The auto makers suggest it is  
because there are uncoordinated traffic lights and because almost all the businesses send their employees home at the same ti me. Easy to fix! And no reason whatsoever to limit the number of cars. The asphalt industry suggests it is because the size and a mount 
of roads is inadequate. What do we do then? Tax cars severely until few can afford them? Legislate opening and closing hours of businesses to stagger  
to'ing and fro'ing? Hire a smarter municipal highway engineer to synchronize the traffic lights? Bui ld larger and more efficient 
streets? Demand that auto companies make cars smaller so more can fit the existing roads? Tax gasoline prohibitively, pass ou t 
and give away free bicycles in virtually unlimited quantities while simultaneously building mass rai l systems? What? Which? 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 the real reason. then our solution results in a real cure. If we picked wrongly, our att empt at solution may result 
in no cure, or create a worse situation than we had before. The American Medical Association style of medicine (a philosophy I will henceforth call allopathic) has a model that explains  the 
causes of illness. It suggests that an yone 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 
been cursed by bad genes. In a ny case, the cause of the disease is not the person and the person is neither responsible for creating 
their own complaint nor is the victim capable of making it go away. This institutionalized irresponsibility seems useful for both 
parties to the illness,  doctor and patient. The patient is not required to do anything about their complaint except pay (a lot) and 
obediently follow the instructions of the doctor, submitting unquestioningly to their drugs and surgeries. The physician then  
acquires a role of be ing considered vital to the survival of others 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 a nything 
but something evil, the physician's cure is often violent, confrontational. Powerful poisons are used to rejigger body chemis try or 
to arrest the multiplication of disease bacteria or to suppress 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 m e in 
fear. But they never stopped me. When I've had a client die there has been an almost inevitable coroner's investigation, complete 
with detectives and the sheriff. Fortunately, I practice in rural Oregon, where the local people have a deeply -held belief in 
individual liberty and where the authorities know they would have had a very h ard time finding a jury to convict me. Had I chosen 
to practice with a high profile and had I located Great Oaks School of Health in a major market area where the physicians wer e 
able to charge top dollar, I probably would have spent years behind bars as d id other 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, desp ite 
the fact that doing so will alienate some of my readers. But I do so because most Americans are entirely enthralled 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 m edicine. This is its handling of trauma. I agree that a body can become the genuine victim of fast moving bullets. It can 
be innocently cut, smashed, burned, crushed and broken. Trauma are not diseases and modern medicine has become quite skilled 
at puttin g traumatized bodies back together. Genetic abnormality may be another undesirable 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 
expressi on of poor genetics often results from poor nutrition, and thus is similar to a degenerative disease condition, and thus is 
well within the scope of natural medicine. Today's suffering American public is firmly in the AMA's grip. People have been effective ly prevented from learning much about 
medical alternatives, have been virtually brainwashed by clever media management that portrays other medical models as 
dangerous and/or ineffective. Legislation influenced by the allopathic doctors' union, the American  Medical Association, severely 
limits or prohibits the practice of holistic health. People are repeatedly directed by those with authority to an allopathic doctor 
whenever they have a health problem, question or confusion. Other types of healers are consid ered to be at best harmless as long as 
they confine themselves to minor complaints; at worst, when naturopaths, hygienists, or homeopaths seek to treat serious dise ase 
conditions they are called quacks, accused of unlicensed practice of medicine and if the y persist 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 non -standard treatments. So when anyone seeks an alternativ e 
health approach it is usually because their complaint has already failed to vanish after consulting a whole series of allopat hic 
doctors. This highly unfortunate kind of sufferer not only has a degenerative condition to rectify, they may have been furthe r 
damaged by harsh medical treatments and additionally, they have a considerable amount of brainwashing 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 doct ors' union is the source of their medical outlook. Whenever an American complains of some malady, a concerned and 
honestly caring friend will demand to know have they yet consulted a medical doctor. Failure to do so on one's own behalf is 
considered 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 forced upon them. When a 
parent fails t o seek standard medical treatment for their child, the adult may well be found guilty of criminal negligence, raising 
the interesting issue of who "owns" the child, the parents or the State. It is perfectly acceptable to die while under conventional medica l care. Happens all the time, in fact. But holistic alternatives are 
represented as stupidly risky, especially for serious conditions such as cancer. People with cancer see no choice but to do 
chemotherapy, radiation, and radical surgery because this is th e current allopathic medical approach. On some level people may 
know that these remedies are highly dangerous but they have been told by their attending oncologist that violent therapies ar e their 
only hope of survival, however poor that may be. If a cance r victim doesn't proceed immediately with such treatment their official 
prognosis becomes worse by the hour. Such scare tactics are common amongst the medical profession, and they leave the recipie nt 
so terrified that they meekly and obediently give up all  self-determinism, sign the liability waiver, and submit, no questions asked. Many then die after suffering intensely from the therapy, long before the so -called disease could have actually caused their demise. 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 certainly be witch hunts and all such irresponsible, greedy quacks would be safely imprisoned. I find i t 
highly ironic that for at least the past twenty five hundred years the basic principle of good medicine has been t hat the treatment 
must first do no harm. This is such an obvious truism that even the AMA doctors pledge to do the same thing when they take th e 
Hippocratic Oath. Yet virtually every action taken by the allopath is a conscious compromise between the potent ial 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 matt er what 
therapy was attempted. Almost certainly receiving hygienic therapy contr ibuted to making their last days far more comfortable and 
relatively freer of pain without using opiates. I have personally taken on clients sent home to die after they had suffered e verything 
the doctors could do to them, told they had only a few days, we eks, or months to live. Some of these clients survived as a result of 
hygienic programs even at that late date. And some didn't. The amazing thing was that any of them survived at all, because th e best 
time to begin a hygienic program is as early in the de generative process as possible, not after the body has been drastically 
weakened by invasive and toxic treatments. Later on, I'll tell you about some of these 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 be done; 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 a holistic pra ctitioner treat a sick person and have that person follow 
any of their suggestions or take any natural remedies and have that person die or worsen and it instantly becomes the natural  
doctor's fault. Great blame is placed and the practitioner faces inquest s, grand juries, manslaughter charges, jail time and civil suits 
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. T he 
causes are usually considered my sterious: we don't know why the pancreas is acting up, etc. The sick are sympathized with as 
victims who did nothing to contribute to their condition. The cure is a highly technical battle against the illness, whose we apons 
are defined in Latin and far bey ond the understanding of a layperson. Hygienic medicine presents an opposite view. To the naturopath, illness is not a perplexing and mysterious occurrence over wh ich 
you have no control or understanding. The causes of disease are clear and simple, the si ck person is rarely a victim of circumstance 
and the cure is obvious and within the competence of a moderately intelligent sick person themselves to understand and help 
administer. In natural medicine, disease is a part of living that you are responsible f or, 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. It makes the sick become dependent. I'm not implying that m ost doctors knowingly are conniving 
extortionists. Actually most medical doctors are genuinely well -intentioned. I've also noticed that most medical doctors are at heart 
very timid individuals who consider that possession of a MD degree and license proves that they are very important, proves them 
to be highly intelligent, even makes them fully 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 e ndured the high pressure weeding 
out of any free spirit unwilling to grind away into the night for seven or more years. Anyone incapable of absorbing and 
regurgitating huge amounts of rote information; anyone with a disrespectful or irreverent attitude tow ard the senior doctor -gods 
who arrogantly serve as med school professors, anyone like this was eliminated with especial rapidity. When the thoroughly 
submissive, homogenized survivors are finally licensed, 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 makes continued possession of the license to practice (and the high income that usually comes with it) ent irely 
dependent on continued conformity to what is defined by the AMA as "correct practice." Any doctor who innovates beyond strict 
limits or uses non -standard 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 the sick or help them heal themselves are persecuted and prosecuted. Extension of the AMA's control  
through regulatory law and police powe r is justified in the name of preventing quackery and making sure the ignorant and gullible 
public receives 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 union doctors, pay their high fees and suffer greatly by misunderstanding of the true cause of disease and its pro per cure. If there are any actual villains responsible for this suppressive tragedy some of them are  to be found in the inner core of the AMA, 
officials who may perhaps fully and consciously comprehend the suppressive system they promulgate. Hygienists usually inform the patient quite clearly and directly that the practitioner has no ability to heal the m or cure their 
condition and that no doctor of any type actually is able to heal. Only the body can heal itself, something it is eager and u sually 
very able to do if only given the chance. One pithy old saying among hygienists goes, "if the body can't hea l itself, nothing can 
heal it." The primary job of the hygienic practitioner is to reeducate the patient by conducting them through their first nat ural 
healing process. If this is done well the sick person learns how to get out of their own body's way and permit its native healing 
power to manifest. Unless later the victim of severe traumatic injury, never again will that person need obscenely expensive 
medical procedures. Hygienists rarely make six figure 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 not interpose the assumed healing power of a doctor between the patient and wellness. When I was younge r 
and less exp erienced I thought that the main reason traditional medical practice did not stress the body's own healing power and 
represented the doctor as a necessary intervention was for profit. But after practicing for over twenty years I now understan d that 
the las t thing most people want to hear is that their own habits, especially their eating patterns and food choices, 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 t hey're 
giving the patients exactly what they want, which is to be allowed to continue in their unconscious irresponsibili ty. 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 its obligatory introductions and warm ups, must address The Cause of Disease . This is a required step 
because we see the cause of disease and its consequent cure in a very different manner than the allopath. Instead of many cau ses, 
we see one basic reason why. Instead of many unrelated cures, we have basically one approach 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 the possibility of many differing yet equally true explanations for the same re ality. Of all available 
paradigms, Natural Hygiene suits me best and has been the one I've used 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, o r 
"self-poisoning." Before explaining this theory it will help many readers if I digress a brief moment about the nature and validity of alternat ive 
paradigms. Not too many decades ago, scientists thought that reality was a singular, real, perpetual --that Natural La w existed much 
as a tree or a rock existed. In physics, for example, the mechanics of Newton were considered capital "T" True, the only poss ible 
paradigm. Any other view, not being True, was False. There was capital "N" natural capital "L" law. More recent ly, 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 unce rtainty has 
overtaken the hard, physical sciences. It has not yet done so with medicine. The AMA is convinced (or is working hard to 
convince everyone else) that its paradigm, the allopathic approach, is Truth, is scientific, and therefore, anything else is Falseh ood, 
is irresponsibility, is a crime against the sick. But the actual worth or truth of any paradigm is found not in its "reality," but in its utility. Does an explanation or theor y allow a 
person to manipulate experience and create a desired outcome. To the extent a paradigm does that, it can be considered valuable. Judged by this standard, the Theory of Toxemia must be far truer than the hodgepodge of psuedoscience taught in medical schoo ls. Keep that in mind the next time some officious medical doctor d isdainfully informs you that Theory 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 a bout its business of digesting food, moving about, and repairing itself. The body is a marvelous creation, a carbon, oxygen 
combustion machine, constantly burning fuel, disposing of the waste products of combustion, and constantly rebuilding tissue by 
replacing worn out, dead cells with new, fresh ones. Every seven years virtually every cell in the body is replaced, some types o f 
cells having a faster turnover rate than others, which means that over a seven year period several hundred pounds of dead cel ls 
must be digested (autolyzed) and eliminated. All by itself this would be a lot of waste disposal for the body to handle. Added  to 
that waste load are numerous mild poisons created during proper digestion. And added to that can be an enormous burden of was te 
products created as the body's attempts to digest the indigestible, or those tasty items I've heard called "fun food." Add to  that 
burden the 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 for this is toxic. If these toxins were allowed to remain and accumulate in the body, it would poiso n itself 
and die in agony. So the body has a processing system to elimi nate toxins. And when that system does break down the body does 
die in agony, 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 wha t 
hygienists call t he secondary organs of elimination, such as the large intestine, lungs, bladder and the skin, because none of these 
other eliminatory organs are supposed to purify the body of toxins. But when the body is faced with toxemia, the secondary or gans 
of elimina tion are frequently pressed into this duty and the consequences are the symptoms 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 insoluble food 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 the body, but the skin is not supposed to move toxins outside the system. But  when 
toxins are flowed out  through secondary organs of elimination these areas become inflamed, irritated, weakened. The results can 
be skin irritations, sinusitis or a whole host of other "itises" depending on the area involved, bacterial or viral infection s, asthma. When excess t oxemia is deposited instead of eliminated, the results 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 h eroic organs of detoxification, are the most important ones; these jointly act as filters to purify 
the blood. Hygienists pay a lot of attention to these organs, the liver especially. In an ideal world, the liver and kidneys would keep up with their job fo r 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, pe ople 
would not denature their food and turn it into junk. In this perfect  world everyone would get moderate exercise into old age, and 
live virtually without stress. In this utopian vision, the average healthy productive life span would approach a century, ent irely 
without using food supplements or vitamins. In this world docto rs would have next to no work other than repairing traumatic 
injuries, 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 the liver and kidneys than nature designed them to handle. Except for a few highly fortunate individuals blessed 
with an incredible genetic endowment that permits them to live to age 99 on moose meat, well -larded white flour b iscuits, coffee 
with evaporated milk and sugar, brandy and cigarettes (we've all heard of someone like this), most peoples' liver and kidneys  begin 
to break down prematurely. Thus doctoring has become a financially rewarding profession. Most people overbur den their organs of elimination by eating whatever they feel like eating whenever they feel like it. Or, they 
irresponsibly eat whatever is served to them by a mother, wife, institution or cook because doing so is easy or expected. Eat ing is a 
very habitua l and unconscious activity; frequently we continue to eat as adults whatever our mother fed us as a child. I consider it 
unsurprising that when people develop the very same disease conditions as their parents. they wrongly assume the cause is gen etic 
inher itance, when actually it was just because they were putting their feet under the same table as their parents. Toxemia also comes about from following the wrongheaded recommendations of allopathic -inspired nutritional texts and licensed 
dietitians. For exam ple, people believe they should eat one food from each of the four so -called basic food groups at each meal, 
thinking they are doing the right thing for their health by having four colors of food on every plate, when they really aren' t. What 
they have actu ally 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 comb ining. Table 1: The Actual Food Groups*  
 Starches  Proteins  Fats Sugars  Watery Vegetables  
bread  meats  butter  honey  zucchini  
potatoes  eggs oils fruit green beans  
noodles  fish lard sugar  tomatoes  
manioc/yuca  most nuts  nuts molassas  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    endive  
 yeast    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 
guarantees indigestion and lots of business for the medical profession. This chart illustrates the actual food groups. It is usually a poor practice to 
mix different foods from one group 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 --we give no thought to what becomes of our food once it has been swallowed . We have been led to 
assume that anything put in the mouth automatically gets digested flawlessly, is efficiently absorbed into the body where it 
nourishes our cells, with the waste products being eliminated completely by the large intestine. This vision of efficiency may exist 
in the best cases but for most there is many a slip between the table and the toilet. Most bodies are not optimally efficient  at 
performing all the required functions, especially after years of poor living habits, stress, fatigue, a nd 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 used for bodily functions. Our bodies use nutritional substances for fuel, for repair and rebuild ing, and 
to conduct an incredibly complex biochemistry. Scientists are still busily engaged in t rying to understand the chemical mysteries of 
our bodies. But as bewildering as the chemistry of life is, the chemistry of digestion itself is actually a relatively simple  process, 
and one doctors have had a fairly good understanding of 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 mixed with 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 change other large, complex molecules without being changed itself . Digestive enzymes perform relatively simple functions --breaking large molecules into smaller parts that 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 en ergy 
contained in our foods, while far worse from the point of view of the genesis of diseases, undigested starches pass through t he 
stomach and into the gut where they ferment and thereby create an additional toxic burden for the liver to process. And ferme nting 
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. Ther e 
is a very simple experiment you 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 pass down the throat, begin to chew it until it seems to literally  dissolve. Pylatin works fast in our mouths so you may be surprised at how sweet the taste gets. As important as chewing is, I have only run 
into about one client in a hundred that actually makes an effort to consciously chew their food. Horace Fletcher, whose name has become synonymous with the importance of chewing food well (Fletcherizing), r an an 
experiment on a military population in Canada. He required half his experimental group to chew thoroughly, and the other half  to 
gulp things down as usual,. His study reports significant improvement in the overall health and performance of the group that 
persistently chewed. Fletcher's report recommended that every mouthful be chewed 50 times for half a minute before being 
swallowed. Try it, you might be very surprised at what a beneficial effect such a simple change in your approach to eating ca n 
make. Not only will you have less intestinal gas, if overweight you will probably find yourself getting smaller because your blo od 
sugar will elevate quicker as you are eating and thus your sense of hunger will go away sooner. If you are very thin and have  
difficulty gaining weight you may find that the pounds go on easier because chewing well makes your body more capable of 
actually assimilating the calories you are consuming. A logical conclusion from this data is that anything that would prevent or red uce chewing would be unhealthful. For example, 
food eaten when too hot tends to be gulped down. The same tends to happen when food is seasoned with fresh Jalapeño or habane o 
peppers. People with poor teeth should blend or mash starchy foods and then gum th em thoroughly to mix them with saliva. Keep 
in mind that even so -called protein foods such as beans often contain large quantities of 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 hydrochloric acid, secreted by the stomach itself, and pepsin, an enzyme. Together these break proteins down into water -soluble amino acids. To accomplish this the stomach muscles agitate the food 
continuously, somewhat like a washing machine. This extended 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 any starch not converted t o sugar in the mouth does not get properly processed thereafter. And the most 
dangerous misdigetion comes from the sad fact that cooked proteins are relatively indigestible no matter how strong the 
constitution, no matter how concentrated the stomach acid or how many enzymes present. It is quite 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 hard er, 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 next in 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 of amino 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 so they can pass into the blood stream and be used by the body's chemistry. To make them soluble, 
enzymes break down the proteins, separating the individual amino acids one from the other, because amino acids are soluble. Enzymes that digest 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 break the bonds holding that amino acid to others in the protein chain, and then, what  I 
find so miraculous about this process, the enzyme is capable of finding yet another amino 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 eate n 
proteins are decomposed into amino acids and these amino acids pass into the blood where the body recombines them into 
structu res it wants to make. And we have health. But when protein chains are heated, the protein structures are altered into physica l 
shapes that the enzymes can't "latch" on to. The perfect example of this is when an egg is fried. The eggwhite is albumen, a kind of 
protein. When it is heated, it shrivels up and gets hard. While raw and liquid, it is easily digestable. When cooked, largely  
indigestable. Stress also inhibits the churning action in the stomach so that otherwise digestible foods may not be mixed efficiently with 
digestive enzymes. For all these reasons, undigested proteins may pass into the gut. Along with undigested starches. When starches convert best to sugars under the alkaline conditions found in the mouth. Once 
they pass into the acid st omach starch digestion is not as efficient. If starches reach the small intestine they are fermented by 
yeasts. The products of starch fermentation are only mildly toxic. The gases produced by yeast fermentations usually don't sm ell 
particularly bad; bodie s that regularly contain 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 anaerobic putrefaction are highly toxic and evil smelling; when these toxins are absorbed through the small  or 
large intestines they are very  irritating to the mucous membranes, frequently contributing to or causing cancer of the colon. Protein 
putrefaction may even cause psychotic symptoms in some individuals. Meat eaters often have a very unpleasant body odor even 
when they are not releasing intestinal 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, and greatly shortens life. But misdigestion also carries with it a double whammy; ferme nting and/or 
putrefying foods immediately interfere with the functioning of another 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 t he most 
elementary type of constipation. A more accurate definition of constipation is "the retention of waste products in the large intestine 
beyond the time that is conducive to health." Properly digested food is not sticky and exits the large intestine quickly. But 
improperly digested food (or indigestible food) gradually coats the large intestine, making an ever -thicker lining that interferes 
with the intestine's functioning. Far worse, this coating steadily putrefies, creating additional highly -potent toxins. Lining the colon 
with undigested food can be compared to the mineral deposits filling in the inside of an old water pipe, gradually choking of f the 
flow. In the colon, this deposit can become rock -hard, just like water pipe scale. Since the lar ge intestine is also an organ that removes moisture and water -soluble minerals from the food and moves them into 
the blood stream, when the large intestine is lined with putrefying undigested food waste, the toxins of this putrefaction ar e also 
steadily mo ved 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 and unpleasant symptoms that keep doctors busy and 
financially solvent . I'll have quite a bit more to say about colon cleansing later. The Progress Of Disease: Irritation, Enervation, Toxemia  
    Disease routinely lies at the end of a three -part chain that goes: irritation or sub -clinical malnutrition, enervation, toxemia. Irritations are something the person does to themselves or something that happens around them. Stresses, in other words. Mental stressors include strong negative emotional states such as anger, fear, resentment, hopelessness, etc. Behind most 
diseases  it is common to find a problematic mind churning in profound confusion, one generated by a character that avoids 
responsibility. There may also be job stress or ongoing hostile relationships, often within the family. Indigestible foods and misdigesti on are also stressful irritations, as are mild recreational poisons such as "soft" drugs, tobacco 
and alcohol. Opiates are somewhat more toxifying, primarily because they paralyze the gut and induce profound constipation. Stimulants like cocaine and amphet amines are the most damaging 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 unmeasur able phenomena, "nerve energy." They viewed the functioning of vital organs as being controlled by or 
driven by nerve force, sometimes called life force or élan vital. Whatever this vital force actually is, it can be observed a nd 
subjectively measured by c omparing one person with another. Some people are full of it and literally sparkle 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 li ttle and dully plod through life. As vital force drops, the overall efficiency of all the body's organs correspondingly decline. The pancreas creates less dige stive 
enzymes; the thymus secretes less of its vital hormones that mobilize the immune syste m; the pituitary makes less growth hormone 
so the overall repair and rebuilding of cells and tissues slows correspondingly; and so forth. It does not really matter if t here is or is 
not something called nerve energy that can or cannot be measured in a labo ratory. Vital force is observable to many people. However, it is measurable by laboratory test that after repeated irritation the overall functioning of the essential organs a nd glands 
does deteriorate. Enervation may develop so gradually that it progr esses below the level of awareness of the person, or times of increased 
enervation can be experienced as a complaint --as a lack of energy, as tiredness, as difficulties digesting, as a new inability 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 and this aspect of human genetic programming cannot be changed significantly by adaptation. Given enough generations a human gene pool can adapt to extracting its nutrition from a different group of foods. For example, a 
group of isolated Fijians currently enjoying long healthy lives eating a diet of seafoods and tropical root crops could sudde nly be 
moved to the highlands of Switzerland and forced to eat the local fare or starve. But most of the Fijians would not have syste ms 
adept at making those enzymes necessary to digest cows milk. So the transplanted Fijians would experience many generations of  
poorer health and shorter life spans until their genes had been selected for adaptation to the new dietary. Ultimately their 
descendants could become uniformly healthy on rye bread and dairy products just like the highland Swiss were. However, modern ind ustrial farming and processing of foodstuffs significantly contributes to mass, widespread enervation in 
two ways. Humans will probably adjust to the first; the second will, I'm sure, prove insurmountable. First, industrially proc essed 
foods are a recent i nvention and our bodies have not yet adapted to digesting them. In a few more generations humans might be 
able to accomplish that and public health could improve on factory food. In the meanwhile, the health of humans has declined. Industrially farmed food s have also been lowered in nutritional content compared to what food could be. I gravely doubt if any 
biological organism can ever adapt to an overall dietary that contains significantly lowered levels of nutrition. I will expl ain this 
more fully in the c hapter on diet. Secondary Eliminations Are Disease  
    However the exact form the chain from irritation or malnutrition to enervation progresses, the ultimate result is an increase d 
level of toxemia, placing an eliminatory burden on the liver and kidneys in excess of their ability. Eventually these organs begin to 
weaken. Decline of liver and/or kidney function threatens the stability and purity of blood chemistry. Rather than risk compl ete 
incapacitation or death from self -poisoning, the overloaded, toxic  body, guided by its genetic predisposition and the nature of the 
toxins (what was eaten, in what state of stress), cleverly channels surplus toxins into its first line of defense --alternative or 
secondary elimination systems. Most non -life-threatenin g yet highly annoying disease conditions originate as secondary eliminations. For example, the skin was 
designed to sweat, elimination of fluids. Toxemia is often pushed out the sweat glands and is recognized as an unpleasant bod y 
odor. A healthy, non -toxic body smells sweet and pleasant (like a newborn 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 small amounts 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 are discharged in mucus through tissues not des igned 
to handle them, the tissues  themselves become irritated, inflamed, weakened and thus much more subject to bacterial or viral 
infection. Despite this danger, not eliminating surplus toxins carries with it the greater penalty of serious disability or d eath. Because of this liability, the body, in its wisdom, initially chooses secondary elimination routes as far from vital tissues and organs 
as possible. Almost inevitably the skin or skin -like mucus membranes such as 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 these secondary eliminations are suppressed with drugs (either from the medical doctor or with over the  
counte r remedies), if the eating or lifestyle habits that created the toxemia are not changed, or if the toxic load increases beyon d the 
limits of this technique, the body then begins to store toxins in fat or muscle tissues or the joint cavities, overburdens th e kidneys, 
creates cysts, fibroids, and benign tumors to store those toxins. If toxic overload continues over a longer time the body wil l 
eventually have to permit damages to vital tissues, and life -threatening conditions develop. Hygienic doctors alwa ys stress that disease is remedial effort. Illness comes from the body's best attempt to lighten its toxic load 
without immediately threatening its survival. The body always does the very best it can to remedy toxemia given its circumsta nces, 
and it should  be commended for these efforts regardless of how uncomfortable they might be to the person inhabiting the body. Symptoms of secondary elimination are actually a positive thing because they are the body's efforts to lessen a dangerously t oxic 
condition. Se condary eliminations shouldn't be treated immediately with a drug to suppress the process. If you squelch the bodies 
best and least -life-threatening method to eliminate toxins, the body will ultimately have to resort to another more dangerous 
though probab ly less 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 conventional doctor takes steps to halt the body's remedial efforts, thus stopping the undesirable 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 
antihis tamines until the body gets influenza; suppress a flu repeatedly with antibiotics and eventually you get pneumonia. Or, 
suppress eczema with cortisone ointment repeatedly, and eventually you develop kidney disease. Or, suppress asthma with 
bronkiodialators  and eventually you need cortisone to suppress it. Continue treating asthma with steroids and you destroy the 
adrenals; now the body has become allergic to virtually everything. The presence of toxins in an organ of secondary elimination is frequently the cause of infection. Sinuses and lungs, inflamed by 
secondary eliminations, are attacked by viruses or bacteria; infectious diseases of the skin result from pushing toxins out o f the 
skin. More generalized infections also result from toxemia; in this ca se the immune system has become compromised and the body 
is overwhelmed by an organism that it normally should be able to resist easily. The wise cure of infections is not to use ant ibiotics 
to suppress the bacteria while simultaneously whipping the immune  system; most people, including most medical doctors, do not 
realize that antibiotics also goose the immune system into super efforts. But when one chooses to whip a tired horse, eventua lly the 
exhausted animal collapses and cannot rise again no matter how  vigorously it is beaten. The wise cure is to detoxify the body, a 
step that simultaneously eliminates secondary eliminations and rebuilds the immune system. The wise way to deal with the body's eliminative efforts is to accept that disease is an oppor tunity to pay the piper for past 
indiscretions. You should go to bed, rest, and drink nothing but water or dilute juice until the condition has passed. This a llows the 
body to conserve its vital energy, direct this energy toward healing the disordered body  part, and catch up on its waste disposal. In 
this way you can help your body, be in harmony with its efforts instead of working against it which is what most people do. Please forgive another semi -political polemic here, but in my practice I have ofte n been amazed to hear my clients complain that 
they have not the time nor the ability to be patient with their body, to rest it through an illness because they have a job t hey can't 
afford to miss or responsibilities they can't put down. This is a sad comm entary on the supposed wealth and prosperity of the 
United States. In our country most people are enslaved by their debts, incurred because they had been enthralled by the illus ion of 
happiness secured by the possession of material things. Debt slaves beli eve they cannot miss a week of work. People who feel they 
can't afford to be sick think they can afford to live on pills. So people push through their symptoms by sheer grit for years  on end, 
and keep that up until their exhausted horse of a body breaks do wn totally and they find themselves in the hospital running up bills 
to the tune of several thousand dollars a day. But these very same people do not think they can afford the loss of a few hund red 
dollars of current income undertaking some virtually harml ess preventative maintenance on their 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 symptoms usually cease. This means that to make relatively mild but unwanted symptoms lessen and 
ultimately s top it is merely necessary to temporarily cut back food intake, eating only what does not cause toxemia. These foods I 
classify as cleansing, such as raw fruits and vegetables and their juices. If the symptoms are extreme, are perceived as 
overwhelming or are actually life -threatening, detoxification can be speeded up by dropping back to only dilute raw juices or 
vegetable broth made only from greens, without eating the solids. In the most extreme cases hygienists use their most powerfu l 
medicine: a long fa st 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 ignoran ce we are 
usually our own worst enemy in this re gard. We have been very successfully conditioned to think that all symptoms are bad. But I 
know from experience that people can and do learn a new way of viewing the body, an understanding that puts them at cause ove r 
their own body. It allows you to be em powered in one more area of life instead of being 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,  
perso n must discover what they are doing wrong and change their life. Often as not this means elimination of the person'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 intelligent a pproach 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 w ithin 
out and from the head down and in reverse order as the sympt oms have appeared. Hering"s Law of Cure. [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 great ly as his 
personality varies from others. The individual standard m ay be such as to favor the development of indigestion, catarrh, gout, 
rheumatic and glandular inflammations, tubercular developments, congestions, sluggish secretions and excretions, or inhibitio ns of 
various functions, both mental and physical, wherever t he environmental or habit strain is greater than usual. The standard of 
resistance may be opposed so strenuously by habits and unusual physical agencies –that the body breaks down under the strain. This is a crisis. Appetite fails, 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 what the profession and the peop le call a 
cure, and it is for the time being –until an unusual enervation is brought on from accident or dissipation; then another crisis. These 
crises are the ordinary sickness of all communities –all catalogued diseases. When the cold is gone or the hay -fever fully relieved, it 
does not mean the patient is  cured. Indeed, he is as much diseased as before he suffered the attack –the crisis –and he never will be 
cured until the habits of life that keep up toxin poisoning are corrected. To recover from a crisis is not a cure; the tenden cy is back 
to the individua l standard; hence all crises are self -limited, unless nature by maltreatment is prevented from reacting. All so -called 
healing systems ride to glory on the backs of self -limited crises, and the self -deluded doctors and their credulous clients, believe, 
when the crises are past, that a cure has been wrought, whereas the real truth is that the treatment may have delayed reaction. This 
is largely true of anything that has been done except rest. A cure consists in changing the manner of living to such a ration al 
standard that full resistance and a balanced metabolism is established. I suppose it is not quite human to expect those of a 
standardized 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 as for 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 acceler ated healing process that occurs during fasting can scarcely be believed by a person who has not fasted. No matter 
how gifted the writer, the experiential reality of fasting cannot be communicated. The great novelist Upton Sinclair wrote a book 
about fasti ng and it failed to convince the multitudes. But once a person has fasted long enough to be certain of what their own 
body can do to fix itself, they acquire a degree of independence little known today. Many of those experienced with fasting n o 
longer drea d being without health insurance and feel far less need for a doctor or of having a regular checkup. They know with 
certainty that if something degenerates in their body, their own body can fix it by itself. Like Upton Sinclair and many others who larg ely 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 you do 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 budget includes a very large allocation for the daily digestion and assimilation of the food you eat. Y ou may 
find m y estimate surprising, but about one -third of a fairly sedentary person"s entire energy consumption goes into food 
processing. Other uses 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 the 
key 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 our voluntary muscles when working or exercising. Digestion begins in the mouth with thorough 
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 been thoroughly mixed with saliv a. I 
guarantee that if you even finish the chore your jaw will be tired and you will have lost all desire to eat anything else, especially if 
it requires 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 these enzymes is also considerable work! Churning is even harder work than chewing but 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 the muscles 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 physical activity immediately after a large meal feels like a slug and wonders why they just 
can"t make their legs move the way they usually do. So, to assist the body while it is digesting, it is wise to take a siesta  as los 
Latinos do instead of expecting the blood 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 m ore 
pancreatin secreted by the pancreas, and with bile from the gall bladder. Panc reatin further solubilizes proteins. Bile aids in the 
digestion of fatty foods. Manufacturing bile and pancreatic enzymes is also a lot of effort. Only after the carbohydrates (st arches 
and sugars), proteins and fats have been broken down into simpler wate r soluble food units such as simple sugars, amino acids and 
fatty acids, can the body pass these nutrients into the blood thorough the little projections in the small intestines called villi. The leftovers, elements of the food that can"t be solubiliz ed 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 th in 
permeable membranes. Mucous is also secreted in the large i ntestine to facilitate passage of the dryish remains. This is an effort. (Intestinal mucous 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 before the p oisons are re adsorbed.) The final residue, now called fecal matter, is squeezed 
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 throughout the body. It is important to understand the process at least on the level of oversimpli fication 
just presented in order to begin to understand better how health is lost or regained through eating, d igestion, and elimination. And 
most importantly, 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 c an"t 
heal then nothing can heal it. The  body 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 current stressors. If the sick person could but somehow increase the body"s energy resources  
sufficie ntly, then a slowly healing body could heal faster while a worsening one, or one that was failing or one that was not getting  
better might heal. Fasting does just that. To whatever degree food intake is reduced the body"s digestive workload is proport ionately reduced and 
it will naturally, and far more intelligently than any physician could order, redirect energy to wherever it decides that ene rgy is 
most needed. A fasting body begins accessing nutritional reserves (vitamins and minerals) previously st ored 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 an d 
nutritional needs from reserves and fat does require a small effort, but far less effort than eating. I w ould guess a fasting body used 
about five percent of its normal daily energy budget on nutritional concerns rather than the 33 percent it needs to process n ew 
food. Thus, water fasting puts something like 28 percent more energy at the body"s disposal. This  is true even though the water 
faster 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 and detoxification the body require s, the tireder the faster feels because the body is very hard at work 
internally. A great deal of the body"s energy will go toward boosting the immune system if the problem is an infection. Liber ated 
energy can also be used for healing damaged parts, rebui lding failing organs, for breaking down and eliminating deposits of toxic 
materials. Only after most of the healing has occurred does a faster begin to feel energetic again. Don"t expect to feel anyt hing but 
tired and weak. The only exception to this w ould be a person who has already significantly detoxified and healed their body by previous fasting, 
or the rare soul that has gone from birth through adulthood enjoying extraordinarily good nutrition and without experiencing the 
stressors of improper dige stion. When one experienced faster I know finds himself getting "run down" or catching a cold, he quits 
eating until he feels really well. Instead of feeling weak as most fasters do, as each of the first four or five days of wate r fasting 
pass, he experien ces a resurgence of more and more energy. On the first fasting day he would usually feel rotten, which was why 
he started fasting in the first place. On the second fasting day he"d feel more alert and catch up on his paper work. By his third day 
on only wa ter he would be out doing hard physical chores like cutting the grass, splitting wood or weeding his vegetable garden. Day four would also be an energetic one, but if the fast extended beyond that, lowering blood sugar would begin to make him t ired 
and he" 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 faster usually begins to spend much more time resting, further reduc ing the amount of energy being 
expended on moving the body around, serendipitously redirecting even more of the body"s energy budget toward healing. By the 
end of five or six days on water, I estimate that from 40 to 50 percent of the body"s available ener gy 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 if you haven’t felt it. So hardly a nyone 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 sy stem 
of natural healing that existed during the ‘70s. I observed every one of them at work and tried most of them on my clients. After all 
that I can say with experience that I am not aware of any other 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 goo d ventilation, because fasters not only need a lot of fresh air; their bodies give 
off powerfully offensive odors. 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 wit h a dry brush, stroking toward the heart, followed by a warm water shower two to four times a day to 
assist the skin in eliminating 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 an d 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 oth ers" 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 frui t juice such as grapefruit juice, sipped a teaspoon at a time, no more 
than eight ounces at a time no oftener than every 2 or 3 hours. The second day you eat, add small quantities of fresh juicy f ruit to 
the same amount of juice you took the day before no oftener than every 3 hours. By small quantities I mean half an apple or the 
equivalent. On the third day of eating, add small quantities of vegetable juice and juicy vegetables such 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 vegetables at meals. The third week add raw nuts and seeds no more than 1/2 ounce three times daily. Add 1/4 avocad o 
daily. Fourth week increase to 3 ounces of raw s oaked nuts and seeds daily and 1/2 avocado daily. Cooked grains may also be 
added, 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.
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:

        The auto makers suggest it is  
because there are uncoordinated traffic lights and because almost all the businesses send their employees home at the same ti me. Easy to fix. And no reason whatsoever to limit the number of cars. The asphalt industry suggests it is because the size and a mount 
of roads is inadequate. What do we do then. Tax cars severely until few can afford them. Legislate opening and closing hours of businesses to stagger  
to'ing and fro'ing. Hire a smarter municipal highway engineer to synchronize the traffic lights. Bui ld larger and more efficient 
streets. Demand that auto companies make cars smaller so more can fit the existing roads. Tax gasoline prohibitively, pass ou t 
and give away free bicycles in virtually unlimited quantities while simultaneously building mass rai l systems. What. Which. 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 the real reason. then our solution results in a real cure. If we picked wrongly, our att empt at solution may result 
in no cure, or create a worse situation than we had before. The American Medical Association style of medicine (a philosophy I will henceforth call allopathic) has a model that explains  the 
causes of illness. It suggests that an yone 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 
been cursed by bad genes. In a ny case, the cause of the disease is not the person and the person is neither responsible for creating 
their own complaint nor is the victim capable of making it go away. This institutionalized irresponsibility seems useful for both 
parties to the illness,  doctor and patient. The patient is not required to do anything about their complaint except pay (a lot) and 
obediently follow the instructions of the doctor, submitting unquestioningly to their drugs and surgeries. The physician then  
acquires a role of be ing considered vital to the survival of others 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 a nything 
but something evil, the physician's cure is often violent, confrontational. Powerful poisons are used to rejigger body chemis try or 
to arrest the multiplication of disease bacteria or to suppress 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 m e in 
fear. But they never stopped me. When I've had a client die there has been an almost inevitable coroner's investigation, complete 
with detectives and the sheriff. Fortunately, I practice in rural Oregon, where the local people have a deeply -held belief in 
individual liberty and where the authorities know they would have had a very h ard time finding a jury to convict me. Had I chosen 
to practice with a high profile and had I located Great Oaks School of Health in a major market area where the physicians wer e 
able to charge top dollar, I probably would have spent years behind bars as d id other 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, desp ite 
the fact that doing so will alienate some of my readers. But I do so because most Americans are entirely enthralled 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 m edicine. This is its handling of trauma. I agree that a body can become the genuine victim of fast moving bullets. It can 
be innocently cut, smashed, burned, crushed and broken. Trauma are not diseases and modern medicine has become quite skilled 
at puttin g traumatized bodies back together. Genetic abnormality may be another undesirable 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 
expressi on of poor genetics often results from poor nutrition, and thus is similar to a degenerative disease condition, and thus is 
well within the scope of natural medicine. Today's suffering American public is firmly in the AMA's grip. People have been effective ly prevented from learning much about 
medical alternatives, have been virtually brainwashed by clever media management that portrays other medical models as 
dangerous and/or ineffective. Legislation influenced by the allopathic doctors' union, the American  Medical Association, severely 
limits or prohibits the practice of holistic health. People are repeatedly directed by those with authority to an allopathic doctor 
whenever they have a health problem, question or confusion. Other types of healers are consid ered to be at best harmless as long as 
they confine themselves to minor complaints; at worst, when naturopaths, hygienists, or homeopaths seek to treat serious dise ase 
conditions they are called quacks, accused of unlicensed practice of medicine and if the y persist 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 non -standard treatments. So when anyone seeks an alternativ e 
health approach it is usually because their complaint has already failed to vanish after consulting a whole series of allopat hic 
doctors. This highly unfortunate kind of sufferer not only has a degenerative condition to rectify, they may have been furthe r 
damaged by harsh medical treatments and additionally, they have a considerable amount of brainwashing 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 doct ors' union is the source of their medical outlook. Whenever an American complains of some malady, a concerned and 
honestly caring friend will demand to know have they yet consulted a medical doctor. Failure to do so on one's own behalf is 
considered 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 forced upon them. When a 
parent fails t o seek standard medical treatment for their child, the adult may well be found guilty of criminal negligence, raising 
the interesting issue of who "owns" the child, the parents or the State. It is perfectly acceptable to die while under conventional medica l care. Happens all the time, in fact. But holistic alternatives are 
represented as stupidly risky, especially for serious conditions such as cancer. People with cancer see no choice but to do 
chemotherapy, radiation, and radical surgery because this is th e current allopathic medical approach. On some level people may 
know that these remedies are highly dangerous but they have been told by their attending oncologist that violent therapies ar e their 
only hope of survival, however poor that may be. If a cance r victim doesn't proceed immediately with such treatment their official 
prognosis becomes worse by the hour. Such scare tactics are common amongst the medical profession, and they leave the recipie nt 
so terrified that they meekly and obediently give up all  self-determinism, sign the liability waiver, and submit, no questions asked. Many then die after suffering intensely from the therapy, long before the so -called disease could have actually caused their demise. 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 certainly be witch hunts and all such irresponsible, greedy quacks would be safely imprisoned. I find i t 
highly ironic that for at least the past twenty five hundred years the basic principle of good medicine has been t hat the treatment 
must first do no harm. This is such an obvious truism that even the AMA doctors pledge to do the same thing when they take th e 
Hippocratic Oath. Yet virtually every action taken by the allopath is a conscious compromise between the potent ial 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 matt er what 
therapy was attempted. Almost certainly receiving hygienic therapy contr ibuted to making their last days far more comfortable and 
relatively freer of pain without using opiates. I have personally taken on clients sent home to die after they had suffered e verything 
the doctors could do to them, told they had only a few days, we eks, or months to live. Some of these clients survived as a result of 
hygienic programs even at that late date. And some didn't. The amazing thing was that any of them survived at all, because th e best 
time to begin a hygienic program is as early in the de generative process as possible, not after the body has been drastically 
weakened by invasive and toxic treatments. Later on, I'll tell you about some of these 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 be done; 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 a holistic pra ctitioner treat a sick person and have that person follow 
any of their suggestions or take any natural remedies and have that person die or worsen and it instantly becomes the natural  
doctor's fault. Great blame is placed and the practitioner faces inquest s, grand juries, manslaughter charges, jail time and civil suits 
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. T he 
causes are usually considered my sterious: we don't know why the pancreas is acting up, etc. The sick are sympathized with as 
victims who did nothing to contribute to their condition. The cure is a highly technical battle against the illness, whose we apons 
are defined in Latin and far bey ond the understanding of a layperson. Hygienic medicine presents an opposite view. To the naturopath, illness is not a perplexing and mysterious occurrence over wh ich 
you have no control or understanding. The causes of disease are clear and simple, the si ck person is rarely a victim of circumstance 
and the cure is obvious and within the competence of a moderately intelligent sick person themselves to understand and help 
administer. In natural medicine, disease is a part of living that you are responsible f or, 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. It makes the sick become dependent. I'm not implying that m ost doctors knowingly are conniving 
extortionists. Actually most medical doctors are genuinely well -intentioned. I've also noticed that most medical doctors are at heart 
very timid individuals who consider that possession of a MD degree and license proves that they are very important, proves them 
to be highly intelligent, even makes them fully 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 e ndured the high pressure weeding 
out of any free spirit unwilling to grind away into the night for seven or more years. Anyone incapable of absorbing and 
regurgitating huge amounts of rote information; anyone with a disrespectful or irreverent attitude tow ard the senior doctor -gods 
who arrogantly serve as med school professors, anyone like this was eliminated with especial rapidity. When the thoroughly 
submissive, homogenized survivors are finally licensed, 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 makes continued possession of the license to practice (and the high income that usually comes with it) ent irely 
dependent on continued conformity to what is defined by the AMA as "correct practice. " Any doctor who innovates beyond strict 
limits or uses non -standard 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 the sick or help them heal themselves are persecuted and prosecuted. Extension of the AMA's control  
through regulatory law and police powe r is justified in the name of preventing quackery and making sure the ignorant and gullible 
public receives 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 union doctors, pay their high fees and suffer greatly by misunderstanding of the true cause of disease and its pro per cure. If there are any actual villains responsible for this suppressive tragedy some of them are  to be found in the inner core of the AMA, 
officials who may perhaps fully and consciously comprehend the suppressive system they promulgate. Hygienists usually inform the patient quite clearly and directly that the practitioner has no ability to heal the m or cure their 
condition and that no doctor of any type actually is able to heal. Only the body can heal itself, something it is eager and u sually 
very able to do if only given the chance. One pithy old saying among hygienists goes, "if the body can't hea l itself, nothing can 
heal it. " The primary job of the hygienic practitioner is to reeducate the patient by conducting them through their first nat ural 
healing process. If this is done well the sick person learns how to get out of their own body's way and permit its native healing 
power to manifest. Unless later the victim of severe traumatic injury, never again will that person need obscenely expensive 
medical procedures. Hygienists rarely make six figure 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 not interpose the assumed healing power of a doctor between the patient and wellness. When I was younge r 
and less exp erienced I thought that the main reason traditional medical practice did not stress the body's own healing power and 
represented the doctor as a necessary intervention was for profit. But after practicing for over twenty years I now understan d that 
the las t thing most people want to hear is that their own habits, especially their eating patterns and food choices, 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 t hey're 
giving the patients exactly what they want, which is to be allowed to continue in their unconscious irresponsibili ty. 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 its obligatory introductions and warm ups, must address The Cause of Disease. This is a required step 
because we see the cause of disease and its consequent cure in a very different manner than the allopath. Instead of many cau ses, 
we see one basic reason why. Instead of many unrelated cures, we have basically one approach 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 the possibility of many differing yet equally true explanations for the same re ality. Of all available 
paradigms, Natural Hygiene suits me best and has been the one I've used 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, o r 
"self-poisoning. " Before explaining this theory it will help many readers if I digress a brief moment about the nature and validity of alternat ive 
paradigms. Not too many decades ago, scientists thought that reality was a singular, real, perpetual --that Natural La w existed much 
as a tree or a rock existed. In physics, for example, the mechanics of Newton were considered capital "T" True, the only poss ible 
paradigm. Any other view, not being True, was False. There was capital "N" natural capital "L" law. More recent ly, 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 unce rtainty has 
overtaken the hard, physical sciences. It has not yet done so with medicine. The AMA is convinced (or is working hard to 
convince everyone else) that its paradigm, the allopathic approach, is Truth, is scientific, and therefore, anything else is Falseh ood, 
is irresponsibility, is a crime against the sick. But the actual worth or truth of any paradigm is found not in its "reality," but in its utility. Does an explanation or theor y allow a 
person to manipulate experience and create a desired outcome. To the extent a paradigm does that, it can be considered valuable. Judged by this standard, the Theory of Toxemia must be far truer than the hodgepodge of psuedoscience taught in medical schoo ls. Keep that in mind the next time some officious medical doctor d isdainfully informs you that Theory 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 a bout its business of digesting food, moving about, and repairing itself. The body is a marvelous creation, a carbon, oxygen 
combustion machine, constantly burning fuel, disposing of the waste products of combustion, and constantly rebuilding tissue by 
replacing worn out, dead cells with new, fresh ones. Every seven years virtually every cell in the body is replaced, some types o f 
cells having a faster turnover rate than others, which means that over a seven year period several hundred pounds of dead cel ls 
must be digested (autolyzed) and eliminated. All by itself this would be a lot of waste disposal for the body to handle. Added  to 
that waste load are numerous mild poisons created during proper digestion. And added to that can be an enormous burden of was te 
products created as the body's attempts to digest the indigestible, or those tasty items I've heard called "fun food. " Add to  that 
burden the 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 for this is toxic. If these toxins were allowed to remain and accumulate in the body, it would poiso n itself 
and die in agony. So the body has a processing system to elimi nate toxins. And when that system does break down the body does 
die in agony, 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 wha t 
hygienists call t he secondary organs of elimination, such as the large intestine, lungs, bladder and the skin, because none of these 
other eliminatory organs are supposed to purify the body of toxins. But when the body is faced with toxemia, the secondary or gans 
of elimina tion are frequently pressed into this duty and the consequences are the symptoms 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 insoluble food 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 the body, but the skin is not supposed to move toxins outside the system. But  when 
toxins are flowed out  through secondary organs of elimination these areas become inflamed, irritated, weakened. The results can 
be skin irritations, sinusitis or a whole host of other "itises" depending on the area involved, bacterial or viral infection s, asthma. When excess t oxemia is deposited instead of eliminated, the results 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 h eroic organs of detoxification, are the most important ones; these jointly act as filters to purify 
the blood. Hygienists pay a lot of attention to these organs, the liver especially. In an ideal world, the liver and kidneys would keep up with their job fo r 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, pe ople 
would not denature their food and turn it into junk. In this perfect  world everyone would get moderate exercise into old age, and 
live virtually without stress. In this utopian vision, the average healthy productive life span would approach a century, ent irely 
without using food supplements or vitamins. In this world docto rs would have next to no work other than repairing traumatic 
injuries, 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 the liver and kidneys than nature designed them to handle. Except for a few highly fortunate individuals blessed 
with an incredible genetic endowment that permits them to live to age 99 on moose meat, well -larded white flour b iscuits, coffee 
with evaporated milk and sugar, brandy and cigarettes (we've all heard of someone like this), most peoples' liver and kidneys  begin 
to break down prematurely. Thus doctoring has become a financially rewarding profession. Most people overbur den their organs of elimination by eating whatever they feel like eating whenever they feel like it. Or, they 
irresponsibly eat whatever is served to them by a mother, wife, institution or cook because doing so is easy or expected. Eat ing is a 
very habitua l and unconscious activity; frequently we continue to eat as adults whatever our mother fed us as a child. I consider it 
unsurprising that when people develop the very same disease conditions as their parents. they wrongly assume the cause is gen etic 
inher itance, when actually it was just because they were putting their feet under the same table as their parents. Toxemia also comes about from following the wrongheaded recommendations of allopathic -inspired nutritional texts and licensed 
dietitians. For exam ple, people believe they should eat one food from each of the four so -called basic food groups at each meal, 
thinking they are doing the right thing for their health by having four colors of food on every plate, when they really aren' t. What 
they have actu ally 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 comb ining. Table 1: The Actual Food Groups*  
 Starches  Proteins  Fats Sugars  Watery Vegetables  
bread  meats  butter  honey  zucchini  
potatoes  eggs oils fruit green beans  
noodles  fish lard sugar  tomatoes  
manioc/yuca  most nuts  nuts molassas  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    endive  
 yeast    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 
guarantees indigestion and lots of business for the medical profession. This chart illustrates the actual food groups. It is usually a poor practice to 
mix different foods from one group 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 --we give no thought to what becomes of our food once it has been swallowed. We have been led to 
assume that anything put in the mouth automatically gets digested flawlessly, is efficiently absorbed into the body where it 
nourishes our cells, with the waste products being eliminated completely by the large intestine. This vision of efficiency may exist 
in the best cases but for most there is many a slip between the table and the toilet. Most bodies are not optimally efficient  at 
performing all the required functions, especially after years of poor living habits, stress, fatigue, a nd 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 used for bodily functions. Our bodies use nutritional substances for fuel, for repair and rebuild ing, and 
to conduct an incredibly complex biochemistry. Scientists are still busily engaged in t rying to understand the chemical mysteries of 
our bodies. But as bewildering as the chemistry of life is, the chemistry of digestion itself is actually a relatively simple  process, 
and one doctors have had a fairly good understanding of 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 mixed with 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 change other large, complex molecules without being changed itself. Digestive enzymes perform relatively simple functions --breaking large molecules into smaller parts that 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 en ergy 
contained in our foods, while far worse from the point of view of the genesis of diseases, undigested starches pass through t he 
stomach and into the gut where they ferment and thereby create an additional toxic burden for the liver to process. And ferme nting 
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. Ther e 
is a very simple experiment you 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 pass down the throat, begin to chew it until it seems to literally  dissolve. Pylatin works fast in our mouths so you may be surprised at how sweet the taste gets. As important as chewing is, I have only run 
into about one client in a hundred that actually makes an effort to consciously chew their food. Horace Fletcher, whose name has become synonymous with the importance of chewing food well (Fletcherizing), r an an 
experiment on a military population in Canada. He required half his experimental group to chew thoroughly, and the other half  to 
gulp things down as usual,. His study reports significant improvement in the overall health and performance of the group that 
persistently chewed. Fletcher's report recommended that every mouthful be chewed 50 times for half a minute before being 
swallowed. Try it, you might be very surprised at what a beneficial effect such a simple change in your approach to eating ca n 
make. Not only will you have less intestinal gas, if overweight you will probably find yourself getting smaller because your blo od 
sugar will elevate quicker as you are eating and thus your sense of hunger will go away sooner. If you are very thin and have  
difficulty gaining weight you may find that the pounds go on easier because chewing well makes your body more capable of 
actually assimilating the calories you are consuming. A logical conclusion from this data is that anything that would prevent or red uce chewing would be unhealthful. For example, 
food eaten when too hot tends to be gulped down. The same tends to happen when food is seasoned with fresh Jalapeño or habane o 
peppers. People with poor teeth should blend or mash starchy foods and then gum th em thoroughly to mix them with saliva. Keep 
in mind that even so -called protein foods such as beans often contain large quantities of 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 hydrochloric acid, secreted by the stomach itself, and pepsin, an enzyme. Together these break proteins down into water -soluble amino acids. To accomplish this the stomach muscles agitate the food 
continuously, somewhat like a washing machine. This extended 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 any starch not converted t o sugar in the mouth does not get properly processed thereafter. And the most 
dangerous misdigetion comes from the sad fact that cooked proteins are relatively indigestible no matter how strong the 
constitution, no matter how concentrated the stomach acid or how many enzymes present. It is quite 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 hard er, 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 next in 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 of amino 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 so they can pass into the blood stream and be used by the body's chemistry. To make them soluble, 
enzymes break down the proteins, separating the individual amino acids one from the other, because amino acids are soluble. Enzymes that digest 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 break the bonds holding that amino acid to others in the protein chain, and then, what  I 
find so miraculous about this process, the enzyme is capable of finding yet another amino 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 eate n 
proteins are decomposed into amino acids and these amino acids pass into the blood where the body recombines them into 
structu res it wants to make. And we have health. But when protein chains are heated, the protein structures are altered into physica l 
shapes that the enzymes can't "latch" on to. The perfect example of this is when an egg is fried. The eggwhite is albumen, a kind of 
protein. When it is heated, it shrivels up and gets hard. While raw and liquid, it is easily digestable. When cooked, largely  
indigestable. Stress also inhibits the churning action in the stomach so that otherwise digestible foods may not be mixed efficiently with 
digestive enzymes. For all these reasons, undigested proteins may pass into the gut. Along with undigested starches. When starches convert best to sugars under the alkaline conditions found in the mouth. Once 
they pass into the acid st omach starch digestion is not as efficient. If starches reach the small intestine they are fermented by 
yeasts. The products of starch fermentation are only mildly toxic. The gases produced by yeast fermentations usually don't sm ell 
particularly bad; bodie s that regularly contain 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 anaerobic putrefaction are highly toxic and evil smelling; when these toxins are absorbed through the small  or 
large intestines they are very  irritating to the mucous membranes, frequently contributing to or causing cancer of the colon. Protein 
putrefaction may even cause psychotic symptoms in some individuals. Meat eaters often have a very unpleasant body odor even 
when they are not releasing intestinal 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, and greatly shortens life. But misdigestion also carries with it a double whammy; ferme nting and/or 
putrefying foods immediately interfere with the functioning of another 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 t he most 
elementary type of constipation. A more accurate definition of constipation is "the retention of waste products in the large intestine 
beyond the time that is conducive to health. " Properly digested food is not sticky and exits the large intestine quickly. But 
improperly digested food (or indigestible food) gradually coats the large intestine, making an ever -thicker lining that interferes 
with the intestine's functioning. Far worse, this coating steadily putrefies, creating additional highly -potent toxins. Lining the colon 
with undigested food can be compared to the mineral deposits filling in the inside of an old water pipe, gradually choking of f the 
flow. In the colon, this deposit can become rock -hard, just like water pipe scale. Since the lar ge intestine is also an organ that removes moisture and water -soluble minerals from the food and moves them into 
the blood stream, when the large intestine is lined with putrefying undigested food waste, the toxins of this putrefaction ar e also 
steadily mo ved 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 and unpleasant symptoms that keep doctors busy and 
financially solvent. I'll have quite a bit more to say about colon cleansing later. The Progress Of Disease: Irritation, Enervation, Toxemia  
    Disease routinely lies at the end of a three -part chain that goes: irritation or sub -clinical malnutrition, enervation, toxemia. Irritations are something the person does to themselves or something that happens around them. Stresses, in other words. Mental stressors include strong negative emotional states such as anger, fear, resentment, hopelessness, etc. Behind most 
diseases  it is common to find a problematic mind churning in profound confusion, one generated by a character that avoids 
responsibility. There may also be job stress or ongoing hostile relationships, often within the family. Indigestible foods and misdigesti on are also stressful irritations, as are mild recreational poisons such as "soft" drugs, tobacco 
and alcohol. Opiates are somewhat more toxifying, primarily because they paralyze the gut and induce profound constipation. Stimulants like cocaine and amphet amines are the most damaging 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 unmeasur able phenomena, "nerve energy. " They viewed the functioning of vital organs as being controlled by or 
driven by nerve force, sometimes called life force or élan vital. Whatever this vital force actually is, it can be observed a nd 
subjectively measured by c omparing one person with another. Some people are full of it and literally sparkle 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 li ttle and dully plod through life. As vital force drops, the overall efficiency of all the body's organs correspondingly decline. The pancreas creates less dige stive 
enzymes; the thymus secretes less of its vital hormones that mobilize the immune syste m; the pituitary makes less growth hormone 
so the overall repair and rebuilding of cells and tissues slows correspondingly; and so forth. It does not really matter if t here is or is 
not something called nerve energy that can or cannot be measured in a labo ratory. Vital force is observable to many people. However, it is measurable by laboratory test that after repeated irritation the overall functioning of the essential organs a nd glands 
does deteriorate. Enervation may develop so gradually that it progr esses below the level of awareness of the person, or times of increased 
enervation can be experienced as a complaint --as a lack of energy, as tiredness, as difficulties digesting, as a new inability 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 and this aspect of human genetic programming cannot be changed significantly by adaptation. Given enough generations a human gene pool can adapt to extracting its nutrition from a different group of foods. For example, a 
group of isolated Fijians currently enjoying long healthy lives eating a diet of seafoods and tropical root crops could sudde nly be 
moved to the highlands of Switzerland and forced to eat the local fare or starve. But most of the Fijians would not have syste ms 
adept at making those enzymes necessary to digest cows milk. So the transplanted Fijians would experience many generations of  
poorer health and shorter life spans until their genes had been selected for adaptation to the new dietary. Ultimately their 
descendants could become uniformly healthy on rye bread and dairy products just like the highland Swiss were. However, modern ind ustrial farming and processing of foodstuffs significantly contributes to mass, widespread enervation in 
two ways. Humans will probably adjust to the first; the second will, I'm sure, prove insurmountable. First, industrially proc essed 
foods are a recent i nvention and our bodies have not yet adapted to digesting them. In a few more generations humans might be 
able to accomplish that and public health could improve on factory food. In the meanwhile, the health of humans has declined. Industrially farmed food s have also been lowered in nutritional content compared to what food could be. I gravely doubt if any 
biological organism can ever adapt to an overall dietary that contains significantly lowered levels of nutrition. I will expl ain this 
more fully in the c hapter on diet. Secondary Eliminations Are Disease  
    However the exact form the chain from irritation or malnutrition to enervation progresses, the ultimate result is an increase d 
level of toxemia, placing an eliminatory burden on the liver and kidneys in excess of their ability. Eventually these organs begin to 
weaken. Decline of liver and/or kidney function threatens the stability and purity of blood chemistry. Rather than risk compl ete 
incapacitation or death from self -poisoning, the overloaded, toxic  body, guided by its genetic predisposition and the nature of the 
toxins (what was eaten, in what state of stress), cleverly channels surplus toxins into its first line of defense --alternative or 
secondary elimination systems. Most non -life-threatenin g yet highly annoying disease conditions originate as secondary eliminations. For example, the skin was 
designed to sweat, elimination of fluids. Toxemia is often pushed out the sweat glands and is recognized as an unpleasant bod y 
odor. A healthy, non -toxic body smells sweet and pleasant (like a newborn 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 small amounts 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 are discharged in mucus through tissues not des igned 
to handle them, the tissues  themselves become irritated, inflamed, weakened and thus much more subject to bacterial or viral 
infection. Despite this danger, not eliminating surplus toxins carries with it the greater penalty of serious disability or d eath. Because of this liability, the body, in its wisdom, initially chooses secondary elimination routes as far from vital tissues and organs 
as possible. Almost inevitably the skin or skin -like mucus membranes such as 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 these secondary eliminations are suppressed with drugs (either from the medical doctor or with over the  
counte r remedies), if the eating or lifestyle habits that created the toxemia are not changed, or if the toxic load increases beyon d the 
limits of this technique, the body then begins to store toxins in fat or muscle tissues or the joint cavities, overburdens th e kidneys, 
creates cysts, fibroids, and benign tumors to store those toxins. If toxic overload continues over a longer time the body wil l 
eventually have to permit damages to vital tissues, and life -threatening conditions develop. Hygienic doctors alwa ys stress that disease is remedial effort. Illness comes from the body's best attempt to lighten its toxic load 
without immediately threatening its survival. The body always does the very best it can to remedy toxemia given its circumsta nces, 
and it should  be commended for these efforts regardless of how uncomfortable they might be to the person inhabiting the body. Symptoms of secondary elimination are actually a positive thing because they are the body's efforts to lessen a dangerously t oxic 
condition. Se condary eliminations shouldn't be treated immediately with a drug to suppress the process. If you squelch the bodies 
best and least -life-threatening method to eliminate toxins, the body will ultimately have to resort to another more dangerous 
though probab ly less 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 conventional doctor takes steps to halt the body's remedial efforts, thus stopping the undesirable 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 
antihis tamines until the body gets influenza; suppress a flu repeatedly with antibiotics and eventually you get pneumonia. Or, 
suppress eczema with cortisone ointment repeatedly, and eventually you develop kidney disease. Or, suppress asthma with 
bronkiodialators  and eventually you need cortisone to suppress it. Continue treating asthma with steroids and you destroy the 
adrenals; now the body has become allergic to virtually everything. The presence of toxins in an organ of secondary elimination is frequently the cause of infection. Sinuses and lungs, inflamed by 
secondary eliminations, are attacked by viruses or bacteria; infectious diseases of the skin result from pushing toxins out o f the 
skin. More generalized infections also result from toxemia; in this ca se the immune system has become compromised and the body 
is overwhelmed by an organism that it normally should be able to resist easily. The wise cure of infections is not to use ant ibiotics 
to suppress the bacteria while simultaneously whipping the immune  system; most people, including most medical doctors, do not 
realize that antibiotics also goose the immune system into super efforts. But when one chooses to whip a tired horse, eventua lly the 
exhausted animal collapses and cannot rise again no matter how  vigorously it is beaten. The wise cure is to detoxify the body, a 
step that simultaneously eliminates secondary eliminations and rebuilds the immune system. The wise way to deal with the body's eliminative efforts is to accept that disease is an oppor tunity to pay the piper for past 
indiscretions. You should go to bed, rest, and drink nothing but water or dilute juice until the condition has passed. This a llows the 
body to conserve its vital energy, direct this energy toward healing the disordered body  part, and catch up on its waste disposal. In 
this way you can help your body, be in harmony with its efforts instead of working against it which is what most people do. Please forgive another semi -political polemic here, but in my practice I have ofte n been amazed to hear my clients complain that 
they have not the time nor the ability to be patient with their body, to rest it through an illness because they have a job t hey can't 
afford to miss or responsibilities they can't put down. This is a sad comm entary on the supposed wealth and prosperity of the 
United States. In our country most people are enslaved by their debts, incurred because they had been enthralled by the illus ion of 
happiness secured by the possession of material things. Debt slaves beli eve they cannot miss a week of work. People who feel they 
can't afford to be sick think they can afford to live on pills. So people push through their symptoms by sheer grit for years  on end, 
and keep that up until their exhausted horse of a body breaks do wn totally and they find themselves in the hospital running up bills 
to the tune of several thousand dollars a day. But these very same people do not think they can afford the loss of a few hund red 
dollars of current income undertaking some virtually harml ess preventative maintenance on their 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 symptoms usually cease. This means that to make relatively mild but unwanted symptoms lessen and 
ultimately s top it is merely necessary to temporarily cut back food intake, eating only what does not cause toxemia. These foods I 
classify as cleansing, such as raw fruits and vegetables and their juices. If the symptoms are extreme, are perceived as 
overwhelming or are actually life -threatening, detoxification can be speeded up by dropping back to only dilute raw juices or 
vegetable broth made only from greens, without eating the solids. In the most extreme cases hygienists use their most powerfu l 
medicine: a long fa st 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 ignoran ce we are 
usually our own worst enemy in this re gard. We have been very successfully conditioned to think that all symptoms are bad. But I 
know from experience that people can and do learn a new way of viewing the body, an understanding that puts them at cause ove r 
their own body. It allows you to be em powered in one more area of life instead of being 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,  
perso n must discover what they are doing wrong and change their life. Often as not this means elimination of the person'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 intelligent a pproach 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 w ithin 
out and from the head down and in reverse order as the sympt oms have appeared. Hering"s Law of Cure. [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 great ly as his 
personality varies from others. The individual standard m ay be such as to favor the development of indigestion, catarrh, gout, 
rheumatic and glandular inflammations, tubercular developments, congestions, sluggish secretions and excretions, or inhibitio ns of 
various functions, both mental and physical, wherever t he environmental or habit strain is greater than usual. The standard of 
resistance may be opposed so strenuously by habits and unusual physical agencies –that the body breaks down under the strain. This is a crisis. Appetite fails, 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 what the profession and the peop le call a 
cure, and it is for the time being –until an unusual enervation is brought on from accident or dissipation; then another crisis. These 
crises are the ordinary sickness of all communities –all catalogued diseases. When the cold is gone or the hay -fever fully relieved, it 
does not mean the patient is  cured. Indeed, he is as much diseased as before he suffered the attack –the crisis –and he never will be 
cured until the habits of life that keep up toxin poisoning are corrected. To recover from a crisis is not a cure; the tenden cy is back 
to the individua l standard; hence all crises are self -limited, unless nature by maltreatment is prevented from reacting. All so -called 
healing systems ride to glory on the backs of self -limited crises, and the self -deluded doctors and their credulous clients, believe, 
when the crises are past, that a cure has been wrought, whereas the real truth is that the treatment may have delayed reaction. This 
is largely true of anything that has been done except rest. A cure consists in changing the manner of living to such a ration al 
standard that full resistance and a balanced metabolism is established. I suppose it is not quite human to expect those of a 
standardized 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 as for 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 acceler ated healing process that occurs during fasting can scarcely be believed by a person who has not fasted. No matter 
how gifted the writer, the experiential reality of fasting cannot be communicated. The great novelist Upton Sinclair wrote a book 
about fasti ng and it failed to convince the multitudes. But once a person has fasted long enough to be certain of what their own 
body can do to fix itself, they acquire a degree of independence little known today. Many of those experienced with fasting n o 
longer drea d being without health insurance and feel far less need for a doctor or of having a regular checkup. They know with 
certainty that if something degenerates in their body, their own body can fix it by itself. Like Upton Sinclair and many others who larg ely 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 you do 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 budget includes a very large allocation for the daily digestion and assimilation of the food you eat. Y ou may 
find m y estimate surprising, but about one -third of a fairly sedentary person"s entire energy consumption goes into food 
processing. Other uses 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 the 
key 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 our voluntary muscles when working or exercising. Digestion begins in the mouth with thorough 
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 been thoroughly mixed with saliv a. I 
guarantee that if you even finish the chore your jaw will be tired and you will have lost all desire to eat anything else, especially if 
it requires 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 these enzymes is also considerable work. Churning is even harder work than chewing but 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 the muscles 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 physical activity immediately after a large meal feels like a slug and wonders why they just 
can"t make their legs move the way they usually do. So, to assist the body while it is digesting, it is wise to take a siesta  as los 
Latinos do instead of expecting the blood 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 m ore 
pancreatin secreted by the pancreas, and with bile from the gall bladder. Panc reatin further solubilizes proteins. Bile aids in the 
digestion of fatty foods. Manufacturing bile and pancreatic enzymes is also a lot of effort. Only after the carbohydrates (st arches 
and sugars), proteins and fats have been broken down into simpler wate r soluble food units such as simple sugars, amino acids and 
fatty acids, can the body pass these nutrients into the blood thorough the little projections in the small intestines called villi. The leftovers, elements of the food that can"t be solubiliz ed 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 th in 
permeable membranes. Mucous is also secreted in the large i ntestine to facilitate passage of the dryish remains. This is an effort. (Intestinal mucous 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 before the p oisons are re adsorbed. ) The final residue, now called fecal matter, is squeezed 
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 throughout the body. It is important to understand the process at least on the level of oversimpli fication 
just presented in order to begin to understand better how health is lost or regained through eating, d igestion, and elimination. And 
most importantly, 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 c an"t 
heal then nothing can heal it. The  body 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 current stressors. If the sick person could but somehow increase the body"s energy resources  
sufficie ntly, then a slowly healing body could heal faster while a worsening one, or one that was failing or one that was not getting  
better might heal. Fasting does just that. To whatever degree food intake is reduced the body"s digestive workload is proport ionately reduced and 
it will naturally, and far more intelligently than any physician could order, redirect energy to wherever it decides that ene rgy is 
most needed. A fasting body begins accessing nutritional reserves (vitamins and minerals) previously st ored 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 an d 
nutritional needs from reserves and fat does require a small effort, but far less effort than eating. I w ould guess a fasting body used 
about five percent of its normal daily energy budget on nutritional concerns rather than the 33 percent it needs to process n ew 
food. Thus, water fasting puts something like 28 percent more energy at the body"s disposal. This  is true even though the water 
faster 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 and detoxification the body require s, the tireder the faster feels because the body is very hard at work 
internally. A great deal of the body"s energy will go toward boosting the immune system if the problem is an infection. Liber ated 
energy can also be used for healing damaged parts, rebui lding failing organs, for breaking down and eliminating deposits of toxic 
materials. Only after most of the healing has occurred does a faster begin to feel energetic again. Don"t expect to feel anyt hing but 
tired and weak. The only exception to this w ould be a person who has already significantly detoxified and healed their body by previous fasting, 
or the rare soul that has gone from birth through adulthood enjoying extraordinarily good nutrition and without experiencing the 
stressors of improper dige stion. When one experienced faster I know finds himself getting "run down" or catching a cold, he quits 
eating until he feels really well. Instead of feeling weak as most fasters do, as each of the first four or five days of wate r fasting 
pass, he experien ces a resurgence of more and more energy. On the first fasting day he would usually feel rotten, which was why 
he started fasting in the first place. On the second fasting day he"d feel more alert and catch up on his paper work. By his third day 
on only wa ter he would be out doing hard physical chores like cutting the grass, splitting wood or weeding his vegetable garden. Day four would also be an energetic one, but if the fast extended beyond that, lowering blood sugar would begin to make him t ired 
and he" 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 faster usually begins to spend much more time resting, further reduc ing the amount of energy being 
expended on moving the body around, serendipitously redirecting even more of the body"s energy budget toward healing. By the 
end of five or six days on water, I estimate that from 40 to 50 percent of the body"s available ener gy 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 if you haven’t felt it. So hardly a nyone 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 sy stem 
of natural healing that existed during the ‘70s. I observed every one of them at work and tried most of them on my clients. After all 
that I can say with experience that I am not aware of any other 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 goo d ventilation, because fasters not only need a lot of fresh air; their bodies give 
off powerfully offensive odors. 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 wit h a dry brush, stroking toward the heart, followed by a warm water shower two to four times a day to 
assist the skin in eliminating 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 an d 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 oth ers" 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 frui t juice such as grapefruit juice, sipped a teaspoon at a time, no more 
than eight ounces at a time no oftener than every 2 or 3 hours. The second day you eat, add small quantities of fresh juicy f ruit to 
the same amount of juice you took the day before no oftener than every 3 hours. By small quantities I mean half an apple or the 
equivalent. On the third day of eating, add small quantities of vegetable juice and juicy vegetables such as tomatoes and 
cucumbers.
According to the text, people develop diseases due to various factors such as poor nutrition, stress, and poor habits, which lead to the accumulation of toxins in the body, ultimately causing health problems.
Why do people develop diseases?
The primary role of the hygienist is to educate the patient on how to reeducate themselves and learn to handle their own health, rather than relying on the doctor's intervention.
What is the primary role of the hygienist in the healing process?
The main cause of disease is the accumulation of toxins in the body due to poor nutrition, stress, and other factors, which the body tries to eliminate through secondary elimination routes, leading to various health issues.
What is the main cause of disease, according to the author?
The author believes that doctors often create dependency and make patients dependent on them, and that people should take responsibility for their own health and well-being.
What is the author's opinion on the role of doctors in the healing process?
The author argues that there is no such thing as a "cure" for diseases, and that the body has the ability to heal itself, and that the role of the doctor is to guide the patient towards making healthy lifestyle changes, rather than trying to "cure" the disease.
What is the author's stance on the idea of "curing" diseases?