strong the constitution,no matter how concentrated the stomach acid or how many enzymes present. It isquite understandable to me that people do not wish to accept this fact. After all,cooked proteins are so delicious, especially cooked red meats and the harderfleshed, more flavorful fishes. To appreciate this, consider how those enzymes that digest proteins work. A
protein molecule is a large, complex string of amino acids, each linked to the nextin a specific order. Suppose there are only six amino acids: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. So a particular (imaginary) protein could be structured: 1, 4, 4, 6, 2, 3, 5, 4, 2, 3,6, 1, 1, 2, 3, etc. Thus you should see that by combining a limited number ofamino acids there can be a virtually infinite number of proteins. But proteins are rarely water soluble. As I said a few paragraphs back,
digestion consists of rendering insoluble foods into water-soluble substances sothey can pass into the blood stream and be used by the body’s chemistry. Tomake them soluble, enzymes break down the proteins, separating the individualamino acids one from the other, because amino acids are soluble. Enzymes thatdigest proteins work as though they are mirror images of a particular amino acid. They fit against a particular amino acid like a key fits into a lock. Then they breakthe bonds holding that amino acid to others in the protein chain, and then, what Ifind so miraculous about this process, the enzyme is capable of finding yet anotheramino acid to free, and then yet another. So with sufficient churning in an acid environment, with enough time (a few
hours), and enough enzymes, all the recently eaten proteins are decomposed intoamino acids and these amino acids pass into the blood where the bodyrecombines them into structures it wants to make. And we have health. But whenprotein chains are heated, the protein structures are altered into physical shapesthat the enzymes can’t “latch” on to. The perfect example of this is when an egg isfried. The eggwhite is albumen, a kind of protein. When it is heated, it shrivels upand gets hard. While raw and liquid, it is easily digestible. When cooked, largelyindigestible. Stress also inhibits the churning action in the stomach so that otherwise
digestible foods may not be mixed efficiently with digestive enzymes. For all thesereasons, undigested proteins may pass into the gut along with the undigestedstarches. Starches convert best to sugars under the alkaline conditions found inthe mouth. Once they pass into the acid stomach starch digestion is not asefficient. If starches reach the small intestine they are fermented by yeasts. Theproducts of starch fermentation are only mildly toxic. The gases produced byyeast fermentations usually don’t smell particularly bad; bodies that regularlycontain starch fermentation usually don’t smell particularly bad either. In otherwise
healthy people it can take many years of exposure to starch fermentation toxins to
produce a life-threatening disease. But undigested proteins aren’t fermented by yeasts, they putrefy in the gut (are
attacked by anaerobic bacteria). Many of the waste products of anaerobicputrefaction are highly toxic and evil smelling; when these toxins are absorbedthrough the small or large intestines they are very irritating to the mucousmembranes, frequently contributing to or causing cancer of the colon. Proteinputrefaction may even cause psychotic symptoms in some individuals. Meateaters often have a very unpleasant body odor even when they are not releasingintestinal gasses. Adding a heavy toxic burden from misdigested foods to the normal toxic load
a body already has to handle creates a myriad of unpleasant symptoms, andgreatly shortens life. But misdigestion also carries with it a double whammy;fermenting and/or putrefying foods immediately interfere with the functioning ofanother vital organ—the large intestine—and cause constipation. Most people don’t know what the word constipation really means. Not being
able to move one’s bowels is only the most elementary type of constipation. Amore accurate definition of constipation is “the retention of waste products in thelarge intestine beyond the time that is conducive to health. ” Properly digestedfood is not sticky and exits the large intestine quickly. But improperly digestedfood (or indigestible food) gradually coats the large intestine, making an ever-thicker lining that interferes with the intestine’s functioning. Far worse, this coatingsteadily putrefies, creating additional highly-potent toxins. Lining the colon withundigested food can be compared to the mineral deposits filling in the inside of anold water pipe, gradually choking off the flow. In the colon, this deposit canbecome rock-hard, just like water pipe scale. Since the large intestine is also an organ that removes moisture and water-
soluble minerals from the food and moves them into the blood stream, when thelarge intestine is lined with putrefying undigested food waste, the toxins of this
putrefaction are also steadily moved into the bloodstream and place an even
greater burden on the liver and kidneys, accelerating their breakdown,accelerating the aging process and contributing to a lot of interesting andunpleasant symptoms that keep doctors busy and financially solvent. I’ll havequite a bit more to say about colon cleansing later. The Progress Of Disease:
Irritation, Enervation, Toxaemia
Disease routinely lies at the end of a three-part chain that goes: irritation or
subclinical malnutrition, enervation, toxemia. Irritations are something the persondoes to themselves or something that happens around them. Stresses, in otherwords. Mental stressors include strong negative emotional states such as anger, fear,
resentment, hopelessness, etc. Behind most diseases it is common to find aproblematic mind churning in profound confusion, one generated by a characterthat avoids responsibility. There may also be job stress or ongoing hostilerelationships, often within the family. Indigestible foods and misdigestion are also stressful irritations, as are mild
recreational poisons such as “soft” drugs, tobacco and alcohol. Opiates aresomewhat more toxifying, primarily because they paralyze the gut and induceprofound constipation. Stimulants like cocaine and amphetamines are the mostdamaging recreational drugs ; these are highly toxic and rapidly shorten life. Repeated irritations and/or malnutrition eventually produce enervation. The
old-time hygienists defined enervation as a lack of or decline in an unmeasurablephenomena, “nerve energy. ” They viewed the functioning of vital organs as beingcontrolled by or driven by nerve force, sometimes called life force or élan vital. Whatever this vital force actually is, it can be observed and subjectively measuredby comparing one person with another. Some people are full of it and literallysparkle with overflowing energy. Beings like this make everyone around them feel
good because they somehow momentarily give energy to those endowed with
less. Others possess very little and dully plod through life. As vital force drops, the overall efficiency of all the body’s organs
correspondingly decline. The pancreas creates less digestive enzymes; the thymussecretes less of its vital hormones that mobilize the immune system; the pituitarymakes less growth hormone so the overall repair and rebuilding of cells andtissues slows correspondingly; and so forth. It does not really matter if there is oris not something called nerve energy that can or cannot be measured in alaboratory. Vital force is observable to many people. However, it is measurableby laboratory test that after repeated irritation the overall functioning of theessential organs and glands does deteriorate. Enervation may develop so gradually that it progresses below the level of
awareness of the person, or times of increased enervation can be experienced asa complaint—as a lack of energy, as tiredness, as difficulties digesting, as a newinability to handle a previously-tolerated insult like alcohol. Long-term consumption of poor-quality food causes enervation. The body is a
carbon/oxygen engine designed to run efficiently only on highly nutritious food andthis aspect of human genetic programming cannot be changed significantly byadaptation. Given enough generations a human gene pool can adapt to extractingits nutrition from a different group of foods. For example, a group of isolatedFijians currently enjoying long healthy lives eating a diet of seafoods and tropicalroot crops could suddenly be moved to the highlands of Switzerland and forcedto eat the local fare or starve. But most of the Fijians would not have systemsadept at making those enzymes necessary to digest cows milk. So thetransplanted Fijians would experience many generations of poorer health andshorter life spans until their genes had been selected for adaptation to the newdietary. Ultimately their descendants could become uniformly healthy on rye breadand dairy products just like the highland Swiss were. However, modern industrial farming and processing of foodstuffs significantly
contributes to mass, widespread enervation in two ways. Humans will probablyadjust to the first; the second will, I’m sure, prove insurmountable. First,industrially processed foods are a recent invention and our bodies have not yetadapted to digesting them. In a few more generations humans might be able toaccomplish that and public health could improve on factory food. In themeanwhile, the health of humans has declined. Industrially farmed foods have alsobeen lowered in nutritional content compared to what food could be. I gravelydoubt if any biological organism can ever adapt to an overall dietary that containssignificantly lowered levels of nutrition. I will explain this more fully in the chapteron diet. Secondary Eliminations Are Disease
However the exact form the chain from irritation or malnutrition to enervation
progresses, the ultimate result is an increased level of toxemia, placing aneliminatory burden on the liver and kidneys. Eventually these organs begin toweaken. Decline of liver and/or kidney function threatens the stability and purityof blood chemistry. Rather than risk complete incapacitation or death from self-poisoning, the overloaded, toxic body, guided by its genetic predisposition andthe nature of the toxins (what was eaten, in what state of stress), cleverly channelssurplus toxins into its first line of defense—alternative or secondary eliminationsystems. Most non-life-threatening yet highly annoying disease conditions originate as
secondary eliminations. For example, the skin was designed to sweat, eliminationof fluids. Toxemia is often pushed out the sweat glands and is recognized as anunpleasant body odor. A healthy, nontoxic body smells sweet and pleasant (like anewborn baby’s body) even after exercise when it has been sweating heavily. Other skin-like organs such as the sinus tissues, were designed to secrete smallamounts of mucus for lubrication. The lungs eliminate used air and the tissues are
lubricated with mucus-like secretions too. These secretions are types of
eliminations, but are not intended for the elimination of toxins. When toxins aredischarged in mucus through tissues not designed to handle them, the tissuesthemselves become irritated, inflamed, weakened and thus much more subject tobacterial or viral infection. Despite this danger, not eliminating surplus toxinscarries with it the greater penalty of serious disability or death. So the body, in itswisdom, initially chooses secondary elimination routes as far from vital tissues andorgans as possible. Almost inevitably the skin or skin-like mucus membranes suchas the sinuses, or lung tissues become the first line of defense. Thus the average person’s disease history begins with colds, flu, sinusitis,
bronchitis, chronic cough, asthma, rashes, acne, eczema, psoriasis. If thesesecondary eliminations are suppressed with drugs (either from the medical doctoror with over the counter remedies), if the eating or lifestyle habits that created thetoxemia are not changed, or if the toxic load increases beyond the limits of thistechnique, the body then begins to store toxins in fat or muscle tissues or the jointcavities, overburdens the kidneys, creates cysts, fibroids, and benign tumors tostore those toxins. If toxic overload continues over a longer time the body willeventually have to permit damages to vital tissues, and life-threatening conditionsdevelop. Hygienic doctors always stress that disease is remedial effort. Illness comes
from the body’s best attempt to lighten its toxic load without immediatelythreatening its survival. The body always does the very best it can to remedytoxemia given its circumstances, and it should be commended for these effortsregardless of how uncomfortable they might be to the person inhabiting the body. Symptoms of secondary elimination are actually a positive thing because they arethe body’s efforts to lessen a dangerously toxic condition. Secondary eliminationsshouldn’t be treated immediately with a drug to suppress the process. If yousquelch the bodies best and least-life-threatening method to eliminate toxins, thebody will ultimately have to resort to another more dangerous though probablyless immediately uncomfortable channel. The conventional medical model does not view disease this way and sees the
symptoms of secondary elimination as the disease itself. So the conventionaldoctor takes steps to halt the body’s remedial efforts, thus stopping theundesirable symptom and then, the symptom gone, proclaims the patient cured. Actually, the disease is the cure. A common pattern of symptom suppression under the contemporary medical
model is this progression: treat colds with antihistamines until the body getsinfluenza; suppress a flu repeatedly with antibiotics and eventually you getpneumonia. Or, suppress eczema with cortisone ointment repeatedly, andeventually you develop kidney disease. Or, suppress asthma with bronkiodialatorsand eventually you need cortisone to suppress it. Continue treating asthma withsteroids and you destroy the adrenals; now the body has become allergic tovirtually everything. The presence of toxins in an organ of secondary elimination is frequently the
cause of infection. Sinuses and lungs, inflamed by secondary eliminations, areattacked by viruses or bacteria; infectious diseases of the skin result from pushingtoxins out of the skin. More generalized infections also result from toxemia; in thiscase the immune system has become compromised and the body is overwhelmedby an organism that it normally should be able to resist easily. The wise cure ofinfections is not to use antibiotics to suppress the bacteria while simultaneouslywhipping the immune system; most people, including most medical doctors, donot realize that antibiotics also goose the immune system into super efforts. Butwhen one chooses to whip a tired horse, eventually the exhausted animalcollapses and cannot rise again no matter how vigorously it is beaten. The wisecure is to detoxify the body, a step that simultaneously eliminates secondaryeliminations and rebuilds the immune system. The wise way to deal with the body’s eliminative efforts is to accept that
disease is an opportunity to pay the piper for past indiscretions. You should go tobed, rest, and drink nothing but water or dilute juice until the condition has
passed. This allows the body to conserve its vital energy, direct this energy
toward healing the disordered body part, and catch up on its waste disposal. Inthis way you can help your body, be in harmony with its efforts instead of workingagainst it which is what most people do. Please forgive another semi-political polemic here, but in my practice I have
often been amazed to hear my clients complain that they have not the time nor theability to be patient with their body, to rest it through an illness because they havea job they can’t afford to miss or responsibilities they can’t put down. This is asad commentary on the supposed wealth and prosperity of the United States. Inour country most people are enslaved by their debts, incurred because they hadbeen enthralled by the illusion of happiness secured by the possession of materialthings. Debt slaves believe they cannot miss a week of work. People who feelthey can’t afford to be sick think they can afford to live on pills. So people pushthrough their symptoms by sheer grit for years on end, and keep that up until theirexhausted horse of a body breaks down totally and they find themselves in thehospital running up bills to the tune of several thousand dollars a day. But thesevery same people do not think they can afford the loss of a few hundred dollars ofcurrent income undertaking some virtually harmless preventative maintenance ontheir bodies. Given half a chance the body will throw off toxic overburdens and cleanse
itself. And once the body has been cleansed of toxemia, disagreeable symptomsusually cease. This means that to make relatively mild but unwanted symptomslessen and ultimately stop it is merely necessary to temporarily cut back foodintake, eating only what does not cause toxemia. These foods I classify ascleansing, such as raw fruits and vegetables and their juices. If the symptoms areextreme, are perceived as overwhelming or are actually life-threatening,detoxification can be speeded up by dropping back to only dilute raw juices orvegetable broth made only from greens, without eating the solids. In the most
extreme cases hygienists use their most powerful medicine: a long fast on herb
teas, or just water. I will have a lot to say about fasting, later. When acutely ill, the most important thing to do is to just get out of the body’s
way, and let it heal itself. In our ignorance we are usually our own worst enemy inthis regard. We have been very successfully conditioned to think that allsymptoms are bad. But I know from experience that people can and do learn anew way of viewing the body, an understanding that puts them at cause over theirown body. It allows you to be empowered in one more area of life instead ofbeing dependent and at the mercy of other peoples decisions about your body. Finally, and this is why natural medicine is doubly unpopular, to prevent the
recurrence of toxemia and acute disease states, person must discover what theyare doing wrong and change their life. Often as not this means elimination of theperson’s favorite (indigestible) foods and/or (stress-producing) bad habits. Naturally, I will have a lot more to say about this later, too. Chapter Three
Fasting
From The Hygienic Dictionary
Cure. [1] There is no “cure” for disease; fasting is not a cure. Fasting facilitates natural healing
processes. Foods do not cure. Until we have discarded our faith in cures, there can be no intelligentapproach to the problems presented by suffering and no proper use of foods by those who are ill. Herbert Shelton, The Hygienic System, v. 3, Fasting and Sunbathing. [2] All cure starts from within
out and from the head down and in reverse order as the symptoms have appeared. Hering”s Law ofCure. [3] Life is made up of crises. The individual establishes a standard of health peculiarly his own,which must vary from all other standards as greatly as his personality varies from others. Theindividual standard may be such as to favor the development of indigestion, catarrh, gout, rheumaticand glandular inflammations, tubercular developments, congestions, sluggish secretions and excretions,or inhibitions of various functions, both mental and physical, wherever the environmental or habitstrain is greater than usual. The standard of resistance may be opposed so strenuously by habits andunusual physical agencies—that the body breaks down under the strain. This is a crisis. Appetitefails, discomfort or pain forces rest, and, as a result of physiological rest (fasting) and physical rest(rest from daily work and habits), a readjustment takes place, and the patient is “cured. ” This is whatthe profession and the people call a cure, and it is for the time being—until an unusual enervation isbrought on from accident or dissipation; then another crisis. These crises are the ordinary sickness ofall communities—all catalogued diseases. When the cold is gone or the hay-fever fully relieved, it doesnot mean the patient is cured. Indeed, he is as much diseased as before he suffered the attack—thecrisis—and he never will be cured until the habits of life that keep up toxin poisoning are corrected. Torecover from a crisis is not a cure; the tendency is back to the individual standard; hence all crises areself-limited, unless nature by maltreatment is prevented from reacting. All so-called healing systemsride to glory on the backs of self-limited crises, and the self-deluded doctors and their credulousclients, believe, when the crises are past, that a cure has been wrought, whereas the real truth is thatthe treatment may have delayed reaction. This is largely true of anything that has been done exceptrest. A cure consists in changing the manner of living to such a rational standard that full resistanceand a balanced metabolism is established. I suppose it is not quite human to expect those of astandardized school of healing to give utterance to discovered truth which, if accepted by the people,would rob them of the glory of being curers of disease. Indeed, nature, and nature only, cures; and asfor crises, they come and go, whether or not there is a doctor or healer within a thousand miles. Dr. John. H. Tllden, Impaired Health: Its Cause and Cure,  1921. The accelerated healing process that occurs during fasting can scarcely be
believed by a person who has not fasted. No matter how gifted the writer, theexperiential reality of fasting cannot be communicated. The great novelist UptonSinclair wrote a book about fasting and it failed to convince the multitudes. Butonce a person has fasted long enough to be certain of what their own body cando to fix itself, they acquire a degree of independence little known today. Many ofthose experienced with fasting no longer dread being without health insurance andfeel far less need for a doctor or of having a regular checkup. They know withcertainty that if something degenerates in their body, their own body can fix it byitself. Like Upton Sinclair and many others who largely failed before me, I am going
to try to convince you of the virtues of fasting by urging you to try fasting yourself. If you will but try you will be changed for the better for the rest of your life. If youdo not try, you will never Know. To prompt your first step on this health-freedom road, I ask you to please
carefully consider the importance of this fact: the body’s routine energy budgetincludes a very large allocation for the daily digestion and assimilation of the foodyou eat. You may find my estimate surprising, but about one-third of a fairlysedentary person”s entire energy consumption goes into food processing. Otheruses for the body’s energy include the creation or rebuilding of tissues,detoxification, moving (walking, running, etc. ), talking, producing hormones, etc. Digestion is one aspect of the body’s efforts that we can readily control, it is thekey to having or losing health. The Effort Of Digestion
Digestion is a huge, unappreciated task, unappreciated because few of us are
aware of its happening in the same way we are aware of making efforts to use ourvoluntary muscles when working or exercising. Digestion begins in the mouth withthorough chewing. If you don’t think chewing is effort, try making coleslaw in
your own mouth. Chew up at least half a big head of cabbage and three big
carrots that have not been shredded. Grind each bit until it liquefies and has beenthoroughly mixed with saliva. I guarantee that if you even finish the chore your jawwill be tired and you will have lost all desire to eat anything else, especially if itrequires chewing. Making the saliva you just used while chewing the cabbage is by itself, a huge
and unappreciated chemical effort. Once in the stomach, chewed food has to be churned in order to mix it with
hydrochloric acid, pepsin, and other digestive enzymes. Manufacturing theseenzymes is also considerable work. Churning is even harder work than chewingbut normally, people are unaware of its happening. While the stomach is churning(like a washing machine) a large portion of the blood supply is redirected from themuscles in the extremities to the stomach and intestines to aid in this process. Anyone who has tried to go for a run, or take part in any other strenuous physicalactivity immediately after a large meal feels like a slug and wonders why they justcan’t make their legs move the way they usually do. So, to assist the body while itis digesting, it is wise to take a siesta as los latinos do instead of expecting theblood to be two places at once like los norteamericanos. After the stomach is through churning, the partially digested food is moved into
the small intestine where it is mixed with more pancreatin secreted by thepancreas, and with bile from the gall bladder. Pancreatin further solubilizesproteins. Bile aids in the digestion of fatty foods. Manufacturing bile andpancreatic enzymes is also a lot of effort. Only after the carbohydrates (starchesand sugars), proteins and fats have been broken down into simpler water solublefood units such as simple sugars, amino acids and fatty acids, can the body passthese nutrients into the blood thorough the little projections in the small intestinescalled villi. The leftovers, elements of the food that can’t be solubilized plus some
remaining liquids, are passed into the large intestine. There, water and the vital
mineral salts dissolved in that water, are extracted and absorbed into the blood
stream through thin permeable membranes. Mucous is also secreted in the largeintestine to facilitate passage of the dryish remains. This is an effort. (Intestinalmucous can become a route of secondary elimination, especially during fasting. While fasting, it is essential to take steps to expel toxic mucous in the colon beforethe poisons are readsorbed. ) The final residue, now called fecal matter, issqueezed along the length of the large intestines and passes out the rectum. If all the digestive processes have been efficient there now are an abundance
of soluble nutrients for the blood stream to distribute to hungry cells throughoutthe body. It is important to understand the process at least on the level ofoversimplification just presented in order to begin to understand better how healthis lost or regained through eating, digestion, and elimination. And mostimportantly, through not eating. How Fasting Heals
Its an old hygienic maxim that the doctor does not heal, the medicines do not
heal, only the body heals itself. If the body can’t heal then nothing can heal it. Thebody always knows best what it needs and what to do. But healing means repairing damaged organs and tissues and this takes energy,
while a sick body is already enervated, weakened and not coping with its currentstressors. If the sick person could but somehow increase the body’s energyresources sufficiently, then a slowly healing body could heal faster while aworsening one, or one that was failing or one that was not getting better mightheal. Fasting does just that. To whatever degree food intake is reduced the body’s
digestive workload is proportionately reduced and it will naturally, and far moreintelligently than any physician could order, redirect energy to wherever it decidesthat energy is most needed. A fasting body begins accessing nutritional reserves(vitamins and minerals) previously stored in the tissues and starts converting body
fat into sugar for energy fuel. During a time of water fasting, sustaining the body’s
entire energy and nutritional needs from reserves and fat does require a smalleffort, but far less effort than eating. I would guess a fasting body used about fivepercent of its normal daily energy budget on nutritional concerns rather than the33 percent it needs to process new food. Thus, water fasting puts something like28 percent more energy at the body’s disposal. This is true even though the waterfaster may feel weak, energyless. I would worry if sick or toxic fasters did not complain about their weakness. They should expect to feel energyless. In fact, the more internal healing anddetoxification the body requires, the tireder the faster feels because the body isvery hard at work internally. A great deal of the body’s energy will go towardboosting the immune system if the problem is an infection. Liberated energy canalso be used for healing damaged parts, rebuilding failing organs, for breakingdown and eliminating deposits of toxic materials. Only after most of the healinghas occurred does a faster begin to feel energetic again. Don’t expect to feelanything but tired and weak. The only exception to this would be a person who has already significantly
detoxified and healed their body by previous fasting, or the rare soul that has gonefrom birth through adulthood enjoying extraordinarily good nutrition and withoutexperiencing the stressors of improper digestion. When one experienced faster Iknow finds himself getting “run down” or catching a cold, he quits eating until hefeels really well. Instead of feeling weak as most fasters do, as each of the firstfour or five days of water fasting pass, he experiences a resurgence of more andmore energy. On the first fasting day he would usually feel rotten, which was whyhe started fasting in the first place. On the second fasting day he’d feel more alertand catch up on his paper work. By his third day on only water he would be outdoing hard physical chores like cutting the grass, splitting wood or weeding hisvegetable garden. Day four would also be an energetic one, but if the fastextended beyond that, lowering blood sugar would begin to make him tired andhe’d feel forced to begin laying down. After a day of water fasting the average person’s blood sugar level naturally
drops; making a faster feel somewhat tired and “spacey,” so a typical fasterusually begins to spend much more time resting, further reducing the amount ofenergy being expended on moving the body around, serendipitously redirectingeven more of the body’s energy budget toward healing. By the end of five or sixdays on water, I estimate that from 40 to 50 percent of the body’s availableenergy is being used for healing, repair and detoxification. The amount of work that a fasting body’s own healing energy can do and what
it feels like to be there when it is happening is incredible. But you can’t know it ifyou haven’t felt it. So hardly anyone in our present culture knows. As I mentioned in the first chapter, at Great Oaks School I apprenticed myself
to the traveling masters of virtually every system of natural healing that existedduring the ‘70s. I observed every one of them at work and tried most of them onmy clients. After all that I can say with experience that I am not aware of anyother healing tool that can be so effective as the fast. Essentials of a Successful, Safe Fast
1. Fast in a bright airy room, with exceptionally good ventilation, because
fasters not only need a lot of fresh air; their bodies give off powerfully offensiveodors. 2. Sun bathe if possible in warm climates for 10 to 20 minutes in the morning
before the sun gets too strong. 3. Scrub/massage the skin with a dry brush, stroking toward the heart,
followed by a warm water shower two to four times a day to assist the skin ineliminating toxins. If you are too weak to do this, have an assisted bed bath. 4. Have two enemas daily for the first week of a fast and then once daily until
the fast is terminated. 5. Insure a harmonious environment with supportive people or else fast alone if
you are experienced. Avoid well-meaning interference or anxious criticism at all
cost. The faster becomes hypersensitive to others’ emotions. 6. Rest profoundly except for a short walk of about 200 yards morning and
night. 7. Drink water. At least three quarts every day. Do not allow yourself to
become dehydrated. 8. Control yourself. Break a long fast on diluted non-sweet fruit juice such as
grapefruit juice, sipped a teaspoon at a time, no more than eight ounces at a timeno oftener than every 2 or 3 hours. The second day you eat, add small quantitiesof fresh juicy fruit to the same amount of juice you took the day before no oftenerthan every 3 hours. By small quantities I mean half an apple or the equivalent. Onthe third day of eating, add small quantities of vegetable juice and juicy vegetablessuch as tomatoes and cucumbers.
The author believes that most doctors are well-intentioned but also very timid and self-important, and that the AMA's influence over the media and information has led to a lack of understanding and dependency on doctors.
What is the author's perspective on the role of doctors in the medical profession?
The author argues that the primary cause of disease is the accumulation of toxins in the body, which is a result of poor diet, lack of self-discipline, and other unhealthy habits.
According to the author, what is the primary cause of disease?
The author believes that the body has the ability to heal itself and that the primary role of a hygienist is to educate the patient on how to facilitate this process, rather than relying on medical intervention.
What is the author's view on the relationship between the body and its ability to heal itself?
The author does not believe in the concept of a "cure" and instead emphasizes the importance of changing one's habits and lifestyle to prevent disease.
What is the author's opinion on the concept of "cure"?
The author stresses the importance of following certain rules while fasting, including staying in a bright airy room, getting enough water, and avoiding interference from others, as well as not ending the fast too early and allowing the body to use its reserves to heal itself.
What are the author's essential rules for a successful fast?