I believe fasting is the therapy that almost invariably gives a critically ill person their very best chance of recovery. If a patient 
dies while fasting they almost certainly would have died anyway, and if death comes while fasting, it will be more comfortabl e, 
with less pain, and with more mental clarity. Critically ill people may have, among other things, any of the followi ng diagnoses: advanced cancer, advanced aids, heart 
failure, very high blood pressure, kidney failure, advanced liver disease, advanced emphysema, pneumonia or other catastrophi c 
infections, especially those that seem unresponsive to antibiotics, strokes, emboli, sclerotic vessels as found in arteriosclerosis, 
severe nerve degeneration interfering with nerve transmission to vital organs. Treating the critically ill does not have to be an all or nothing, ideological choice between holistic medicine and A MA style 
medicine. It is important for the critically ill and their families to know that if they use standard medical treatment such as drugs or 
surgery, these measures can and should be combined with natural healing methods. It is always desirable to qui t all addicting 
substances, start a whole foods diet, (as light as possible), and add meganutrition (supplements) to the medical doctor's tre atments. Few medical doctors are so arrogantly partisan as to assert that natural measures will do any harm as long  as the MD is still 
allowed to prescribe as they please. Holistic support will not only lessen the side effects of the medical treatments but will speed up healing and often reduce t he 
required dose of prescribed drugs. I have had several clients with cancer who chose to have surgery, radiation and chemotherapy, 
but stayed on a raw food diet and took high doses of supplements throughout the treatment. These people amazed the attending 
physician by feeling good with little if any fatigue, no hair loss, o r flu symptoms. The same can be true of other conditions. Food In The Order Of Digestive Difficulty  
    Individual digestive weaknesses and allergies are not taken into account in this list. Hard To Digest: Meat, fish, chicken, eggs (if cooked), all leg umes including soy products, peanuts and peanut butter, beans, split 
peas, lentils, chick peas, dairy products such as cheese, milk, butter milk, nuts and seeds and their butters. Intermediate: all grains –quinoa, amaranth, millet, spelt, rye, wheat, oat s, barley. Fairly Easy: Brussels sprouts, green beans, green peas, broccoli, cauliflower, raw cultured milk products, asparagus, cabbage , 
sprouts especially bean sprouts, kale, other leafy greens. Very Easy: fruits, vegetable juices, fruit juices, broth (clear). No Effort: herb tea, water. Ethyl always comes to my mind when I think of how much healing power can still be left in a dying body. She (accompanied by 
her husband for support) came to Great Oaks School with terminal cancer, heart failure, advanced diabetes, extreme weakness, and 
complete inability to digest. Any food ingested just came back up immediately. Ethyl had large tumors taking over the breast,  
sticking out from her skull, an d protruding from her body in general. The largest was the one in the left breast which was the size 
of a big man's fist. She did have one crucial thing going for her, Ethyl was a feisty Irish red head who still had a will to live, and a reason to  do so. She and her husband, who had just retired, had dreamed their whole life of touring the US and Canada in their own RV the minu te 
he retired. The time had finally arrived but Ethyl was too ill to support her own weight (only 90 pounds) and to top it off was blind 
from diabetic retinopathy. The doctors had done everything they could to her, and now judged her too weak to withstand any mo re 
surgery (she had already had her right breast removed). Radiation or chemotherapy were also considered impossible due to heart 
failure. They sent Ethyl home to die, giving her a few days to a month at most. Any sensible hygienist trying to stay out of jail would have refused to take on this type of case because it was a cancer cas e 
where death was likely. Treatment o f this highly lucrative disease is considered the AMA's exclusive franchise, even when the 
medical doctors have given up after having done everything to a body the family can pay for or owe for. Whenever a person die s 
under the care of any person who is no t a licensed M.D. there must be an autopsy and a criminal investigation in search of 
negligence. If the person dies under the care of an M.D. the sheriff's assumption is that the doctor most assuredly did every thing he 
could and should have done and death was inevitable. By accepting Ethyl I had a reasonable likelihood of ending up in trouble; but 
being foolish, brave and (stupidly) feeling relatively immune to such consequences (I was under 40 at the time), it seemed 
important to try to help her. So, undau nted by the task, regardless of the outcome, I proceeded logically, one step at a time. Today, 
with more experience and a modest net worth I wouldn't want to have to defend in a lawsuit, and at age 55. possessing no spar e 
five to ten years to give to the S tate to "pay" for my bravery, I would probably refuse such a case. Fortunately I have not been 
confronted with this problem lately. Since Ethyl was unable to digest anything given by mouth, she was fed rectally with wheat grass juice implants three tim es a 
day. She was carried to the colonic table for a daily colonic. Wheat grass and clay poultices were applied to her tumors thre e times 
a day. She received an acupressure massage and reflexology treatments during the day, plus a lot of tender loving care . This 
program continued for a month during which the tumors were being reabsorbed by the body, including the large, extremely hard 
tumor sticking out the flesh of the right breast. Ethyl complained of severe pain as the large tumor in her breast shra nk. While it had been getting larger and pressing ever 
harder on all the nerves, she had little or no sensation, but as it shrank, the nerves were reactivated. Most people think th at a 
growing tumor would cause more pain than a shrinking one. Often the opp osite is true. Pain can be a good sign that the body is 
winning, an indicator to proceed. By the second month, Ethyl, gradually gaining strength, was able to take wheat grass and carrot juice orally, and gradually e ased 
into raw foods, mostly sprouts and leafy greens such as sunflower and buckwheat greens grown in trays. She started to walk with 
assistance up and down the halls, no longer experiencing the intense pain formerly caused by a failing heart, and most surpri sing of 
all, her eyesight returned , at first seeing only outlines, and then details. The third month Ethyl enlarged her food intake to include raw foods as well as the carrot and wheat grass juice and sprouts, plus 
vitamin and mineral supplements to help support her immune system and the healing process. All the tumors had been reabsorbed 
by her body and were no longer visible, her heart was able to support normal activity such as walking, and nonstrenuous house hold 
chores, and her diabetes had corrected itself to the point that she no  longer required insulin and was able to control her blood sugar 
with diet. Her husband was then instructed in her maintenance and they went home to continue the program. The last I heard from them 
they had made two lengthy trips around the US in thei r RV and were enjoying their retirement together after all. My treatment worked because the most important factor in the healing of the critically ill person is not give them more 
nourishment than their body is able to process. The moment the digestiv e capacity of the sick person is exceeded, the condition 
will be exacerbated and in a critically illness, the person is likely to die. If the body still has sufficient organ integrit y and vital 
force to heal itself, it will do so only if given the least po ssible nourishment that will support life –provided no essential organs are 
hopelessly damaged. If the liver and kidneys are functional, and the person has done some previous dietary improvement and/or  
cleansing, success is likely, especially if the person wants to live. A person in critical condition does not have time to ease into fasting by first spending a month or two on a raw foods diet. This 
means that the person who is taking care of the critically ill person must be experienced enough to adjust  the intensity of the body's 
healing efforts and accurately assess the ability of the person to process toxic waste products clamoring for removal so the ailing 
body is not drowned in it's own poisons. It is often necessary to use clear vegetable broth, ve getable and wheat grass juices, and 
fruits juices, or whole sprouts to slow down the cleansing gradient and sometimes, to resupply the tissue's exhausted nutriti onal 
reserves. I wish all cases of critical illness had such a positive outcome as Ethyl's,  but unfortunately they don't. I had Marge on the same 
program at the same time. She also had cancerous tumors all over her body and had similarly been sent home to die. In some wa ys 
Marge's body was a more likely candidate for survival than Ethyl's. Marge  did not have heart failure or diabetes and was still able 
on arrival to at least take small amount of water orally and walk to the bathroom. Put on a similar program, her tumors also shrunk 
and were reabsorbed and she too went home. But Marge did not  really have a strong reason to live. Although her husband was by her side throughout the treatment program, 
Marge was deeply upset because she was estranged from one of her sons who she had not seen for over 10 years. When she went 
home from Great Oaks, t he son finally consented to see his mother, went to the effort of trying to work things out with her, and 
finally confessed that under it all he still loved her. At that point Marge died in peace. She had accomplished the last thing she wanted to take  care of and her will to live did not 
extend beyond that point. Had she died several months earlier as predicted by the medical profession, Marge would have been 
unable to resolve this relationship. This was what Marge's life was pivoting on at the end. I was glad to assist her in doing what she 
needed to do. Her husband and other family members found it difficult to understand, and they were hurt that Marge did not wi sh 
to continue her life with them. Diet For The Chronically Ill. The chronically ill  person has a long -term degenerative condition that is not immediately life threatening. This condition usually 
causes more -or-less continuous symptoms that are painful, perhaps unsightly, and ultimately will be disabling or eventually 
capable of causing d eath. To qualify as "chronic" the symptoms must have been present a minimum of six months, with no relief 
in sight. People with these conditions have usually sought medical assistance, frequently have had surgery, and have taken an d 
probably are taking num erous prescription drugs. Some examples of chronic conditions are: arthritis, rheumatism, diabetes, early onset of cancer and aids, asthma, colitis, 
diverticulitis, irritable bowel syndrome, some mental disorders, arterial deposit diseases, most of the  itises (inflammations). Before fasting, the chronically ill often do have time to prepare the way with limited dietary reform, and frequently begin t o feel 
relief quite quickly. Before actually fasting they should limit their diet to raw foods and eli minate all toxic foods like alcohol, 
coffee, tea, salt, sugar and recreational drugs for two months if they have been following a typical American diet. If the chronically ill had been following a vegetarian diet, perhaps a diet including with eggs an d dairy, if they had been using 
no addicting substances, then one month on raw foods is sufficient preparation for fasting. If the person had water or juice fasted 
for at least a week or two within the last two years, and followed a healthy diet since that  time, one or two weeks on raw foods 
should be a sufficient runway. During preparation for a fast, I never recommend that a chronically ill person quit taking prescription medicines because doi ng 
so can seriously disrupt their homeostasis. However, if their symptoms lessen or vanish during the pre -fasting clean up, the person 
might try tapering off medications. The length and type of fast chosen to resolve a chronic illness depends largely on available time, finances, availability of support 
people, work responsibilities, and mental toughness. If you are one of those fortunate people 'rich' enough to give the ir health first 
priority, long water fasting is ideal. If on the other hand you can't afford to stop working, have no one to take care of you  and assist 
with some household chores, and/or you are not mentally tough enough to deal with self -denial, compromi se is necessary. Ideally the chronically ill person would fast for an extended period under supervision until their symptoms were gone or grea tly 
improved, with a fall -back plan to repeat the whole process again in three to six months if necessary. If  you are not able to do that, 
the next best program is to fast for a short period, like one or two weeks, with a plan to repeat the process as often as pos sible until 
you are healed. I have had clients with potentially life -threatening conditions such as obesity with incipient heart failure, or who came to me 
with cancer, that were unable to stop work for financial reasons, or who could not afford a residential fasting program, or w ho felt 
confident in their own ability to deal with detoxification in th eir own home. These people have fasted successfully at home, 
coming to see me once a week. Almost inevitably, successful at -home fasters had already done a lot of research on self healing, 
believed in it, and had the personal discipline to carry it out pro perly, including breaking the fast properly without overeating. Foods To Heal Chronic Illness  
 Sprouts  Baby Greens  Salad  Juices  Fruit  
alfalfa  sunflower  lettuce  beet grapefruit  
radish  buckwheat  celery  celery  lemon  
bean  zucchini  zucchini  lime lime 
clover  kale kale orange  orange  
fenugreek  endive  radish  parsley  apple  
wheat   tomato  tomato  raspberries  
cabbage   cabbage  cabbage  blueberries  
  carrot  carrot  grapes  
  spinach  apple  peaches  
  parsley  grapefruit  apricots  
  sweet pepper  lemon  strawberry  
 
Fruits should be watery and lower in sugar. Some examples of poor fruit choices would be pineapple, ripe mango, bananas, date s, 
raisins, figs. Fruits should not be combined with vegetables. Vegetables should not be starchy, packed -full of energy. Poor vegetable choices would be potato, parsnip, turnip, corn, sweet 
potato, yam, beet, winter squash. Sprouts and baby greens are vegetables and may be included in salads. Juices should not be extremely sweet. Apple, orange, beet and carrot ju ice should be diluted with 50% water. Fruit juices should 
not be mixed with vegetable juices or with vegetables at the same meal. Salads should include no fruit. Salad dressings should be lemon or lime juice, very small quantities of olive oil, and herbs. No 
salt, soy sauce nor black pepper. Cayenne can be okay for some. I have also helped chronically ill people that were no t mentally prepared to water fast, but were able to face the long -term self -
control and deprivation of a raw food cleansing diet that included careful food combining. These people also regained their h ealth, 
but it took them a year at minimum, and once wel l they had to remain on a diet tailor -made to their digestive capacity for the rest 
of their life, usually along with food supplements. Jim was such a case. He was 55 years old, very obese, had dangerously high blood pressure poorly controlled with med ication, 
and was going into congestive heart failure. He was on digitalis and several other heart medications plus diuretics, but in n o way 
was his condition under control. He had severe edema in the feet and legs with pitting, and fluid retention in the a bdominal region 
caused a huge paunch that was solid to the touch not soft and squishy like fatty tissue. Jim had dreamed of having his own homestead with an Organic garden, now he had these things but was too sick to enjoy them 
or work in his garden wi thout severe heart pain and shortness of breath. Jim had retired early in order to enjoy many years without 
the stresses of work, and he was alarmed to realize that he was unlikely to survive a year. The day Jim came to see me the first time I would h ave classified his condition as critically ill because his life was in immediate 
danger; but he responded so quickly to his detox program that he was very soon out of danger and would be more accurately 
described as a chronically ill person. Jim was not pr epared to water fast. He was attached to having his food and he was aware that 
at his extreme weight he was going to have stay on a dietary program for a long, long time. He also wanted to choose a gradie nt 
that he could manage by himself at home with litt le assistance from his wife. He had been on a typical American diet with meat, 
coffee, etc., so that in spite of his dangerous condition it did not seem wise to me to add the heavy eliminatory burden of a  water 
fast to a body that was already overwhelmed w ith fluids and waste products. Jim immediately went on a raw food cleansing diet, with no concentrated foods like nuts, seeds, or avocados, and with one day  
each week fasting on vegetable juice and broth. He did enemas daily even though it wasn't his favorite thing. In one month he had 
lost 30 pounds, his eyes had started to sparkle, and his complexion was rosy. The swelling had disappeared from his feet and legs, 
and he had to buy new pants. Starting the second month he gradually withdrew from pr escription medications. From the beginning I had put Jim on a program 
of nutritional supplements including protomorphogens (see chapter on vitamins and food supplements) to help the body repair i t's 
heart and the kidneys. In only four months he had returne d his body to glowing health, and looked great for his age, though he was 
still overweight. At the end of one year he had returned to a normal weight for his height, and only cheated on the diet a co uple of 
times when attending a social event, and then it was only a baked potato with no dressing. He was probably going to have many qualitative years working his garden and living out his dreams. The local intensive care 
ward lost a lot of money when they failed to get Jim. Diet For The Acutely Ill  
    The acutely ill person experiences occasional attacks of distressing symptoms, usually after indiscretions in living or emotio nal 
upsets. They have a cold, or a flu, or sinusitis, or a first bout of pneumonia, or a spring allergy attack. The intense sympt oms knock 
them flat and force them to bed for a few days or a week. If they are sick more often than that, they are moving toward the 
chronically ill category. People who are acutely ill should stop eating to whatever extent that they are able until the  symptoms are gone. During an acute 
illness, the appetites is probably pretty dull anyway, so why not give a brief fast on water or fruit juice a try. Most acute conditions are short in duration, usually not lasting more than a week. Allergy attacks, some types of flu, and a first 
bout of pneumonia may well last for three weeks or a month. The general rule is to eat as little as possible until the sympto ms have 
passed, self -administer colon cleansing, even if you have a horror of such things, and take vitamin supplements, including 
megadoses of Vitamin C, bioflavinoids, and zinc. (See the chapter on vitamins.) Those having a little experience with natural  
medicine make teas of echinacea, fenugreek seeds and red clover and quit eating. Eating as little a s possible can mean only water 
and herb teas, only vegetable broth, only vegetable juice or non -sweet fruit juice, even only cleansing raw foods. If you eat more 
than this you have not relieved your system of enough digestive effort. After your sympto ms are gone it is very important to change your life -style and improve your diet so that you aren't so toxic and 
don't have to experience an acute illness several times a year when your body is forced to try an energetic detox. Diet For A Healthy Person  
    I doubt that it is possible to be totally healthy in the twentieth century. Doctors Alsleben and Shute in their book How to S urvive 
the New Health Catastrophes state that in -depth laboratory testing of the population at large demonstrated four universa lly present 
pathological conditions: heavy metal poisoning, arteriosclerosis, sub -clinical infections, and vitamin/mineral deficiencies. Those of 
us who consider ourselves healthy, including young people, are not really healthy, and at the very least would  benefit from 
nutritional supplementation. In fact the odds against most people receiving adequate vitamin and mineral nutrition without 
supplements are very poor as demonstrated by the following chart. Problem Nutrients in America  
 Nutrient  Perc ent Receiving Less than the RDA  
B-6 80% 
Magnesium  75 
Calcium  68 
Iron 57 
Vitamin A  50 
B-1 45 
C 41 
B-2 36 
B-12 36 
B-3 33 
 
A genuinely healthy person almost never becomes acutely ill, and does not have any disturbing or distracting symptoms; nothin g 
interferes with or handicaps their daily life or work. A healthy person has good energy most of the time, a positive state of  mind, 
restful sleep, good digestion and elimination. Healthy people do not have to live simon -pure lives to remain that way. Healthy people can afford 10% dietary indiscretions by 
calorie count –eating or drinking those things that they know are not good for them but that are fun to eat or are "recreational foods 
or beverages." Such "sinning" could mean a restaurant bash twice a month, having a pizza, French bread, beer or wine in 
moderation, ice cream, cookies, cake, turkey for festive occasions, etc. The  key concept of responsible sinning is keeping within 
that ten percent limit. A diet for a healthy person that wants to remain healthy should not exceed the digestive capacity of the individual, either i n 
terms of quantity or quality. All foods that ca n not be efficiently digested should be removed from the regular diet and relegated to 
the "sin" category, including those you are allergic to and those for which you have inadequate digestive enzymes. I have 
encountered very few people that can efficientl y digest cooked meat, chicken, or fish, but some can, and some can with the 
assistance of digestive enzyme supplements. In order to digest meats, the stomach must be sufficiently acid, there must be en ough 
pepsin, pancreatin, and bile, etc., and the meat s hould be eaten on the extremely rare side (not pork), in small quantities (not more 
than five or six ounces), and not combined with anything except nonstarchy vegetables. If you must include meat in your dieta ry, it 
should represent a very small percentage  of your total caloric intake, be eaten infrequently, with the bulk of the calories coming 
from complex carbohydrates such grains, legumes and nuts, as well as large quantities of vegetables and fruits. The healthy person that wants to stay that way f or many, years is advised to fast one day a week, to give the organs of 
elimination a chance to catch up on their internal housecleaning. If water fasting seems impossible, try a day of juicing it;  if that is 
too rigorous, try a day on raw foods. A similar  technique, though less beneficial than even a one day each week on raw foods, is 
delaying breaking your overnight fast for as long as possible each day. Try giving up breakfast altogether or postponing brea king 
your overnight fast, because from the time y ou stop eating at the end of one day to the time you start eating the next is actually a 
brief, detoxifying fast. Eggs, milk, cheese and yogurt can be assimilated by some healthy people with or without digestive aids. It is possible to tak e 
lactase to  break down the milk sugars for example; sometimes aids such as hydrochloric acid, pepsin, and pancreatin help. If you 
can buy it or are willing to make it raw milk yogurt containing lactobacillus bulgaris or acidophilus may be digested more re adily, 
espec ially if it prepared from healthy cows or goats fed on unsprayed food, and served very fresh. Eggs should come from 
chickens that run around outside, eating weeds, and scratching bugs. The yokes of those eggs will be intense orange, not yell ow. Few people these days have ever eaten a real egg. Surprisingly, for those of you who fear cholesterol, the healthy way to eat eggs 
is use just the raw yolk from fertile eggs. It is enjoyed by many people in a smoothie –fresh fruit blended up with water or milk. Eggs c ontain lecithin, a nutrient that naturally prevents the body from forming harmful fatty deposits in the arteries. Sea weeds are a wonderful source of minerals and should be eaten in soups and salads. Other invaluable fortifying foods are 
algae of all k inds (such as chlorella and spirulina), lecithin, brewers yeast, and fresh bakers yeast. Many people have had very 
unpleasant experiences trying to eat living bakers yeast and so use brewers yeast instead. But brewers yeast is cooked and th e 
proteins it co ntains are not nearly as assimilable as those in raw yeast. Raw yeast is so powerful, it feels like pep pills! It takes a special technique to eat raw yeast because in the stomach and intestines the yeast does the job it is supposed to do: 
convert sug ars into alcohol and carbon dioxide gas. The entire digestive tract then bloats with gas and the person will feel very 
uncomfortable for some time. However, raw yeast is a marvelous source of B vitamins and proteins and can make someone feel 
very energetic –if they know how to use it. The secret is to eat live yeast very first thing in the morning on an empty stomach and 
then, not eat anything at all for about two hours, giving the stomach acids and enzymes time to kill the yeasts and digest th em 
before addi ng sugars from another meal. Some like to eat yeast in fresh cake form, buying it from a bakery. Others prefer dry 
granular baker's yeast blended with water into a sort of "shake." This is not a bad place to put your raw egg yoke either. If  you 
need it swe etened to drink it, use an artificial or herbal sweetener like nutrisweet or stevia. Live yeast cannot consume milk sugars 
very well. So if you can handle dairy, try one or two tablespoons of granulated live yeast, an egg yoke and a little raw milk  or 
yogu rt, well whizzed. Wheat germ is also a great, rich food, but is usually rancid unless it is taken out of the refrigerated display; unless it is  
refrigerated, in a dated package and fresh, don't eat it. Herb teas and roasted grain beverages are healthy beverages, along with 
mineral and distilled water avoiding where possible chlorinated and fluoridated water. Diet Is Not Enough  
    Those isolated, long -lived peoples discovered by Weston A. Price had to do hard physical labor to eat, had to walk briskly up 
and down steep terrain to get anywhere. But today, few North Americans output very much physical energy in process of daily l ife 
or work. Not only cars, but all of our modern conveniences make it possible to live without ever breaking into a sweat. We p ay for 
this ease; it costs us a significant degree of health. Exercise has many benefits when combined with excellent nutrition. It creates an overall feeling of well -being that can not be 
created by diet alone. Exercising temporarily makes the heart beat faster, increasing blood circulation throughout the body right 
out to the tips of your fingers and toes. This short -term elevated flow of blood flow brings increased supplies of oxygen and 
nutrients to all parts of the body, facilitating healing and r epair. Without revving up your engine every day many of the body's 
systems never get the sludge burned out of them and never perform optimally. Exercise also changes the metabolic rate so your body burns more calories –not only while you are exercising , but also for a 24 
hour period following exercise. This maintains a healthful body weight into old age, or helps to lose weight. Most people fin d that 
exercise in moderation does not increase appetite, so that it is possible to consistently burn more calo ries in a day, and gradually 
reduce weight if that is desirable. It is necessary to burn 3,500 calories to lose a pound of weight. Most forms of exercise allow you 
to burn 300 to 600 calories per hour at a moderate pace which would be achieved by doubling the resting pulse. Without even 
considering the weight -loss benefit of achieving a raised metabolism, an hour of daily exercise continued for a week or two 
dependent upon the type of exercise and pace should lead to one pound of weight loss if the caloric intake is held constant. The flip side of having a higher metabolism is rarely appreciated but is extremely important. Recall the basic equation of he alth: 
Health = Nutrition / Calories. Exercise permits a person to eat somewhat more while not gaining weight. If the food is nutrient 
rich, the body has a chance to extract more vitamins, more minerals, more amino acids. The person who remains slender by rigi dly 
reducing their food intake to near starvation levels may lack vital, health -building nutrition. And only exercise moves lymphatic fluid. The blood is pumped through the body by the heart, but the lymphatic system, lacking  
a heart, requires muscular contractions to move from the extremities of the body to the central cavity. The lymphatic system picks 
up cellular waste products and conducts these toxins to disposal. Frequently, people with rheumatic aches and pains or other 
generalized muscular discomforts physicians like to give Latin diagnostic names to can give up taking pain pills if they will  but 
begin exercising regularly. Only when they begin moving their lymph can they begin to detoxify properly. There is another benefit from exercise which is not to be ignored, and that is that it gives the person a chemical sense of w ell 
being. It actually will help to emotionally boost up people who are chronically depressed and make them smile. After a good  
workout, especially one done outside, everything seems brighter, more positive; whatever was bothering you somehow just doesn 't 
seem like that big of a deal now. I am not making pro -exercise propaganda. This is not a figment of the imagination. An exercis ing 
body really does make antidepressant neurochemicals called endorphins, but only after about 45 minutes to an hour of aerobic 
workout. Endorphins are powerful, with painkilling and euphoric effects equal to or greater than heroin, but without any u ndesirable side 
effects. If chemists could learn to cheaply synthesize endorphins I'm sure that millions of people would want to become addic ted to 
them. Because I make such a point of getting in my workout every day, my husband has accused me of being an endorphin junkie, 
and he is right! I admit it, I'm really hooked on the feeling of well being I consistently get from any sustained exercise. I  defend my 
addiction staunchly because it is the healthiest addiction I know of. I have also been accused of  carrying exercise to extremes, and I admit to that also. For a few years I trained for Ironman 
triathlons. I now think doing ironman distances is immoderate and except for a few remarkable individuals with "iron" 
constitutions, training that hard can only  lead to a form of exhaustion that is not health promoting. I have become much more 
sensible in my "old" age, and in recent years have limited my participation to the Olympic distance triathlons. I was on the 
Canadian team at the World Championship in 1992 , and intend to do it again in 1995. I do not find the Olympic distance 
exhausting, in fact I think it is great fun and truly exhilarating. I get to see all these wonderful age group competitors fr om all over 
the world who look and feel fantastic. It does my soul good to see a group of people aging so gracefully, not buying into the 
popular notion that old age is inevitably disabling, depressing, and ugly. Sport brings a degree of balance to my life after spending 
so much time in the presence of the sick. I  plan to maintain my athletic activities into old age, barring accident or other unforeseen 
obstacles to fitness. To maintain basic fitness it does not matter so much what form of exercise is chosen, as long as it is not damaging to the sk eletal 
system  or connective tissues. Many people are unable to run due to foot, knee, hip, or back problems, but almost everyone can 
walk. Walking outside is better than inside on a treadmill, and walking hills is better than walking on flat ground. Exercise  
machines s uch as stationary bikes, cross country ski machines, and stair steppers work well for a lot of people who live in the city, 
especially in the winter, or for those who hate exercise. Whatever you choose to do, it is important to at least double the r esting 
pulse for 30 minutes no less than four days a week. This is the absolute minimum required to maintain the health and function  of 
the cardiovascular -pulmonary system. If your resting pulse is 70, you must walk, jog, ski, bike, swim or what have you, fast 
enough to keep the pulse at 140 beats per minute for at least 30 minutes. I have a strong preference to exercising outside in isolated places where there is only me and the forest, or only me and the  river. Running along logging roads in the hilly back c ountry, or swimming in the green unpolluted water of a forest river is a spiritual 
experience for me. It is a time to meditate, to commune with nature, and to clear my mind and create new solutions. The repet itive 
action of running or walking or swimming, along with the regular deep breathing in clean air, with no distractions except what 
nature provides is truly health promoting. Sharing these activities with friends or family can also be great fun and some of the best 
in social interactions. It is one of my favorite ways of visiting with people. I don't expect other people to be as enthusiastic about 
exercise as I am, but I do hope that everyone will make an effort to be minimally fit as an ongoing part of their health prog ram into 
old age. Diet For A Lon g, Long Life  
    Some people not only want to be healthy, but they want to live in good health long past the normal life span projected by 
statistical tables for Homo Sapiens. Dr. Roy Walford, a well -respected medical research gerontologist who has been ac tively 
studying longevity for many years, is one of those. He has scientifically demonstrated with accepted studies that a qualitati ve life 
span up to at least 115 years of age is reasonably attainable by the average person if they start working on it no l ater than about 50 
years of age, though earlier is much better. Walford's principles of extending life are very simple. All you have to do is restrict your caloric intake to about 1,500 per  day, 
and water fast two days a week. Or alternatively, reduce your caloric intake to 1,200 per day and fast only one day a week on 
water. And make sure that every single bit of food you do eat is packed with nutrition, every single calorie, without excepti on. You 
continue this program for the rest of your life along with moderate daily exercise and high but reasonable dosages of vitamins, 
minerals, and also take a few exotic food supplements. The supplement program is not particularly expensive nor extreme, 
Walford's supplement program is more moderate than the life e xtension program I recommend for all middle -aged and older 
people. The best foods for this type of program is a largely raw food diet (80%) with a predominance of sprouts and baby gree ns, 
some cooked vegetables, and raw nuts and seeds. And make sure you ge t 30 minutes of cardiovascular exercise every other day. While Dr. Walford's focus is on caloric reduction while maintaining sufficient nutrition, most other life extensionists focus  on 
increasing the nutrition side of the equation for health without b othering to reduce caloric intake. This approach is much easier 
because essentially, it involves gobbling nutritional supplements by the handfuls without requiring self -discipline, though it can get 
quite expensive. I'll have more to say about this approac h in the next chapter, which is about vitamins. In this book I can't explain all the aspects of prolongation of life through conscious life -style choice. Those who are interested are 
referred to the Bibliography. Chapter Six  
Vitamins and Other Food Supplements  
 
 
From The Hygienic Dictionary  
 
Vitamins. [1] The staple foods may not contain the same nutritive substances as in former times. . . . Chemical fertilizers, by 
increasing the abundance of the crops without replacing all the exhausted elements o f the soil, may have indirectly contributed to 
change the nutritive value of cereal grains and of vegetables. . . . Hygienists have not paid sufficient attention to the gen esis of 
diseases. Their studies of conditions of life and diet, and of their effects  on the physiological and mental state of modern man are 
superficial, incomplete, and of too short duration. They have, thus, contributed to the weakening of our body and our soul. A lexis 
Carrel, Man the Unknown. I have already explained the hygienis t's view of why people get sick. The sequence of causation goes: enervation, toxemia, 
alternative elimination, disease. However, there is one more link in this chain, a precursor to enervation that, for good and  
understandable reasons, seemed unknown to th e earlier hygienists. That precursor is long term sub -clinical malnutrition. Lack of 
nutrition effects virtually everybody today. Almost all of us are overfed but undernourished. I have already explained that one particular head of broccoli does not ne cessarily equal another head of broccoli; the nutritional 
composition of apparently identical foods can be highly variable. Not only do different samples of the same type of food diff er 
wildly in protein content, amino acid ratios and mineral content, thei r vitamin and vitamin -like substances also vary according to 
soil fertility and the variety grown. These days, food crop varieties are bred for yield and other commercial considerations, such as shipability, storage life, an d ease 
of processing. In pr e-industrial times when each family propagated its own unique open -pollinated varieties, a natural selection 
process for healthy outcomes prevailed. If the family's particular, unique varieties carried genes for highly nutritious food , and if 
the family's land was fertile enough to allow those genes to manifest, and if the family kept up its land's fertility by wise 
management, their children tended to survive the gauntlet of childhood illness and lived to propagate the family's varieties and 
continue the f amily name. Thus, over time, human food cultivars were selected for their nutritional content. But not any longer! These days, farming technology with its focus on bulk yield and profit, degrades the nutritional content of 
our entire food supply. Even  commercial organically grown food is no better in this respect. Sub-clinical, life -long, vitamin and mineral deficiencies contribute to the onset of disease; the malnourished body becomes 
increasingly enervated, beginning the process of disease. Vitam in supplements can increase the body's vital force, reversing to a 
degree the natural tendency towards degeneration. In fact, some medical gerontologists theorize that by using vitamins it mig ht be 
possible to restore human life span to its genetically pro grammed 115 years without doing anything else about increasing nutrition 
from our degraded foods or paying much attention to dietary indiscretions. Knowing what I do about toxemia's effects I doubt 
vitamins can allow us to totally ignore what we eat, thoug h supplements can certainly help. More than degraded nutritional content of food prompts a thinking person to use food supplements. Our bodies and spirits are 
constantly assaulted and insulted by modern life in ways our genetics never intended us to de al with. Today the entire environment 
is mildly toxic. Air is polluted; water is polluted; our food supply contains traces of highly poisonous artificial molecules  that our 
bodies have no natural ability to process and eliminate. Our cities and work places  are full of loud, shocking noises that trigger 
frequent adrenaline rushes and other stress adaptations. Our work places are full of psychological stresses that humans never  had to 
deal with before. Historically, humans who were not enslaved have been  in control of determining their own hour to hour, day to day activities, 
living on their own largely self -sufficient farms. The idea of working for another, at regular hours, without personal liberty, 
ignoring or suppressing one's own agenda and inclinati ons over an entire lifetime is quite new and not at all healthy. It takes 
continual subconscious applications of mental and psychic energies to protect ourselves against the stresses of modern life, 
energies that we don't know we're expending. This is also  highly enervating. Thus to remain healthy we may need nutrition at 
levels far higher than might be possible through eating food; even ideal food might not contain enough vitamins to sustain us  
against the strains and stresses of this century. And thin k about Dr. Pottenger's cats. Our bodies are at the poorer end of a century -long process of mass degeneration that 
started with white flour from the roller mill. Compared to my older clients I have noticed that my younger patients seem to p ossess 
less vita l force on the average, show evidence of poorer skeletal development, have poorer teeth, less energy, have far more 
difficulty breeding and coping with their family life, and are far more likely to develop degenerative conditions early. Most  of my 
younger patients had a poor start because they were raised on highly refined, devitalized, deficient foods, and grew up without 
much exercise. Their parents had somewhat better food. Some of their grandparents may have even grown up on raw milk and a 
vegetable gar den, and actually had to walk, not owning cars when they were young. Their great grandparents had a high likelihood 
of enjoying decent nutrition and a healthful life -style. Unfortunately, most of my patients like the idea of taking vitamins too much for their own good. The AMA medical model has 
conditioned people to swallow something for every little discomfort, and taking a pill is also by far the easiest thing to do  because 
a pill requires no life -style changes, nor self -discipline, nor personal responsibility. But vitamins are much more frugal than drugs. Compared to prescriptions, even the most exotic life extension supplements are much less expensive. I am saddened wh en my 
clients tell me they can't afford supplements. When their MD prescribes a medicine that costs many times more they never have  
trouble finding the money. I am also saddened that people are so willing to take supplements, because I can usually do a lot more to genuinely help their 
bodies heal with dietary modification and detoxification. Of all the tools at my disposal that help people heal, last in the race 
comes supplements. One of the best aspects of using vitamins as though they were healin g agents is that food supplements almost never have 
harmful side effects, even when they are taken in what might seem enormous overdoses. If someone with a health condition read s 
or hears about some vitamin being curative, goes out and buys some and takes it, they will at very least have followed the basic 
principle of good medicine: first of all do no harm. At worst, if the supplements did nothing for them at all, they are pract icing the 
same kind of benevolent medicine that Dr. Jennings did almost two cen turies ago. Not only that, but having done something to 
treat their symptoms, they have become patients facilitating their own patience, giving their body a chance to correct its pr oblem. They well may get better, but not because of the action of the parti cular vitamin they took. Or, luckily, the vitamin or vitamins they 
take may have been just what was needed, raising their body's vital force and accelerating the body's ability to solve its pr oblem. One reason vitamin therapies frequently do not work a s well as they might is that, having been intimidated by AMA propaganda 
that has created largely false fears in the public mind about harmful effects of vitamin overdoses, the person may not take e nough 
of the right vitamin. The minimum daily requirements of vitamins and minerals as outlined in nutrition texts are only sufficient to 
prevent the most obvious forms of deficiency diseases. If a person takes supplements at or near the minimum daily requirement  
(the dose recommended by the FDA as being 'generall y recognized as safe') they should not expect to see any therapeutic effect 
unless they have scurvy, beri beri, rickets, goiter, or pellagra. In these days of vitamin -fortified bread and iodized salt, and even vitamin C fortified soft drinks, you almos t never see the kind 
of life -threatening deficiency states people first learned to recognize, such as scurvy. Sailors on long sea voyages used to develop a 
debilitating form of vitamin C deficiency that could kill. Scurvy could be quickly cured by as littl e as one lime a day. For this 
reason the British Government legislated the carrying of limes on long voyages and today that is why British sailors are stil l called 
limeys. A lime has less than 30 milligrams of vitamin C. But to make a cold clear up faster with vitamin C a mere 30 mg does 
absolutely nothing! To begin to dent an infection with vitamin C takes 10,000 milligrams a day, and to make a life threatenin g 
infection like pneumonia go away faster might require 25,000 to 150,000 milligrams of vitamin C daily, administered 
intravenously. In terms of supplying that much C with limes, that's 300 to 750 of them daily –clearly impossible. Similarly, pellagra can be cured with a few milligrams of vitamin B 3, but schizophrenia can sometimes be cured with 3, 000 
milligrams, roughly a thousand times as much as the MDR. There are many many common diseases that the medical profession does not see as being caused by vitamin deficiencies. Senility and many mental disorders fall in this category. Many old people  live on extremely deficient diets comprised largely of 
devitalized starches, sugars, and fats, partly because many do not have good enough teeth to chew vegetables and other high 
roughage foods, and they do not have the energy it takes to prepare more nou rishing foods. Virtually all old people have deficiency 
diseases. As vital force inevitably declines with age, the quantity and quality of digestive enzymes decreases, then the abil ity to 
breakdown and extract soluble nutrients from food is diminished, fre quently leading to serious deficiencies. These deficiencies are 
inevitably misdiagnosed as disease and as aging. Suppose a body needs 30 milligrams a day of niacin to not develop pellagra, but to be fully healthy, needs 500 milligrams dai ly. If that bo dy receives 50 milligrams per day from a vitamin pill, to the medical doctor it could not possibly be deficient in this 
vitamin. However, over time, the insidious sub -clinical deficiency may degrade some other system and produce a different disease, 
such a s colitis. But the medical doctor sees no relationship. Let me give you an actual example. Medical researchers studying 
vitamin B 5 or pantothenic acid noticed that it could, in what seemed to be megadoses (compared to the minimum daily 
requirement) largel y reverse certain degenerative effects of aging. These researchers were measuring endurance in rats as it 
decreased through the aging process. How they made this measurement may appear to some readers to be heartless, but the best 
way to gauge the enduranc e of a rat is to toss it into a five gallon bucket of cold water and see how long it swims before it drowns. Under these conditions, the researcher can be absolutely confident that the rat does its very best to stay alive. Young healthy rats can swim f or 45 minutes in 50° Fahrenheit water before drowning. Old rats can only last about 15 minutes. And old rats swim differently, less efficiently, with their lower bodies more or less vertical, sort of dog paddling. But whe n old rats 
were fed pantothenic aci d at a very high dose for a few weeks before the test, they swam 45 minutes too. And swam more 
efficiently, like the young rats did. More interestingly, their coats changed color (the gray went away) and improved in text ure; 
they began to appear like young  rats. And the rats on megadoses of B 5 lived lot longer –25 to 33 percent longer than rats not on 
large doses of B 5. Does that mean "megadoses" of B 5 have an unknown drug -like effect? Or does that mean the real nutritional 
requirement for B 5 is a lot hi gher than most people think? I believe the second choice is correct. To give you an idea of how much 
B 5 the old rats were given in human terms, the FDA says the minimum daily requirement for B 5 is about 10 milligrams but if 
humans took as much B 5 as the  rats, they would take about 750 milligrams per day. Incidentally, I figure I am as worthy as any 
lab rat and take over 500 milligrams daily. My point is that there is a big difference between preventing a gross vitamin deficiency disease, and using vi tamins to create 
optimum functioning. Any sick person or anyone with a health complaint needs to improve their overall functioning in any way 
that won't be harmful over the long term. Vitamin therapy can be an amazingly effective adjunct to dietary reform and 
detoxification. Some of the earlier natural hygienists were opposed to using vitamins. However, these doctors lived in an era when the food 
supply was better, when mass human degeneration had not proceeded as far as it has today. From their perspe ctive, it was possible 
to obtain all the nutrition one needed from food. In our time this is unlikely unless a person knowingly and intelligently pr oduces 
virtually all their own food on a highly fertile soil body whose fertility is maintained and adjusted  with a conscious intent to 
maximize the nutritive content of the food. Unfortunately, ignorance of the degraded nature of industrial food seems to exten d to 
otherwise admirable natural healing methods such as Macrobiotics and homeopathy because these disc iplines also downplay any 
need for food supplementation. Vitamins For Young Persons And Children  
    Young healthy people from weaning through their thirties should also take nutritional supplements even though young people 
usually feel so good that they  find it impossible to conceive that anything could harm them or that they ever could become 
seriously sick or actually die. I know this is true because I remember my own youth and besides, why else would young people so 
glibly ride motorcycles or, after o nly a few months of brainwashing, charge up a hill into the barrel of a machine gun. Or have 
unsafe sex in this age of multiple venereal diseases. Until they get a little sense, vitamin supplements help to counteract t heir 
inevitable and unpreventable use of recreational foods. Vitamins are the cheapest long life and health insurance plan now 
available. Parents are generally very surprised at the thought that even their children need nutritional supplements; very fe w 
healthy children receive them. A few are  given extra vitamin C when acutely ill, when they have colds or communicable diseases 
such as chicken pox. Young people require a low dose supplement compared to those of us middle -aged or older, but it should be a broad formula 
with the full range of  vitamins and minerals. Some of the best products I have found over 25 years of research and experimentation 
with young people are Douglas Cooper's "Basic Formula" (low dose and excellent for children) and "Super T Formula" (double th e 
dose of Basic Formul a, therefore better for adolescents and young adults), also from Douglas Cooper Company; Bronson's 
"Vitamin and Mineral Formula for Active Men and Women" and Bronson's "Insurance Formula." "Vitamin 75 Plus;" and 
"Formula 2" from Now Natural Foods are also good and less costly. Healthy very small children who will swallow pills can take these same products at half the recommended dose. If they won't 
swallow pills the pills can be blended into a fruit smoothie or finely crushed and then stirred into appl e sauce. There are also 
"Children's Chewable Multi -Vitamins + Iron" (1 -5 years old) from Douglas Cooper that contains no minerals except iron, 
Bronson's "Chewable Vitamins" (make sure it is the one for small children, Bronson makes several types of chewabl es) and a 
liquid vitamin product from Bronson called Multivitamin Drops for Infants . These will be a little more costly than cutting p ills in 
half. There is also an extraordinarily high quality multivitamin/mineral formula for children called "Childre n's Formula Life 
Extension Mix" from Prolongevity, Ltd. (the Life Extension Foundation), it is in tablet form, and slightly more expensive. I hope that my book will be around for several generations. The businesses whose vitamin products I recommend wi ll not likely 
exist in twenty years. Even sooner than that the product names and details of the formulations will almost certainly be alter ed. So, 
for future readers discovering this book in a library or dusty shelve of a used book store, if I, at my curre nt level of understanding, 
were manufacturing a childrens and young adults vitamin formula myself, this is what it would contain. Any commercial 
formulation within 25 percent of these figures plus or minus would probably be fine as long as the vitamins in the pills were of 
high quality. Vitamin C  500 mg  B-1 30 mg  
Vitamin E  50 iu  B-2 30 mg  
Vitamin A  500 iu  B-3 niacinamide  100 mg  
Vitamin D  25 iu  B-5 50 mg  
Magnesium  100 mg  B-6 30 mg  
Calcium  400 mg  B-12 30 mcg  
Selenium  10 mcg  Chromium  20 mcg  
Manganese  2 mcg  Biotin  30 mg  
Zinc 5 mg  Iodine (as kelp)  5 mg  
PABA  20 mg  Bioflavinoids  100 mg  
 
Vitamins For An Older Healthy Person  
    Someone who is beyond 35 to 40 years of age should still feel good almost all of the time. That is how life should be. But 
enjoying well -being does not mean that no dietary supplementation is called for. The onset of middle age is the appropriate time to 
begin working on continuing to feel well for as long as possible. Just like a car, if you take very good care of it from the beginning, 
it is likely to run smoothly for many years into the future. If on the other hand you drive it hard and fast with a l ot of deferred 
maintenance you will probably have to trade it in on a new one after a very few years. Most people in their 70s and older who  are 
struggling with many uncomfortable symptoms and low energy lament, 'if I'd only known I was going to live so lo ng I would have 
taken better care of myself.' But at that point it is too late for the old donkey; time for a trade in. Gerontologists refer to combating the aging process as "squaring the curve." We arrive at the peak of our physical function a t 
about  age eighteen. How high that peak level is depends on a person's genetic endowment, the quality of the start they received 
through their mother's nutritional reserves, and the quality of their childhood nutrition and life experience. From that peak  our 
function begins to drop. The rate of drop is not uniform, but is a cascade where each bit of deterioration creates more deterior ation, 
accelerating the rate of deterioration. Because deterioration starts out so slowly, people usually do not begin to notice there has been any decline until they reach their 
late 30s. A few fortunate ones don't notice it until their 40s. A few (usually) dishonest ones claim no losses into their 50s  but they 
are almost inevitably lying, either to you or to themselves, or both. T hough it might be wisest to begin combating the aging process 
at age 19, practically speaking, no one is going to start spending substantial money on food supplements until they actually notice 
significant lost function. For non -athletes this point usually  comes when function has dropped to about 90 percent of what it was in 
our youth. If they're lucky what people usually notice with the beginnings of middle age is an increasing inability for their  bodies 
to tolerate insults such as a night on the town or a  big meal. Or they may begin to get colds that just won't seem to go away. Or 
they may begin coming home after work so tired that they can hardly stay awake and begin falling asleep in their Lazy Boy 
recliner in front of the TV even before prime time. If t hey're not so lucky they'll begin suffering the initial twinges of a non -life-
threatening chronic condition like arthritis. The thinnest line demonstrates the worst possible life from a purely physical point of view, where a person started out life with 
significantly lowered function, lost quite a bit more and then hung on to life for many years without the mercy of death. If one can postpone the deterioration of aging, they extend and hopefully square the curve (retard loss of function until lat er and 
then have the loss occur more rapidly). Someone whose lifetime function resembled a "square curve"(the thickest, topmost line ) 
would experience little or no deterioration until the very end and then would lose function precipitously. At this point we do not 
know how to eliminate the deterioration but we do know how to slow it down, living longer and feeling better, at least to a p oint 
close to the very end. Vitamin supplements can actually slow or even to a degree, reverse, the aging process. Howev er, to accomplish that task, they 
have to be taken in amounts far greater than so -called minimum daily requirements, using vitamins as though they were drugs, a 
therapeutic approach to changing body chemistry profiles and making them resemble a younger bod y. For example, research 
gerontologists like Walford reason that if pantothenic acid (vitamin B 5, in fairly substantial (but quite safe) doses can ex tend the 
life and improve the function of old rats, there is every indication that it will do a similar jo b on humans. Medical researchers and 
research gerontologists have noticed that many other vitamin and vitamin -like substances have similar effects on laboratory 
animals. Some will object that what helps rats and mice is in no way proven to cause the s ame result on humans. I agree. Proven with full 
scientific rigor, no. In fact, at present, the contention is unprovable. Demonstrable as having a high likelihood's of being so, yes! So likely so as to be almost incontrovertible, yes! But provable to the mo st open -minded, scientific sort –probably not for a long 
time. However, the Life Extension Foundation is working hard to find some quantifiable method of gauging the aging process in  
humans without waiting for the inarguable indicator, death. Once this is a ccomplished and solidly recognized, probably no rational 
person will be able to doubt that human life span can be increased. Experiments work far better with short -lived laboratory animals for another reason; we can not control the food and supplement 
intakes of humans as we can with caged mice. In fact, there are special types of laboratory mice that have been bred to have 
uniformly short life spans, especially to accelerate this kind of research. With mice we can state accurately that compared t o a 
control group, feeding such and such a dose of such and such a supplement extended the life -span or functional performance by 
such and such a percent. A lot of these very same medical gerontologists nourish their own bodies as thoroughly as the laborato ry animals they are 
studying, taking broad mixes of food supplements at doses proportional to those that extend the life spans of their research 
animals. This approach to using supplementation is at the other end of the scale compared to using supplements to prevent gross 
deficiencies. In the life extension approach, vitamins and vitamin -like substances are used as a therapy against the aging process 
itself. Will it work? Well, some of these human guinea pigs have been on heavy vitamin supplementation for over thirty years (as of 
1995) and none seem to be suffering any damage. Will they live longer? It is impossible to say with full scientific rigor? To  know 
if life extension works, we would have to first determine "live longer than what?" After all, we  don't know how long any person 
might have lived without life extending vitamin supplements. Though it can't be "proven," it makes perfect sense to me to spe nd 
far less money on an intensive life extension vitamin program than I would certainly lose as a r esult of age -related sickness. Besides, I've already observed from personal use and from results in my clinical practice that life extension vitamin program s do 
work. Whether I and my clients will ultimately live longer or not, the people who I have pu t on these programs, including myself 
and my husband, usually report that for several years after starting they find themselves feeling progressively younger, grad ually 
returning to an overall state of greater well -being they knew five or ten or fifteen ye ars ago. They have more energy, feel clearer 
mentally, have fewer unwanted somatic symptoms. Sometimes the improvements seem rather miraculous. After a few months on the program one ninety year old man, an 
independent -minded Oregonian farmer, reported  that he began awakening with an erection every morning; unfortunately, his 89 
year old cranky and somewhat estranged wife, who would not take vitamins, did not appreciate this youthfulness. A few months 
later (he had a small farm) he planted a holly orcha rd. Most of you won't appreciate what this means without a bit of explanation, 
but in Oregon, holly is grown as a high -priced and highly profitable ornamental for the clusters of leaves and berries. But a slow -
growing holly orchard takes 25 years to began making a profit! A few older clients of mine reported that they noticed nothing from the life extension program, but these are unique people w ho 
have developed the ability to dominate their bodies with their minds and routinely pay their bodies absolu tely no attention, driving 
them relentlessly to do their will. Usually they use their energies to accomplish good, Christian works. Eventually, these de dicated 
and high -toned people break down and die like everyone else. Will they do so later on life exten ding vitamins than they would 
have otherwise? I couldn't know because I can't know how long they might have lived without supplementation and since they 
refuse to admit the vitamins do them any good, they won't pay for them. Many on life extension prog rams experience a reverse aging process for awhile. However, after the full benefit of the 
supplementation has worked itself through their body chemistry, they again begin to experience the aging process. I believe t he 
process will then be slowed by their vitamins compared to what it would have been without supplements. But I can't prove it. Maybe we will have some idea if the program worked 20 to 40 years from now. At this time I know of only two companies that make top quality life extension vitamin supplement formulas. One is 
Prolongevity (Life Extension Foundation), the other, Vitamin Research Products. I prefer to support what I view as the altrui stic 
motives  behind Prolongevity and buy my products from them. Unfortunately, these vitamin compounders can not put every 
possibly beneficial substance in a single bottle of tablets. The main reason they do not is fear of the power -grabbing Food and 
Drug Administrati on. This agency is threatening constantly to remove certain of the most useful life -extending substances from the 
vitamin trade and make them the exclusive property of prescription -writing medical doctors. So far, public pressure has been 
mobilized against  the FDA every time action was threatened and has not permitted this. If some product were included in a mix 
and that product were prohibited, the entire mixed, bottled and labeled batch that remained unsold at that time would be wast ed, at 
enormous cost. Were I manufacturing my own life extension supplement I would include the following. By the way, to get this all in one day, it 
is necessary to take 6 to 12 large tablets daily, usually spread throughout the day, taken a few at a time with each meal.
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:

        I believe fasting is the therapy that almost invariably gives a critically ill person their very best chance of recovery. If a patient 
dies while fasting they almost certainly would have died anyway, and if death comes while fasting, it will be more comfortabl e, 
with less pain, and with more mental clarity. Critically ill people may have, among other things, any of the followi ng diagnoses: advanced cancer, advanced aids, heart 
failure, very high blood pressure, kidney failure, advanced liver disease, advanced emphysema, pneumonia or other catastrophi c 
infections, especially those that seem unresponsive to antibiotics, strokes, emboli, sclerotic vessels as found in arteriosclerosis, 
severe nerve degeneration interfering with nerve transmission to vital organs. Treating the critically ill does not have to be an all or nothing, ideological choice between holistic medicine and A MA style 
medicine. It is important for the critically ill and their families to know that if they use standard medical treatment such as drugs or 
surgery, these measures can and should be combined with natural healing methods. It is always desirable to qui t all addicting 
substances, start a whole foods diet, (as light as possible), and add meganutrition (supplements) to the medical doctor's tre atments. Few medical doctors are so arrogantly partisan as to assert that natural measures will do any harm as long  as the MD is still 
allowed to prescribe as they please. Holistic support will not only lessen the side effects of the medical treatments but will speed up healing and often reduce t he 
required dose of prescribed drugs. I have had several clients with cancer who chose to have surgery, radiation and chemotherapy, 
but stayed on a raw food diet and took high doses of supplements throughout the treatment. These people amazed the attending 
physician by feeling good with little if any fatigue, no hair loss, o r flu symptoms. The same can be true of other conditions. Food In The Order Of Digestive Difficulty  
    Individual digestive weaknesses and allergies are not taken into account in this list. Hard To Digest: Meat, fish, chicken, eggs (if cooked), all leg umes including soy products, peanuts and peanut butter, beans, split 
peas, lentils, chick peas, dairy products such as cheese, milk, butter milk, nuts and seeds and their butters. Intermediate: all grains –quinoa, amaranth, millet, spelt, rye, wheat, oat s, barley. Fairly Easy: Brussels sprouts, green beans, green peas, broccoli, cauliflower, raw cultured milk products, asparagus, cabbage, 
sprouts especially bean sprouts, kale, other leafy greens. Very Easy: fruits, vegetable juices, fruit juices, broth (clear). No Effort: herb tea, water. Ethyl always comes to my mind when I think of how much healing power can still be left in a dying body. She (accompanied by 
her husband for support) came to Great Oaks School with terminal cancer, heart failure, advanced diabetes, extreme weakness, and 
complete inability to digest. Any food ingested just came back up immediately. Ethyl had large tumors taking over the breast,  
sticking out from her skull, an d protruding from her body in general. The largest was the one in the left breast which was the size 
of a big man's fist. She did have one crucial thing going for her, Ethyl was a feisty Irish red head who still had a will to live, and a reason to  do so. She and her husband, who had just retired, had dreamed their whole life of touring the US and Canada in their own RV the minu te 
he retired. The time had finally arrived but Ethyl was too ill to support her own weight (only 90 pounds) and to top it off was blind 
from diabetic retinopathy. The doctors had done everything they could to her, and now judged her too weak to withstand any mo re 
surgery (she had already had her right breast removed). Radiation or chemotherapy were also considered impossible due to heart 
failure. They sent Ethyl home to die, giving her a few days to a month at most. Any sensible hygienist trying to stay out of jail would have refused to take on this type of case because it was a cancer cas e 
where death was likely. Treatment o f this highly lucrative disease is considered the AMA's exclusive franchise, even when the 
medical doctors have given up after having done everything to a body the family can pay for or owe for. Whenever a person die s 
under the care of any person who is no t a licensed M. D. there must be an autopsy and a criminal investigation in search of 
negligence. If the person dies under the care of an M.
The author believes that fasting is the therapy that gives a critically ill person their best chance of recovery, and if death occurs while fasting, it will be more comfortable, with less pain, and with more mental clarity.
What is the author's opinion on the effectiveness of fasting in critically ill patients?
The author suggests that in this case, the person should start a raw food diet and eliminate toxic foods for a period of time, and then gradually introduce raw foods, and consider taking vitamin supplements to support the immune system and healing process.
What is the author's recommendation for someone who is chronically ill but cannot fast?
The author believes that nutrition is crucial for maintaining health, and it is not enough to just eat a healthy diet; one must also consider the importance of supplements to ensure optimal health.
What is the author's view on the importance of nutrition in maintaining health?
The author is a strong advocate for the use of vitamins and supplements, believing that they can help maintain health and potentially even reverse the aging process.
What is the author's stance on the use of vitamins and supplements?
The author recommends a diet that is 80% raw food, with a focus on sprouts and baby greens, and taking broad-spectrum supplements, and also engaging in moderate exercise to maintain health and potentially increase longevity.
What is the author's recommendation for a healthy person who wants to maintain their health and longevity?