But John had been very slender to start with and by now he was getting near the end of his food reserves. He probably couldn't have fasted on water for more than one more week without starvation beginning. But this time, when he broke his fast, it was under close supervision. I gave him dilute juice only, introduced other sustenance very cautiously and made absolutely sure that reintroducing nourishment would not permit the organism to gain.

This time it didn't. John's own immune system, beefed up by fasting, had conquered a virulent organism that could have easily killed him.

Before the era of antibiotics, before immunizations to the common childhood illnesses, people frequently died of infections as virulent as the one that attacked John. They usually died because they "ate to keep up their strength." Most of these deaths were unnecessary, caused by ignorance and poor nursing care. For example, standard medical treatment for typhoid fever used to consist of spoon-fed milk--sure to kill all but the strongest const.i.tution. Even without the a.s.sistance of ma.s.sive doses of vitamin C, if people would but fast away infections they could cure themselves of almost all of them with little danger, without the side effects of antibiotics or creating mutated antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria.

Dr. John Tilden, a hygienist who practiced in the '20s, before the era of antibiotics, routinely fasted patients with infectious illnesses. Supporting the sick body with wise nursing, he routinely healed scarlet fever, whopping cough, typhoid, typhus, pneumonia, peritonitis, Rocky Mountain fever, tuberculosis, gonorrhea, syphilis, cholera, and rheumatic fever. The one common infection he could not cure was diphtheria involving the throat. (Tilden, Impaired Health, Vol. II).

Recently, medical gerontologists have discovered another reason that fasting heals infections. One body function that deteriorates during the aging process is the production of growth hormone so the effects of growth hormone have been studied. This hormone also stimulates the body to heal wounds and burns, repair broken bones, generally replace any tissues that have been destroyed and, growth hormone stimulates the immune response. Growth hormone also maintains muscle tone and its presence generally slows the aging process.

Growth hormone might make a wonderful life-extension supplement; on it a middle-aged person might readily maintain the muscle tone of youth while slowing aging in general. Unfortunately, growth hormone cannot at this time be inexpensively synthesized and is still far too costly to be used therapeutically except to prevent dwarfism.

However, any technique that encourages a body to produce more of this hormone would be of great interest to life extensionists.

The body only produces growth hormone at certain times and only when certain nutrients are present in the blood. Gerontologists call these nutrients "precursors." The precursors are two essential amino acids, argenine and ornithine and certain vitamins such as C and B6.

But having the precursors present is not enough. Growth hormone is only manufactured under certain, specific circ.u.mstances: for about one hour immediately after going to sleep and then only if the blood supply is rich with argenine and ornithine but contains few other amino acids; it is also manufactured during heavy aerobic exercise that goes on for more than thirty minutes; and growth hormone is produced at an accelerated rate when fasting. (Pearson and Shaw, 1983). I did not know this when I was fasting John, but now, I would give argenine and ornithine to someone with a serious infection as well as ma.s.sive quant.i.ties of vitamin C.

Chronic Back Pain

Barry was a carpenter who couldn't afford to lose work because he was unable to bend or twist or lift. He frequently had bouts of severe back pain that made working almost impossible. Upon a.n.a.lysis by biokinesiology I found that he had a major problem with large intestine weakness and secondarily, adrenal weakness.

Constipation frequently causes back pain. The muscles of the back have nerve pathway connections to the large intestines; weakness in the intestine causes weakness of the back and makes it p.r.o.ne to injury. But the problem is the intestine, not the back. And the only way to make the back stay better is to heal the intestine. Many athletes have very similar problems. For example, they get knee injuries and think there is something wrong with their knee. Or they get shoulder injuries and think their shoulder is weak. These people are only half right. Yes, their knee or their shoulder is weak. But it could become strong and almost uninjurable if the underlying cause of the weakness is corrected.

The knee for example, has nerve pathway connections to the adrenal glands and kidneys. The shoulder has similar connections to the thyroid. The foot is weakened by the bladder. The treatment should first be on the weakened gland or organ and secondarily, on the damaged muscle tissue. I have solved numerous sports-related knee problems with protomorphogens for the adrenals and elimination of food allergies that make the adrenals work overtime. I have fixed bad shoulders by rebuilding the thyroid.

In Barry's case, it was the intestine. I asked him about his bowel function and he said that he was never constipated, had "a daily bowel movement without a lot of straining." But having given some 6,000 colonics, I knew better. There should have been no straining; Barry was trying very hard to be regular--he should not have had to effort. Fortunately, it struck him as true that he needed to detoxify and I managed to convince him to water fast. He probably figured, why not since he couldn't work anyway. Barry was a tall, skinny man to start with and you would think he hardly carried any fat at all, but he fasted on water for 30 days, receiving a colonic every day, while I did bodywork on his damaged back. He sure was constipated and couldn't deny the evidence that floated by through the sight tube of the colonic machine. By the end of the fast his colon was fairly repaired and free of old fecal material. And Barry had become a tall, gaunt-looking guy who had lost about 20 pounds you wouldn't think he had to spare.

After a few weeks of careful weaning back on to food, Barry felt pretty good, terrific even. He had no back pain and found out for the first time what not being constipated meant. It no longer took "not very much effort" to move his bowels; they moved themselves.

That was ten years ago. A few months ago, Barry looked me up, just to say thanks and to let me know that he had not had any more back problems and had generally felt good because he had more or less stayed on the improved diet I had instructed him about during his fast.

Painful Menstruation

Elsie was twenty. She came to see me because I had helped Elsie's mother overcome breast cancer many years earlier. Elsie began to have very painful periods with profuse bleeding and abdominal pain.

Her nutrition had been generally good because her mother couldn't survive on the average American diet and had long ago converted her family to vegetarianism. And like her mother, Elsie had been taking vitamins for many years.

A medical doctor diagnosed Elsie as having endometriosis, meaning, the lining of her uterus had migrated to the fallopian tubes, where it continued to bleed regularly into the abdominal cavity, following the same hormonal cycle as the endometritial tissue that lines the uterus. The doctor offered to try hormonal manipulation and if this proved unsuccessful, offered a hysterectomy. That would certainly eliminate the symptoms!

But Elsie did not wish to eliminate her ability to have children and preferred not to risk throwing her hormones off balance. So she came to me. My a.n.a.lysis showed that she had weak ovaries and weak uterus.

These were secondary to a toxic colon, toxic because she had a weak gall bladder and weak pancreas that reduced her digestive capacity and turned her improperly combined Organic, vegetarian legume-rich diet into toxemia. Checking her foods for allergies I discovered the normal pattern: Elsie was intolerant to dairy, wheat, eggs, corn, soy and concentrated sugars.

Being no stranger to fasting (her mother had fasted at length ten years previously) Elsie undertook a 30 day cleanse on vegetable juice with daily enemas, taking vitamins in powdered form. After the fast I put her on protomorphogens for her reproductive organs and pancreas. The gall bladder had healed by itself during fasting--gall bladders usually heal easily. Her maintenance diet included using pancreatic enzyme supplements when eating vegetable proteins and Elsie eliminated most fats so her gall bladder would not be stressed. The fasting also overcame her allergic reactions to corn and wheat but she was still unable to handle soy products, eggs or dairy. After six months Elsie no longer needed protomorphogens, had no abdominal pain and her periods were normal.

You may well be wondering how or why detoxification of the bowels allowed the body to repair the uterus. The large intestine is a sort of nest that cradles the reproductive organs, including the ovaries, uterus, and in the case of the male, the prostate gland. A toxic colon is like having one rotten apple in a basket, it contaminates the whole batch. Many problems in the abdominal area are caused by a toxic colon, including chronic back pain, ovarian cysts, infertility, birth abnormalities, bladder infections and bladder cancer, painful menstruation, fibroids and other benign growths as well as malignant ones, and prostat.i.tis or prostate cancer. Detoxing the body and cleaning out the colon should be a part of the healing of all of these conditions.

Irritable Bowels

Some peoples' lives don't run smoothly. Jeanne's certainly didn't.

She was abandoned to raise three little kids on welfare. Her college diploma turned out to be useless. Jeanne used to help me at Great Oaks in exchange for treatment. During those early years she had done a 30 day juice fast with colonics. Twenty years later at age 60, having survived three children's growing up, surviving the profound, enduring loss of one who died as an adult, after starting up and running a small business that for many years barely paid its way, and experiencing an uninsured fire that took her house, she began to develop abdominal pains the doctors named "irritable bowel syndrome" or "colitis." The MD offered antibiotics and antispasmodics but Jeanne had no insurance, the remedies were unaffordable. She also retained considerable affinity for natural medicine.

Prior to these symptoms her diet had been vegetarian, and had included large quant.i.ties of raw fruits and vegetables and whole grains. But the bran in bread was irritating to her bowels, she could no longer digest raw vegetables or most raw fruit.

Jeanne's vital force was low; her healing took time. She started on a long fast supported by powdered vitamins, vegetable broth and herb teas, but after three weeks was too weak to do her own enemas at home and could not shop for vegetables to cook into broth. So she had to add one small serving of cooked vegetable per day, usually broccoli or steamed kale. This lasted for one more week but Jeanne, having no financial reserves, had to return to work, and needed to regain energy quickly. Though not totally healed, she progressed to a maintenance diet of cooked grains and vegetables and food supplements, very much like a Macrobiotic diet. She felt better for awhile but wore down again after another stressful year.

Her abdominal pains gradually returned though this time she noticed they were closely a.s.sociated with her stresses. About one year after ending her first fast, as soon as she could arrange to take time off, she began another. This time to avoid extreme weakness, she took vegetable broth from the outset, as well as small amounts of carrot juice and one small serving of cooked vegetable a day for three weeks. Again, this rest allowed the digestive tract to heal and the pain went away. She returned to her Macrobiotic diet with selected raw foods that she could now handle without irritating her bowel.

She was now healthier then she had been in many years. With improved energy and a more positive att.i.tude, Jeanne returned to University at age 65 and obtained a teaching certificate. Now she is making good money, doing work she enjoys for the first time in 35 years. I hope she has a long and happy life. She is ent.i.tled to one!

A Collection of Gallbladders

Gallbladder cases are rather ho-hum to me; they are quick to respond to hygienic treatment and easy to resolve. I've fixed lots of them.

But an inflamed gallbladder is in no way ho-hum to the person afflicted with it. I've been frequently told that there are no worse pains a body can create than an inflamed gallbladder or the sensations accompanying the pa.s.sing of a gall stone. I hear from kidney patients that pa.s.sing a kidney stone is worse but I've never had a patient who experienced both kinds of stones to give me an honest comparative evaluation.

The only thing dangerous about simple gallbladder problems is ignoring them (between the bouts of severe pain they can cause) because then the inflamed gallbladder can involve the liver. I already told the story of how my own mother lost half her liver this way.

The condition is usually caused by a combination of hereditary tendency, general toxemia, and/or a high-fat diet, especially one high in animal fats. The liver makes bile that is stored in the gallbladder, to be released on demand into the small intestine to digest fat. A toxic, overloaded liver makes irritating sediment-containing bile that inflames the gallbladder and forms stones. A high-fat diet forces the liver to make even more of this irritant.

A toxic, overloaded, inflamed, blocked gallbladder is capable of causing an enormous array of symptoms that can seem to have no connection at all to their cause. In part these same symptoms are caused by a toxic, constipated colon that, in part, got that way because of poor fat digestion over a long time. These symptoms include: severe back pain; headache; bloating; burping; nausea; insomnia; intestinal gas; generalized aches and pains.

Medical doctors used to remove a troublesome gallbladder without hesitation; it was an organ they considered to be highly dispensable. Without one, the bile duct takes over as a bladder but its capacity is much smaller so the person's ability to digest fats has been permanently crippled, leading to increased toxemia and earlier aging if fats are not eliminated from the diet. These days the medicos have a new, less invasive procedure to eliminate stones; they are vibrated and broken-up by ultrasonics without major surgery. Inflamed gallbladders are usually removed because gallbladder inflammations resist treatment by antibiotics.

There are several very effective natural gallbladder remedies. The best is a three week fast, taking the juice of one or two lemons every day, along with colonics. The lemon juice tends to clear the bile duct. The fast allows the gallbladder to heal from inflammation. In cases that aren't too severe I have had very good results simply eliminating fats from the diet and using a food supplement derived from beet tops called AF Betafood. However, in all these cases, once the gallbladder is no longer "acting up," the person must stay on a low fat diet. Any fats they do eat must be vegetable and in small quant.i.ties.

By healing their gallbladders and cleansing their colons, several of my clients have resolved severe, debilitating back pain, pain so severe that the suffers were becoming bedridden. Medical doctors don't a.s.sociate gallbladder disease with back pain.

The Frightening Heart

Heart disease is one of the major causes of death among North Americans. It evokes images of resuscitation, of desperate races against time, trying to restart an arrested heart before the brain dies. It makes people think of horribly expensive surgery, last wills and testaments, terrible, paralyzing pain. Heart disease is a great profit center for the medical profession.

Most heart problems are very easy to fix by holistic approaches, even many hereditary weaknesses and malfunctions can be healed, if the work is done before too much organic damage occurs. But it rarely is easy to get the people to take the necessary medicine; everything in their lives must change--and fast.

First of all, people with heart problems must rapidly reach and maintain normal weight. This can be done by fasting or by dietary change, usually by eliminating all fats, sugars and refined starches. Alcohol and tobacco must instantly and forever become only past memories. It is almost as essential to eliminate flesh protein foods and dairy. Should that prove entirely too painful, fish in small quant.i.ties and only one or two times a week is tolerable.

For starters, a long fast, especially one involving lots of bed rest, is ideal. This gives the heart a chance to heal while the body weight is adjusted. A period of intense rest even without water fasting will accomplish almost as much. Even someone with the potential for heart disease who has not yet had a heart attack would be well-served to spend a month in bed, losing weight on juice, or sitting in a rocker on the porch eating only raw foods. After the weight is down to normal or close to normal and the heart tests stronger, an exercise program should be started.

Exercise has to become a religion. A daily aerobic program must be started on a carefully managed gradient, using the pulse rate as an regulator, at first raising their maximum heart rate to a point just below 150 percent of its resting pulse and keeping it there for thirty minutes. One can walk, jog, ride a bicycle or use an exercise machine. Actually, everyone should do this, even those with no heart problems. My husband, who hates the boredom of exercise, enjoys a ski machine in front of the TV while the stock market program is on.

He finds the TV interesting enough that he pays no attention to his workout. Daily aerobic exercise will strengthen the heart, gradually slowing the heart's resting pulse rate, indicating that the heart has become much stronger, pumping more blood with each pulse. As the resting pulse drops the exercising heartbeat can be increased to double the resting rate.

Highly aggressive, compet.i.tive, stress-oriented people have to give up being adrenaline junkies and learn to relax and a.s.sume a laid-back approach to living. Or die soon. An adrenaline junkie is someone that enjoys the feeling they get when operating under stress. Stress and the adrenaline it releases produce a kind of a drug-high. Many stressaholics cannot give up their adrenaline addiction while maintaining their previous employment and life-style, even though their life is at stake. In this sense they are like alcoholics, who should not take employment tending bar. To survive for long these people may have to retire or change professions. Stockbrokers may have to become Organic farmers; journalists may have to operate a news stand or bookstore, or work part-time covering the society page and dog shows. Women frequently turn their family life into a stress-filled drama too.

With heart problems a life extension megavitamin program is essential, even for twenty somethings if they have heart disease.

The sixty milligrams of Co-Enzyme Q-10 I recommend for the average middle aged person will not be enough for heart cases; they should take at least 120 milligrams daily and consider up to 250 mg. This much Q-10 greatly boosts the energy output of the heart on a cellular level. Vitamin E should also be increased, to between 600 and 2,000 iu daily. I also rebuild diseased hearts with protomorphogens; usually they must stay on protomorphogens for the rest of their lives. Niacin taken several times a day in doses, sufficient to dilate the capillaries and cause a skin flush (50 to 200 milligrams), increases the blood flow to nourish the heart. The amino acid L. Carnitine is also useful by increasing the energy output of the heart much like Co-Enzyme Q-10.

When I put people on this program, the supplements and other measures gradually take effect, and over months the patient begins to feel enormously better. Inevitably they come to dislike the side-effects of the various medications their medical doctor has put them on and they begin to wean themselves off of heart-stimulating poisons like digitalis. Another benefit of my program is that inevitably, blood pressure also drops to a normal range so if they have been on blood pressure medication they quit that too. Their diuretics also become unnecessary. The money they save more than pays for their supplements and the sense of well-being they feel is beyond value.

Other Kinds Of Cancer

There seem to be many other kinds of cancer, at least if you believe the medical doctors. They divide up cancers and their treatments by their location in the body and by the type of cancer cells present.

I do not see it that way. To me, a cancer is a cancer is a cancer, and there is only one kind: it is an immune system collapse, consequence of the deadly triangle of weak spleen, thymus and liver, plus a toxic large intestine and weak pancreas. That organ profile is found in skin cancer, prostate cancer, leukemia, brain cancer, cancer of what have you. How fast or how slowly the cells multiply or spread, where they are located, what the cancer cells look like in a microscope, these are irrelevant factors compared to the body's ability to conquer the disease. Or die from it.

If the body's immune system can stop the growth of the cancers and begin to turn them back before the cancer cells impinge catastrophically on some vital function, the person can usually survive. Even if the body cannot completely eliminate all the cancer cells, but regains enough immune function to keep the existing cancers in permanent check, a person can survive many years with an existing, stable cancer without undue pain or discomfort. Still having a non-growing tumor after a long fast indicates that a person is a lot better than they were before fasting.

I believe that virtually everyone has cancer cells in their body, just like viruses and bacteria. But most people do not develop cancer as a disease because their immune function is strong so these misbehaving cells are destroyed as fast as they appear. Mutated, freely-multiplying cells are caused by peroxidized fats, by free radicals in the body, by radiation (there has always been background radiation on Earth), by chance mutation. There are naturally occurring highly carcinogenic substances in ordinary foods that are unavoidable. In fact some of these naturally occurring substances are far more dangerous than the toxic residues of pesticides in our foods. The body is supposed to deal with all these things; they are all called insults. It is rarely the insult, but the failure of the body to eliminate cancerous cells promptly that causes the disease called cancer. So the treatment I recommend for cancer in general is the same as the one described for breast cancer cases. Restore the immune function.