Here are some steps you can begin to incorporate into your lifestyle to improve your health and increase your risk of avoiding disease. Now, you don’t have to go hog wild. Take one step at a time until a new habit is created. Then take the next step.

Please bear in mind this is for educational purposes only. I am not a doctor and I do not treat disease. If you are on medications, you should work closely with a qualified health care provider, preferably one who wants to help you get off the meds. Your body is your own and its care is your responsibility.

Eat Whole Foods

Whole foods are those grown by nature. They require no to minimal processing. Examples of whole foods include lettuce, broccoli, blueberries, fish, eggs, a nice, rare sirloin. Example of fractionated (not whole) foods include pickles, macaroni and cheese, pasta, soft drinks. These foods are highly processed and contain chemicals introduced during their preparation. They are not designed with your health in mind, but for maximum profit and long shelf life.

The Stairway © courtesy of pareeerica

Eat Whole Foods Minimally Processed

A rare steak is better than well done. Slightly raw salmon is better than cooked through and flaky. Steamed broccoli is better than broccoli and mayonnaise salad. Raw milk and cheeses are better than pasteurized versions.

Buy Healthy Versions of Your Favorite Food

Do you like beef? Buy pasture-raised. Eggs? Same thing. Go organic if possible. Buy fruit in season, not year round. Choose heirloom vegetables over hybridized. Drink milk? Drink from organic, pasture-raised cows. Learn to make your own cheese. Books abound in food preparation knowledge!

Drink Water

I’m not a fan of drinking 8 glasses of water a day, but I do believe many are chronically dehydrated from consuming water-poor foods and drinking caffeinated beverages. So have a couple glasses. And don’t drink with your meals. It dilutes digestive juices.

Get Some Sunshine

The sun is life to all it touches. Be moderate in your exposure. Don’t overdo it and make up for the excess exposure with sunscreen. Avoid sunscreen whenever possible. But a little sun worship never hurt anybody.

Take a Walk

Walking is very healthy. You can walk slow. You can walk fast. You can even do a little trot. But get moving. If you can walk in nature, so much the better. We came from nature, and we are diminished when separated.

Lift and Carry Heavy Things

Bones are built upon demand. If you don’t place demand on them, the body won’t build strong ones. And I’m sure you’d like to remain strong into your elder years. Heavy lifting involves the whole body. Just don’t overdo it. Pace yourself.

Get Plenty of Sleep

Adequate sleep is absolutely necessary for the human body to regenerate itself. Chronic sleep deprivation is harmful to your immune system. Take naps. If you have noise in your environment, get some white noise CDs of nature sounds. And be sure to ventilate the room you sleep in. You don’t want to be breathing in your own carbon dioxide.

Breathe Deep

Start paying attention to your breathing pattern. Many of us breathe too shallowly. Start taking deep breaths. This increases oxygen in your body and decreases acids through carbon dioxide exhalation.

Make Some Friends

Turn off the TV, get off your butt, and go make some friends. Do things together. Talk. Go for a cup of java. Make love. Laugh together. Cry together. Get involved in the community.

Give Up Grains for a Season

Go without grains for a couple months just to see how your body reacts. You’d be surprised how many people are sensitive to gluten and don’t even know it, wondering why their body aches and they have inflammation. That means no pizza, bread, cookies, cakes, oatmeal, rice. Additionally, grains contain phytates that bind with healthy minerals and prevent their absorption. Our species has been eating grains only 10,000 years, and they’re proving very harmful to our health and our planet.

Give Up Vegetable Oils

Let’s face it, corn oil doesn’t grow on trees. Neither does canola or sunflower oil. Seed oils are omega 6 polyunsaturates, and contrary to corporate interests, excess omega 6 polyunsaturates are not so good for the body. Our ratio of omega 6 to omega 3 is about 20:1, where it should be 1:1. Stick with fruit oils, like olive and coconut. Use animal fats, like lard and butter. That’s what we used before we started dropping dead from heart attacks and cancer. That’s what grandma used, and she had 13 babies and died at 90.

Quit Drinking Sodas and Flavored Waters

Coke is not a food. Mountain Dew is not a food. Gatorade is not a food. Fruit juice is not a food. These are all liquids flavored with high-fructose corn syrup, artificial flavors, and various toxic colorings. And don’t forget the caffeine they put in them to addict you, as if the HFCS wasn’t enough! Same thing goes for coffee. Yes, it’s yummy. But it’s a stimulant that masks your true, exhausted state of health. Wean yourself off and save it for special occasions.

Shun High-Fructose Corn Syrup

HFCS is an ubiquitous ingredient in processed foods. It’s how food manufacturers make overprocessed, tasteless food palatable to the tongue. It spikes blood sugar and carries no nutrient value but the stimulation it provides is addicting. It’s just rotten stuff.

Avoid Boxed, Canned, and Packaged Foods

Again, most whole foods are not found in boxes, cans or bags. Frozen foods are the least damaged of all packaged foods. If you don’t recognize the ingredients on the label, pass. Shop the outer edges of the store.

Aisle of Delight © courtesy of Temporary Transfer

Get Your Vitamin D Levels Tested

We are chronically deficient in vitamin D. I think this supplement is one of the easiest things we can add to our diet that will have major and lasting impact on our good health and mental outlook. And it’s so cheap. Buy vitamin D3 in gelcap form. Current recommendations are 5,000 iU daily until sufficient serum levels are reached, but everyone is different and you should know your serum levels prior to supplementation. Also, make sure you have a source of iodine for your thyroid.

Add a Fish Oil Supplement to Your Diet

Fish oils contain important EPA and DHA omega 3 fatty acids, which are necessary for controlling inflammation. The body can create these fatty acids from the essential omega 3 fatty acid alpha linoleic acid (ALA, such as that found in flax oil), but only poorly, and most people are deficient in ALA anyway. That’s where pasture-raised meat and vegetables come into play. Mankind has often settled around waterways and harvested their bounty.

When Stressed, Breathe!

Stress is a killer. And stress happens when you let your mind run amok. Tame the mind. Control your thoughts. Breathe when you feel your body tense. Remember that last horrible thing you thought you wouldn’t survive, and yet here you are.

Live Simply and Stay out of Debt

Debt is servitude. Freedom from anxiety is better than a boat with a loan payment. A small house with peace of mind is better than a big house with a heartbreaking mortgage.

Find Your Song and Sing It

We all came here for a reason. We all have gifts to contribute. Don’t let poor health and lack of energy keep you from playing your part. Each step you take to improve your health will improve your energy level and mental outlook so that you can pursue your dreams. Me, I’m going to produce a television show.

Recommended reading:

The Real Food Revival by Sherri Brooks Vinton and Ann Clark Espuelas

I’ve been reading about the health benefits of pasture-raised meat and eggs lately, so I went to Eat Wild and Local Harvest to find some local farms. It was suprisingly easy to find farms within driving distance. Try it.

Go to Eat Wild, then click on the left link that says Shop for Local Grass-Fed Meat, Eggs & Dairy. Then scroll down and click on your state. The first sentence in the text says “Looking for the farm or ranch nearest you?” and then provides a link to Google maps. There you’ll find your state stuck full of pins signifying farms. Click on the pin and you’ll get a little pop-up with additional information you can search. Cool!

I Found Healthy, Pasture-Raised Eggs

The first farm I visited was just a three-quarter acre property about half an hour away in New York. (On the drive there I came across a huge turtle on the road that had been run over by a car (click to view–not for the squeamish). Of course I had to take a picture. I’d never seen such a thing.

Back to the story. The property was three quarters of an acre managed by a couple who had free ranging chickens and a few fenced areas for crops. They were starting a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) where people pay an annual fee for a portion of the season’s produce. I stocked up on fresh eggs from chickens who roamed the property, many of which had names. Their natural diet was supplemented by organic grains. Look at the vibrant orange of the yokes!

What a pleasure to eat these rich eggs from happy chickens living like chickens instead of battery hens crammed together and forced into laying by manipulation of lighting. When I ate my first pasture-raised egg it tasted rich with a somewhat earthy tone that gently caressed the back of my palate.

Here are some pictures of the beautiful chickens on that property.

Rooster top-left and the rest are hens.

I Buy Three Chickens

The next farm I visited raised free range layers, meat chickens, hogs and cattle. The woman who met me was friendly and a pleasure to talk to. She showed me around the very large farm where I, a city girl, learned that cows have more than four teats.

I met the abominable Cornish Cross chickens, a hybrid that reaches a slaughter weight of four and one-half pounds by six weeks of age. They don’t move around much, preferring to just eat and sit in their own shit. They grow so fast that their bones and organs can’t catch up and begin failing if they live too long. These are the preferred (profitable) birds raised for meat because they grow so quickly, which keeps feed costs down. But they’re just dumb, and without humans to care for them, they would probably all perish.

…in June we had a spike of hot, humid weather. When I went out one afternoon to check on the birds, I found a number of Cornish—now right at broiler stage—either dead or seriously distressed with heat exhaustion. (I lost 22 of them over the next day or so.) Despite the fact they had been on that pasture more than two weeks, drinking from a float-operated waterer right outside their shade shelter, they sat on their butts inside the shelter and died rather than walk ten feet for a drink of water! –The Modern Homestead

I was visiting this farm to check out the pigs, because I wanted to order half of one. The pigs were healthy and happy and fenced off at the edge of a treed area of the farm. But they had rooted up almost all the plants in the area, so all their feed was supplemented.

Well, the whole point of buying a pasture-raised pig is to get one that has a moderately natural dietary, not feed brought in. The owner was planning on enlarging their foraging area, but too late for me. I did buy three chickens that were to be slaughtered this week. I pick them up tomorrow.

I Buy a Lamb and Half a Pig

The last farm I visited was on Ohio run by a couple very interested in the health and happiness of their animals and operating a sustainable method where they eventually hope they can control all the inputs. Their farm was exceptionally clean and organized, and I really enjoyed talking with these people. We have many of the same interests and a passion for healthy food and happy animals.

I met their sow and a boar they had recently acquired, both huge animals that were quite friendly. And then I met the piglets that had recently been separated from their mother. They had a large area in which to forage along with a small mudhole they used to cool themselves. Here’s one taking a mudbath.

The pigs receive a grain supplement along with whatever they dig up themselves. Looking at the lack of vegetation where the pigs had rooted through the dirt, I was surprised at how strong their noses are. They can really devastate an area, so they would have to be moved about for the land to recover.

The couple also had three lambs that they had been unable to sell, so I got a great deal on one. I paid $130, which was $65 for the lamb and $65 to cover the cost of butchering. I also put a deposit down on half a pig that I’ll be able to pick up in September. The couple gave me some pork chops to take home and try, and they were succulent. Here’s a picture of their pork chop next to one I bought at a local store. Can you guess which one was pasture-raised?

The chickens had free range of the farm, coming into the barn to lay their eggs in cozy little nesting boxes. I picked up a dozen eggs. The farmers are also raising turkeys that they move about the yard in a portable enclosure. They say the turkeys are the best of foragers and very curious and interested in people.

I’m so happy to know that the animals I will be eating will have been raised compassionately with their needs in mind. And the meat will be healthier for me than conventionally raised animals.

I have until September to pay for the pig. I have to pay for the lamb next week when it goes to slaughter. I have no idea how to cook it, so I’m going to have to search some blogs for recipes. Got any favorites?

When I get a video camera I intend to go back to these farms and interview the various farmers. But for now I can offer you a video I shot with my digital camera of their piglets. I hope you enjoy it!

For years I advocated a plant-based diet as the healthiest. But I could never swing it myself despite several efforts. Now that I’m studying the paleolithic diet, I feel like I’m starting over with a mountain of information to climb. I haven’t been posting much because I’m reading, reading, reading. I’m reading even more than that.

I am coming to believe that a high-carbohydrate diet is harmful over the long haul, and that a high-fruit diet is possibly the worst. I feel unqualified now to advise people on diet. It’s disconcerting to find that what I’ve believed the past five years might be way off base.

Why We Eat

We eat for energy and for the nutrients necessary to build, maintain and repair our bodies. Our bodies can store a great deal of this energy and nutrients, which is why we are able to fast so long, an adaptation necessary when food supplies are uncertain.

Prior to the agricultural revolution that occurred 10,000 years ago, our main fuel was fat and protein. Once we started growing grains, starches shared time with meat and fat as the primary fuel source. Now we are completely reliant on grains as our main fuel source. We eat them and we feed them to animals we eat. While growing grains freed us from having to follow herds for meat, the switch caused our species to start having health problems.

Study of human skeletal remains from archaeological contexts shows that the introduction of grains and other cultigens and the increase in their dietary focus resulted in a decline in health and alterations in activity and lifestyle. Although agriculture provided the economic basis for the rise of states and development of civilizations, the change in diet and acquisition of food resulted in a decline in quality of life for most human populations in the last 10,000 years. –Clark Spencer Larsen

Most populations are able to live in relative health with the help of grains as a supplemental fuel supply in addition to dairy and meat. Weston Price found many such groups of people living in good health subsisting on grains, dairy, meat and vegetables. It was only when flour, sugars and canned food entered their food supply that chronic diseases began to afflict these populations.

The current high consumption of grains (predominantly wheat and corn) following the industrial revolution–along with the rise in vegetable oils!–has led to a host of inflammatory diseases such as heart disease, arthritis, colitis, any number of “itises.” A lot of people just react badly to grains and don’t even know their health problems are caused by them. And since grains contain opiates, they are addicting, and people are not happy to give them up.

Where Do Vegans Get Their Caloric Energy?

Many sensitive people can’t bring themselves to eat slaughtered animals. Some of our greatest philosophers were vegetarians. So what do they do?

Cooked vegans switch to legume-like meat substitutes (like soy) and grains, such as pastas, whole wheat and rice.

Raw food vegans eat sprouted legumes and fats in nuts and oils.

Raw 80/10/10ers, because of their high sugar consumption, must keep fat intake low, so they consume massive amounts of fruit.

Breakfast: Smoothie made with 4 cups of freshly squeezed orange juice blended with 2 cups of mango flesh
Lunch: 7 extra-extra large bananas blended with 2 cups of frozen wild blueberries
Dinner: 5 Haitian mangoes, pause of 30 minutes, then I made two huge blended salads consisting of:

* 3 large tomatoes
* 2 mangoes
* 6 cups of spinach
* 10 stalks of celery
* juice of 1 lime squeezed on top

I had that blended salad in two sittings (two blendings). I also had about 1 third of an avocado somewhere in there. –Frederic Patenaude

Sheesh! Just thinking of all the food and sugar I ate trying to comply with the 80/10/10 diet makes me nauseous.

Most any whole foods diet in the short-term (up to five years or so) will help to rebalance the chemical/mineral/fatty acid makeup of the tissues and result in a significant decrease in toxins. So people feel much better when switching to whole foods or switching from processed foods to a vegan diet.

But over the years, malnutrition of certain key nutrients (such as B12, vitamin A and certain fatty acids) begins to take its toll in many people. Victoria Boutenko wrote a bestseller (Green for Life) based on her observation that she didn’t feel as good a few years into raw veganism as when she initially switched to raw food. Her answer was to mimic the dietary habits of chimpanzees. I guess that’s okay if you want to mimic an animal that spends all day eating, but I think humans are too smart for that. We have better things to do, which is a result of the brain we developed on a meat-based diet. Maybe some day we’ll evolve from spear-throwing hunter/gatherers to leaf-eating Vitamix users.

I recently read a blog article discussing TC Fry’s death. TC Fry was a natural hygienist responsible for promoting an all-fruit diet as the optimum diet. The article blamed his death largely on Fry departing from the diet he advocated by gorging on fatty and carbohydrate-rich foods at the end of the day. But my question is, If he was consuming the healthiest diet for humans, why was he gorging on these poor foods late at night? Probably the same reason I was. Lack of fat and energy from a plant-based diet. I would surmise his body was starving of something and gorging late at night was his only relief. But he gorged on garbage just like I did. What would have happened had we gorged on wild-caught fish or venison or pasture-raised poultry?

I think the key difference between vegan and paleo diets is that vegans must supplement with nutrients that their food is missing in its natural state (B12 is a prime example) whereas paleos supplement with nutrients that should be in the food they eat but are missing because of degradation of food quality (such as fish oils). But I’m just learning, so don’t quote me. Paleos don’t ever have to worry about getting complete proteins, but vegans must research the amino acid profiles of foods to make sure they’re getting all the ones they need. I was always short on iron.

I also find that as a paleo eater I really need only fire. Well, a pan helps too. As a raw food vegan I need a juicer, food processor, blender, maybe even a dehydrator. And they say eating plants is more natural than eating meat! But I do love how easy cleanup is when I prepare a meal from plants.

Is Fat Bad?

Within the raw vegan community you have the 80/10/10ers disparagingly calling the other raw foodists “high fat” vegans and being mad about their advice. Well, if you’re eating a lot of sugar, as fruit eaters are, then high-fat is bad. But not because fat is bad, but because it’s bad with a high-fruit diet. Just as a lot of fruit is bad on a low carb diet. But around most of the globe where humans habitate, fruit is only available seasonally, whereas meat is available most of the time. Paleos run on fat, vegans run on sugar, and SAD eaters run on both of poor quality.

Most of the wild fruits eaten by most hunter-gatherers did not provide the abundance of sugar supplied by modern hybridized fruits. Modern fruits supply large amounts of fructose, which Stanhope and Havel report can cause dyslipidemia, insulin resistance and hyperinsulinemia, which perpetuate a metabolic state dependent on sugars. –Don, Primal Wisdom

Why is it humans are biologically adapted to store fat for lean times but can store only so much sugar? And too much sugar gets turned into fat. Why doesn’t fat get turned into sugar? Well, maybe because we’re supposed to be eating fat. From what I understand, if you’re on a low-carb diet and then you eat a lot of fruit (like what a hunter/gatherer would do in the fall), you’ll put on weight. And isn’t that what you want to do prior to the winter so you’ll have some energy stores to carry with you?

And what’s the effect of continually having high blood sugar and the resulting need for your pancreas to keep pumping out insulin? And of forcing your digestive apparatus to process food numerous times each day and never getting a rest?

I encourage every person who eats a vegan diet for health reasons to read Weston Price’s Nutrition and Physical Degeneration. It was a mind opener for me. And for those who are vegans for ethical reasons, think about this: Every time a field is plowed to raise plant foods, rodents and other animals are killed. An acre of grass might feed a few cows that get eaten or it might kill hundreds of rodents. Are ethics of eating determined by individual souls or bulk weight? A conundrum for sure!

I have a lot to learn. And then I’ll pass it on to you. Now I’ve got to study up on the whole saturated fat/cholesterol issue.

(These opinions are subject to change.)

It makes me so frustrated when people force-feed their sick dogs and cats on the mistaken–and deadly–notion that the animal needs energy! There’s no better way to increase the likelihood of your pet dying than to force it to eat food it can’t digest.

Animals are more instinctual than humans and have not been brainwashed into a certain mode of action. Animals who become ill or injured stop eating, find a warm spot, and rest until recovery. If humans were smart, they’d take note and follow their example.

A lot of energy is used up in the digestion and assimilation of food. This energy is better spent in elimination of toxins and repair of tissues. Fasting does not mean starving. The body contains all the nutrient reserves needed for the body, and using nutrient from the body’s stores is far more efficient than digesting it. The energy saved from digestion is then diverted to healing.

To stop the food intake takes a heavy load off the internal economy. The work of digesting and assimilating food and of discarding the waste and refuse portions all ceases. The heart and lungs have less work to perform. The liver and kidneys are given a rest. In fact, the whole physiology is given a rest. The energy usually employed in digesting and assimilating food is now used for eliminating or neutralizing the toxic matter that is forcing the reaction… Food that is eaten in acute disease does not nourish anyway. The more the patient eats, the worse he becomes so that the danger lies really on the other side. –Herbert Shelton, Human Life Its Philosophy and Laws

The body has only so much energy with which to repair itself. If this energy is diverted to eliminating food forced on the animal, attempting to excrete drugs, nervous exhaustion from trips to the vet, inability to sleep due to nausea and constant handling by humans hoping to “show their love,” then you will wear your animal out.

Leave it be! It’s so much smarter than you are.

It is of no advantage to urge food upon the stomach when there is no digestive power to work it up. There is never any danger of starvation so long as there are reserved forces sufficient to hold the citadel of life and start anew its main-springs.

For when sustenance becomes a prime necessity, the digestive apparatus will be clothed with power enough to work up some raw material, and a call made for it proportioned to the ability to use it. And if there is not power within the domain of life to save the organism, it must perish. –Jennings, Tree of Life

My cats fast when ill and I leave them alone. The only thing I make sure they have is water and a warm place to sleep. It’s scary as hell not doing anything, because every vet will want to “do something,” and if your animal dies you will be blamed for not taking it to the vet for treatment. But if the animal dies under the vet’s ministrations, the disease will be blamed. How very convenient.

Here are my cats who fasted and recovered without food or drugs.

Tip Toe: Has fasted three times, 7 days each preceded by vomiting. Took her to the vet. Normal bloodwork. Vet wanted to treat with antibiotics. I declined. She’s 15 years old and still with me.

Toby (pictured above): Bloody diarrhea for three days, fasted 8 days, followed by bloody nose, sneezing and coughing. Normal bloodwork. Vet wanted to treat with antibiotics. I declined. She’s 15-1/2 years old now.

Lyla: Upper respiratory and eye infections. Fasted 8 days. I don’t even take them to the vet anymore. She’s 15 years old.

Tibbs: Upper respiratory and eye infections. Fasted 3 or 4 days. I’ve learned by now to just leave them alone. If they’re going to survive, they need all the energy they can muster. She’s 15-1/2 years old.

Under ordinary circumstances, the generalized food reserves of man and animal are capable of sustaining functional and structural integrity for a considerable time without more food being consumed. Under the most favorable circumstances of quiet, rest and mental poise, these reserves are capable of holding out much longer… These reserves are stored up for just such uses and there are times and conditions when they must be used. Indeed there are conditions of “disease” in which it is impossible to make use of food from any other source–conditions in which the body is unable to take the raw materials and make use of them. –Herbert Shelton, The Science and Fine Art of Fasting

Additional reading:
Feeding My Cats Whole Raw Rabbit, Chicken, Duck and Turkey
Cats Get Sick after Cross Country Road Trip
I Think I Poisoned My Cat

Some look at the religious fanatic and think her deluded and brainwashed, someone who has bought into a mindset fashioned by the church she attends. They see the closed mind and dogmatism and are grateful that they have not been so influenced, grateful for their independence of thought.

But when it comes to health, illness, and treatment, they consider themselves knowledgeable and open-minded. They are ever learning new cures and methods of treatment, and many are proud that they have stepped outside the main allopathic current into side eddies of homeopathy, essential oils, superfoods, body work and the like.

But their mindset is still that of pathology, of finding cures for symptoms, which are only effects of an underlying cause. From the witch doctor to the physician, all view disease as an entity caused by the devil or the microbe or genetics. The body is a fragile thing prone to a multitude of dysfunctions, each one having its own name and location and drug of choice.

Instead of buying, begging, or stealing, a cure, it is better to stop building disease. Disease is of man’s own building, and one worse thing than the stupidity of buying a cure is to remain so ignorant as to believe in cures. –Dr. John Tilden

A Flawed Foundation

What if the entire foundation upon which you understand health and disease is flawed? What if you are asking the wrong questions? Instead of asking, “What drug should I take for my high blood pressure?” what if you should ask, “What causes my high blood pressure and how do I lower it naturally? How do I remove the cause?”

Instead of asking, “Should I avoid nightshade plants for my arthritis and which essential oil should I use?” what if you asked, “What has caused the irritation in my joints and how do I remove it? If I remove it, will my joints return to normal?”

And instead of asking, “How do I do the gall bladder flush to get rid of gallstones?” what if you asked, “What habits do I need to change to not only stop developing gallstones but to naturally dissolve the ones I already have?”

Reversal of Diseases Is Possible

These questions require a belief in the possibility that reversal of disease is possible, and we have been brainwashed by allopathic medicine that says, “We don’t know the cause, and there is no cure.” Allopathic medicine is focused on biochemical manipulation through drugs to suppress symptoms and provide relief, not reversal. And after a time, when the drugs no longer work and the affected organ or tissue begins to fail, the surgeon steps in and cuts it out.

But they’re right about there being no cure. Does bringing a lit candle into a dark room cure darkness? No. Darkness is not a condition, a thing, an affliction. Darkness is just the absence of light as disease is the absence of health.

The proper way to study disease is to study health and every influence favorable or not to its continuance. Disease is perverted health. Any influence that lowers nerve-energy becomes disease-producing. Disease cannot be its own cause; neither can it be its own cure, and certainly not its own prevention. –Dr. John Tilden

The physicians will ensure the clogging of your arteries does not kill you by thinning your blood. They do not try to help you unclog your arteries. The doctors will give you anti-inflammatories for your arthritis without searching for the irritant causing the inflammation. The disease progresses. You are given insulin to regulate your blood sugar, but lip service is given to diet to reduce the load on your pancreas.

Nearly all men die of their medicines, not of their diseases. –Molière

Cause is ignored while symptoms are soothed or suppressed or malfunctioning organs are cut out. We live longer than we should given our state of health, but what sort of life is it habituated to the pill, dead on our feet living in fear.

Cures are what the people want, and cures are what doctors and cultists affect to make; but at most only relief is given.–Dr. John Tilden

The most important things to realize and admit is that disease is of man’s own building. But it’s terrifying to think that you might be responsible for your disease. That means you’re responsible for doing something about it. It’s a lot easier to let the doctor handle it all like your mechanic handles your car. You don’t want to learn about piston engines and braking systems and electrical wiring. You want to watch TV! You want to par-TAY!

Look at your current level of health and at your current belief system regarding health and health care, and ask yourself, “How’s it working so far?” Your success or lack thereof is largely based on your belief system and the habits you’ve acquired.

I remember arguing with a friend about health and illness. She was on high blood pressure and arthritis medicine and, because she had had her womb removed, estrogen. She invited me to dinner one night, which was a five-course meal of baked, fried, smashed, boiled, sugared, pickled, you name it, “foods.” My taste buds were in heaven, but if I ate like that I’d have clogged arteries, aching joints and a womb that couldn’t survive the onslaught.

We talked once of moving out of the SF Bay Area, and her number one requirement wasn’t what city she wanted to live in, the type of house she wanted, how many bedrooms, or how much land. Her main concern was to be near a hospital. What kind of life is that? That’s bondage, not freedom. How’s it working so far?

You’re an infant and you get an ear infection. The doctor prescribes antibiotics. The infection clears but reappears three months later. Another round of antibiotics. This goes on for a year or two. As an 8- and 9-year-old you have chronic bronchitis and headaches, which are treated with antibiotics and ibuprofen. You get the flu once in a while and suffer from colds on occasion. You treat these with OTC cough syrups and nasal decongestants.

Then in your mid-twenties you complain of abdominal pain and general achiness. Oh my, you’ve got colitis. Line up another drug. But then your knees begin to hurt. Congratulations, you have arthritis. You are given NSAIDs to control the pain and are told to take it easy. You’re in your fifties now and the doctor says you have high blood pressure and some narrowing of your arteries. You start taking aspirin to thin your blood, but oh my. You end up in emergency with internal bleeding. So you quit the aspirin and start taking blood pressure meds, which cause a host of side effects along with the arthritis medicine.

You don’t have much energy anymore. You watch TV a lot, eat out every week at your favorite Chinese restaurant and serves up hot MSG. You can golf okay but you can’t walk up mountains. You consider yourself healthy because you’re mobile and pretty much free from pain, especially since you had your left knee replaced. You’re impotent, but you’re too tired anyway. And thank god for that, because you have no business seeding any new life. You sleep a lot.

Turns out if you had a decent doctor who knew anything about nutrition (which most know nothing), he would have known that the ear infection would clear up without drugs and that prescribing antibiotics would only destroy the friendly bacteria in your digestive tract.

He would have correctly determined that the colitis was due to your sensitivity to gluten. And the damage done your colon from your undiagnosed gluten sensitivity caused foreign milk proteins (everybody needs milk, after all) to enter your bloodstream. Your immune system got all confused attacking these proteins and started attacking your own tissues. He would have told you to quit drinking milk.

And he would have known that your arteries were damaged by a highly acid diet to include consumption of toxic pharmaceuticals, and your body correctly repaired them by sealing them with plaque, thus raising your blood pressure. He would have put you on a diet that could have reversed the heart disease.

Your arthritis would have cleared up as well once your colon repaired itself after you stopped irritating it with gluten and your body cleared out the foreign antigens. And voila! No more colds. You would have been mountain climbing at 70 instead of watching TV commercials touting the next drug that’ll take care of your jittery legs or sad, sad feelings of not belonging.

You didn’t listen to your body and neither did your doctor. You thought you could eat any old thing you wanted because you didn’t throw it up. You never read a book on health but it was all just so confusing and contradictory, so you signed your life away to your HMO’s hero of the day.

Your doctor doesn’t look for the CAUSE, because medical research science doesn’t search for cause. Its primary focus is searching for patentable pharmaceuticals to suppress symptoms. The doctors are educated by institutions largely financed by pharmaceutical companies. They are wined and dined by drug makers. Their drug saleswoman has nice legs.

It’s all they know, except for the few smart ones paying attention who realize they’re not doing their patients any good and begin to think for themselves. But all they get is censure and grief from their peers, a threat to revoke their license because they dared suggest something “alternative” and an honorable mention at Quackwatch. They risk their livelihoods by exercising critical thinking and researching outside their mainstream profession.

But this is why physicians are called

ALLOPATHS = OTHER DISEASE

or

PHYSICIAN = Originally, physician meant a practitioner of physic (pronounced with a hard C). This archaic noun had entered Middle English by 1300 (via Old French fisique). Physic meant the art or science of treatment with drugs or medications (Wikipedia)

Physicians suppress the remedial action of the body with pharmaceuticals and create side effects (and death) that are oftentimes worse than the original problem. And most chronic diseases are caused because acute diseases were treated with drugs and not behavior or diet modification.

THAT’S what wrong with pharmaceuticals.

The current health paradigm proclaims “Sunshine reduces risk of some cancers” or “Vitamin D cures rickets,” or the most commercially popular “X compound in fruits and vegetables reduces risk of cancer.” You are bathed in this paradigm daily through newspapers, magazines, television and radio. Word of mouth and the grapevine solidify this view as “science and truth.”

If what you are lacking can be put into a bottle and set at the right price point, then you are a market waiting to be tapped by the latest scientific study or infectious disease scare. The Internet health educators send me these announcements all the time along with their product picks that will quell my fears and give me the illusion that I am doing something healthy.

The emphasis here is on addition of isolated compounds to ward against disease. Industrial voodoo. Will adding borage omega 3s to your diet really provide cancer immunity? Will taking phytonutrients make up for six cups of coffee, two glasses of wine, a steak, overcooked brocolli, a Snickers, Top Ramen noodles and a toxic relationship? Must we cut the fins off all the sharks so you can eat pizza?

I’d like to you think of this another way. Lack of sunshine is harmful to the body and causes a cascade of failure. Sunshine is required by the body for formation of vitamin D. Vitamin D is required for utilization of calcium. Lack of appropriate vitamin D levels impedes the body’s normal function resulting in impaired health. Rickets is not a “disease” to be healed but a physiological end result of inadequate nutrition. Correct the nutritional deficiency and the body will correct the physical manifestation if permanent damage has not yet occurred. Vitamin D doesn’t heal; the body heals.

Your Body Is Your Spirit’s Home

Your body destroys and creates about one hundred thousand cells every SECOND! So in one minute the building blocks and tools you’ve provided your body will enable it to tear down and create six million cells. That’s almost NINE TRILLION cells a day that have to be broken down and carted off and NINE TRILLION cells in a day that have to be created. They can easily create these cells with clean, vibrant, energy-rich raw plant or healthy animal fats, for example, or they can struggle to build the cells with dead, cooked fats. One cell will be made of pecans and apples, the other of hotdogs and french fries. One cell will be alive and healthy, the other crippled and weak.

Your body requires an energy source (carbohydrates), building blocks (proteins and fats) and tools (enzymes, vitamins and minerals) among other things to build and maintain your house in order. Provide quality materials and you build a quality home. No leaky roofs (leaky gut), no rotting floorboards (osteoporosis), no faulty wires threatening to burn your house down (autoimmune disease). Keep it clean and airy and vermin and mold (bacteria, viruses, parasites, fungi) won’t overwhelm you. Install a quality septic system and avoid overburdening it and your toilet won’t back up on you (arthritis, fibromyalgia, other chronic pain states).

But if you use substandard building materials and weak, poorly made tools, you’ll end up with a shack instead of a mansion. And if you don’t provide a safe environment (alkaline) for your workers and let them rest at proper intervals, they’ll get injured or quit. The next rain that comes (infectious microbes) will see your house fill with water. The wolf that comes to blow your house down (lost job, divorce, disease diagnosis, death in the family) will succeed.

Disease Doesn’t Just Happen to You. The Devil Didn’t Do It. You Earned It.

An obese, disgruntled friend of mine got breast cancer. She had the tumor and some lymph nodes removed, made a few minor dietary changes when she really needed an overhaul. She bought flax seed oil, protein powders, pills and potions recommended by the health food industry. She tried to buy her way out.

But her cupboards were filled with crap and her bathroom was filled with chemicals. When the cancer revisted her in her bones she said, “It’s God’s will.” It’s not God’s will that she eat crap and grumble all day long. It’s not God’s will that she be obese and angry. Another woman in my apartment complex got cancer. I’d see her sitting outside drinking coke. She was pouring acid and toxic sugar into her very sick body. I just couldn’t understand it.

Folks, wake up! Your body is an electrical and chemical biological organism. It’s level of vitality is directly correlated with the materials that enter into it and the physical environment in which it lives, including the mental and emotional environment.

Your Choices Determine Your Reality

So it’s up to you what kind of house your spirit lives in. If you choose to live in the city, drink tap water laced with chlorine, fluoride and pharmaceutical waste, eat food from a box stripped of nutrients and fortified with synthetic nutrients, additives and preservatives and flavored with high fructose corn syrup and rancid fats, overwork, neglect sleep, avoid the sun, fill your body with stimulants (coffee, coke, sugar, drugs) to whip it into activity during the day, take a poison (alcohol, drugs, sleeping pills) to knock it out at night, take drugs to suppress the warning signals given you or remove body parts that long ago cried out for change, then you are choosing a life of debility, depression and premature death.

Some choices, like living in the city, may be necessary for your physical survival. But then it is even more important to safeguard your health. Each compromise requires increased diligence.

You can earn health by the choices you make. If you choose to open your windows to the country sun, drink clean water and breath fresh air, get adequate rest and exercise, avoid stimulants and drugs, work at something you love and live alongside people you love, and eat food minimally processed with abundant enzymes, vitamins and minerals, then you will be building healthy cells that function as designed. You will be maintaining what is the natural state of the human body: health. Not only will your body function well, but your mental and emotional states will improve.

You can’t buy health. You have to earn it.

This post discusses the difference between UV-A and UV-B rays, the role of melanin in protection against sunburn, the risks of wearing sunscreen, and the health benefits of exposing your body to the sun’s rays.

I am fair-skinned, of Norwegian stock. When I sunbathe, I’m talking about exposing my body (preferably nekkid) to the sun for short periods when the sun’s rays are relatively weak. I started off sunbathing for 15 minutes and have built up to one hour, but I usually sunbathe for about half an hour. I do not ever burn my skin.

I will not use sunscreen (big yuck!), so I am using the mechanism of melanin production to protect my skin from exposure to the sun. So I’d like to explain the process to you and the potential risk of using sunscreen, but again, I’m no expert. This is a complex subject. Please feel free to post any corrections to what I present below.

I write posts like this because I think people should make informed decisions about their health and their bodies. I’m not a doctor or a scientist. I’m just a very curious person who’s found out I’ve been lied to far too many times. My health is important to me, and it’s up to me to know the truth from the lie.

UV-B Rays

UV-B rays are responsible for the quick tan or burn you get from prolonged exposure. The quick tan usually fades and the burn often blisters and then peels. Overexposure (coupled with poor diet and life style) can lead to basal-cell carcinoma or squamous cell carcinoma. UV-B causes direct damage to your DNA when the DNA absorbs the ultraviolet photon, but most of the rays are efficiently converted to heat by melanin. The direct damage to the cells will signal the melanocytes (5% to 10% of the cells at the bottom layer of your skin) to produce more melanin.

Sunscreen is used to protect skin from UV-B rays, but it does not protect as well as melanin and can cause greater free radical damage to your cells.

Melanin is a molecule that acts as a photoprotective substance, dissipating more than 99.9% of the absorbed UV radiation as heat without generating free radicals. The more melanin, the more UV is absorbed and dissipated. Minor direct damage is natural (the suns rays are, after all, radiation), and it stimulates the production of more melanin for protection. The cells will be replaced.

UV-B rays are responsible for the production of Vitamin D and therefore are beneficial in moderation. Light skinned people have little melanocyte activity, dark skinned people great melanocyte activity.

UV-A Rays

These are longer rays that penetrate into deeper layers of your skin. They do not cause sunburn, but they will stimulate the melanocytes to begin melanin production. They make the melanin combine with oxygen to produce a tan. A tan from UV-A rays takes about 72 hours to appear and last longer than the quick tan produced by UV-B.

UV-A rays cause indirect damage to your cells through creation of free radicals and oxidation. Indirect damage is responsible for 92% of melanoma cases. Melanoma is cancer of the melanocytes and accounts for 75% of all deaths from skin cancer.

Many sunscreens do not protect against UV-A because they typically remain on the surface of the skin. However, when the sunscreen does enter into the skin it generates free radicals of its own and the indirect damage is amplified. The chemicals in sunscreen are harmful to the living tissues of the skin. Full-spectrum sunscreens are recommended for protection against both UV-A and UV-B. 

Sunscreen Use Leads to Greater Incidents of Melanoma

In the American Journal of Public Health, Garland et al. wrote:

Although sunscreens, including PABA and its esters prevent sunburn, there has never been any epidemiological or laboratory evidence that they prevent either melanoma or basal cell carcinoma in humans.

Worldwide, the countries where chemical sunscreens have been recommended and adopted have experienced the greatest rise in cutaneous malignant melanoma, with a contemporaneous rise in death rates.

Controlled Sun Exposure Increases Health

William P. Grant, PhD, wrote in an article in Cancer, published by the American Cancer Society:

There are large geographic gradients in mortality rates for a number of cancers in the U.S. (e.g., rates are approximately twice as high in the northeast compared with the southwest). Risk factors such as diet fail to explain this variation. Previous studies have demonstrated that the geographic distributions for five types of cancer are related inversely to solar radiation. The purpose of the current study was to determine how many types of cancer are affected by solar radiation and how many premature deaths from cancer occur due to insufficient ultraviolet (UV)-B radiation….

The results of the current study demonstrate that much of the geographic variation in cancer mortality rates in the U.S. can be attributed to variations in solar UV-B radiation exposure. Thus, many lives could be extended through increased careful exposure to solar UV-B radiation and more safely, vitamin D3 supplementation, especially in nonsummer months.

I fasted at a retreat years ago in Palm Springs. One of my co-fasters was a hispanic woman who couldn’t stay in the sun for any length of time. She would break out in a rash. After just a week of fasting and eating only fruit, she was able to sunbathe for 20 minutes without any problems. The sun wasn’t her problem. Her health was her problem.

Other Factors to Consider

The sunscreen you wear doesn’t necessarily just stay with you. You go swimming in it. You get it on clothing and towels and then wash them. Chemicals from sunscreens enter into your bloodstream (who knows what they do then!) and are excreted in your urine. How many pounds of sunscreen are now in the groundwater? In the water you drink?

An article in The Times of India states that sunscreen is causing death to corral reefs. They caution that:

…banning of sunscreen was not necessary and pointed out two simple things swimmers could do to reduce their impact on corals: Use sunscreens with physical filters, which reflect instead of absorb ultraviolet radiation; and use eco-friendly chemical sunscreens.

Vitamin D Supplementation

Reinhold Vieth wrote beautifully for the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition:

Humans evolved as naked apes in tropical Africa. The full body surface of our ancestors was exposed to the sun almost daily. In contrast, we modern humans usually cover all except about 5% of our skin surface and it is rare for us to spend time in unshielded sunlight. Our evolution has effectively designed us to live in the presence of far more vitamin D (calciferol) than what most of us get now, yet there is no consensus about what vitamin D intakes are optimal or safe.

Unlike anything else used in the fortification of foods, the purpose of vitamin D is to correct for what is an environmental deficit (less ultraviolet exposure) and not to correct for lack due to classical nutritional reasons. With a few exceptions reviewed by Takeuchi et al (2), there is little or no vitamin D in the kind of foods that humans normally eat. Therefore, conclusions about the efficacy and safety of vitamin D must be in the context of the role of environmental factors.

The Bottom Line

The sun is the safest, most natural way to produce vitamin D. But don’t ever burn yourself. I just don’t understand why people are willing to smear chemicals all over the largest organ of their body. Those chemicals will make it into your bloodstream to join the million other chemicals ingested and inhaled, and it’s anybody’s guess what they’ll do.

If you are light-skinned, take it easy. You don’t have much melanin to absorb the ultraviolet rays, so you don’t need much exposure to produce vitamin D. Maybe 10 to 15 minutes a few times a week. If you’re dark-skinned or you live in northern latitudes, then you’ll need more exposure.

If you plan on being outside for some time, wear long-sleeved shirts and a hat. Sit in the shade. Take short sunbaths to build up your melanin so you can increase your time outdoors. Use sunscreen if there are no other options.

To me there’s a world of difference between synthetic vitamin D found in a bottle (preserved with toxic chemicals) and living vitamin D produced by my own body. And it feels so good to lay in the warmth of the sun on a cold winter day. It banishes the blues.

Other Links

http://www.vvv.com/healthnews/dsunscre.html
http://www.skinbiology.com/toxicsunscreens.html. (Be advised that my linking to this site does not constitute endorsement of their product, only appreciation for their information.)
http://www.healself.org/sun.html
Sunlight and Melanoma–Weston A. Price Foundation

See also: Why Not Sunbathe? Because the Sun’ll Kill Ya
Will Sunbathing Cause Cancer?