Healing with Nature

Yesterday was a “pizza celebration” day at work because we hit a milestone on a big project that is very important to the company. Obviously I turned down the lunch invitation since I have stopped eating pizza more than 7 or 8 years ago when I started eating more whole foods and more raw foods.

I noticed that there were 9 large pizza boxes piled up on the garbage can after lunch was over and there were 3 or 4 more still with partial pizzas in the meeting room. There were many varieties of pizzas. They had the usual all dressed or works pizza, there were pepperoni pizzas, there were a couple of vegetarian pizzas for the small minority of vegetarians,  and some with chicken.

After lunch was over I was speaking to one of my coworkers. This particular coworker seemed to be very interested in my personal diet in the past. He even told me one time that he tried to eat one meal of only fruit but it caused him severe diarrhea. I asked him how his pizza lunch was. We then discussed my daily food intake and I told him that on average my meals contain about 2 to 3 pounds of fruit. An entire day’s food would amount to close to 9 pounds (some days a little lower and some a little higher).

He seemed shocked and surprised saying that is a lot of food. This got me thinking as the amount of food people on the standard western diet is probably smaller due to the concentrated foods that are void of water. Then I thought about the toxins in all the standard foods and how most people drink with their food. Besides the pizza there was also about 5 or 6 large 2 liter bottles of soda. They had the usual Coke, Sprite, and a couple other flavors.

 Just to make a comparison, I decided to calculate the weight of the food and drink that a typical standard western diet meal would weigh and compare it to a whole food mono fruit meal that I would eat.

The pizzas were from Papa Johns and fortunately for me Papa Johns has a web site that contains the nutritional information of their pizzas. Most of the diners were eating at least 2 slices of pizza (some had more and some less). Also along with the pizza most every diner was drinking soda. A few preferred to have water, coffee or tea but most chose to drink the soda.

Here is my calculation for an average person:

2 slices of Papa John’s works pizza contains 740 calories. 220 of those calories are from fat.  This is about 30% of the nutrients are fat, which is about the standard for the typical western diet. The weight of 1 slice of pizza is about 6 ounces, 2 slices are 12 ounces or 3/4 of a pound.

If that was the end of it then my coworker was correct as the standard western meal is less than a pound and contains enough calories for a single meal at 740 calories. A typical meal for me is about 2.5 pounds of grapes. This amount of grapes is about 760 calories (just 20 more than the pizza meal). The grapes meal is a pure whole food that contains nearly no toxins and doesn’t make me thirsty at all. There is no salt, spices, onions, garlic or other condiments on my food. The food is full of water and tastes fresh and sweet without adding anything.

The pizza eaters were consuming on average about 2 glasses of soda to ‘wash’ down the pizza. This amounts to about 16 ounces of liquid. 16 ounces of liquid weighs around 1 pound. In all the standard western dieters or pizza eaters were consuming 1.75 pounds of food and drink. I was consuming 2.5 pounds.

There really is not much difference between the amount of food that I ate versus the amount of food the standard western diet or pizza dieters were eating. If you also add the amount of calories that they consumed in the soda (16 ounces) they ate way too many calories as well. 16 ounces of regular soda contains about 200 calories. Their total calories consumed was now 940, my meal was 760 calories. Since the soda is fat free their actual percentage of fat is now down to 23%.

The problem for those who chose the soda instead of water to dilute the toxins have  eaten 200 extra empty calories that contains no nutrients at all. This is excess calories since the average person only needs to eat about 700 or so calories per meal (assuming they eat 3 meals a day).

In conclusion, I do have to agree that the sheer weight of my meals are slightly higher than standard western diet meals but they do not contain excess empty calories and do not require any liquid to wash down the toxins. I think I’ll stick with fruit.

One of the biggest barriers to switching to a whole food and raw diet which is the original diet of humans is the psychological effects of addictions. The standard western diet that the vast majority of people choose to consume is full of addictive substances. These foods are not only addictive by their smells and tastes but they also contain chemicals known as opioids which are highly addictive.

What are opioids? They are as the name suggests similar to opium, one of the most addictive drugs known. Opioids are defined as anything that is non opium derived but causes similar effects on the brain as morphine (which is opium derived). Opioids are known to create positive feelings, reduce pain, cause sedation, and just generally produce a feeling of pleasure.

When something you eat contains these opioid substances they will be very difficult to discontinue consuming. People will get cravings and urges to keep on using these foods since they give a false sense of well being that lasts just long enough to get the next hit (or meal).

Which foods have these addictive substances? The most common are the grains such as wheat and all products made from wheat, dairy products that were derived from milk, and meats which can be from most any animal or even from fish.

Grains

The grains that contain the most opioids are the ones that contain gluten. This topic was covered in another blog entry called The French Don’t Call it Pain for Nothing. Gluten is found in wheat, rye, oats and barley. The other grains also have addictive substances but are not as dangerous as the ones that contain gluten. Gluten is known to create many health problems besides addictions, one of which is celiac disease. An example of an opioid found in many grains is gliadinomorphine which as the name suggests is similar to morphine to our brain and nervous system.

Dairy

Milk and all of the products that are made from milk including cream, ice cream, cheese, and many other products that contain covert dairy products such as many breads, cereals, meats, and many processed foods contain opioids. Cow’s milk contains casein which after digestion breaks down to casomorphine. Two other opioids found in dairy are beta-casomorphine-7 and alpha-casein. Antibodies of these opioids have been found in the brain stems of humans which indicates that they can cross the blood-brain barrier.

Besides the opioid problems with dairy there are many other serious problems with dairy as a large percentage of the population is lactose intolerant. They do not have the ability to digest the milk sugar known as lactose. Many people also are allergic to the milk proteins.

Meat

Hemoglobin is a protein found in blood. Every kind of meat contains blood since meat is the flesh of animals. Hemoglobin is known to be an opioid. Most every animal raised for food has been fed a high grain diet. Resdiue of the grain diet will be in the flesh of every animal and therefore these meats will also contain the opioids from grains.

Due to the standard procedures of modern factory farming most animals are given anti-biotics and hormones. Both of these additives can cause cravings and opioid type of reactions in the consumer of the meat.

What do opioids do? Opioids will bind to opioid receptors in the brain, central nervous system and gastrointestinal tract. Once they attach to these receptors, their chemicals are released and they will cause pain to stop and feelings of euphoria. Some of these cause sedation and feelings of relaxation.

One of the reasons why people feel tired or sleepy after a big meal is due to these opioids. These foods are causing a numbing of the real world and makes us feel happy and reduces pain. These are the same reactions to all of the usual addictive drugs such as morphine, heroin and cocaine.

People consuming the foods mentioned in this post or derivatives of them are experiencing the addictive properties of these foods. Often I hear people tell me that they would rather die than change their diets to exclude meat, dairy or grains. This is the addiction speaking and not the person. These foods can be more addictive than illegal drugs as society shuns illegal drugs but nobody ever shuns food, even the most dangerous ones mentioned here.

If you are addicted to any of these unhealthy and dangerous foods, I hope that this post will help you understand why. Maybe with this knowledge you can plan a withdrawal strategy from these foods. It can never be easy to stop consuming an addictive substance so keep that in mind if you decide to discontinue eating them. Often professional help is needed to stop using an addictive substance.

One of the most controversial and misunderstood areas of diet is vitamin B12. I will try to clarify this here in simple language. Vitamin B12 which is also known as cobalamin, is a coenzyme which plays a part in red blood cell formation and growth.

As with vitamin C it can not be synthesized by the body and therefore must come from other sources. The only creature on earth that can produce vitamin B12 is the lowly bacteria. No animal or plant can produce this essential vitamin.

When we ingest vitamin B12 there must be sufficient intrinsic factor secreted from our parietal cells of our stomach in order to utilize and absorb the B12. The parietal cells of the stomach are the same cells that secrete hydrochloric acid that aids in the digestion of food.

Most of the symptoms of insufficient vitamin B12 people show are usually not caused by the lack of B12 but a lack of intrinsic factor secretions by the stomach. Symptoms of B12 deficiency are primarily anaemia, which is insufficient number of red blood cells. This can manifest itself as fatigue or weakness. It can also cause weight loss, constipation, flatulence or loss of appetite.

More serious symptoms can be numbness or tingling in the hands or feet, insomnia, loss of memory, dizziness, loss of balance, tinitus (ringing in ears), depression, headaches or hallucinations. These symptoms can be many other things so don’t run out and buy B12 supplements just yet.

The average meat eater needs between 1 to 3 micrograms of B12 a day while the average vegetarian only requires as little as 0.3 to 0.5 micrograms per day. The meat eater’s stomach is much less efficient at producing intrinsic factor and their body needs to work much harder to get any nutrient from the food they eat.

The liver can store up to 1000 micrograms of vitamin B12. If your liver is storing this amount then you can stay free of any B12 deficiencies for as long as 2000 days which is  nearly 6 years without receiving any B12 from any sources whatsoever.

There are several ways to get this important vitamin into our body. One of the most obvious is through diet. When we consume healthy plant based food that was grown in soil containing the bacteria that produce B12 the plant will contain sufficient amounts of B12. Due to the conventional modern farming methods that use chemicals in the soil which kills the bacteria most conventional food from plants has little to no B12.

If however you consume some organic food that was grown in soil containing composted material without the toxic chemicals there will be B12 in the food.

The absorbing colon which is the first half of the colon can absorb B12 from bacterial secretions. The colon is full of bacteria and if you maintain a healthy lifestyle these bacteria will flourish and help with B12 absorption. The amount of B12 from this source can be between 1 to 10 micrograms daily provided your colon can absorb the vitamin.

Finally another source of vitamin B12 is from the bacteria in the mucus membranes of our body. The nasal passages, gums, tongue, tonsils and teeth can have bacterial B12 produced and absorbed directly into the bloodstream. This amount of B12 can be up to 0.5 micrograms a day. This alone is enough to prevent a deficiency of B12 in a healthy raw vegan and there is no need to even produce intrinsic factor as the B12 is directly absorbed into the blood.

If you chose to use drugs, coffee, alcohol, live a stressful life, or consume other toxins  the bacteria will be less likely to survive and your B12 levels might be low. Living a healthy non toxic lifestyle will allow these bacteria to help with B12 production.

Using the popular B12 ’supplements’ like spirulina, chlorella, blue green algae and many other B12 supplements can actually cause a B12 deficiency because they contain a fake inactive B12 which will compete with true B12 for receptors and not allow real B12 to be absorbed.

If you are concerned about vitamin B12 levels in your body there are testing methods to verify that your B12 levels are ok. The most accurate method as of the writing of this is known as the UMMA test (urinary methylmalonic acid test). More information on it can be found here.

The actual facts on B12 deficiencies are that many more meat and dairy eaters are B12 deficient than vegans and vegetarians mostly because they have problems secreting intrinsic factor and do not absorb B12 well.

It is really quite rare for a healthy raw vegan to have B12 deficiencies. In transition to a healthy raw vegan diet you might want to look into certain bacterial produced B12 containing foods. These are most raw and organic foods that were grown in soil that uses compost and contains cobalt. If in doubt then grow these on your own. Lettuces grow well even in an apartment.

Just remember that the usual cause in not insufficient B12 but not enough intrinsic factor secretions produced by your stomach cells. This can be reversed with a healthy lifestyle. If you are still really worried about B12 then get yourself tested and put your mind at ease.

Here is the Wikipedia definition of reductionism: Reductionism can either mean (a) an approach to understanding the nature of complex things by reducing them to the interactions of their parts, or to simpler or more fundamental things or (b) a philosophical position that a complex system is nothing but the sum of its parts, and that an account of it can be reduced to accounts of individual constituents.

People tend to want to break down complex things into their parts or at least their main parts so that we can better understand them. The best example is with food. We all know that food is complex and nature produces hundreds of thousands of chemicals and materials which are included in most plant life. In order to make some sense of these foods we usually look for some of the most prominent nutrients found in the food and call it a food that is rich in that nutrient.

An example of this is the orange. Most people will tell you that oranges are a good source of vitamins. In fact the vitamin that most people associate with oranges is vitamin C. Vitamin C, which is also known as ascorbic acid is one of the essential vitamins we humans need to consume because our body doesn’t manufacture vitamin C from other sources.

The sailors back in the 1400s and 1500s found this out because on their long voyages they wouldn’t consume any foods containing vitamin C. Many would get scurvy and other illnesses due to lack of this essential nutrient.

When it was discovered that scurvy was a result of insufficient vitamin C the sailors would bring limes on board their ships to avoid this problem. This is where the term limey originated.

Primates and guinea pigs lack a gene to make vitamin C. Possibly humans originally had this ability but lost it over time since nearly every fruit and vegetable contains enough vitamin C for our daily needs. This fact clearly shows that humans as well as all primates must consume a diet that is composed of fresh fruits and vegetables.

Is the vitamin C that is found in oranges and other citrus fruit alone enough to keep us healthy? If the vitamin C is removed from the orange and is consumed alone this might prevent scurvy but it is not a healthy replacement for eating the entire orange. Besides the pure vitamin C there are probably hundreds or even thousands of other nutrients in the orange that assist in the assimilation of the vitamin C.

Besides this there are also many trace nutrients that are needed for good health that need to be consumed in certain ratios with other nutrients. The orange has all of these nutrients packed together in the correct ratios and with all of the co-factors and catalysts needed by the body to digest and use the nutrients.

It might be true that using the extracted form of vitamin C from an orange might prevent getting scurvy but if we never eat the whole food, the raw, ripe and fresh orange itself and always take the reduced vitamin C our health will suffer in the long run. In fact using the extracted vitamin C will eventually cause other health problems because our body doesn’t understand what the vitamin C that was extracted from the orange is. It is actually a foreign chemical that is not available in nature.

Natural vitamin C is always in a package that is called a whole food with all of the other micro and co-nutrients in the right ratios and with the right enzymes and co-factors. This is the way we humans have evolved (or were created). The abundance of these whole foods is the reason why the human race is here on the planet earth.

Life is a complex series of opportunities and evolutions to suit the external environment that supports life. It has taken tens of millions of years or even billions for the current life forms to be what they are today. Every small detail was taken into consideration for the optimal probability of survival for each species. Taking the whole foods that brought us to this point and changing them into parts of the original food and ignoring all of the other parts that interact with that part is not only not healthy at all but outright dangerous.

The only way to ensure that we are eating the foods that our body was created to thrive off of is to eat as much 100% whole foods right from nature as possible. There are probably thousands of micro nutrients and phytonutrients that science has not even discovered yet that are critical to our health. Using parts of foods that have been shown by studies to improve one part of our health or to reverse some measured problem such as cholesterol levels is not in the least bit helpful to us.

Our body is much more complex than a machine that was designed by a human engineer. We can not run our body like we run a jet engine. Engineers didn’t design the human body. It is a very complex system that has evolved over millions of years and very few of the functions of the body are understood.

Foods are not a single nutrient that some scientist just happened to separate from a food. They are also nowhere near as powerful to our health after they are damaged by the processes that are used to separate them from the food. In fact most of these separated nutrients will cause more harm than good when eaten without all of the other nutrients together in the food.

If you do a search for nutrients of an orange you will get some subset of the whole list. Some of the known nutrients of oranges are, vitamin C, folate, potassium, vitamin B1, vitamin A, calcium, dietary fiber and water. This list only incorporates the most common and known nutrients that scientists have separated from food. The list is so far from complete that there are probably more that 10 times this amount of unknown nutrients and co-nutrients in an orange that are essential to the body.

Reductionism is a foolish way to count nutrition. Whole foods when eaten in their natural form right from nature provide the nutrients that are needed for a healthy body and to thrive. Anything less is just opening up yourself to health problems and will cause long term poor health.

Now I must be asking for lawsuits. At least the topic is not lawyers!

If you are a regular reader of this blog on natural hygiene, you would already know my personal and the general NH opinion on medical doctors. Medical doctors today are given a lot of respect and are seen as some of the most knowledgeable professionals in society. Many people think they perform magic and can cure most anything.

For example when my coworker was diagnosed with cancer last year he knew that I was living an alternative lifestyle but still when we discussed his options once he said that he had no other choice but to do what the doctors prescribed for him. May he rest in peace but I think they steered him wrong and he shouldn’t have been put through all those operations and chemicals. I honestly believe that he would have lived a lot longer if he refused to do what they prescribed.

Medical doctors are all educated by the same extremely wealthy and large pharmaceutical companies who donate billions and billions of dollars to ‘medical education’. These companies subsidize the universities with money, faculties, facilities, gifts, equipment, text books, cadavers (which they conveniently caused the deaths of), and even professors. How can any medical doctor even think for him / herself when they live in the medical education environment for their entire training period?

They are basically at the mercy of the pharmaceutical industry. Even their license to practice which is granted by the state and federal governments is nearly 100% influenced by the large pharmaceutical industry. There is a lot of lobbying going on by the pharmaceutical industry and they donate billions of dollars to the political parties.

An example of this is the ‘practicing medicine without a license’ law that most every alternative medical provider has butt up against. The law states that anyone who ‘practices medicine’ must be licensed by the state that they practice in. The terms ‘practicing medicine’ are given a very vague definition which makes nearly everyone who even suggests any form of treatment for anything relating to health to be practicing medicine.

When your mom told you to take an aspirin for your headache when you were a teenager, she was practicing medicine. If you had a casual conversation with an aquaintance and they recommended some kind of treatment for some medical problem you have, they are practicing medicine.

The law is intended to make sure that the only treatments that any person can ever seek out are drugs, surgery or other invasive treatments that are performed by a licensed medical doctor. This seems so convenient for the large pharmaceutical industry as well as the medical instument industry. Afterall they are the ones who supported the law and hired the highly paid lobbyists to write the law in the first place.

Basically any treatment that doesn’t involve these huge industries and adds to their profits is illegal. If you change your diet to heal a problem that was originally caused by your old diet, you are practicing medicine without a license.

There used to be a fasting retreat in the state of Maryland where a faster passed away due to problems related to their diabetes symptoms. This person was not co-operating with the requests of the fasting supervisors and would have had problems with any kind of treatment. The state board of physicians of Maryland brought the owner of the fasting retreat to trial for practicing medicine without a license. He was forced to flee from the US and open another fasting retreat in another country.

Having had a ‘chronic’ and ‘incurable’ illness for nearly 20 years before I finally discovered natural hygiene, I have met a lot of medical doctors. I have to say that none have impressed me in the least except for one who lives a natural hygiene lifestyle. She discovered NH and incorporated it into her treatments for her patients.

Unfortunately the state board of physicians’ opinions of her treatments were not all that favorable. She felt pressured to act according to the desires of the pharmaceutical industry and therefore took a sabatical from her practice. Her ethics and beliefs do not correspond with those of the pharmaceutical industry, which forced her to quit practicing medicine.

An acquaintance of mine had twins 7 years ago in a hospital. They were breached and the doctors decided that she must have a caesarian section. The surgery was performed and she had healthy twins. She became pregnant again a couple of years ago. This time she decided that she wanted to have the baby at home. She was a little apprehensive at first because she was used to the medical establishment’s propaganda that anything to do with health needs to involve them.

One of her friends happened to be a medical doctor and he heard about her wishes. He immediately telephoned her to tell her that she was making a big mistake. She was in a great risk of dying because of her previous experience. Her uterus was at risk of rupturing which would have caused her immediate death.

It took her a month to settle down and return to her senses and finally have the birth at home. At the time of the birth her husband called the local hospital to make sure they were able to support her in case of emergency. The hospital staff said that they were expecting them and were confident that she would soon be on her way there.

The birth happened without any events and she now has 3 healthy and happy children.

Another friend of mine’s mother was in the hospital for a ‘routine’ removal of polyps. They were not cancerous and simply were being removed prophylactically. The operation was a success but post operation she developped sepsis and due to the neglect of the hospital staff she passed away. My friend has won an out of court settlement against the doctor and the hospital. In fact the doctor is up for having his license revoked by the very same state board of physicians.

The health industry has such low self-esteem in the US that they must write laws that exclude any other competing treatments. They know perfectly well that they are causing most of the health problems in the country. They also are very afraid of natural hygiene because they know that their drugs, surgeries and treatments can not hold a candle to the power of the inner workings of our own bodies to heal us.

My suggestion to those who still consider seeing a medical doctor for any of their health issues is to think twice about that thought. Do not waste your time, money, and especially health by seeing a medical doctor. Just follow natural hygeiene and your body will keep you in the best health possible.

Raw superfood is the tag that has been given to various types of dry processed and packaged foods that are sold for a high profit by some of the raw food leaders. A partial list of these foods are:

1. Cacao
2. Maca
3. Goji berries
4. Raw peanuts
5. Spirulina
6. Algae
7. Chlorella
8. Coconut products
9. Raw oils
10. Hemp powder

Are these foods really healthy? According to the promoters of these foods they are more than healthy but essential to any raw food dieter’s daily meal plan.

The profitability of the majority of these raw superfoods is extremely high due to the claims made by their promoters. Some are claimed to improve the consumer’s energy, some improve sexual drive, some are meant to detoxify the consumer, some are meant to cure ailments, etc.

I will use the maca product as an example here to show what exactly these miracle superfoods are all about. The following is an excerpt from a superfoods website:

“Maca (Lepidium meyenii) is related to the turnip and beetroot. It grows underground, enduring extremes of temperature due to the altitude and proximity to the equator. A true superfood it is the only native vegetable in South America to be a member of the cruciferous family, sharing the cancer fighting properties of it’s relatives. It is similar to a sweet potato but in the West we can buy raw organic maca in powdered form, keeping all of the nutritional benefits intact. Maca is an adaptogen - that is, a plant classified to have certain medicinal qualities that can fight stress and reduce many degenerative diseases. Maca supplements are often marketed as a herb, although ‘herbal maca’ is actually a root vegetable”

Maca is a root vegetable that grows in South America. As most natural hygienists know, root vegetables are inappropriate for human consumption in large quantities. In fact even small quantities of root vegetables are not recommended for digestion as they usually contain starches which are difficult to break down in the body.

The fact that the article mentions that maca has cancer fighting properties indicates that it is not a food at all but a medicine or a drug. Drugs have no place in a healthy person’s usual diet. In fact natural hygienists do not use drugs at all and rely on the inner intelligence of their own body to heal their illnesses. This built-in healing system will only be able to complete it’s work efficiently when it doesn’t have interference from artificial substances like drugs or medicines. A fast or a long term healthy diet will heal most health issues.

These foods are all processed so that they can have a long shelf life. All of them are lacking their original water content and many are made into powder or are refined in various ways. In fact several of these foods are even processed at temperatures above the point where they would be considered raw. None are whole food.

Another consideration is that people who buy these products will spend so much of their food budget on these and have less money for real food like fresh fruits and vegetables. People will also (erroneously) assume that these foods have so much nutritional value that they can consume less healthy foods, which would lead to nutrient deficiencies. Finally, many of these foods are not only not healthy but are downright unhealthy.

Food choices are part of a healthy lifestyle. Eat raw, ripe, fresh and preferably organic fruits and vegetables in the right combinations and your health will soar, avoid the marketing hype and snake oil salesman selling raw superfoods. Your health will improve and your bank account will thank you as well.