Metabolic Solutions Report  
Terry Chamberlin, B.Sc., C.N.C., Bioanalyst                Nova Scotia, Canada                  msibio@yahoo.com               902-584-3810  
 
Feature Book  
 
How and When to Be Your Own Doctor  
by Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon  
 
Forward  
 
    I was a physically tough, happy -go-lucky fellow until I reached my late thirties. Then I began to experience more and more off 
days when I did not feel quite right. I thought I possessed an iron constitution. Although I grew a big foo d garden and ate mostly 
"vegetablitarian" I thought I could eat anything with impunity. I had been fond of drinking beer with my friends while nibbli ng on 
salty snacks or heavy foods late into the night. And until my health began to weaken I could still ge t up the next morning after 
several homebrewed beers, feeling good, and would put in a solid day's work. When my health began to slip I went looking for a cure. Up to that time the only use I'd had for doctors was to fix a few 
traumatic injuries. The only preventative health care I concerned myself with was to take a multivitamin pill during those rare 
spells when I felt a bit run -down and to eat lots of vegetables. So I'd not learned much about alternative health care. Naturally, my first stop wa s a local general practitioner/MD. He gave me his usual half -hour get -acquainted checkout and 
opined that there almost certainly was nothing wrong with me. I suspect I had the good fortune to encounter an honest doctor,  
because he also said if it were my w ish he could send me around for numerous tests but most likely these would not reveal 
anything either. More than likely, all that was wrong was that I was approaching 40; with the onset of middle age I would nat urally 
have more aches and pains. ‘Take some aspirin and get used to it,' was his advice. 'It'll only get worse.' Not satisfied with his dismal prognosis I asked an energetic old guy I knew named Paul, an ‘80 -something homesteader who 
was renowned for his organic garden and his good health. Paul  referred me to his doctor, Isabelle Moser, who at that time was 
running the Great Oaks School of Health, a residential and out -patient spa nearby at Creswell, Oregon. Dr. Moser had very different methods of analysis than the medicos, was warmly perso nal and seemed very safe to talk to. She 
looked me over, did some strange magical thing she called muscle testing and concluded that I still had a very strong constit ution. If I would eliminate certain "bad" foods from my diet, eliminate some generally hea lthful foods that, unfortunately, I was allergic 
to, if I would reduce my alcohol intake greatly and take some food supplements, then gradually my symptoms would abate. With 
the persistent application of a little self -discipline over several months, maybe six months, I could feel really well again almost all 
the time and would probably continue that way for many years to come. This was good news, though the need to apply personal 
responsibility toward the solution of my problem seemed a little sobering. But I could also see that Dr. Moser was obviously not telling me something. So I gently pressed her for the rest. A little sh yly, 
reluctantly, as though she were used to being rebuffed for making such suggestions, Isabelle asked me if I had ever heard of  
fasting? 'Yes,' I said. "I had. Once when I was about twenty and staying at a farm in Missouri, during a bad flu I actually d id fast, 
mainly because I was too sick to take anything but water for nearly one week.' "Why do you ask?" I demanded. "If you would fast, you will start feeling really good as soon as the fast is over." she said. "Fast? How long?" "Some have fasted for a month or even longer," she said. Then she observed my crestfallen expression and added, "Even a 
couple of weeks  would make an enormous difference." It just so happened that I was in between set -up stages for a new mail -order business I was starting and right then I did have a 
couple of weeks when I was virtually free of responsibility. I could also face the id ea of not eating for a couple of weeks. "Okay!" I 
said somewhat impulsively. "I could fast for two weeks. If I start right now maybe even three weeks, depending on how my 
schedule works out." So in short order I was given several small books about fas ting to read at home and was mentally preparing myself for several 
weeks of severe privation, my only sustenance to be water and herb tea without sweetener. And then came the clinker. "Have you ever heard of colonics?" she asked sweetly. "Yes. Weird practice, akin to anal sex or something?" "Not at all," she responded. "Colonics are essential during fasting or you will have spells when you'll feel terrible. Only c olonics 
make water fasting comfortable and safe." Then followed  some explanation about bowel cleansing (and another little book to take home) and soon I was agreeing to get 
my body over to her place for a colonic every two or three days during the fasting period, the first colonic scheduled for th e next 
afternoon. I'l l spare you a detailed description of my first fast with colonics; you'll read about others shortly. In the end I withstood 
the boredom of water fasting for 17 days. During the fast I had about 7 colonics. I ended up feeling great, much trimmer, wit h an 
enormous rebirth of energy. And when I resumed eating it turned out to be slightly easier to control my dietary habits and 
appetites. Thus began my practice of an annual health -building water fast. Once a year, at whatever season it seemed propitious, I 'd set 
aside a couple of weeks to heal my body. While fasting I'd slowly drive myself over to Great Oaks School for colonics every o ther 
day. By the end of my third annual fast in 1981, Isabelle and I had become great friends. About this same time Isabelle 's 
relationship with her first husband, Douglas Moser, had disintegrated. Some months later, Isabelle and I became partners. And  
then we married. My regular fasts continued through 1984, by which time I had recovered my fundamental organic vigor and ha d retrained my 
dietary habits. About 1983 Isabelle and I also began using Life Extension megavitamins as a therapy against the aging process . Feeling so much better I began to find the incredibly boring weeks of prophylactic fasting too difficult to motiva te myself to do, 
and I stopped. Since that time I fast only when acutely ill. Generally less than one week on water handles any non -optimum health 
condition I've had since ‘84. I am only 54 years old as I write these words, so I hope it will be many, many years before I find 
myself in the position where I have to fast for an extended period to deal with a serious or life -threatening condition. I am a kind of person the Spanish call autodidactico, meaning that I prefer to teach myself. I had already lea rned the fine art of 
self-employment and general small -business practice that way, as well as radio and electronic theory, typography and graphic 
design, the garden seed business, horticulture, and agronomy. When Isabelle moved in with me she also brought most of Great 
Oak's extensive library, including very hard to obtain copies of the works of the early hygienic doctors. Naturally I studied  her 
books intensely. Isabelle also brought her medical practice into our house. At first it was only a few loya l local clients who continued to consult 
with her on an out -patient basis, but after a few years, the demands for residential care from people who were seriously and 
sometimes life -threateningly sick grew irresistibly, and I found myself sharing our family  house with a parade of really sick 
people. True, I was not their doctor, but because her residential clients became temporary parts of our family, I helped supp ort and 
encourage our residents through their fasting process. I'm a natural teacher (and how -to-do-it writer), so I found myself explaining 
many aspects of hygienic medicine to Isabelle's clients, while having a first -hand opportunity to observe for myself the healing 
process at work. Thus it was that I became the doctor's assistant and came to pra ctice second -hand hygienic medicine. In 1994, when Isabelle had reached the age of 54, she began to think about passing on her life's accumulation of healing wisd om 
by writing a book. She had no experience at writing for the popular market, her only m ajor writing being a Ph.D. dissertation. I on 
the other hand had published seven books about vegetable gardening. And I grasped the essentials of her wisdom as well as any  
non-practitioner could. So we took a summer off and rented a house in rural Costa Ri ca, where I helped Isabelle put down her 
thoughts on a cheap word -processing typewriter. When we returned to the States, I fired -up my "big -mac" and composed this 
manuscript into a rough book format that was given to some of her clients to get what is tren dily called these days, "feedback." But before we could completely finish her book, Isabelle became dangerously ill and after a long, painful struggle with 
abdominal cancer, she died. After I resurfaced from the worst of my grief and loss, I decided t o finish her book. Fortunately, the 
manuscript needed little more than polishing. I am telling the reader these things because many ghost -written books end up having 
little direct connection with the originator of the thoughts. Not so in this case. And unl ike many ghost writers, I had a long and 
loving apprenticeship with the author. At every step of our colaboration on this book I have made every effort to communicate  
Isabelle's viewpoints in the way she would speak, not my own. Dr. Isabelle Moser was for many years my dearest friend. I have 
worked on this book to help her pass her understanding on. Many people consider death to be a complete invalidation of a healing arts practitioner. I don't. Coping with her own dicey 
health had been a major motivat or for Isabelle's interest in healing others. She will tell you more about it in the chapters to come. Isabelle had been fending off cancer since its first blow up when she was 26 years old. I view that 30 plus years of defeatin g Death 
as a great success r ather than consider her ultimate defeat as a failure. Isabelle Moser was born in 1940 and died in 1996. I think the greatest accomplishment of her 56 years was to meld virtually a ll 
available knowledge about health and healing into a workable and most  importantly, a simple model that allowed her to have 
amazing success. Her "system" is simple enough that even a generally well -educated non -medico like me can grasp it. And use it 
without consulting a doctor every time a symptom appears. Finally, I s hould mention that over the years since this book was written I have discovered contains some significant errors of 
anatomical or psysiological detail. Most of these happened because the book was written "off the top of Isabelle's head," wit hout 
any refere nce materials at hand, not even an anatomy text. I have not fixed these goofs as I am not even qualified to find them all. Thus, when the reader reads such as 'the pancreas secreates enzymes into the stomach,' (actually and correctly, the duodenum)  I 
hope they will understand and not invalidate the entire book. Chapter One  
How I Became a Hygienist  
 
From The Hygienic Dictionary  
Doctors. [1] In the matter of disease and healing, the people have been treated as serfs. The doctor is a dictator who knows it all, 
and the people are stupid, dumb, driven cattle, fit for nothing except to be herded together, bucked and gagged when necessar y to 
force medical opinion down their throats or under their skins. I found that professional dignity was more often pomposity,  sordid 
bigotry and gilded ignorance. The average physician is a fear -monger, if he is anything. He goes about like a roaring lion, seeking 
whom he may scare to death. Dr. John. H. Tllden, Impaired Health: Its Cause and Cure, Vol. 1, 1921. [2] Today we are  not only in 
the Nuclear Age but also the Antibiotic Age. Unhappily, too, this is the Dark Age of Medicine --an age in which many of my 
colleagues, when confronted with a patient, consult a volume which rivals the Manhattan telephone directory in size. This  book 
contains the names of thousands upon thousands of drugs used to alleviate the distressing symptoms of a host of diseased stat es of 
the body. The doctor then decides which pink or purple or baby -blue pill to prescribe for the patient. This is not, in my opinion, the 
practice of medicine. Far too many of these new "miracle" drugs are introduced with fanfare and then reveled as lethal in cha racter, 
to be silently discarded for newer and more powerful drugs. Dr. Henry Bieler: Food is Your Best Medicine; 1 965. I have two reasons for writing this book. One, to help educate the general public about the virtues of natural medicine. The 
second, to encourage the next generation of natural healers. Especially the second because it is not easy to become a nat ural 
hygienist; there is no school or college or licensing board. Most AMA -affiliated physicians follow predictable career paths, straight well -marked roads, climbing through apprenticeships 
in established institutions to high financial rewards and soc ial status. Practitioners of natural medicine are not awarded equally 
high status, rarely do we become wealthy, and often, naturopaths arrive at their profession rather late in life after followi ng the 
tangled web of their own inner light. So I think it is  worth a few pages to explain how I came to practice a dangerous profession 
and why I have accepted the daily risks of police prosecution and civil liability without possibility of insurance. Sometimes it seems to me that I began this lifetime powerful ly predisposed to heal others. So, just for childhood warm -ups I 
was born into a family that would be much in need of my help. As I've always disliked an easy win, to make rendering that hel p 
even more difficult, I decided to be the youngest child, with tw o older brothers. A pair of big, capable brothers might have guided and shielded me. But my life did not work out that way. The younger of my 
two brothers, three years ahead of me, was born with many health problems. He was weak, small, always ill, an d in need of 
protection from other children, who are generally rough and cruel. My father abandoned our family shortly after I was born; i t fell 
to my mother to work to help support us. Before I was adolescent my older brother left home to pursue a career in the Canadian 
Air Force. Though I was the youngest, I was by far the healthiest. Consequently, I had to pretty much raise myself while my single mothe r 
struggled to earn a living in rural western Canada. This circumstance probably reinforced my cons titutional predilection for 
independent thought and action. Early on I started to protect my "little" brother, making sure the local bullies didn't take advantage 
of him. I learned to fight big boys and win. I also helped him acquire simple skills, ones th at most kids grasp without difficulty, 
such as swimming, bike riding, tree climbing, etc. And though not yet adolescent, I had to function as a responsible adult in our household. Stressed by anger over her situatio n 
and the difficulties of earning ou r living as a country school teacher (usually in remote one -room schools), my mother's health 
deteriorated rapidly. As she steadily lost energy and became less able to take care of the home, I took over more and more of  the 
cleaning, cooking, and learned h ow to manage her --a person who feels terrible but must work to survive. During school hours my mother was able to present a positive attitude, and was truly a gifted teacher. However, she had a 
personality quirk. She obstinately preferred to help the most able students become even more able, but she had little desire to help 
those with marginal mentalities. This predilection got her into no end of trouble with local school boards; inevitably it see med the 
District Chairman would have a stupid, badly -behaved child that my mother refused to cater to. Several times we had to move in 
the middle of the school year when she was dismissed without notice for "insubordination." This would inevitably happen on th e 
frigid Canadian Prairies during mid -winter. At night, exhausted by the day's efforts, my mother's positiveness dissipated and she allowed her mind to drift into negative 
thoughts, complaining endlessly about my irresponsible father and about how much she disliked him for treating her so badly. These emotions and their irresponsible expression were very difficult for me to deal with as a child, but it taught me to work on 
diverting someone's negative thoughts, and to avoid getting dragged into them myself, skills I had to use continually much la ter on 
when I began to manage mentally and physically ill clients on a residential basis. My own personal health problems had their genesis long before my own birth. Our diet was awful, with very little fresh fruit or 
vegetables. We normally had canned, evapo rated milk, though there were a few rare times when raw milk and free -range fertile 
farm eggs were available from neighbors. Most of my foods were heavily salted or sugared, and we ate a great deal of fat in t he 
form of lard. My mother had little money but  she had no idea that some of the most nutritious foods are also the least expensive. It is no surprise to me that considering her nutrient -poor, fat -laden diet and stressful life, my mother eventually developed severe 
gall bladder problems. Her degen eration caused progressively more and more severe pain until she had a cholecystectomy. The 
gallbladder's profound deterioration had damaged her liver as well, seeming to her surgeon to require the removal of half her  liver. After this surgical insult she had to stop working and never regained her health. Fortunately, by this time all her children were 
independent. I had still more to overcome. My eldest brother had a nervous breakdown while working on the DEW Line (he was posted on 
the Arctic Circle watching radar screens for a possible incoming attack from Russia). I believe his collapse actually began w ith ou r 
childhood nutrition. While in the Arctic all his foods came from cans. He also was working long hours in extremely cramped 
quarters with no leave for months in a row, never going outside because of the cold, or having the benefit of natural dayligh t.  
    When he was still in the acute stage of his illness (I was still a teenager myself) I went to the hospital where my bother wa s 
being held, and talked the attending psychiatrist into immediately discharging him into my care. The physician also agreed to  
refrain from giving him electroshock therapy, a commonly used treatment for mental conditions in Canadian hospitals at that ti me. Somehow I knew the treatment they were using was wrong. I brought my brother home still on heavy doses of thorazine. The s ide effects of this drug were so severe he could barely exist: 
blurred vision, clenched jaw, trembling hands, and restless feet that could not be kept still. These are common problems with  the 
older generation of psycho tropic medications, generally contro lled to some extent with still other drugs like cogentin (which he 
was taking too). My brother steadily reduced his tranquilizers until he was able to think and do a few things. On his own he started taking a lot of 
B vitamins and eating whole grains. I do not know exactly why he did this, but I believe he was following his intuition. (I 
personally did not know enough to suggest a natural approach at that time.) In any case after three months on vitamins and an  
improved diet he no long needed any medica tion, and was delighted to be free of their side effects. He remained somewhat 
emotionally fragile for a few more months but he soon returned to work, and has had no mental trouble from that time to this day. This was the beginning of my interest in mental  illness, and my first exposure to the limitations of ‘modern' psychiatry. I always preferred self -discipline to being directed by others. So I took every advantage of having a teacher for a mother and 
studied at home instead of being bored silly in a classroom. In Canada of that era you didn't have to go to high school to enter 
university, you only had to pass the written government entrance exams. At age 16, never having spent a single day in high sc hool, 
I passed the university entrance exams with a grade of 97 percent. At that point in my life I really wanted to go to medical school 
and become a doctor, but I didn't have the financial backing to embark on such a long and costly course of study, so I settle d on a 
four year nursing course at the Univer sity of Alberta, with all my expenses paid in exchange for work at the university teaching 
hospital. At the start of my nurses training I was intensely curious about everything in the hospital: birth, death, surgery, illness, etc. I 
found most births to be joyful, at least when everything came out all right. Most people died very alone in the hospital, terrified if 
they were conscious, and all seemed totally unprepared for death, emotionally or spiritually. None of the hospital staff want ed to 
be with a dying person except me; most hospital staff were unable to confront death any more bravely than those who were dying. So I made it a point of being at the death bed. The doctors and nurses found it extremely unpleasant to have to deal with the  
preparatio n of the dead body for the morgue; this chore usually fell to me also. I did not mind dead bodies. They certainly did not 
mind me! I had the most difficulty accepting surgery. There were times when surgery was clearly a life saving intervention, partic ularly 
when the person had incurred a traumatic injury, but there were many other cases when, though the knife was the treatment of 
choice, the results were disastrous. Whenever I think of surgery, my recollections always go to a man with cancer of th e larynx. At that time the University of 
Alberta had the most respected surgeons and cancer specialists in the country. To treat cancer they invariably did surgery, p lus 
radiation and chemotherapy to eradicate all traces of cancerous tissue in the body, bu t they seemed to forget there also was a 
human being residing in that very same cancerous body. This particularly unfortunate man came into our hospital as a whole 
human being, though sick with cancer. He could still speak, eat, swallow, and looked normal. But after surgery he had no larynx, 
nor esophagus, nor tongue, and no lower jaw. The head surgeon, who, by the way, was considered to be a virtual god amongst gods, came back from the operating room 
smiling from ear to ear, announcing proudly that he  had ‘got all the cancer'. But when I saw the result I thought he'd done a 
butcher's job. The victim couldn't speak at all, nor eat except through a tube, and he looked grotesque. Worst, he had lost a ll will to 
live. I thought the man would have been much better off to keep his body parts as long as he could, and die a whole person able to 
speak, eating if he felt like it, being with friends and family without inspiring a gasp of horror. I was sure there must be better ways of dealing with degenerative  conditions such as cancer, but I had no idea what they might 
be or how to find out. There was no literature on medical alternatives in the university library, and no one in the medical s chool 
ever hinted at the possibility except when the doctors took jab s at chiropractors. Since no one else viewed the situation as I did I 
started to think I might be in the wrong profession. It also bothered me that patients were not respected, were not people; they were considered a "case" or a "condition." I was 
frequently reprimanded for wasting time talking to patients, trying to get acquainted. The only place in the hospital where huma n 
contact was acceptable was the psychiatric ward. So I enjoyed the rotation to psychiatry for that reason, and decided that I woul d 
like to make psychiatry or psychology my specialty. By the time I finished nursing school, it was clear that the hospital was not for me. I especially didn't like its rigid hier archical 
system, where all bowed down to the doctors. The very first wee k in school we were taught that when entering a elevator, make 
sure that the doctor entered first, then the intern, then the charge nurse. Followed by, in declining order of status: gradua te nurses, 
third year nurses, second year nurses, first year nurses,  then nursing aids, then orderlies, then ward clerks, and only then, the 
cleaning staff. No matter what the doctor said, the nurse was supposed to do it immediately without question --a very military sort 
of organization. Nursing school wasn't all bad. I learned how to take care of all kinds of people with every variety of illness. I demonstrated for 
myself that simple nursing care could support a struggling body through its natural healing process. But the doctor -gods tended to 
belittle and denigrate n urses. No wonder --so much of nursing care consists of unpleasant chores like bed baths, giving enemas and 
dealing with other bodily functions. I also studied the state -of-the-art science concerning every conceivable medical condition, its symptoms, an d treatment. At the 
university hospital nurses were required to take the same pre -med courses as the doctors --including anatomy, physiology, 
biochemistry, and pharmacology. Consequently, I think it is essential for holistic healers to first ground themselv es in the basic 
sciences of the body's physiological systems. There is also much valuable data in standard medical texts about the digestion,  
assimilation, and elimination. To really understand illness, the alternative practitioner must be fully aware of t he proper 
functioning of the cardiovascular/pulmonary system, the autonomic and voluntary nervous system, the endocrine system, plus th e 
mechanics and detailed nomenclature of the skeleton, muscles, tendons and ligaments. Also it is helpful to know the con ventional 
medical models for treating various disorders, because they do appear to work well for some people, and should not be totally  
invalidated simply on the basis of one's philosophical or religious viewpoints. Many otherwise well -meaning holisti c practitioners, lacking an honest grounding in science, sometimes express their 
understanding of the human body in non -scientific, metaphysical terms that can seem absurd to the well -instructed. I am not 
denying here that there is a spiritual aspect to he alth and illness; I believe there are energy flows in and around the body that can 
effect physiological functioning. I am only suggesting that to discuss illness without hard science is like calling oneself a  abstract 
artist because the painter has no abil ity to even do a simple, accurate representational drawing of a human figure. Though hospital life had already become distasteful to me I was young and poor when I graduated. So after nursing school I 
buckled down and worked just long enough to save en ough money to obtain a masters degree in Clinical Psychology from the 
University of British Columbia. Then I started working at Riverview Hospital in Vancouver, B.C., doing diagnostic testing, an d 
group therapy, mostly with psychotic people. At Riverview I  had a three -year-long opportunity to observe the results of 
conventional psychiatric treatment. The first thing I noticed was the ‘revolving door' phenomena. That is, people go out, and then they're back in, over and over  
again, demonstrating that sta ndard treatment --drugs, electroshock and group therapy --had been ineffective. Worse, the treatments 
given at Riverside were dangerous, often with long term side effects that were more damaging than the disease being treated. It felt 
like nursing school all  over again; in the core of my being I somehow knew there was a better way, a more effective way of 
helping people to regain their mental health. Feeling like an outsider, I started investigating the hospital's nooks and cran nies. Much to my surprise, in a  back ward, one not open to the public, I noticed a number of people with bright purple skins. I asked the staff about this and every one of the psychiatrists denied these patients existed. This outright and widely -agreed -upon 
lie really raised my cur iosity. Finally after pouring through the journals in the hospital library I found an article describing psycho 
tropic -drug-induced disruptions of melanin (the dark skin pigment). Thorazine, a commonly used psychiatric drug, when taken in 
high doses over a  long period of time would do this. Excess melanin eventually was deposited in vital organs such as the heart and 
the liver, causing death. I found it especially upsetting to see patients receive electroshock treatments. These violent, physician -induc ed traumas did 
seem to disrupt dysfunctional thought patterns such as an impulse to commit suicide, but afterwards the victim couldn't remem ber 
huge parts of their life or even recall who they were. Like many other dangerous medical treatments, electroshoc k can save life but 
it can also take life away by obliterating identity. According the Hippocratic Oath, the first criteria of a treatment is that it should do no harm. Once again I found myself tra pped 
in a system that made me feel severe protest. Ye t none of these specialists or university professors, or academic libraries had any 
information about alternatives. Worse, none of these mind -doctor -gods were even looking for better treatments. Though unpleasant and profoundly disappointing, my experi ence as a mental hospital psychologist was, like being in nursing 
school, also very valuable. Not only did I learn how to diagnose, and evaluate the severity of mental illness and assess the 
dangerousness of the mentally ill, I learned to understand them, to feel comfortable with them, and found that I was never afraid of 
them. Fearlessness is a huge advantage. The mentally ill seem to have a heightened ability to spot fear in others. If they se nse that 
you are afraid they frequently enjoy terrorizing you. When psychotic people know you feel comfortable with them, and probably 
understand a great deal of what they are experiencing, when they know that you can and intend to control them, they experienc e a 
huge sense of relief. I could always get mentally ill p eople to tell me what was really going on in their heads when no one else 
could get them to communicate. A few years later I married an American and became the Mental Health Coordinator for Whatcom County, the northwestern 
corner of Washington State. I  handled all the legal proceedings in the county for mentally ill people. After treatment in the state 
mental hospital I supervised their reentry into the community, and attempted to provide some follow up. This work further 
confirmed my conclusions that i n most cases the mentally ill weren't helped by conventional treatment. Most of them rapidly 
became social problems after discharge. It seemed the mental hospital's only ethically defensible function was incarceration --
providing temporary relief for the fa mily and community from the mentally ill person's destructiveness. I did see a few people recover in the mental health system. Inevitably these were young, and had not yet become 
institutionalized, a term describing someone who comes to like being in the hospital because confinement feels safe. Hospitalization can mean three square meals and a bed. It frequently means an opportunity to have a sex life (many female inm ates 
are highly promiscuous). Many psychotics are also criminal; the hospital seems fa r better to them than jail. Many chronically 
mentally ill are also experts at manipulating the system. When homeless, they deliberately get hospitalized for some outrageo us 
deed just before winter. They then "recover" when the fine weather of spring return s. 
    After a year as Mental Health Co -ordinator, I had enough of the "system" and decided that it was as good a time as any to return 
to school for a Ph.D., this time at University. of Oregon where I studied clinical and counseling psychology and geronto logy. While in graduate school I became pregnant and had my first child. Not surprisingly, this experience profoundly changed my 
consciousness. I realized that it had perhaps been all right for me to be somewhat irresponsible about my own nutrition and h ealth, 
but that it was not okay to inflict poor nutrition on my unborn child. At that time I was addicted to salty, deep -fat fried corn chips 
and a diet pop. I thought I had to have these so -called foods every day. I tended to eat for taste, in other words, what I liked, not 
necessarily what would give me the best nutrition. I was also eating a lot of what most people would consider healthy food: m eat, 
cheese, milk, whole grains, nuts, vegetables, and fruits. My constitution had seemed strong and vital e nough through my twenties to allow this level of dietary irresponsibility. During 
my early 20s I had even recovered from a breast cancer by sheer will power. (I will discuss this later.) So before my pregnan cy I 
had not questioned my eating habits. As my body changed and adapted itself to it's new purpose I began visiting the libraries and voraciously read everything 
obtainable under the topic of nutrition --all the texts, current magazines, nutritional journals, and health newsletters. My childhood 
habit of self -directed study paid off. I discovered alternative health magazines like Let's Live, Prevention, Organic Gardening, and 
Best Ways, and promptly obtained every back issue since they were first published. Along the way I ran into articles by Linus  
Pauling on vitamin C, and sent away for all of his books, one of these was co -authored with David Hawkins, called The 
Orthomolecular Approach to Mental Disorders. This book had a profound effect on me. I instantly recognized that it was Truth with a ca pital "T", although the orthomolecular 
approach was clearly in opposition to the established medical model and contradicted everything I had ever learned as a stude nt or 
professional. Here at last was the exciting alternative approach to treating mental di sorders I had so long sought. I filed this 
information away, waiting for an opportunity to use it. And I began to study all the references in The Orthomolecular Approac h to 
Mental Disorders dealing with correcting the perceptual functioning of psychotic pe ople using natural substances. In the course of delving through libraries and book stores, I also came across the Mokelumne Hill Publishing Company (now 
defunct). This obscure publisher reprinted many unusual and generally crudely reproduced out -of-print books about raw foods 
diets, hygienic medicine, fruitarianism, fasting, breathairianism, plus some works discussing spiritual aspects of living tha t were 
far more esoteric than I had ever thought existed. I decided that weird or not, I might as well fin d out everything potentially useful. So I spent a lot of money ordering their books. Some of Mokelumne Hill's material really expanded my thoughts. Though much of  
it seemed totally outrageous, in every book there usually was one line, one paragraph, or if I was lucky one whole chapter that rang 
true for me. Recognizing capital "T" Truth when one sees it is one of the most important abilities a person can have. Unfortunately, every  
aspect of our mass educational system attempts to invalidate this skill. Students are repeatedly told that derivation from recognized 
authority and/or the scientific method are the only valid means to assess the validity of data. But there is another parallel  method to 
determine the truth or falsehood of information: Knowing. W e Know by the simple method of looking at something and 
recognizing its correctness. It is a spiritual ability. I believe we all have it. But in my case, I never lost the ability to  Know because 
I almost never attended school. Thus it is that I am absolutely certain How and When to Be Your Own Doctor will be recognized as Truth by some of my 
readers and rejected as unscientific, unsubstantiated, or anecdotal information by others. I accept this limitation on my abi lity to 
teach. If what you read in the following pages seems True for you, great! If it doesn't, there is little or nothing I could do to further 
convince. I return now to the time of my first pregnancy. In the face of all these new Truths I was discovering conc erning health and 
nutrition, I made immediate changes in my diet. I severely reduced my animal protein intake and limited cooked food in genera l. I 
began taking vitamin and mineral supplements. I also choose a highly atypical Ph.D. dissertation topic, "The  Orthomolecular 
Treatment of Mental Disorders." This fifty cent word, orthomolecular, basically means readjusting the body chemistry by 
providing unusually large amounts of specific nutrient substances normally found in the human body (vitamins and mineral s). Orthomolecular therapy for mental disorders is supported by good diet, by removal of allergy -producing substances, by control of 
hypoglycemia, plus counseling, and provision of a therapeutic environment. My proposed dissertation topic met with not hing but opposition. The professors on my doctoral committee had never heard of 
the word orthomolecular, and all of them were certain it wasn't an accepted, traditional area of research. Research in academ ia is 
supposed to be based on the works of a previo us researchers who arrived at hypothesis based on data obtained by strictly following 
scientific methodology. "Scientific" data requires control groups, matched populations, statistical analysis, etc. In my case  there 
was no previous work my dissertation c ommittee would accept, because the available data did not originate from a medical school 
or psychology department they recognized. Due to a lot of determination and perseverance I finally did succeed in getting my thesis accepted, and triumphed over m y 
doctoral committee. And I graduated with a dual Ph.D. in both counseling psychology and gerontology. My ambition was to 
establish the orthomolecular approach on the west coast. At that time I knew of only two clinics in the world actively using 
nutrition al therapy. One was in New York and the other, was a Russian experimental fasting program for schizophrenics. Doctors 
Hoffer and Osmond had used orthomolecular therapy in a Canadian mental hospital as early as 1950, but they had both gone on t o 
other thing s.  
    The newly graduated Dr. Isabelle Moser, Ph.D. was at this point actually an unemployed mother, renting an old, end -of-the-
road, far -in-the-country farmhouse; by then I had two small daughters. I strongly preferred to take care of my own children in stead 
of turning them over to a baby sitter. My location and my children made it difficult for me to work any place but at home. So  
naturally, I made my family home into a hospital for psychotic individuals. I started out with one resident patient at a tim e, using 
no psychiatric drugs. I had very good results and learned a tremendous amount with each client, because each one was differen t 
and each was my first of each type. With any psychotic residing in your home it is foolhardy to become inattentive e ven for one hour, including what are normally 
considered sleeping hours. I have found the most profoundly ill mentally ill person still to be very crafty and aware even th ough 
they may appear to be unconscious or nonresponsive. Psychotics are also generall y very intuitive, using faculties most of us use 
very little or not at all. For example one of my first patients, Christine, believed that I was trying to electrocute her. Th ough she 
would not talk, she repeatedly drew pictures depicting this. She had, qui te logically within her own reality, decided to kill me with 
a butcher knife in self -defense before I succeeded in killing her. I had to disarm Christine several times, hide all the household 
knives, change my sleeping spot frequently, and generally stay s ufficiently awake at night to respond to slight, creaky sounds that 
could indicate the approach of stealthily placed small bare feet. With orthomolecular treatment Christine improved but also became more difficult to live with as she got better. For e xample, 
when she came out of catatonic -like immobility, she became extremely promiscuous, and was determined to sleep with my 
husband. In fact she kept crawling into bed with him with no clothes on. Either we had to forcefully remove her or the bed wo uld 
be handed over to her --without a resident man. Christine then decided (logically) that I was an obstacle to her sex life, and once 
more set out to kill me. This stage also passed, eventually and Christine got tolerably well. Christine's healing process  is quite typical and demonstrates why orthomolecular treatment is not popular. As a psychotic 
genuinely improves, their aberrated behavior often becomes more aggressive initially and thus, harder to control. It seems fa r more 
convenient for all concerned to suppress psychotic behavior with stupefying drugs. A drugged person can be controlled when 
they're in a sort of perpetual sedation but then, they never get genuinely well, either. Another early patient, Elizabeth, gave me a particularly valuable les son, one that changed the direction of my career away from 
curing insanity and toward regular medicine. Elizabeth was a catatonic schizophrenic who did not speak or move, except for so me 
waxy posturing. She had to be fed, dressed and pottied. Elizabeth was  a pretty little brunette who got through a couple of years of 
college and then spent several years in a state mental hospital. She had recently run away from a hospital, and had been foun d 
wandering aimlessly or standing rigidly, apparently staring fixedl y at nothing. The emergency mental health facility in a small city 
nearby called me up and asked if I would take her. I said I would, and drove into town to pick her up. I found Elizabeth in 
someone's back yard staring at a bush. It took me three hours to persuade her to get in my car, but that effort turned out to be the 
easiest part of the next months. Elizabeth would do nothing for herself, including going to the bathroom. I managed to get some nutrition into her, and change  
her clothes, but that wa s about all I could do. Eventually she wore me down; I drifted off for an hour's nap instead of watching her 
all night. Elizabeth slipped away in the autumn darkness and vanished. Needless to say, when daylight came I desperately sear ched 
the buildings, th e yard, gardens, woods, and even the nearby river. I called in a missing person report and the police looked as 
well. We stopped searching after a week because there just wasn't any place else to look. Then, into my kitchen, right in fro nt of 
our round eye s and gaping mouths, walked a smiling, pleasant, talkative young woman who was quite sane. She said, "Hello I'm Elizabeth! I'm sorry I was such a hassle last week, and thank you for trying to take care of me so well. I was 
too sick to know any better." She said she had gone out our back door the week before and crawled under a pile of fallen leaves on 
the ground in our back yard with a black tarp over them. We had looked under the tarp at least fifty times during the days pa st, but 
never thought to look  under the leaves as well. This amazing occurrence made my head go bong to say the least; it was obvious that Elizabeth had not been ‘schizophrenic' 
because of her genetics, nor because of stress, nor malnutrition, nor hypoglycemia, nor because of any of the causes of mental 
illness I had previously learned to identify and rectify, but because of food allergies. Elizabeth was spontaneously cured be cause 
she'd had nothing to eat for a week. The composting pile of leaves hiding her had produced enough hea t to keep her warm at night 
and the heap contained sufficient moisture to keep her from getting too dehydrated. She looked wonderful, with clear shiny bl ue 
eyes, clear skin with good color, though she was slightly slimmer than when I had last seen her. I then administered Coca's Pulse Test (see the Appendix) and quickly discovered Elizabeth was wildly intolerant to wheat and 
dairy products. Following the well known health gurus of that time like Adelle Davis, I had self -righteously been feeding her 
home-made whole wheat bread from hand -ground Organic wheat, and home -made cultured yogurt from our own organically -fed 
goats. But by doing this I had only maintained her insanity. Elizabeth was an intelligent young woman, and once she understoo d 
what was caus ing her problems, she had no trouble completely eliminating certain foods from her diet. She shuddered at the 
thought that had she not come to my place and discovered the problem, she would probably have died on the back ward of some 
institution for the ch ronically mentally ill.  
    As for me, I will always be grateful to her for opening my eyes and mind a little wider. Elizabeth's case showed me why Russi an 
schizophrenics put on a 30 -day water fast had such a high recovery rate. I also remembered all the esoteric books I had read 
extolling the benefits of fasting. I also remembered two occasions during my own youth when I had eaten little or nothing for  
approximately a month each without realizing that I was "fasting." And doing this had done me nothing bu t good. Once when I was thirteen my mother sent my "little" brother and I to a residential fundamentalist bible school. I did not wan t to 
go there, although my brother did; he had decided he wanted to be a evangelical minister. I hated bible school bec ause I was 
allowed absolutely no independence of action. We were required to attend church services three times a day during the week, a nd 
five services on Sunday. As I became more and more unhappy, I ate less and less; in short order I wasn't eating at al l. The school 
administration became concerned after I had dropped about 30 pounds in two months, notified my mother and sent me home. I 
returned to at -home schooling. I also resumed eating. I fasted one other time for about a month when I was 21. It h appened because I had nothing to do while visiting my mother 
before returning to University except help with housework and prepare meals. The food available in the backwoods of central B .C. didn't appeal to me because it was mostly canned vegetables, canne d milk, canned moose meat and bear meat stews with lots of 
gravy and greasy potatoes. I decided to pass on it altogether. I remember rather enjoying that time as a fine rest and I left  feeling 
very good ready to take on the world full force ahead. At that time I didn't know there was such a thing as fasting, it just happened 
that way. After Elizabeth went on her way, I decided to experimentally fast myself. I consumed only water for two weeks. But I must 
have had counter intentions to this fast because I found myself frequently having dreams about sugared plums, and egg omelets, 
etc. And I didn't end up feeling much better after this fast was over (although I didn't feel any worse either), because I fo olishly 
broke the fast with one of my dream omelets. And I knew better! Every book I'd ever read on fasting stated how important it is to 
break a fast gradually, eating only easy -to-digest foods for days or weeks before resuming one's regular diet. From this experiment I painfully learned how important it is to break a fast properly. Those eggs just didn't feel right, like I had 
an indigestible stone in my belly. I felt very tired after the omelet, not energized one bit by the food. I immediately cut b ack my 
intake to raw fruits and vegetables while the eggs cleared out of my system. After a few days on raw food I felt okay, but I never 
did regain the shine I had achieved just before I resumed eating. This is one of the many fine things about fasting, it allows you to get in much better communication  with your own body, so that 
you can hear it when it objects to something you're putting in it or doing to it. It is not easy to acquire this degree of se nsitivity to 
your body unless you remove all food for a sufficiently long period; this allows the body  to get a word in edgewise that we are 
willing and able to listen to. Even when we do hear the body protesting, we frequently decide to turn a deaf ear, at least un til the 
body starts producing severe pain or some other symptom that we can't ignore. Within a few years after Elizabeth's cure I had handily repaired quite a few mentally ill people in a harmless way no one had 
heard of; many new people were knocking at my door wanting to be admitted to my drug free, home -based treatment program. So 
many in fact that my ability to accommodate them was overwhelmed. I decided that it was necessary to move to a larger facility 
and we bought an old, somewhat run -down estate that I called Great Oaks School of Health because of the magnificent oak trees 
growing in the front yard. At Great Oaks initially I continued working with psychotics, employing fasting as a tool, especially in those cases with obvi ous 
food allergies as identified by Coca's Pulse Test, because it only takes five days for a fasting body to e liminate all traces of an 
allergic food substance and return to normal functioning. If the person was so severely hypoglycemic that they were unable to  
tolerate a water fast, an elimination diet (to be described in detail later) was employed, while stringe ntly avoiding all foods usually 
found to be allergy producing. I also decided that if I was going to employ fasting as my primary medicine, it was important for me to have a more intense 
personal experience with it, because in the process of reviewing the literature on fasting I saw that there were many different 
approaches, each one staunchly defended by highly partisan advocates. For example, the capital "N" Natural, capital "H" 
Hygienists, such a Herbert Shelton, aggressively assert that only a pure water fast can be called a fast. Sheltonites contend that 
juice fasting as advocated by Paavo Airola, for example, is not a fast but rather a modified diet without the benefits of rea l fasting. Colon cleansing was another area of profound disagreement amon g the authorities. Shelton strongly insisted that enemas and 
colonics should not be employed; the juice advocates tend to strongly recommend intestinal cleansing. To be able to intelligently take a position in this maze of conflict I decided to first t ry every system on myself. It seems to me 
that if I can be said to really own anything in this life it is my own body, and I have the absolute right to experiment with  it as long 
as I'm not irresponsible about important things such as care of my kids. I al so feel strongly that it was unethical to ask anyone to do 
anything that I was not willing or able to do myself. Just imagine what would happen if all medical doctors applied this prin cipal in 
their practice of medicine, if all surgeons did it too! I set out to do a complete and fully rigorous water fast according to the Natural Hygiene model --only pure water and bed rest 
(with no colon cleansing) until hunger returns, something the hygienists all assured me would happen when the body had 
completed its detoxification process. The only aspect of a hygienic fast I could not fulfill properly was the bed rest part; 
unfortunately I was in sole charge of a busy holistic treatment center (and two little girls); there were things I had to do,  though I 
did my cho res and duties at a very slow pace with many rest periods. I water fasted for 42 days dropping from 135 pounds to 85 pounds on a 5' 7" frame. At the end I looked like a Nazi 
concentration camp victim. I tended to hide when people came to the door, bec ause the sight of all my bones scared them to death. Despite my assurances visitors assumed I was trying to commit suicide. In any case I persevered, watching my body change, 
observing my emotions, my mental functioning, and my spiritual awareness. I thoug ht, if Moses could fast for 42 days so can I, 
even though the average length of a full water fast to skeletal weight for a person that is not overweight is more in the ord er of 30 
days. I broke the fast with small amounts of carrot juice diluted 50/50 with  water and stayed on that regimen for two more weeks. After I resumed eating solid food it took six weeks to regain enough strength to be able to run the same distance in the same  
time I had before fasting, and it took me about six months to regain my  previous weight. My eyes and skin had become 
exceptionally clear, and some damaged areas of my body such as my twice -broken shoulder had undergone considerable healing. I 
ate far smaller meals after the fast, but food was so much more efficiently absorbed  that I got a lot more miles to the gallon from 
what I did eat. I also became more aware when my body did not want me to eat something. After the fast, if I ignored my body' s 
protest and persisted, it would immediately create some unpleasant sensation that  quickly persuaded me to curb my appetite. I later experimented with other approaches to fasting, with juice fasts, with colon cleansing, and began to establish my own 
eclectic approach to fasting and detoxification, using different types of programs f or different conditions and adjusting for 
psychological tolerances. I'll have a lot more to say about fasting. After my own rigorous fasting experience I felt capable of supervising extended fasts on very ill or very overweight people. Great Oaks was g radually shifting from being a place that mentally ill people came to regain their sanity to being a spa where 
anyone who wanted to improve their health could come for a few days, some weeks or even a few months. It had been my 
observation from the beginni ng that the mentally ill people in my program also improved remarkably in physical health; it was 
obvious that my method was good for anyone. Even people with good health could feel better. By this time I'd also had enough of psychotic people anyway, and longed for sane, responsible company. So people started to come to Great Oaks School of Health to rest up from a demanding job, to drop some excess weight, and 
generally to eliminate the adverse effects of destructive living and eating habits. I also began to get cancer patients, rang ing from 
those who had just been diagnosed and did not wish to go the AMA -approved medical route of surgery, chemotherapy, and 
radiation, to those with well -advanced cancer who had been sent home to die after receiving all of the above treatments and were 
now r eady to give alternative therapies a try since they expected to die anyway. I also had a few people who were beyond help 
because their vital organs had been so badly damaged that they knew they were dying, and they wanted to die in peace without 
medical in tervention, in a supportive hospice cared for by people who could confront death. Great Oaks School was intentionally named a "school" of health partially to deflect the attentions of the AMA. It is, after a ll, 
entirely legal to teach about how to main tain health, about how to prevent illness, and how to go about making yourself well once 
you were sick. Education could not be called "practicing medicine without a license." Great Oaks was also structured as a sch ool 
because I wanted to both learn and tea ch. Toward this end we started putting out a holistic health newsletter and offering classes 
and seminars to the public on various aspects of holistic health. From the early 1970s through the early 1980s I invited a 
succession of holistic specialists to re side at GOSH, or to teach at Great Oaks while living elsewhere. These teachers not only 
provided a service to the community, but they all became my teachers as well. I apprenticed myself to each one in turn. There came and went a steady parade of alter native practitioners of the healing arts and assorted forms of metapsychology: 
acupuncturists, acupressurists, reflexologists, polarity therapists, massage therapists, postural integrationists, Rolfers, F eldenkries 
therapists, neurolinguistic programmers, biokinesiologists, iridologists, psychic healers, laying on of handsers, past life readers, 
crystal therapists, toning therapists in the person of Patricia Sun, color therapy with lamps and different colored lenses a la Stanley 
Bourroughs, Bach Flower ther apists, aroma therapists, herbalists, homeopaths, Tai Chi classes, yoga classes, Arica classes, 
Guergieff and Ouspensky fourth -way study groups, EST workshops, Zen Meditation classes. Refugee Lamas from Tibet gave 
lectures on The Book of the Dead and led m editation and chanting sessions, and we held communication classes using Scientology 
techniques. There were anatomy and physiology classes, classes on nutrition and the orthomolecular approach to treating menta l 
disorders (given by me of course); there wer e chiropractors teaching adjustment techniques, even first aid classes. And we even 
had a few medical doctors of the alternative ilk who were interested in life style changes as an approach to maintaining heal th. Classes were also offered on colon hea lth including herbs, clays, enemas, and colonics. So many of my client at Great Oaks 
were demanding colonics in conjunction with their cleansing programs, that I took time out to go to Indio, Calif. to take a c ourse in 
colon therapy from a chiropractor, an d purchase a state of the art colonic machine featuring all the gauges, electric water solenoids 
and stainless steel knobs one could ask for. During this period almost all alternative therapists and their specialties were very interesting to me, but I found that most of the 
approaches they advocated did not suit my personality. For example, I think that acupuncture is a very useful tool, but I per sonally 
did not want to use needles. Similarly I thought that Rolfing was a very effective tool but I did no t enjoy administering that much 
pain, although a significant number of the clients really wanted pain. Some of the techniques appealed to me in the beginning , and 
I used them frequently with good results but over time I decided to abandon them, mostly beca use of a desire to simplify and 
lighten up my bag of tricks. Because of my enthusiasm and successes Great Oaks kept on growing. Originally the estate served as both the offices of the 
Holt Adoption Agency and the Holt family mansion. The Holt family ha d consisted of Harry and Bertha Holt, six of their 
biological children, and eight adopted Korean orphans. For this reason the ten thousand square foot two story house had large  
common rooms, and lots and lots of bedrooms. It was ideal for housing spa clien ts and my own family. The adjoining Holt 
Adoption Agency office building was also very large with a multitude of rooms. It became living space for those helpers and 
hangers -on we came to refer to as "community members." My first husband added even more to the physical plant constructing a 
large, rustic gym and workshop. Many "alternative" people visited and then begged to stay on with room and board provided in exchange for their work. A few 
of these people made a significant contribution such as cooki ng, child care, gardening, tending the ever -ravenous wood -fired boiler 
we used to keep the huge concrete mansion heated, or doing general cleaning. But the majority of the ‘work exchangers' did no t 
really understand what work really was, or didn't have suf ficient ethical presence to uphold the principle of fair exchange, which is 
basically giving something of equal value for getting something of value and, perhaps more importantly, giving in exchange wh at 
is needed and asked for. I also found that comm unity members, once in residence, were very difficult to dislodge. My healing services were supporting 
far too much dead wood. This was basically my own fault, my own poor management. Still, I learned a great deal from all of this waste. First of all i t is not a genuine service to another human being to give them 
something for nothing. If a fair exchange is expected and received, positive ethical behavior is strengthened, allowing the 
individual to maintain their self -respect. I also came to realize wha t an important factor conducting one's life ethically is in the 
individual healing process. Those patients who were out exchange in their relationships with others in one or more areas of t heir 
life frequently did not get well until they changed these beha viors. Toward the end of 1982, after providing a decade of services to a great many clients, many of these in critical condition, I 
reached to point where I was physically, mentally, and spiritually drained. I needed a vacation desperately but no one, including 
my first husband, could run Great Oaks in my absence much less cover the heavy mortgage. So I decided to sell it. This decisi on 
stunned the community members and shocked the clientele who had become dependent on my services. I also got a divorce at this 
time. In fact I went through quite a dramatic life change in many areas --true to pattern, a classic mid -life crisis. All I kept from 
these years was my two daughters, my life experiences, and far too many books from the enormous Great Oaks library. These changes were however, necessary for my survival. Any person who works with, yes, lives on a day -to-day basis with sick 
people and who is constantly giving or outflowing must take time out to refill their vessel so that they can give again. Fail ure to do 
this can result in a serious loss of health, or death. Most healers are empathic people who feel other peoples' pains and str esses and 
sometimes have difficulty determining exactly what is their own personal ‘baggage' and what belongs to the clie nts. This is 
especially difficult when the therapy involves a lot of 'hands on' techniques. After leaving Great Oaks it took me a couple of years to rest up enough to want to resume practicing again. This time, instea d of 
creating a substantial institu tion, Steve, my second husband and my best friend, built a tiny office next to our family home. I had a 
guest room that I would use for occasional residential patients. Usually these were people I had known from Great Oaks days o r 
were people I particularl y liked and wanted to help through a life crisis. At the time I am writing this book over ten years have passed since I sold Great Oaks. I continue to have an active outpatien t 
practice, preferring to protect the privacy of my home and family life sin ce I was remarried by limiting inpatients to a special few 
who required more intensive care, and then, only one at a time, and then, with long spells without a resident. Chapter Two  
The Nature and Cause of Disease  
 
From The Hygienic Dictionary  
Toxemia. [1] "Toxemia is the basic cause of all so -called diseases. In the process of tissue -building (metabolism), there is cell -
building (anabolism) and cell destruction (catabolism). The broken -down tissue is toxic. In the healthy body (when nerve energy is 
normal), this toxic material is eliminated from the blood as fast as it is evolved. But when nerve energy is dissipated from any  
cause (such as physical or mental excitement or bad habits) the body becomes weakened or enervated. When the body is 
enervated, el imination is checked. This, in turn, results in a retention of toxins in the blood --the condition which we speak of as 
toxemia. This state produces a crisis which is nothing more than heroic or extraordinary efforts by the body to eliminate was te or 
toxin from the blood. It is this crisis which we term disease. Such accumulation of toxin when once established, will continue unti l 
nerve energy has been restored to normal by removing the cause. So -called disease is nature's effort to eliminate toxin from the 
blood. All so -called diseases are crises of toxemia." John H. Tilden, M.D., Toxemia Explained. [2] Toxins are divided into two 
groups; namely exogenous, those formed in the alimentary canal from fermentation and decomposition following imperfect or 
faulty digestion. If the fermentation is of vegetables or fruit, the toxins are irritating, stimulating and enervating, but not so 
dangerous or destructive to organic life as putrefaction, which is a fermentation set up in nitrogenous matter --protein -bearing 
foods, but particularly animal foods. Endogenous toxins are autogenerated. They are the waste products of metabolism. Dr. John. H. Tllden, Impaired Health: Its Cause and Cure, 1921. Suppose a fast -growing city is having traffic jams. "We don't like it!" pro test the voters." Why are these problems happening?" asks the city council, trying to look like they are doing something about it. Experts then proffer answers. "Because there are too many cars," says the Get A Horse Society.
When_to_Be_Your_Own_Doctor.txt
Summarize the following text section accurately and concisely. Maintain specific details and numerical information, and use anti-repetition mechanisms:

        Metabolic Solutions Report  
Terry Chamberlin, B. Sc. , C. N. C. , Bioanalyst                Nova Scotia, Canada                  msibio@yahoo. com               902-584-3810  
 
Feature Book  
 
How and When to Be Your Own Doctor  
by Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon  
 
Forward  
 
    I was a physically tough, happy -go-lucky fellow until I reached my late thirties. Then I began to experience more and more off 
days when I did not feel quite right. I thought I possessed an iron constitution. Although I grew a big foo d garden and ate mostly 
"vegetablitarian" I thought I could eat anything with impunity. I had been fond of drinking beer with my friends while nibbli ng on 
salty snacks or heavy foods late into the night. And until my health began to weaken I could still ge t up the next morning after 
several homebrewed beers, feeling good, and would put in a solid day's work. When my health began to slip I went looking for a cure. Up to that time the only use I'd had for doctors was to fix a few 
traumatic injuries. The only preventative health care I concerned myself with was to take a multivitamin pill during those rare 
spells when I felt a bit run -down and to eat lots of vegetables. So I'd not learned much about alternative health care. Naturally, my first stop wa s a local general practitioner/MD. He gave me his usual half -hour get -acquainted checkout and 
opined that there almost certainly was nothing wrong with me. I suspect I had the good fortune to encounter an honest doctor,  
because he also said if it were my w ish he could send me around for numerous tests but most likely these would not reveal 
anything either. More than likely, all that was wrong was that I was approaching 40; with the onset of middle age I would nat urally 
have more aches and pains. ‘Take some aspirin and get used to it,' was his advice. 'It'll only get worse. ' Not satisfied with his dismal prognosis I asked an energetic old guy I knew named Paul, an ‘80 -something homesteader who 
was renowned for his organic garden and his good health. Paul  referred me to his doctor, Isabelle Moser, who at that time was 
running the Great Oaks School of Health, a residential and out -patient spa nearby at Creswell, Oregon. Dr. Moser had very different methods of analysis than the medicos, was warmly perso nal and seemed very safe to talk to. She 
looked me over, did some strange magical thing she called muscle testing and concluded that I still had a very strong constit ution. If I would eliminate certain "bad" foods from my diet, eliminate some generally hea lthful foods that, unfortunately, I was allergic 
to, if I would reduce my alcohol intake greatly and take some food supplements, then gradually my symptoms would abate. With 
the persistent application of a little self -discipline over several months, maybe six months, I could feel really well again almost all 
the time and would probably continue that way for many years to come. This was good news, though the need to apply personal 
responsibility toward the solution of my problem seemed a little sobering. But I could also see that Dr. Moser was obviously not telling me something. So I gently pressed her for the rest. A little sh yly, 
reluctantly, as though she were used to being rebuffed for making such suggestions, Isabelle asked me if I had ever heard of  
fasting. 'Yes,' I said. "I had. Once when I was about twenty and staying at a farm in Missouri, during a bad flu I actually d id fast, 
mainly because I was too sick to take anything but water for nearly one week. ' "Why do you ask. " I demanded. "If you would fast, you will start feeling really good as soon as the fast is over. " she said. "Fast. How long. " "Some have fasted for a month or even longer," she said. Then she observed my crestfallen expression and added, "Even a 
couple of weeks  would make an enormous difference. " It just so happened that I was in between set -up stages for a new mail -order business I was starting and right then I did have a 
couple of weeks when I was virtually free of responsibility. I could also face the id ea of not eating for a couple of weeks. "Okay. " I 
said somewhat impulsively. "I could fast for two weeks. If I start right now maybe even three weeks, depending on how my 
schedule works out. " So in short order I was given several small books about fas ting to read at home and was mentally preparing myself for several 
weeks of severe privation, my only sustenance to be water and herb tea without sweetener. And then came the clinker. "Have you ever heard of colonics. " she asked sweetly. "Yes. Weird practice, akin to anal sex or something. " "Not at all," she responded. "Colonics are essential during fasting or you will have spells when you'll feel terrible. Only c olonics 
make water fasting comfortable and safe. " Then followed  some explanation about bowel cleansing (and another little book to take home) and soon I was agreeing to get 
my body over to her place for a colonic every two or three days during the fasting period, the first colonic scheduled for th e next 
afternoon. I'l l spare you a detailed description of my first fast with colonics; you'll read about others shortly. In the end I withstood 
the boredom of water fasting for 17 days. During the fast I had about 7 colonics. I ended up feeling great, much trimmer, wit h an 
enormous rebirth of energy. And when I resumed eating it turned out to be slightly easier to control my dietary habits and 
appetites. Thus began my practice of an annual health -building water fast. Once a year, at whatever season it seemed propitious, I 'd set 
aside a couple of weeks to heal my body. While fasting I'd slowly drive myself over to Great Oaks School for colonics every o ther 
day. By the end of my third annual fast in 1981, Isabelle and I had become great friends. About this same time Isabelle's 
relationship with her first husband, Douglas Moser, had disintegrated. Some months later, Isabelle and I became partners. And  
then we married. My regular fasts continued through 1984, by which time I had recovered my fundamental organic vigor and ha d retrained my 
dietary habits. About 1983 Isabelle and I also began using Life Extension megavitamins as a therapy against the aging process. Feeling so much better I began to find the incredibly boring weeks of prophylactic fasting too difficult to motiva te myself to do, 
and I stopped. Since that time I fast only when acutely ill. Generally less than one week on water handles any non -optimum health 
condition I've had since ‘84. I am only 54 years old as I write these words, so I hope it will be many, many years before I find 
myself in the position where I have to fast for an extended period to deal with a serious or life -threatening condition. I am a kind of person the Spanish call autodidactico, meaning that I prefer to teach myself. I had already lea rned the fine art of 
self-employment and general small -business practice that way, as well as radio and electronic theory, typography and graphic 
design, the garden seed business, horticulture, and agronomy. When Isabelle moved in with me she also brought most of Great 
Oak's extensive library, including very hard to obtain copies of the works of the early hygienic doctors. Naturally I studied  her 
books intensely. Isabelle also brought her medical practice into our house. At first it was only a few loya l local clients who continued to consult 
with her on an out -patient basis, but after a few years, the demands for residential care from people who were seriously and 
sometimes life -threateningly sick grew irresistibly, and I found myself sharing our family  house with a parade of really sick 
people. True, I was not their doctor, but because her residential clients became temporary parts of our family, I helped supp ort and 
encourage our residents through their fasting process. I'm a natural teacher (and how -to-do-it writer), so I found myself explaining 
many aspects of hygienic medicine to Isabelle's clients, while having a first -hand opportunity to observe for myself the healing 
process at work. Thus it was that I became the doctor's assistant and came to pra ctice second -hand hygienic medicine. In 1994, when Isabelle had reached the age of 54, she began to think about passing on her life's accumulation of healing wisd om 
by writing a book. She had no experience at writing for the popular market, her only m ajor writing being a Ph. D. dissertation. I on 
the other hand had published seven books about vegetable gardening. And I grasped the essentials of her wisdom as well as any  
non-practitioner could. So we took a summer off and rented a house in rural Costa Ri ca, where I helped Isabelle put down her 
thoughts on a cheap word -processing typewriter. When we returned to the States, I fired -up my "big -mac" and composed this 
manuscript into a rough book format that was given to some of her clients to get what is tren dily called these days, "feedback. " But before we could completely finish her book, Isabelle became dangerously ill and after a long, painful struggle with 
abdominal cancer, she died. After I resurfaced from the worst of my grief and loss, I decided t o finish her book. Fortunately, the 
manuscript needed little more than polishing. I am telling the reader these things because many ghost -written books end up having 
little direct connection with the originator of the thoughts. Not so in this case. And unl ike many ghost writers, I had a long and 
loving apprenticeship with the author. At every step of our colaboration on this book I have made every effort to communicate  
Isabelle's viewpoints in the way she would speak, not my own.
Dr. Isabelle A. Moser
Who wrote the book "How and When to Be Your Own Doctor"?
He was unhappy and felt that the doctors were not doing enough to help his mother.
What was the author's initial reaction to his mother's declining health and the medical profession?
He helped his brother reduce his dosage of Thorazine and encouraged him to eat a diet that did not trigger his allergies.
What was the author's experience with his brother who had a nervous breakdown?
His mother's diet was poor, and she eventually developed gallbladder problems and had to undergo surgery.
What was the author's experience with his mother's health issues?
He used a holistic approach, including fasting, colonics, and nutrition counseling, and also recognized the importance of self-discipline and the need to understand the body's signals.
What was the author's approach to treating mentally ill patients?