Intensive natural healing

It is always very difficult to find out what’s wrong, to find out what’s causing our health problems, to find out what is the reason for the stroke or the heart attack we just had, the diabetes or the cancer we were just diagnosed with. It is always very difficult as long as we think of the body in terms of a collection of separate parts pieced together; as long as we think that it is possible for the arteries supplying the brain or the heart to have a pathology that is not shared by every other organ and tissue; as long as we think that it is possible for the pancreas, the prostate or the mammary glands of the breasts to be defective in their function independently of every other cell throughout the body. The moment we see this, we recognise the absurdity of this point of view and the obviousness of the inter-relation of every cell to every other cell, tissue, organ and system.

There is only one whole body mind, and everything that happens to it affects everything else that takes place within it.

Looking at things from this new perspective, there are always only two possible alternatives: healthy or diseased, ranging from one to the other on a continuous scale with every possible point in between along the line. From this perspective, every medical intervention or treatment that is not intended to correct or remedy something acute—to fix a broken bone, to save someone whose kidneys or liver just failed, to stitch up a wound to prevent the loss of too much blood—but instead attempting to address a chronic disease condition—treating heart disease, diabetes, cancer, arthritis, Alzheimer’s, etc—is bound to fail.

The failure comes from the misunderstanding that stems from the misguided premise that views the body as a collection of parts working to specific ends more or less independently of one another. If we are to ever overcome our health problems and thrive throughout a long and happy life, it is this basic premise—this misguided and erroneous premise—that must be thrown out and replaced by the clear understanding that there is only one whole body mind, and that everything in it affects and is affected by everything else.

We are sometimes, maybe most often, faced with a major health issue that is acute because it is an end point to a degenerative disease condition that has been developing over decades throughout our entire life. Stroke and heart attack are good examples. Sometimes, maybe most often, it is these events that shake us up enough to move us into action, and if we have the luck to have been exposed to sensible information, we can have the chance to begin anew and change the course of the rest of our life, steering it towards recovery and optimal health.

When an event of this kind happens—when we have a stroke or heart attack—we must act fast to recover as quickly as possible and reduce as much as we can the possibility of having another one within weeks or months, something that could easily be fatal. The fact is that this is usually quite likely to happen, and it’s therefore important to take it to heart.

How can we take the most important and extreme measures to reverse this course of progressive degeneration and set ourselves on the course to recovery as quickly as we can? What would I suggest should be done with the greatest sense of urgency based on the understanding that it is our life that is at stake? What are the most important and effective ways to help the body heal and repair itself?

Cleanse, detoxify, heal the gut because everything that circulates in the body comes and goes through what circulates in the bloodstream, and everything that circulates in the bloodstream comes and goes through what enters the intestines. It is in the gut that everything about our health starts and ends, where all nutrients are absorbed and most metabolic wastes are discarded. This is why it must be the foundational focus of the healing process.

There is no better way to cleanse, detoxify and heal the gut than to drink fresh green vegetable juices while at the same time getting a series of colonics: the hydro-colon therapy cleans stuff out of the gut, the juice cleanses, alkalises and nourishes the blood and body. Doing these separately is very good. Doing them together is great. Give yourself two weeks—fourteen days—during which to do this. Every day drinking between two and three litres of fresh green vegetable juice, and every other day getting a colonic (on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, for example).

For the juice, you can make it or buy it, but it must be cold pressed in a slow masticating juicer, and it must be free of sugar, i.e., containing only green watery, fibrous and leafy vegetables. Any amount of sugar will fuel the proliferation of pathogenic bacteria and yeasts like candida, and one of the most important aspects of this gut cleansing and healing is the elimination of the candida which undermines the function and health of our gut and our entire organism. In many modern cities there are small cold pressed juiceries where it is possible to buy very good quality all-organic green juice. Doing it at home is less expensive but requires you to do the work. You can also make some yourself and buy some as well (that’s what I tend to do).

In addition to the juicing and hydro-colon therapy, there are three kinds of supplements that should be taken: probiotics (Prescript-Assist is what I take), L-Carnosine (Paradise Herbs is what I take), and enzymes (I’ve used pHi-Zymes by Baseline Nutritionals and Heal-n-soothe by LivingWell). The probiotics replenish and heal the flora, carnosine helps heal the lining of the gut and glycated tissues, and the enzymes promote accelerated repair of damaged cells. They should all be taken three times a day, morning, noon and late afternoon, always on an empty stomach. Take each time one capsule of probiotics and two of L-Carnosine.

To avoid being too hungry, but also to ensure an important intake of the miraculously healing coconut oil, you should have a coconut milk based smoothie, pudding or ice cream: a small glass, two or three times per day. And to make sure you have a good intake of salt and minerals, you should either put unrefined salt in the green juice or eat cucumber and celery sticks with salt, as much as you feel like depending on taste, once mid-morning and once mid-to-late afternoon. Sometimes you may want to drink salty green juice, and sometimes you may prefer to eat salty, crunchy veggies. Just follow your inclination.

(See the work of Dr Norman Walker for more details about the importance of colonics and juicing.)

Enzymes are proteins with specialised functions. They are the things that do stuff in the body. Most of us have heard that enzymes are made in the pancreas and are needed for digestion because they break down the nutrients into their constituents: starches are broken down into glucose by amylase, fats are broken down into glycerol and free fatty acids by lipase, and various proteins are broken down into amino acids by various proteases. These building blocks of foods can then be absorbed from the gut into the bloodstream and carried all over the body to where they are needed. But enzymes also do practically everything else that needs doing, and, in particular, heal and repair damaged cells and tissues.

All raw foods contain enzymes, some more than others. Fresh juices which contain a high concentration of minerals and nutrients, also contain a high concentration of enzymes. Because the more enzymes are available, the better it is for the body to heal and repair itself. Hence, our strategy for recovering from this stroke, heart attack we just had, is to flood the body with enzymes. The fact is that in western countries, most people live on processed junk food that is not only totally devoid of minerals and micronutrients, but also completely dead and devoid of enzymes. If we don’t survive on processed junk food, then we typically hardly ever eat anything raw. Therefore, even if the food we eat is not as bad as processed fast food, it is still cooked, dead and devoid of enzymes.

Eating this way leads to two major problems. The first is that the pancreas is continuously manufacturing enzymes in a desperate attempt to cope with the digestion of cooked and dead food, and over time, like within a few decades, begins to get exhausted and eventually becomes unable to produce any enzymes. It typically also stops being able to produce insulin at the same time, just because it is simply exhausted. The second is that because all enzymes are used for digesting processed and cooked dead foods, there are hardly any enzymes available for anything else that needs doing, healing and repairing.

In our healing programme, to flood the body with enzymes, we—in addition to drinking all this juice loaded with enzymes of all sorts—will supplement with more enzymes. There is no upper limit to the amount we can take, and the more the better. It is really just a matter of what we can afford and are willing to take on a short, medium and long term basis. It is important to start slowly and increase gradually. This is to allow the body to adjust to the presence of more enzymes, but also because they will immediately start their cleanup of the body, breaking down scared and dead tissues that inevitably accumulate over time, as well as both benign and cancerous tumours. The breakdown products are toxic and need to be eliminated quickly. Hence part of the importance of the initial 14 day juice cleanse with intensive hydro-colon therapy.

The amazing thing about enzymes is that they know exactly what to do, what to break down, what to build up, what needs help repairing and what needs help healing. This can be considered a miracle of nature. But it is just life: the self-organised life of living organisms that has been evolving and having its means and methods refining themselves over the 4.5 billion years of evolution on the planet. Self-organised, synergistic and symbiotic co-dependent emergence and evolution. Miraculous and amazing, but from the perspective of an enzyme, a chloroplast or mitochondria, it is utterly simple, obvious and straight forward: adaptation for improved survival.

(See the work of Drs Cichoke and Gonzalez for more on enzyme therapy.)

Iodine is an element that is needed in every cell. According to statistics from the WHO, 97% of the world’s population is iodine deficient. And according to David Brownstein, M.D., a physician who has spent a good portion of his medical career studying iodine, testing for it, and treating his patients’s deficiencies of salt and iodine, the figure is probably closer to 98 or even 99%. In any case, this means that we can conclude that everyone should be supplementing with iodine to ensure the body an appropriate supply.

Iodine is found in the highest concentration in the thyroid gland, mammary glands, and then other glands of the body. For all glands, but especially for the thyroid and breasts, it is simply crucial. Brownstein has treated with total success a large number of women suffering from fibrous cysts or cancerous tumours in the breasts, and a large number of both men and women suffering from thyroid-related dysfunctions using basically only iodine supplementation and dietary modifications (including, most importantly, increased unrefined sea salt intake). He states his belief that most if not all cystic breast disease and cancers, and that most if not all thyroid problems, regardless of whether they are hypo or hyper thyroid dysfunctions, are caused by iodine deficiency, and are always corrected with appropriate supplementation.

One of the reasons why iodine deficiency is so problematic is that because it is so important in its role in every cell, and because it is part of the halogen family of elements (F, Cl, Br, I, At), it is replaced in the cells by other much more abundant but toxic halogens like fluorine, chlorine and bromine. All of these being common industrial chemicals far too abundant in our environment, water and food, and that find their way into the body, slipping into those slots in the cells intended for iodine. It is only by supplementing and providing the body with the adequate amounts it needs, that these other halogens can be gradually replaced by iodine and excreted from the body.

Brownstein recommends using Lugol’s solution, which is sodium iodine and iodide dissolved in water. It is generic and inexpensive, as it has been around for almost 200 years (first made in 1829), and it is a safe and effective way to replenish iodine stores. For most people (as it was for Brownstein himself and for me) it will be necessary to take 50–100 mg per day for about a year. It should be taken in water or juice on an empty stomach. I took it with water for many months before starting to put it in the green juice, in which the taste cannot be detected. I use a 15% solution (18.75 mg per drop) and took between two and four drops per day (37.5–75 mg; two drops at a time, once or twice per day).

After almost a year, I felt two days in a row an immediate surge of energy and light butterflies in the stomach, which I knew were caused by the iodine stimulating the thyroid because I had read about it. Therefore, reacting to it with such sensitivity, I knew that I had finally replenished, after all these months, the iodine stores. Now, I take one drop in my green juice, which sounds like an infinitesimally small amount, but it is important to maintain supplementation because iodine is needed every day by all cells and it is water soluble making it easily excreted with the urine. It has been estimated by iodine researchers that the body needs a minimum of 12.5 mg per day. Therefore it is best to take a little more than that; one drop of 15% solution which provides 18.75 mg. Iodine is of fundamental importance. Supplementation with it is essential, especially in a detoxification and healing programme.

(See Brownstein’s book for more on iodine, and The Guide to Supplementing with Iodine, for additional details about supplementation)

Magnesium and sodium bicarbonate support the cleansing, detoxification and—very importantly—alkalisation of the gut, blood, tissues and organs of the body. The easiest and most effective way to get these into the tissues is to have a 60 minute bath with one cup of nigari flakes and one cup of baking soda. You should do this every other day (Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday, for example) for the first two weeks. This will help pull out accumulated acid, chemical toxins and heavy metals. It is very pleasant and relaxing to lie in a hot bath for an hour reading a book, listening to music or just lying there quietly, adding hot water to maintain a comfortably hot temperature. It is also an essential part of the detoxification programme. After the first two weeks, you can reduce the number of baths to one to two per week.

(See the work of Drs Dean and Sircus for more on magnesium chloride and sodium bicarbonate.)

Eating for rejuvenation and optimal health is a matter of choosing between health and life or sickness and death. After these first two weeks, you will start to eat more solid foods, keeping the juice as the pillar of your new way of nourishing and taking care of the body. In fact, every day the focus of the first half of the day will be to hydrate, cleanse and alkalise by drinking green juice, one litre in two 500 ml portions, at around 9–10 and then 11:30–12:30. Lunch around 14 will be a green smoothie made of avocado and/or coconut milk, together with other green leafy veggies (kale, celery, cucumber, spinach, etc), and coconut water for the liquid part. You can add salt, black pepper and/or cayenne, other spices, superfood powders or extracts, making the smoothie as nutritious and tasty as you can using your resourcefulness to come up with new ideas and recipes.

Having a smoothie of this kind provide lots of enzymes and nutrients, essential oils and excellent fats, together with the naturally occurring fibres but because they are chopped up and blended smooth, they are very easy to digest and thus cause very little digestive stress; this is second to juicing which removes all the fibres for maximum absorption of nutrients and minimum work by the digestive organs.

In the late afternoon, have another green juice if it’s possible. You should drink one to two litres of alkaline water per day, whenever you feel like it. (You can either buy it, making sure the pH is above 8, or you can add alkalising drops to your high quality filtered water. I use Young pHorever’s PuripHy.) Remember that water and juice intake must be balanced with salt in order to hydrate well and not dilute the blood sodium levels and causing the kidneys to excrete more water. We want to drink lots and eat lots of salt in order to super-hydrate. For each litre of water/juice you need about half a teaspoon of salt.

Stop drinking around 18 or so, approximately 45 minutes before dinner: a big leafy green salad of your choice (baby greens, baby spinach, romaine, oak leaf, kale, mixed lettuces and greens) with some nuts and seeds, plenty of cold pressed organic olive oil or some kind of nut or seed butter dressing, and with this big salad, have a small amount of grass fed meat or wild/organically raised fish every other night (one day on, one day off).

That’s it. This is how you should eat for all the months during which you are recovering until you are in perfect health and perfect shape. You can eat like this for the rest of your life. This is more or less what I do. Some variations, will include creamed vegetable soups with coconut milk in the winter (cauliflower, brocoli, celery, spinach), cold soups like gazpacho in the summer, different kinds of salads (celery-fennel, red cabbage, white cabbage, chopped up cucumbers, tomatoes and red peppers in the summer, soaked nut and seed parsley salad, etc), and different lightly steamed vegetables like brocoli, romanesco, cauliflower and green beans. Of course, you are welcome to experiment in this way depending on the season and on personal taste, mood and circumstances.

Supplements that you should take as soon as you start eating, some with lunch and some with dinner, are the following.

With lunch:
(2) Liposomal Magnesium (L-Threonate; Mercola)
(2) Liposomal Vitamin C (Mercola)
(2) Krill oil (Mercola)
(1) Astaxanthin (Nutrex Bioastin 12 mg)
(2) Turmeric extract (Gaia Herbs)
(1) Cinnamon extract (Stop Aging Now)
(1) Tulsi extract (Source Naturals)
(1) Vitamin B12 (Thorne Research Bio-B12)
(2) A-D-K (DaVinci)
(2) Niacinamide (Thorne Research)
(2) Synergy7 (Stop Aging Now)
(2) Zinc (Source Naturals OptiZinc)
(1) Ubiquinol (Mercola)
(1) Huperzine A (Source Naturals)

With dinner:
(2) Liposomal Magnesium (L-Threonate; Mercola)
(2) Liposomal Vitamin C (Mercola)
(2) Turmeric extract (Gaia Herbs)
(1) Cinnamon extract (Stop Aging Now)
(1) Vitamin B12 (Thorne Research Bio-B12)
(1) A-D-K (DaVinci)
(2) Niacinamide (Thorne Research)
(2) Zinc (Source Naturals OptiZinc)
(1) Ubiquinol (Mercola)
(1) Iron bisglycinate (Thorne Research; depending on blood test results)

You will have noticed the obvious absence of some classes of food products that are eaten by most people most of the time: there are no sugars of any kind and no starches, both of which are known to increase the probability of cardiovascular events by their instantaneous triggering of more than 300 inflammatory pathways, all of which cause the blood to thicken and become more viscous; there are also no dairy products, which are highly acidifying and usually the cause of negative immune responses from mild to severe intolerance or allergies; and there are no commercial foods or drinks, all of which should simply be avoided by everyone for their lack of nutrition and chemical toxic loads. These are detrimental to our health in several ways and therefore have no place in a healing programme or in a diet for optimal health and longevity.

You will also have noticed that there is a strong emphasis on green juices and green vegetables, coconut fat from coconut milk, and just enough healthy and clean animal protein and fats to provide the body with everything it needs to thrive. It is perfectly fine to have berries either on their own or with coconut milk, as well as 80-85% organic chocolate once in a while (and not later in the day than about 15). You can have organic green tea in the morning (until about 12), but stop drinking coffee (if you’re a big coffee drinker, you have to do this gradually). The adrenal glands—the very important stress and sex hormone producing glands—in this day and age are almost always overstimulated from our busy and stressful lifestyles, and therefore usually dysfunctional to a greater or lesser extent. They also need to be healed and for this, they need a break.

You should continue the probiotics, L-carnosine, and enzymes as long as necessary to regain total health. You can continue indefinitely. You should continue the iodine supplementation with 50–100 mg per day for a year (might be anywhere between 8 to 12 months), after which you should reduce to one drop of 18.75 mg, and maintain this indefinitely. You should continue all supplements for as long as the healing process continues, and will benefit from taking them to the end of your days, reducing the quantity to once per day instead of twice (dropping the evening supplements with dinner), and remembering that there are only benefits from taking more depending on the circumstances in your life and your body’s needs. Of course there are plenty of other supplements that we can be of benefit, but the ones listed are those that I consider most important.

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