~ Hippocrates
"When diet is wrong, medicine is of no use.
When diet is correct, medicine is of no need."~ Ancient Ayurvedic Proverb
A Necessary Introduction
Bare in mind, none of this is set in stone; I am speaking from my present level of understanding, and everything here is open for revision in light of new evidence.
First, it must be understood that there are two main schools of medicine. The model currently used in the mainstream is allopathic medicine, while the model I'm aligning myself with is homeopathic, or natural, medicine (although, in recent years, "homeopathy" has acquired another meaning, and no longer suggests its original meaning, which is simply natural medicine; the use of food as medicine, to treat the whole person). These two models have been at odds for thousands of years, but it is only recently that allopathy has risen to the forefront, mainly due to the rise of large corporations, which profit from keeping people sick.
While conspiracy theories like this one will naturally provoke incredulity at first glance, after one has become acquainted with the larger, historical picture, such conspiracies can be taken matter-of-factly, as commonplace occurrences. I feel very grateful that my own occupation has allowed me the free time to pursue these issues, which, understandably, many people have been unable to uncover. I also feel a responsibility to share my findings, in as concise and compelling a form as possible. My hope is that people will listen with open minds, and be willing to doubt some things which they have hitherto taken as truth.
The fact is, too many of our beliefs are accepted simply because they have been spoken by a perceived voice of authority. We tend to accept the popular beliefs of the place and time into which we have been born. This, again, is understandable, especially since life as we are required to live it today effectively hinders us from the pursuit of independent knowledge; by loading us up with all sorts of unnecessary responsibilities; necessary only to maintain a society which exalts the mass production, distribution, and consumption of material goods, -- and which does so by embracing a hierarchical model based on competition, conquest, and acquisition.
The roots of these issues, and of our own civilization, extend into the mists of prehistory. It may be necessary to gain an understanding of paleolithic cultures, and the values embraced by them (including respect for nature, and the equality of the sexes), in order to grasp the reality of how our own way of life, and thinking, has come into being. Unfortunately, recent archeological discoveries along these lines have yet to penetrate the mainstream consciousness, and children are still being taught in school that Babylonia and Sumeria, Greece and Rome, represent the official beginnings of Western Civilization.
We are told that "man" carved his way out of inhospitable nature by embracing a competitive and warlike spirit. In fact, the beginning of what we now call civilization was essentially the end of civilization in the highest sense; for tens of thousands of years, well organized social groups existed and thrived in an atmosphere of peace. While numerous examples of artistic accomplishment have been found, including flutes dating back to 40,000 B.C., evidence of weapons is entirely lacking. Two seminal works on the subject are Marija Gimbutas' "The Civilization of the Goddess" and Riane Eisler's "The Chalice And The Blade". But, while these are relatively scholarly texts, a great book for beginners would be Ralph Metzner's "Green Psychology".
The truth is, we are the offspring of two vastly different civilizations and peoples; on the one hand, the peaceful, Goddess-and-Nature-worshiping societies of Old Europe, and on the other hand, the later, militaristic, patriarchal, Sky-God-worshiping Indo-European societies which conquered, but also blended with, the original inhabitants of Old Europe. These two divergent, yet converging, streams of ancestry have resulted in the peculiar antagonism characteristic of our modern psychological condition, and interestingly epitomized in the conflict between allopathic and homeopathic medicine.
As I said, we acquire many of our beliefs from perceived authority figures. But when the legitimacy of those so-called authorities is called into question, so also are the many "truths" they have declared. What I am discovering is that, supported by sweeping, historical currents, large corporations have been allowed to gain supremacy in our time, and to essentially dictate to the public, and even to private universities, teachings, or rather, dogmas, which support their own corporatist (not to say "capitalist") agenda. They exercise the power to manufacture all manner of pseudo-scientific studies, and to prosecute as criminals anyone who sufficiently challenges their supremacy. This is the modern predicament.
While creating an illusion of freedom, they effectively "manufacture consent" (to use a term popularized by political critic and theorist Noam Chomsky), by making use of the media to distribute only those ideas endorsed by themselves. Cracks in this facade can be found, or made, but they are few and far between. Only with the rise of the internet has freedom of information become a reality, and a real threat to the existing power structures. It is now up to us to make use of this new freedom, and, to the very best of our ability, throw off the shackles of our cultural conditioning.
For Reference:
Some books of interest:
"The Gerson Therapy"
"The Food Revolution"
"When Healing Becomes A Crime"
"Medication Madness"
"Brain Disabling Treatments In Psychology"
Some documentaries of interest:
"Healing Cancer From Inside Out"
"Dying To Have Known"
"Food, Inc."
"The Future Of Food"
A few sites to look at are:
http://www.living-foods.com/
http://www.drnatura.com/
https://www.herbdoc.com/
http://www.therawfoodworld.
Some names to remember:
Dr. Max Gerson
Dr. Brian Clement
Dr. Joseph Mercola
Dr. Gabriel Cousens
Dr. John Christopher
Dr. Arnold Ehret
Dr. Peter Breggin
(While I do not agree with everything these men say,
and while they do not always agree with one another,
they are generally reliable, and a good place to start.)
Nutritional Advice
First, some general tips:
Foods to Avoid include animal products, which create numerous acids, including and especially uric acid, which inhibit the creation of an alkaline environment in the body; something essential for true health. Bleached and otherwise refined flours. Healthy carbohydrates are WHOLE GRAIN, not whole wheat. Refined flours, and especially white flour, turns to thick glue in the digestive tract. This is also true of white rice. White and otherwise refined sugars, salt, and caffiene. These three (sugar, salt, caffiene) are powerful neurotoxins, or drugs, which alter and pervert normal brain chemistry, resulting in irritability, excitability, lethargy, and a host of symptoms associated with ADD, ADHD, Chronic Fatigue, and various Mood disorders. Cooked and Overcooked Foods. You may have heard of the Raw Food Movement, which advocates the exclusion of all cooked foods. But even TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) has recommended short periods of fasting from cooked foods, and eating only raw foods, for the purposes of detoxifying the body. While TCM claims that an all-raw diet is too astringent for use in the long-term, it recognizes raw foods as powerful healers (indeed, too powerful for long-term use). Also, TCM insists that food be very lightly cooked. Anything processed or heavily processed, including canned foods, and almost everything in the grocery store, which contains numerous additives, preservatives, and genetically modified ingredients.
A more in-depth discussion:
I landed myself in the intensive care unit, and in a coma, the summer before last. This provoked me to adopt an all raw diet, and during the time when I was faithful to it, I never felt more energized or positive in my entire life. Here's some of what I learned.
One of the pieces of advice you'll most commonly find is to start slow, eliminating just a few things at a time, and at a pace you are comfortable with. For a couple of years, before I began juicing, I had already given up beef, pork, and lamb (anything on four legs), and shortly before going raw I had stopped eating chicken. For a while, during my recovery, I gave up all processed and cooked foods, and returned to the sort of diet our prehistoric ancestors would have recognized -- the sort of diet upon which our own physiology evolved, and which we are apparently designed to survive, and thrive, on. Giving up meat was a decision motivated by ethical concerns, foremost being the suffering of animals, but also environmental considerations (as I'd discovered that the leading contributor to environmental instability is the consumption of meat; specifically, factory farmed meat -- I'd learned that factory farms dump more waste into the air and ocean than any other industry, that it takes as much water to produce a pound of meat as one uses in a year of showering, and, also, that the land and materials used for growing grain, which could feed the world's hungry, were alloted to feeding animals for human consumption). We've grown up thinking of our distant ancestors as hunters, or hunter-gatherers, but the evidence I've studied suggests they were gatherers first, and only hunted rarely, usually to supplement the diet during long droughts and frosts when plants were less available.
I've learned that a lot of what we've been told are lies, often intentionally spread for the purpose of making money. For one thing, meat is not necessary for protein. All of the building blocks for proteins can be found in plants. I also learned that cooking food deprives it, and us, of the majority of it's nutrients. If the food is not organic to begin with, it has already suffered a significant depletion of its nutrient content, so this is an even bigger consideration now that foods are being produced with heavy traces of man-made chemicals, proven to be toxic to the human constitution. All in the name of making a small number of people obscenely wealthy, while making the rest of us fat and sick.
The reality of health, I've learned, is far from what I once thought. The reality is that almost all of us are sick. Sickness is so common, we have come to view it as our normal state -- as health! We think of some people as lazy, dull-witted, or irritable people, but the fact is that what they are eating has made them sick, and these are just a few of the symptoms of toxicity in the body. We look at people vibrant and vibrating with health, and we think it's just the luck of the draw; we think we weren't made that way. The truth is, we have no idea of who we are; that is, who we are when we are healthy, and not overloaded with toxins. Our potential is waiting to be unlocked.
The first step, as all true healers will tell you, is to cleanse the colon. The colon is the key. This is where toxins go to be released from the body, and when the colon is impacted (as most modern colons are), elimination of toxins is greatly inhibited. Our organs, primarily the liver, work to expel toxins from the blood, but all that work is in vain when the colon is clogged; toxins just end up being "recycled" back into the blood. Serious practitioners recommend as many as 30 sessions! of colon hydrotherapy in the initial stages of healing. This can get expensive, but the comparison is often made to what we spend fixing our cars. If we are willing to spend large sums fixing our cars, why are we so reluctant to spend them to fix our bodies -- ourselves? At the very least, enemas and/or a home colon cleansing program is recommended.
Simply doing a program like this, before making any significant dietary changes, can rid the body of a lot of accumulated toxic matter and free up a lot of energy for other biological processes. The only thing they recommend at this point is an avoidance of salty and fried foods. The reason you don't want to begin infusing the body with fresh juices right away is because giving the body what it needs (after having been deprived for so long) will trigger a massive release of toxins, and if the colon isn't clean these will be unable to escape from the body, and a healing crisis will almost definitely occur. After cleansing the colon, and possibly doing some of the other cleanses (you'll see on herbdoc a number of cleanses, including liver, kidney, and gallbladder) you can begin drinking serious juices. At least 20 ounces of green juice a day is recommended. Anything green, but especially dark green leafy veggies, is essential to health. Never underestimate these juices, as they are among the most powerful medicines known to "man". You'll feel the difference immediately. Of course, you'll want to mix these with apple and carrot juices, because they can be very bitter on their own. But try not to overdue the sweet veggies and fruits. They provide "good sugars", and can give boosts of energy (some juice enthusiasts recommend a glass or two of fresh orange or grapefruit juice in the morning, to start the day -- works better than coffee, which is a very powerful and destructive drug; much more so than marijuana, for instance), but you don't want to overdo these.
What you take in is important, but even more important is what you leave out. Refined sugars, white flour, meat, etc. should be seen as positively toxic substances. Meat, especially, is very acidic. You've probably heard of the findings concerning alkaline and acidic foods. The body, in order to be healthy, needs to be slightly alkaline, but the modern diet makes the body extremely acidic. Incidentally, fruits like lemons and oranges, which we tend to think of as acidic, actually have an alkalizing effect on the body. Nuts and seeds are wonderful, especially when raw. The real key here is RAW. All that information on the back of packages about serving size, calories, etc. means nothing. The further removed a food is from its natural state, the more toxic it is. This is not an absolute rule, of course, but a general rule which may be relied upon in most cases.
Olive oil is wonderful, and should be used whenever possible in place of Canola or Vegetable oil. Bear in mind that cooking changes the chemical composition; heating oils actually begins turning them into plastics and metals! But olive oil is relatively safe. Oils, and especially the oils found in nuts and seeds, lubricate the cells and provide a very mothering kind of energy. Butter should be avoided, unless it is raw. Raw dairy is a beautiful thing, but is only legal to sell directly from the farm. If you can find a local farm willing to sell raw dairy -- great! Small farms usually treat their animals very well, for one thing. The sort of dairy products you find in stores have been cooked at high temperatures and had their structures changed. They are some of the most acid-producing substances. People find this hard to believe, since drinking milk can often calm a sore stomach, which we've been taught to think of as an acid stomach. People take "antacids", for instance. But the truth is that soreness in the tummy is caused by a lack of acids, needed for proper digestion, and so-called antacids stimulate the body to produce acids in the stomach. While this is one good form of acidity, it is not optimal and the long-term effects are harmful. The best cure for an upset stomach is mint, or about fifteen mintdrops dissolved in water.
Bottom line: begin thinking of foods as either medicines or poisons, because that's what they are. Garlic, ginger, cayenne pepper -- these are some of the most powerful medicines in your arsenal. Also, you want to expect to feel crumby during a detox. When you begin to change your diet in this radical way, your body starts to shed the wastes which it has been using as a substitute for real nutrition. You may break out in acne, you may feel very letharic, you may get headaches, etc. The mainstream doctors will see these things as signs that what you're doing is not working. Many people are advised by their doctors to stop the cleanse at this point, which they do. That's a shame, because true health is just on the other side of those reactions. It has to get worse before it can get better.
The problem with most mainstream medicine is that it's aim is to eliminate symptoms, and not the sources of disease. When you get a cold, for instance, the body is purging itself of toxins. It's a good thing! The last thing you want to do is suppress these attempts to rid the body of toxins, but that's exactly what our doctors do. They make your symptoms disappear, and you think you are well. Meanwhile, toxins are being sequestered in your organs. Tumors form because of deposits of toxins. The body, unable to rid itself of the disease, finds a place for it in the organs, where it continues to accumulate. Doctors who "treat" Cancer think there's a problem with the liver, or the lungs, or the brain -- wherever the tumor or tumors are localized, -- but really the problem is with the whole body. They surgically remove the tumor, or break it up with radiation, and then it just comes back.
I hope this information is helpful for you. Good luck, and remember not to be hard on yourself. Start slow. The sources of disease are on your dinner plate, but the sources of destructive behavior are rooted in psychological issues common to all of us. Being harsh with yourself will only backfire. So be patient, be gentle, and always keep in mind the person you are on your way to becoming. People who make the transition to a truly healthy diet become happier, more energetic, more eager to take on projects, and more attractive. It is not uncommon for these people to have a youthful glow to their skin and a twinkle in their eyes. This is the natural state; as God, or Nature, intended us to be.
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