Why I’m Changing My Focus from Health Education

(I’m warnin’ ya. This is a long one.)

I’ve been interested in what makes for health for a long time. And I’ve been so blessed to have found and studied the tenets of natural hygiene. Natural hygienists have been studying health for almost 200 years while allopaths have been studying disease. If you’re a fan of Mercola, Fuhrman, Diamond, MacDougall, or anyone promoting fasting or food combining or addressing cause, then you’re a fan of natural hygiene.

I believe diet is important as is exercise, sunshine, rest, warmth, clean air and water, and love, hope, and community. And most important is purpose. Where are we as the apex of evolution without purpose? Probably in front of the television having our life sucked out of us.

People used to criticize me when I’d talk about health principles because I smoked. Just because I liked reading about health doesn’t mean I was able to give up addictions. And after I quite smoking, they criticized me because I drank coffee. After I quit coffee they found something else. It seems I wasn’t allowed to discuss health issues without being perfect (though they could without knowing anything and being on half a dozen drugs), but perfection had to match someone else’s idea. Am I perfect if I eat meat? Am I perfect if I eat grains? Am I perfect at 50 percent raw? How about 80 percent? Am I perfect if I use a toilet instead of squatting over a hole? These are the same sort of people who expect their preacher to be perfect but don’t mind talking trash about their friends on their way out the church parking lot.

A long time ago when I first started learning about health I had dinner at a friend’s house with three other women. At one point they were talking about the health benefits of garlic. The women were showing off their knowledge of how garlic is good for blood pressure and an antiparasitic, nodding their heads in smug agreement. I had the nerve to contradict the ladies and tell them why garlic did not promote health. After the meal I got up to go outside for a cigarette, and one of the ladies said in a self-righteous tone, “I’d rather eat garlic than smoke.” What does my smoking have to do with whether or not garlic is a healthy food? I can’t express my opinion without insult from you? You’re stuffing your fat, arthritic ass with more food than it can handle and you’re pointing the finger at me for smoking?

I got into a discussion with a woman about opiates in grains and how grains weren’t a human food. She disagreed with me and said that grains were a healthy food. So I asked, “Is this your opinion or do you have factual data to back it up?” After presenting lame argument after lame argument (lots of studies show it’s good. Name one. We’ve been eating it forever. No, just 10,000 years), she fell back on, “Why should I listen to you? You just ate a dinner roll.” Basically I had no right to challenge her unfounded assertion because I had eaten a dinner roll with my Caesar salad! (I guess I was the only person on the planet who ever did something she knew wasn’t good for her.) What does my eating a roll have to do with whether or not you can substantiate your claim? (But that’s what happens when you back someone into a corner. It’s even more unhealthy arguing with such people than eating a dinner roll.)

Nobody inquires or cares that I have given up alcohol, drugs, cigarettes, coffee (I’m back on that, actually, but only until the new year), soft drinks, most canned and boxed and frozen foods, my weekly pizza, hamburgers and hot dogs, salad dressings, the list goes on. And now I’m giving up negativity. I ate a dinner roll! I am unworthy.

I once told a waitress who often served me that another name for fluoride was “rat poison.” She turned her head and scoffed. She told me she was giving her toddler fluoride drops at the direction of her dentist. I told her to look into it, ask around. I was emphatic that fluoride is a poison and that this could be verified by her. I said, “Read the warning on the back of the tube of toothpaste.”

What did she do? She asked her dentist! And he assured her fluoride was good for her toddler. That’s it? You stopped there? What do you think he’s going to tell you? “Yes, in fact, I am advising you to poison your toddler. Do you need more?” And then she got pregnant again! Oh great! A dumb woman reproducing her genetic code and daily dumbing her offspring down by a deadly neurotoxin.

When I asked her about the toothpaste warning, she said, “Well, anything in excess can be dangerous.” The excess mentioned on the toothpaste tube was anything above what you use to brush your teeth! (You there, reading this. Go read the warning on your toothpaste.) So the amount needed to brush your teeth almost poisons you. Just an itty-bitty bit more and you need to call the poison control center. Does it take a rocket scientist to understand this warning? 

I suppose the idea of her poisoning her new baby was just too much. It was easier to believe the dentist. Another woman told me she heard a dentist advising his patient to swallow the toothpaste after brushing to get the benefits of the fluoride. (Go ahead and look up fluoride + neurotoxin on the Internet or YouTube.)

When I first moved to Oregon I stayed at a woman’s house for a short while. She saw my “natural” toothpaste in the bathroom and poked fun at me. A few months later she went to the doctor because of a strange rash on her face. Turns out the new toothpaste she was using had a chemical to which her skin was sensitive. It was tearing holes in her face!!! I guess I got the last laugh on that one.

I used to love debating health topics. I learned a lot about health from debating people, and I learned a lot about people from debating health. I’ve also learned to be a much better debater. But I’m choosing happiness now. And I guess I’m waking up from my own stupidity. I mean, how stupid is it to debate someone who doesn’t care, who doesn’t want to change? To try to educate someone against their will? Yes, the intellectual stimulation was invigorating, but more often irritating because the “intelligence” was missing, and people turn debates into arguments and then take them personally.

Discussing health and diet with others is like debating religion. Everyone has their mind made up on what they believe and their belief alone is correct. They read one book on the Mediterranean diet or metabolic typing or paleolithic diet, and they know all there is to know about diet. Natural hygienists have been studying diet for a couple centuries and they’re still arguing over it. Nobody really knows. So why do you, after reading a few books, think you know? I’ve read more than a few books and thought I knew, but I didn’t. I still don’t.

The more I learn about diet, the more I realize that there is no one answer for everyone. And the same answer that’s right today may not be right tomorrow. And the answer also may depend upon where you live and your level of technology. I’d like to be certain, too. But I’ve found a comfortable acceptance and peace with just not knowing.

A vegan insisted to me that a person could live in health without meat or supplementation, and that B12 could be acquired from young coconut. I asked him if he were dropped into the hills of Virginia in the winter how he would survive without killing animals. He said, “God will provide.” Maybe that’s true and God will rain down kiwis on you, but that completely ignores the issue of geography in diet.

It’s all well and good to extol the virtues of veganism with a Whole Foods in your neighborhood and an Internet connection, but what’s an Eskimo to do or a Montana rancher? (Or a broke person in Pennsylvania in winter?) It wasn’t until weeks later that he said, “You probably can’t get young coconut where you live.” Why didn’t you tell me that back when you insisted I didn’t have to supplement a vegan diet and could get B12 from young coconut?

I believe a raw, whole-foods diet is the optimum diet for most. Add a little meat and you’ve got the rest covered. But I also believe that our species never would have gotten as far as we have on that diet. I believe we have traded our tropical paradise and diet for dominion of the planet and further evolution, but we have also lost part of our humanity–and our health–by exploiting our mother and distancing ourselves from her bounty.

It is a credit to man’s intelligence and physiology that he can live anywhere on this planet with a trucking line and a refrigerator on the food straight from the earth without the help of Monsanto or Betty Crocker. But it’s a shame that most people need a grocery store to survive and wouldn’t know a wild edible in their own lawns.

Do you not understand that everything that goes into the mouth passes into the stomach, and is eliminated? But the things that proceed out of the mouth come from the heart, and those defile the man. –Jesus of Nazareth

I think the man’s got a good point. People get sick a lot quicker from negativity and fear and hatred than from anything they eat. Stress will kill you before spaghetti will.

We weren’t dropping likes flies prior to the advent of shopping malls and pharmacies. Sure we had a hard time in the cities with infectious diseases, but that was before sanitation, transportation and refrigeration. The pro-vaccination crowd likes to take credit for improving the score, but I’ve never met someone from this self-righteous group who ever read a book on the arguments against vaccinations. (Most don’t even know Jenner bought his medical license.)

The worse offenders in my view of dietary self-righteousness are the histrionic, supersensitive vegans (if the shoe doesn’t fit, don’t throw it at me. Give it to charity.) who have turned animal eating into an abomination against all that is right and proper and holy. Some go so far as to try and turns their cats–obligate carnivores–into vegans. I am thrilled every time my cat brings home a mouse, and I beamed with pride the two times they brought in a rabbit, because I know that is its optimum food. Forcing nature to conform to ideology is twisted.

Years ago when I was on a vegetarian kick I got into my dad’s new Ford Explorer, I think it was, and exclaimed, “Did so many cows have to die??!!!” I did choose cloth in the last car I bought, but did I have to condemn my dad because he didn’t believe the way I do? So, my vegan friend, go ahead and eat your lettuce and hate me. I’ll eat my grass-fed meat and love you.

Nowadays you can’t amicably discuss health with anyone with having a pocketful of scientific studies to prove your point. But it doesn’t really matter if you do have them, because “A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still.”I once presented over 20 scientific references at someone’s request to back up a claim I made, and he said, “I don’t recognize those publications.” Excuse me? Really? Since when have you been subscribing to health journals? He had read The Mediterranean Diet, believed everything in the book, and was an instant expert on the human dietary.

I posted on a discussion board that raw food contains living enzymes for their digestion so the pancreas doesn’t have to make them, thus relieving the pancreas of work. Someone came along with a snide, condescending comment about how anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of physiology would know that enzymes in food aren’t digestive enzymes so the pancreas must still produce them.

So I posted a study showing that there was a feedback mechanism between enzymes ingested (exogenousproteases) and the pancreas resulting in lowered pancreatic (endogenous) enzyme production. This means that the body sensed the enzyme protease (a digestive enzyme) had been ingested with the meal, told the pancreas, and the pancreas reduced production of that enzyme. So it’s logical to assume there’s a feedback mechanism for all enzymes.

Then the person claimed that enzymes don’t survive the stomach because they are proteins, after all, and proteins are broken down in the stomach. In response I posted a study showing that “enzymes do survive the digestive process.” In fact, Europe has been using enzyme therapy for quite some time now. His response? “That doesn’t prove they survive intact.” Excuse me? What part of the word “survive” confuses you? How does a functioning human brain contort information so easily just to hold on to a viewpoint? How long did it take to admit the world was round?

Anyone who’s been around knows that studies are only valid if they agree with your point of view! Plus they’re so industry-biased that you have to spend considerable time figuring out who paid for them, and you can’t really make any informed decision without reading the entire study. The abstract is just marketing. And I guarantee you can find a study to support any point of view. So what’s the point when we’re all blessed with common sense and intuition and a great big planet that loves us?

A woman asked, “Is soy good for you? There are so many conflicting studies.” I suggested, “Use the common sense god gave ya. Put a bowl of apples, a bowl of cherries, a bowl of bananas and a bowl of soybeans on a table. Would you eat the soybeans?” She responded, “Put chocolate on the table and it’ll win every time.” One of these is not like the other. You can use raw cacao beans, but chocolate is heavily processed, just like soy, and we’ve left the planet of common sense. Would you eat a bowl of raw cacao beans in preference to the other foods (if a raw food guru hadn’t first convinced you to)?

Then there’s the whole issue of people who love their diseases. Everyone will tell you they don’t want to be sick, but many of them are lying and don’t know it. There are huge benefits to being sick. Granted, most of this is subconcious, but the more invested they are in their illness, the more outraged they will be if you suggest they can reverse it. Some reasons people are ill:

1. They have another thing to complain about.
2. They can become an expert at something.
3. They get sympathy and attention from family, friends and strangers.
4. They aren’t held accountable because they are, after all, very sick. They can express their inner nastiness without reprisal.
5. Disability payments are pretty cool. Money for nothing.
6. They take away some of the control from people they depend upon, such as a spouse. “Don’t dominate me. I’m fragile.”
7. They are punishing themselves.
8. They become sick because their body has had to force them to slow down.
9. They get to continue being a victim, their preferred role.
10. They are just sad or tired and want to leave the planet or they want to go be with a loved one who has passed.

If you’re offended by this list, then I suggest you and your subconscious get together over a cup of coffee and talk it over.

People say, “My arthritis,” or “My diabetes,” or “My high blood pressure.” Your what? Why do you take possession of the naming of a diseased state? It’s like saying, “My purse.” Is it a thing, a form of matter in time and space? Why not say instead, “My immune function is compromised and confused by ingested milk proteins and is attacking my own tissues”? Or, “My years of consumption of refined grains and sugar have overworked and damaged my pancreas.”

A ton of books have been written on how to reverse most diseases, but most people are reading books on how to manage their diseases or find relief from the symptoms. And if I suggest that fasting might reverse their disease, do they buy a book on fasting? No, they tell me the disease is irreversible. Why is that?

People spend their whole life treating the effects of breaking the laws of nature. So few are willing to address cause. “Just make the pain go away. I love my soda.” When you got your first headache (or when your head first ached), did you try to figure out what caused it and stop doing that? Or did you just take an aspirin and forget about it? When the acid in your stomach first backed up into your mouth, did you try to figure out what combination of foods or moods made it do that? Or did you just take an antacid and repeat your folly over and over for years?

A neighbor of mine years ago was diagnosed with cancer. I’d see her outside drinking a Coke and think, What would a sick body need with a Coke? (For that matter, what would a healthy body need with it?) She’s dead now. When I first moved here and was staying with my friend Tom I rediscovered Cream Soda in his refrigerator. Tom bought a really nice brand of it, and within a week I had drunk six of them! I’d love to drink them everyday, but my body has no use for high fructose corn syrup. I like to pick my poisons, so coffee it is until I get off it again.

In my twenties I suffered from arthritis in my knees. My doctors told me I’d eventually be in a wheelchair. My knees were always swollen and I was in constant pain for seven years. I couldn’t walk around a block or stand for over 10 minutes. I took a vitamin/mineral supplement from a well-known herbal direct marketing company to lose weight and my knees healed themselves in one month. When I suggested my dad, who had arthritis, try it, he refused. He left an article outside my door on how direct market herbal companies were making people sick. Excuse me? Seven years of debility gone? You’re just going to ignore that? (One of many messages from my father that I wasn’t worth listening to.)

Decades later after my dad had had both knees replaced I gave him a book that guaranteed that the diet outlined therein would reduce or eliminate his arthritic pain in two weeks. My dad chose to live with the arthritis instead of follow the diet in the book. Maybe he just didn’t believe the book. But a two-week test was all it would have taken. I suspect it’s because he’d have to cut back on his red wine.

I read a book by Herbert Shelton wherein he said pain killers for headaches perpetuate headaches. I used to have horrible, debilitating headaches just about every week. So I thought I’d test his statement and quit taking aspirin, fiorinal, whatever I could get my hands on. Shelton was right. I don’t suffer from weekly headaches anymore. I hardly ever get them and when I do I know exactly what caused them. And I quit buying painkillers seven years ago. I won’t take any drugs and I’m appalled at how many people take them every day for just about anything. What happens when you throw chemicals into a biochemical, bioelectrical organism? You whack it out! If drugs make healthy people sick, what do they do to sick people?

People are lazy, and it’s a fact that they are motivated more by pain than pleasure. They hate change, and as long as the pain isn’t too bad, they will tolerate it. That’s not living. That’s just existing.

In my experience, the worst people to discuss health with are the experts at disease. Don’t tell a self-taught expert with diabetes they may be able to get off insulin with a proper diet, because they know all about the pancreas, insulin resistance, yaddy yaddy. They’ll give you all the reasons why they can’t get healthy.

People who study their diseases are heavily invested in them. What happens if they’ve spent years studying diabetes and have become the expert on their block only to find out they could have nipped it in the bud ten years ago by giving up their refined flours and sugars and switching to whole foods? They’ve just wasted ten years and they’re no longer a self-taught expert; they’re an idiot! That’s a hard pill to swallow.

I’ve told many people about the benefits of fasting in reversing just about every disease imaginable. Go without food? Are you kidding? Nope. Can’t be done. It’s a lie. Read a book on fasting? No, why waste my time. What? Statistics on diseases reversed through fasting? No, fasting is not healthy. I won’t do it. I love my steak and potatoes and Ben & Jerry’s.

And don’t ever dare to tell someone they are responsible for their illness. Tell someone their negative attitude, controlling personality, and packrat mentality based on fear are responsible for their heart disease and you’ve made yourself an enemy. You could be handing them the keys to the kingdom, but they’ll just find offense. They are, after all, victims. What do victims see? They see attackers.

Our medical system is happy to make victims of the ill. They collect millions of nonprofit, tax-free dollars to give to research scientists to war against these diseases but every patient pays for treatment. (Why would you want to war against your own body? Cut! Slash! Poison! Burn!!! Wouldn’t you rather love it into health?)

But when people do say, “Give me all the options,” the doctors say, “People don’t change. They don’t want to change. They want drugs.” And for many people it’s true. But look at how many are leaving allopathy and seeking out alternative medicine. Some people do want to change. Why assume automatically that they don’t?

But those enterprising people have to slog through marketing message after marketing message of pills, potions, and products to treat their symptoms. Greed and superstition stand between them and freedom. Do you know how long it took me to find natural hygiene? First I had to take bentonite and other intestinal cleanses, herbs for inflammation, tinctures, colonics, hundreds of dollars of Grade A, therapeutic essential oils. Thousands of dollars that didn’t get me anywhere.

And once they’ve settled on this therapy or that essential oil or that herb, don’t you dare suggest they’re focusing on the symptom and they need to address the cause. Because they just bought $150 in essential oils. And they’ve got their echinacea and St. John’s wort and stinging nettles. They’ve made up their minds. The portcullis has closed. Yep. Keep eatin’ those pizzas and hot dogs and drinking that beer and cola, but take your echinacea and lysine! And then when you get sick say, “It’s genetics. It’s god. It’s a germ.”

Trying to teach people natural hygiene is a huge undertaking, because in order to begin teaching the basics, you have to tear down the existing foundation of belief: why Pasteur was a lousy scientist who stole from Bechamp; the real reason for the decline in infectious diseases; disease as remedial action; there is no cure; the poisoning effects of herbs; the benefits of daily sunshine. And on and on. Swimming against a strong current full of cripples on rafts paid for by drug companies mesmerized by trashy sitcoms, a continuous barrage of pharmaceutical commercials ,and seasonal cold and flu reminders?

The worst part is keeping up with what’s going on in the “health care” industry. I subscribe to several sites that send me emails about the latest doings of the pharmaceutical industry, the FDA, the AMA, the hospitals and doctors, the graft, corruption, greed. Like I want a constant barrage of that negativity and human debasement in my inbox so I can keep informed so I can quote the latest scientific study to somebody who really doesn’t care! I know these agencies are corrupt. So do I have to take a hammer to my head every day in the form of email reminders?

And now I’m really going off the deep end. Because I’ve come to believe that illness, poverty, unhappiness, and all those negative states are just effects of a more insidious cause: FAULTY THINKING.

If you think you’re sick and can’t get well, then you’re right. You can’t and never will. If you think you can get well from your illness, yep, you’re right. You can get well.

Today I choose to be happy instead of right.

Additional Reading:
I Guess I Lied about Changing My Blog Focus