Healing with Nature

Germs are feared more by people today than nearly anything else. People will climb onto some of the fastest and wildest rollercoasters but will be hesitant to shake your hand. If you want to be left alone just make it known that you have contracted a contagious disease and the room will quickly empty out.

During the SARS scare of just a few years ago it was so easy to book flights to Asia as most people were afraid to fly in an airplane where the person in the next seat might be a carrier. I flew to Asia several times during that period and the flights were less full than usual and there were many people wearing surgical masks and using other precautions.

Nearly every few months there is a new media scare tactic out about some contaminant like salmonella or e-coli. Last year here in the USA the entire spinach industry was turned upside down because someone fell sick from eating spinach that was contaminated by runoff from a dairy or meat farm. There was no spinach available for months in any store due to this. Tons and tons of spinach already on the store shelves were destroyed.

This year the same thing happened with tomatoes. Certain varities of tomatoes were pulled from the shelves of every single store and were destroyed because someone somewhere got ill from eating a contaminated tomato.

This is not confined only to the US or even only to the western countries but it also occurs in developing countries where the same scare tactics are used. There was and still is the worldwide bird flu epidemic, which caused millions of totally healthy birds to be destroyed.

In places like Africa they have the Ebola virus, HIV, Marburg virus, plus all the usual ones like colera, yellow fever, hepatitis, etc.

Is there any justification for this germophobia?

The mainstream society wants everybody to be fully aware of this, not the phobia but the actual germs and the risks (more on this later). The big corporations have jumped right on the bandwagon and invented useful products to alleviate this problem.  If you spend some time in the typical supermarket you can find anti-bacterial soaps, anti-bacterial wipes, anti-bacterial detergents, anti-bacterial clothes, etc. In fact according to the CDC (Center for Disease Control) there are over 700 such products on the market already and more are coming every day.

Antibiotics which are medicines developed to kill microbes in the body are being prescribed to people at alarming rates. In fact most often there is no test performed to even confirm the patient is suffering from an infection that the antibiotics would have any affect on before they are prescribed. Their abuse has lead to many new strains of microbes that are resistent to antibiotics.

Louis Pasteur was a French scientist who invented pasteurization in the 1800’s. He is known as the father of the germ theory. The germ theory is what most of the world believes in due to his work. The theory generally states that germs cause diseases and they are contagious. This means that germs that are attacking one person or animal can be passed onto another person or animal by some sort of contact.

It has been said that he changed his mind about the germ theory as he retracted the entire theory on his deathbed. There is a lot of controversy related to this as there is little evidence of this fact available. Some say that he said that illnesses are due to the environment and not the germ, others dispute this.

In any event, it is unimportant if Pasteur retracted the germ theory or not. The important thing is what is the actual truth? There is another theory called Koch’s postulates. They were developed by a German scientist named Robert Koch. They are the following:

1. The suspected causal organism must be constantly associated with the disease.

2. The suspected causal organism must be isolated from an infected host and grown in pure culture.

3. When a healthy susceptible host is inoculated with the pathogen from pure culture, symptoms of the original disease must develop.

4. The same pathogen must be re-isolated from hosts infected under experimental conditions.

Unfortunately for followers of Pasteur there have been many failures in his theory as it does not follow Koch’s postulates. Many diseases do not have one organism or pathogen that can be consistently separated from the host (the person suffering from the illness) and that can be grown in a lab which causes the same symptoms in another host.

Whether Pasteur retracted the theory or not is not the issue but should it be retracted for the entire world is more of an important question.

For the average person who enjoys their standard toxic diet the theory makes perfect sense. They experience what Pasteur described in his germ theory. They often get sick when someone in their household gets sick. They often get sick after a coworker or person who they come in close contact with was sick. They take certain medicines and seem to feel better, sometimes it is antibiotics or other toxic medicines.

These medicines generally are supressing the body’s reaction to the illness. In other words the symptoms seem to go away so the patient feels ‘better’. They think thay are healed or cured of the disease. What actually occured is that the toxic medicines are so toxic to the body that the body stops fighting the illness and uses all of it’s energy to remove the offending toxin and has no energy to continue fighting the illness. There is so much toxin in most people that this toxin removal process is nearly unfelt. They think they are in the best of health.

On the other hand someone who is truly in good health and follows the laws of nature will rarely contract a disease that is hosted by someone they come into contact with. As long as their body gets acclimated to the ‘contagious’ microbes a little at a time, their body will usually be able to avoid getting any symptoms at all.

What is the actual role of microbes in the body? Microbes serve a vital purpose to us. They participate in many necessary activities throughout the body. Even the ‘pathogenic’ microbes serve a purpose. When the body is full of excess toxic material and this creates dead and dying matter and cells the normal elimination systems of the body are overloaded and can not remove all of the toxic material and the dead matter. This is where the microbes come into play as they will gladly consume these dead cells and toxic matter.

The problem is that these so called pathogenic microbes also excrete waste as any living organism does after it consumed food. The waste of these microbes can be a toxin by itself which might create new symptoms in the host. Eventually however these microbes will consume all of the available dead cells and toxins and they will in turn die off. This is when the body returns to a healthy state.

In a typical person this is followed by the consumption of more toxic food and a poor quality lifestyle so the cycle continues once again. In someone who follows natural hygiene there is little to worry about because they do not have an environment that microbes can survive in for very long as they do not have enough available pathogenic microbe food or dead and toxic matter.

Should we worry about germs? Not if you follow a natural hygiene lifestyle. Just keep doing the right things to stay healthy as mentioned in this blog, take normal precautions but do not give into the germophobic craze, just relax and go about your life. Most of the fears of the masses are unfounded for NH practitioners, in fact nearly all of the products and measures they use are more harmful than helpful to us.

After living the natural hygiene lifestyle for a time now I know there are many people who know me and also know about my lifestyle. Once in a while some of these people who I must interact with on a day to day basis will either ask me a question or make a statement about my lifestyle as it is so different from the average person. Comments that I hear are things like “some people eat hamburgers every day and they still live to 90 years old so if they ate like you does that mean they will live to 200 years?”. Eventhough it was stated as a question it was meant more as a comment about the merits of a natural hygiene lifestyle. 

Certainly there are many people who live to 90 years old and do not participate in a natural hygienic lifestyle, this is obvious as there are many nonagenarians still alive in the world and few of them are practicing natural hygiene. In fact there are more people in their 90’s and 100’s now than ever before. Does this tell us that modern life is so advanced and so healthy that people are living longer? Many people are living into their 90’s and past 100 today but few of them are really having a good quality of life. In fact many of these elderly people are surviving day to day in a home where they are cared for because they can no longer care for themselves. Many have severe brain problems ranging from Alzheimer’s to simple confusion or depression. Many do not even recognize their close friends or relatives. This is not quality of life just existence. Someone who we all know ate lots and lots of poor quality food is Ronald Reagan. For most of the last 10 or so years of his life he merely existed, he did not recognize his own friends or family. He was basically a vegetable. Can this life be described as thriving?

To make steady progress; prosper - is the definition of thrive. Life should be exactly this, steady progress and prospering. I can not see living dependent on others to do basic, simple tasks such as dressing, bathing, eating and going to the bathroom as thriving by any definition of the word. So few people are really enjoying their older years in our society. There are some exceptions of course as everybody has that one aunt or uncle who is 95 and still lives on their own, but still they are not thriving. They can not participate in the activities that they used to enjoy, they often get frustrated with many chronic major health problems and even more minor ones.

Living according to the laws of nature will allow someone to continue their usual activities of life right into their twilight years, thus avoiding almost all of the chronic and acute health issues that so many suffer from. Natural hygiene is not a guarantee that you will live to 200, not at all, but it sure is a way to enjoy your life using the body and all of it’s wonderful abilities right into your final days. Your thinking will be at it’s clearest possible, your bones and posture will be straight and strong, your muscles will still allow you to do all the activities you enjoyed all life long, aches and pains will be minor problems and not force you to be bedridden for long periods of time, you will be able to really enjoy everything you worked for in your life instead of lying helpless at a care-giver’s mercy.

People commonly ask the question “How are you?”, it is more of a greeting than a question. Often it is used instead of hello or other forms of greeting. It is very rare for the person who was asked this to respond with anything other than fine or well or good. I know that even at times when I was feeling really bad I have answered this question with ‘fine’, ‘okay’, ‘good’. I believe that many people will do the same as this answer is safe and will not result in more questions. If you are really not feeling well you don’t want to start a whole explanation and description of the way you feel as that might make you feel even worse so you just tell a little lie and say that you are fine.

As for the way I personally feel, I have to admit that after living according to the laws of nature, I feel much better these days than I did before I was living this lifestyle. Of course I had no way of knowing that I wasn’t feeling as good as I could, I had no gauge or objective means to experience how to feel better so I assumed the way I felt before was as good as it gets. In fact I didn’t realize that before I was living this way I was often depressed. There were many times that I was very depressed before living this way and I do remember those times but even when I wasn’t depressed I just wasn’t feeling just right.

I have heard of many other people who have been chronically depressed and after removing the poor diet and bad lifestyle their depression was completely lifted. Many people do not even realise this and continue to live with their depression without even knowing they do not need to always feel that way. Some depressed people will go to a doctor to try to get over their depression and they almost always end up with a prescription for some toxic mood altering drug or addictive narcotic. In fact many years ago when I was depressed I went to see a doctor and he tried to encourage me to take some prescription drugs to help me get over it.

Even at that time I knew drugs were a last resort and that I could try a number of things before taking those addictive and toxic chemicals. Instead of yielding to the doctor I decided to read a book about depression which totally explained to me the causes of depression. After reading the book I felt a lot better as the book explained the causes of depression and these causes were completely controllable by me. It was a great relief for me to know this, just the knowledge of the cause was enough for me to lift the depression out from my life.

This happened many years ago way before I even had a clue about the laws of nature. There were many times after that period where I started to feel depressed again but not to the same extent. Now that I follow the laws of nature I feel as if there is almost no possible way that I can ever feel depressed again. I always think of the positive side of every situation and my mental and physical health are at their best point of any in my entire life.

It’s a shame that many depressed people needlessly suffer when relief is so simple, they do not need to use artificial chemicals or spend lots of money on a therapist, all they need to do is follow the laws of nature and their depression will eventually lift. Depression is not a natural phenomenon, it is the body’s reaction to a toxic environment, once your body is in a low toxin, stable environment and all of the laws of nature are followed depression just is not possible.

Unfortunately society shuns those who do not seem happy or do not fit in with the rest of society and depressed people often do not seek help or seek help from the wrong sources such as the medical estabishment. They needlessly suffer. Some go as far as suicide attempts or do other forms of deviant behaviors. If you are depressed or know someone who is, please learn about natural hygiene and start a new life free of depression.

In addition to the entry on this blog about protein, I decided to add one about athletes and protein. Go to any gym in the world and you will find some bodybuilders who look like Arnold Schwarzenegger did at his prime who are consuming oogles and oogles of protein. They drink protein shakes, eat animal products including eggs, dairy, and lots of meat, eat nuts, seeds, and several popular protein supplements. There is a very big myth out in the world of bodybuilding that loads of protein are needed to build strong muscles. Is this a fact or really a myth? Can bodybuilders get even stronger and more muscular without the massive amounts of protein? Unfortunately there are very few bodybuilders who consume a healthy raw vegan diet. However there are several and they are probably in much better health and have much more strength than their equal in the non-raw, non-vegan world. Here are just a few of the extremely strong and fit bodybuilders who are eating a raw vegan diet with little protein, they actually eat little to no overt protein foods and get all of their protein from the protein that is already in fruits and vegetables.

First on the list is Richard Blackman who claims to be a pure fruitarian (eats only fruit), his web site is here: http://fruitarianfitness.com/

Second is Charlie Abel who is on a raw food low fat diet, his web site is here: http://www.charliesgym.info/

Third is Storm Talifero who is on a raw food diet and his web site is here: http://www.thegardendiet.com/aboutmuscle.html

Fourth is Nick Stern who is on a raw food diet and is a bodybuilder at 55 years old. A YouTube clip can be seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlwB2r16BJI

Fifth is Tonya Kay who is on a raw vegan diet and is a bodybuilder. Information on her is here: http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/kristi15.htm or http://www.tonyakay.com/

There is an entire web site totally devoted to vegan bodybuilding some of whom are raw vegan which can be found here: http://www.veganbodybuilding.com/

Here is one more vegan bodybuilder who was 71 years old when the picture was taken, he is not a raw vegan but a vegan, the picture speaks for itself: http://www.gymmorris.com/

If you have checked any of the above links, you can see that these athletes are more than just skinny and weak rabbit food eaters, they are some of the top athletes in their sports. These athletes get their nutrition from raw fruits, vegetables and nuts and seeds. Some might use vegan protein supplements but most do not consume extra protein beyond that which is already supplied in their food. The advantage that these athletes have over the animal protein consuming athletes is that they recover from their workouts in less time, they get sick less often, and they will maintain their athletic body and abilities well into their older years which can’t be said for most of the standard diet consuming athletes.

I hope this post put away all of the misinformation about being a strong athlete and diet. There is no requirement to consume any special diet for athletes, they just need to consume more of the same foods because they use more calories when they train. More calories used require more calorie consumption, just eat more of the same raw vegan whole foods such as those mentioned in other blog entries.