MIKE SNYDER 07/27/05

Mike: Welcome everyone. I’m very pleased that you can join us tonight and it’s a great pleasure to bring you my special guest, Dave Klein. He’s an Author and he’s a self-healing empowerment coach. Since 1992 he has guided a multitude of people with disease to a whole new level of vibrant disease-free health. His clients receive empowering education with respect to the whole self: mental, emotional, physical and spiritual.

He does diet counseling, self-healing and healthful lifestyle education for many different conditions and he’s an author of many books including -- He’s a co-author of “Self Healing Power”, “Your Natural Diet: Alive Raw Foods” with T.C. Fry, “The Fruits of Healing: A Story About Natural Healing of Ulcerative Colitis”, “The Seven Essentials for Overcoming Illness and Creating Everlasting Wellness” and Living Nutrition Magazine.

Today we have Keith Schaffer recording the calls from www.SaveyourSeminars.com. Thank you!

Dave, could you tell us a little bit about yourself, maybe a little story and share with us some things that have brought you to where you are now?

Dave: Sure Mike, I’m curious if I can somehow find out later on how many people actually know my story because it’s fairly well known in the raw food circles. I grew up in northern New Jersey and eating the “Standard American Diet”. Around age 17 I came down with ulcerative colitis symptoms which were pretty horrendous, going to the toilet all the time, chronic fatigue, and bleeding, and, it was just a ruinous eight years that I went through with that.

All through the eight years, the seven gastroenterologist I saw told me that there was no connection between my diet and my health condition. Being sick and miserable and just being offered medicines and exams -- I was just very angry at the whole system and the doctors were always promising me to hang in there until the wonder drug came along and I would be one of the first people to try it.

Well, in the seventh year of my illness, I was having ten to fifteen bloody bowl movements a day. I was just a weak sickly shadow of my former self. My mental functions were about 20% of what it seemed like they used to be and I didn’t have much of a life. And, somehow I made it through engineering school and worked three years in engineering and in the last year I started looking for diet help.

I knew that there had to be some kind of an answer out there I’d have no idea what it would be. But, the only factor I can think of which might

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have an impact was nutrition, so I went to a nutritionist and he just had a bunch of pills to offer and that didn’t seem to make any sense to me. And then, a little while later, I was in the phone book and I found a doctor of natural hygiene who did diet counseling. I went to see him and he gave me a diet plan of what looked like rabbit and monkey food.

So I thought that that was very strange, and I didn’t see how by eating that I would not lose the rest of my weight and wither away and die. But he explained about how the way my body can heal itself and he gave me a bunch of information on natural hygiene. He explained how he overcame hypertension and lost a lot of weight. He was the healthiest man I’ve ever seen in my life and his name is Dr. Lawrence Gallant. So I took the information and thought well maybe this applies to a lot of people, but it doesn’t apply to me because I was going to the toilet all the time.

To make a long story short, a few months later the gastroenterologist in Manhattan said, Dave, the medicines aren’t working. It’s time for you to cut out your colon or try a drug which will knock out your immune system. So, I was sick and weak and shivering and pale and frightened and realized that I had to figure this thing out for myself now because the medical people are just going to lead me into a grave and the whole thing just seemed like insanity to me.

So, I wasn’t going to follow any of this advice and so I went home and started looking for answers and trying to think outside of the box for the first time. Then, I got some big clues. I saw one book which said some people never overcome colitis until they stop eating meat. And then I talked to Lawrence and he said, “Dave, you can do it!” And then one magical night, twenty-one years ago, I was reading information on fruitarian diet, on the principles of self healing, on natural hygiene. And I read a bunch of amazing empowering testimonials about people who had overcome all kinds of serious diseases by just changing the thinking, letting go of the mentality of treating the body with drugs and other things, and just trusting that the body will heal itself and adopting a diet of mostly raw foods or 100% raw foods.

So, I also understood that biologically our closest cousins are the primates and the ones that are energetic eat mostly fruit. But, I also understood that fruits and vegetables have all the nutrients we need, they’re as nutritious as can be, and not the junky diet that I was eating that was destroying my body and specifically meat was just rotting and making my colon very sick. So, the whole thing made sense to me, intellectually and even on a spiritual level. It was like a big spiritual awakening. I understood that I had to make a big change in my life and start living naturally, as naturally as possible, and totally let go of the medical mentality.

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So, the next morning I woke up, I threw away the medicines and tore the doctor’s names out of the phone book and somebody was speaking to me from up above and I just started doing juices and smoothies. I drank smoothies and juices all day long and maybe had some melons with that.

On the second day I did the same thing. My gut started feeling soothed for the first time in three years. On the third day, I started coming back to life, seeing vibrant colors, my energy, my spirit was just soaring, I was coming alive, feeling things I hadn’t felt in years because I’d become a zombie being so sick and so drugged up. On the fourth day I started doing solid raw food and I started having formed bowl movements and the bleeding went away.

I was jumping for joy. It’s like being let out of jail. And, my overflowing joy, I’d gone bananas, my family thought I’d gone bananas and I was just as happy as can be.

From that moment, I just wanted to tell the whole world about this. So, back then I needed to detoxify, rebuild my health and start looking healthy. And, I was powerless to help people back then, but my plan was to focus on my own health and build up my health and eventually I changed careers from engineering to health education.

I just enjoy helping people get the information to overcome their limitations, which is usually a toxic diet and incorrect beliefs, and live the life which deep down they really are yearning to live -- Free of disease.

To me this is just a really wonderful thing that anybody can do, is to help people learn how to eat healthier and live a life with more freedom. So, there’s a lot I can talk about that I’m sure we can address questions later on without me telling my whole entire life story in detail.

Mike: Thank you. I had a similar story where I was going to medical doctors for a skin condition I had. They would tell me there’s no relation to your diet and this health challenge you have. So they would put me on medications and it wasn’t until I discovered your magazine, Living Nutrition that I discovered that the body can heal itself. So I started practicing natural hygiene, and doing some fasting, and the health challenge went away and it was amazing.

Dave: That’s fantastic, Mike.

Mike: Yeah, it’s amazing how the body can heal itself. So you changed your career to Natural Health? Did you go to school for that?

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Dave: Well, I went to engineering school then worked three years in that. Then after I healed up, I took a year and a half off, got back into engineering and moved out to California from New York state. Natural Hygiene teaches that in order to become healthy, we need to give equal attention to about twenty to thirty different aspects of health and not just become raw food fanatics and think that raw food is all there is to becoming healthy.

Mike: Can you describe your current diet and how long have you been on it, eating this way?

Dave: Yeah, the first six months I ate steamed veggies, potatoes, and squash for dinner several nights a week. During the day, I’ve always eaten fruit, especially in the morning. So, all through the twenty-one years I’ve always eaten about three or four meals of fruit. Not huge meals, just enough to satisfy and I eat them with or without greens, lettuce, celery or cucumbers. And then, it depends on the season, depends on how my body feels, depends on whether I’m working out or not as to what I’m gonna have for dinner. It depends on the food availability. I follow my senses. That’s why this diet started working for me from day one.

I don’t know how I had this talent. Some people are not in touch with their body and their senses and what their body is calling for them to do. So those are the people who have the biggest challenge, it seems, in trying to become a raw fooder. It’s a talent, it’s a skill which people can learn by sitting and being present, checking in with their body and learning to pay attention to different signals and let go of paying attention to what the mind is saying. And by responding to our body’s needs in this way, that’s how we’re able to create health and have success in life. So again, your question was -- If you could repeat it?

Mike: Outline your current diet, so, I understand it’s raw and vegan foods with fruits, leafy greens, vegetables, nuts and seeds. Are there some other foods that you include?

Dave: Right, so, not really, not at all. I gave up meat and junk food immediately. The first seven years I would have some steam -- Well, after the first six months, I would only have steamed veggies, potato squash, and occasionally some grains, some baked corn chips, just a few times a year. The reason I progressed on to a purer and purer diet is because my digestive strength was weak, I couldn’t handle starchy mucus forming food. They just gave me fermentation, made me tired and weak, and unable to perform and think clearly.

So, my body needed the simplest and purest diet and that was really a great teacher for me. I really learned how the digestive system works especially for sensitive people, what they need to do. So, after the first

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seven or eight years, all of a sudden I woke up one day feeling absolutely fantastic with no cravings. I noticed that I had no more cravings or attachments to the last cooked foods I used to eat, which was occasionally, baked corned chips, hot air pop corn, and a few cooked grains.

Since that happened, about seven or eight years ago, I haven’t eaten any more cooked food. I basically eat fruits with or without greens, celery or cucumber throughout the day, three or four times. And, I do that because my body is calling for it, also, that gives me enough calories, enough fuel to get through the day. If I don’t have enough sweet fruits with the sugar calories during the day then late in the afternoon I’m tired and I’m looking for a big meal or something to make me feel better. And if I get into that tract I could overeat on nuts or something fatty and that just doesn’t work for me.

I think it’s really healthy. A good way to keep your body clean is to have sweet fruit with the greens throughout the day and plan on having one heavier meal for dinner, if that’s what you need, which could be a salad with one kind of fat. I think that gives the body the best chance to digest the food and create energy out of it and build your bones and so forth and it keeps up the cleanest inside.

So, for example, a salad with nuts or seeds or avocado or a dressing made from that or coconut and, if you’re still eating cooked food, I think it’s good to have a raw salad with every cooked food meal and have your cooked meal be lightly steamed vegetables, potatoes, or squash. If you feel unsatisfied like your not getting enough calories doing this, I think the best approach is to eat bigger portions, and also stay physically fit because when we’re out of shape then our spine is not strong and we’re not in good aerobic shape then we would seem to be at the mercy of our emotions and we are not able to have any kind of self discipline when it comes to wrong food choices.

So that’s basically what I eat. Some evenings I won’t have any greens. I might have some cucumbers I might have a bowl of oranges. Depending on the food combining on how long it’s been before my previous meal. I may have another kind of fruit meal in the evening. Sometimes I make juices, I like to squeeze oranges to make orange juice almost every day.

Mike: Is there a certain percentage or weight of greens and celery that you should be eating every day?

Dave: Well, that’s a good question. My response is that there really is no “shoulds” when it comes to diets, we should all follow our own senses because ultimately we have to learn for ourselves. Some people absolutely swear they can’t touch vegetables, some raw fooders. Some

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swear they can’t touch nuts or seeds. Unless they’re falling apart and they’re anemic and looking terrible, I just generally say, that’s wonderful that you’re following your senses and your body is telling you what to do and you just sound so happy and feel happy.

So I’ve come across a few people like that. I also have come across a lot of people who, of course, are out of balance and I may suggest during a consultation, that they add more greens or they decrease the fat or they get more calories from fruit during the day.

Mike: Do you blend or juice often? Do you like the green smoothies popularized by Victoria Boutenko?

Dave: I think it’s wonderful when people get into making juices and smoothies, especially in the beginning. I really encourage people to explore different ways to create raw food dishes and drinks in the beginning and eventually, most of them settle on a simpler diet and they fuss less in the kitchen with making different things. I never have made a green smoothie or had one in my life. It doesn’t appeal to me but I think it’s wonderful that people like it and if they make it flavorful without using overpowering spices, I think that’s a great way to get your greens and your nutrition.

I love to make a glass of orange juice every morning. I squeeze about six oranges, the regular Valencia oranges and one blood orange, if they’re available and they’ve been available here for the last four months which is wonderful, it’s longer than ever. So, one blood orange with the Valencia orange juice make an absolutely delicious drink. So, that’s the way I start my morning every day when I’m feeding my few cats around 7:00 a.m. Then a couple of hours later, I’m gonna have some other kind of sweet fruit. Maybe a couple of bananas or three or four bananas or a melon, I usually eat an entire melon or sometimes two melons, or a bowl of grapes. I may, after eating that, have a handful of dates depending on how my energy is.

Then I may have a cucumber or two or a few stalks of the tender inner celery stalks, or ribs I should say, or maybe a handful of lettuce or an entire head of lettuce. So, after having those two meals of fruit in the morning, I’m pretty much good until about, I don’t know, twelve or one o’clock in the afternoon. And, depending on my activity level and how I feel and the season, that just sort of dictates what my next two or three fruit meals are going to be. I like to have choices of say apricots, grapefruits, melons, grapes, dates around the house, because I don’t like to plan my meal because I don’t know what I’m gonna want until the urge hits me. And then my body always tells me what kind of energy it wants, what kind of taste sensation.

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It’s like a sensorial kind of thing where my body is just talking to me and telling me what kind of food I want and I’ve done this so many times, I’ve had twenty-one years times five meals a day. That’s a lot of different meals and so I’m always paying attention to how these foods affect my energy and leave me feeling. How they digest and how my mind and body respond to the food. So I pretty much know what foods are gonna work for me. If I’m not paying attention to my body and I have the wrong kind of food because I’m stressed or on the run or whatever, I pay for it with bad digestion. My energy doesn’t feel good and I just start eating in distorted ways because I’m trying to correct what I did and I know I got myself into a little bit of a mess. So, the thing to do when we’re out of sorts and haven’t eaten properly is to clean out with water and just rest and let the body purify itself and citrus juice and whole citrus fruits are just about the best food if you want to assist your body in doing that while still eating.

Mike: I’ve gotten much more in touch with my body and how it feels after eating certain foods. I noticed there was a big difference in digestion of different foods. Do you like to mono-eat foods or do you like raw gourmet?

Dave: Well, complicated combinations definitely don’t work for me because I have a history of colitis and really bad depleted digestive system. Anybody that’s had really bad gastrointestinal illness, inflammation for years, going to the toilet non stop for years, definitely is not going to have strong digestion for a few years. And people with a history of what I went through just don’t digest fats well.

So I was forced to learn to eat simply, and naturally I try to think intellectually we really are designed to have one kind of food per meal. So my instincts and my intellect were telling me that yeah, what Dr. Shelton, T.C. Fry, and Doug Graham are saying that a mono meal is really the best way to have good digestion and excellent health, it made sense to me. So in the beginning I used to make fancy salads and it never really did it for me.

On a deep level I really knew that this wasn’t really a satisfying meal. Then later I learned just to eat -- If I wanted lettuce, I would have an entire head of lettuce and that would be a mini meal. If my body was calling for oranges, I would eat three, four, five or six, until I felt satisfied and that was a meal. These foods have all the broad spectrum of nutrients and I learned how to be satisfied and eat things mono style in a way which was just satisfying and really helped me maintain a high level of energy.

So, yeah, I’d like to encourage people to try just having a mono meal once in a while or have a mono meal with say one other food, say lettuce or celery. Just tune into the flavor of the food and just try to imagine how

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nutritious these foods are, and to me it really challenges or bamboozles my senses when I put two different kinds of foods in my mouth at the same time which have contrasting flavors. Let’s say tangerine and a grape or say some almonds and an orange. It’s like my brain is getting two different hits on different foods, flavors and energies, and that is a little unsettling to my mind and body.

It wants to enjoy and savor one particular kind of food and within the flavor of each food there’s all kinds of subtle overtones with of course different textures and coolness or heat to it. There’s different nuances, there’s different sensational experiences we get from having one kind of food and I find that to be absolutely wonderful. It doesn’t make me want to stuff myself with five or ten different kinds of foods in a different meal. It’s like I want to savor the particular energy and flavors of one particular food.

I think a lot of raw fooders, they all revolve in this direction. So, if you’re new to this, you’ve only been doing this diet for like less than a year, or one, two, or three, you’re just a baby at this. We all went through this and I think the deeper you get into this, the more your body is going to give you clear signals to be simplifying your diet and eating less. That’s another big subject we can touch on if you want, Mike. Like most raw fooders, because they’ve had a long history of eating a standard diet which is low in nutrients and high in really junk, the body is screaming for good quality food which makes them truly feel good.

They tend to get it and when they get into the raw food diet, they tend to overeat on everything, and sometimes that overeating can last for a good three or four years of a one long binge it seems. I’ve met a lot of people like that and I used to be one of those people. It’s interesting that once I got satisfied and remineralized and rebuilt my body, that my body is much happier and I haven’t lost any weight by eating a lot less than I used to.

For example, in the past, I’d eat twelve bananas where now I’m satisfied with three. I’ve saved a lot on my food bill and I eat a lot less and a lot less has to come out through my colon which is less strain on that and a lot less energy demand is put on my digestive system. I really never measure my food, but I think I’m eating about a third to a half less than what I used to eat in the beginning.

Mike: When you measure it you sometimes don’t get adequate calories compared to the cooked fooders, but I’ve found that you don’t really need to eat as many calories and we still receive all our nutrients.

Dave: Right. That’s a big point because if you’ve read Natural Hygiene literature and so forth, you’ll see that it’s estimated that 50% or as much as

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60% of our daily energy potential, the energy that is available once we wake up, goes towards digesting heavy fatty foods and starchy foods on the Standard American Diet I was talking about and trying to deal with the waste. So, on the Standard American Diet, the body is almost constantly trying to digest food, the immune system and all the other organs of elimination, the liver and kidney and so forth, most of their energy is going to processing and trying to deal with the wastes. The amount of energy that’s liberated when we do this clean digesting diet which is really high in water content is phenomenal. I mean, it’s more than 50% of our daily energy is all of a sudden liberated. So the body uses that energy to improve itself which is by detoxifying in the beginning and then rebuilding an entire -- at the same time, rebuilding an entire new body.

After a few years of following this regime and eating well and not overeating on fatty foods and going off on tangents with junk foods here and there, we can build a much healthier looking, more beautiful, vibrant, alive body which has much more energy. So for me to overcome chronic fatigue and burnt down adrenal glands and just being so sickly and miserable, to creating dynamic health, and believe me it took -- It didn’t happen quickly for me, it took about six or seven years because of how depleted I was.

That was just absolutely wonderful and it just brings tears to my eyes when I think of what it was like to change from the person who had this sad dreary low-energy persona to become a high-energy person. Who at least when the whether is warm, goes to sleep at 10 or 11 and wakes up at 4 or 5 in the morning totally refreshed and can go, go, go all day long without even needing a nap and be able to do a lot of things to help people and to enjoy life.

Mike: So you found your need for sleep has gone down too?

Dave: Definitely. If I eat fatty foods, if I have a few ounces of nuts, then I’m gonna need about eight hours of sleep. If I eat nuts more than once a week, it’s going to be eight or nine hours of sleep. If I’m not eating fatty foods for several days, my body is cleaned out and my energy is just out of site then, yeah, maybe five or six hours of sleep might do it sometimes. When I’ve eaten a really low fat diet over the last few years in the summer, sometimes I’ve woken up at 2:30 or 3 in the morning, after just about four hours of sleep and just felt absolutely charged up and ready to go.

I’ve learned from experience not to just use all that energy up by doing things. When those times happened, I learned the best thing to do is just relax in bed and just enjoy where I’m at and not try to get up and do things

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and I would doze off. As we get older it’s really a good idea not to overdo it with all this good energy we get.

Mike: Should people focus on different ways they use the energy now that they have so much extra? Could some people get burnt out?

Dave: Yeah, definitely we want to avoid the trap of overworking and I’ve learned -- I’ve been an example of a person who has overworked for several years to get my business established to have a decent life where I have a few dollars left over in the bank account after I get a Living Nutrition Magazine out to people. We can tax our body, but we’re going to pay for it and we can’t keep on doing it forever.

If we have to go through a stretch of working really hard, we need a lot of relaxation time on the weekends, we need to go to bed earlier, and we need to create a life where relaxation is really the goal, relaxation and health. We obviously can do several different things to bring more relaxation time into our life: shutting off the TV and the computer at 5:00 pm or at least the computer, just doing nurturing things, just getting out in nature, just lying on the grass outside on your lawn, and not getting caught up in the busy world.

Of course, being a raw fooder, it’s all part of getting back to nature. If we’re hooked on all the modern technological wonders, we hopefully come to the point where we see that all that stuff is totally incongruent with our back-to-nature diet and our true health goals. So I’ve moved out to the country and I’m surrounded by an apple orchard and twenty different kinds of fruit trees and vines and bushes. It took years to get to this point so I think it’s a really important goal for raw fooders to inch along and get closer to nature and get away from the modern hustle and bustle of city life.

I think another good point I wanted to make in this talk was -- To have success as a raw fooder and to really create good health, it’s really important to get in touch with our senses and to do that, it’s really important to have some quiet time everyday to ourselves. If we live within a house with a partner or children, it’s really important to just go to a room or go out to a place in nature where you can sit under a tree and just sit and relax.

If you’re not a fan of meditation, it’s just a matter of learning to relax and get in touch with your body and observing what’s going on with you, observing your thoughts, your mind and just feeling the earth. Sitting in silence I think for at least 15 minutes a day, maybe twice a day, is really important to get in touch with the body’s signals so we can respond properly to our body’s needs and create tranquility and serenity and a

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degree of self-mastery. I think that’s a really important practice to bring into our lives: Sitting and being present, be still with our body.

In the next Living Nutrition, there’s a wonderful article by my friend, Dr. Jim Dreaver, its called “The Power of Silence”. Every spiritual tradition, every spiritual teacher is -- They’re saying the same thing: Be still, listen to the sounds with them, let the mind relax and disengage from the mind shatter. If we sit still, eventually it will happen.

Mike: It’s a great point. Quiet time and meditation is very important. It’s a very helpful tool to help get rid of cravings, calm the mind down, and find some peace. A big part of natural hygiene is maintaining health and avoiding disease. What do you feel are the elements or factors of disease?

Dave: Well, Dr. Tilden or Dr. Shelton, one of the early 1900 natural hygiene doctors came up with the seven stages of disease and that’s one model, that’s one way to look at it and physiologically it’s correct. So, briefly, I always leave one of the stages out, but I think it goes something like this. The first stage is, and you can correct me Mike if you know or any of the callers can later on, I think the first stage is Enervation which is we deplete our energy. The second stage, I think, is irritation where the toxins are irritating our nerves and our tissues.

The third stage is inflammation, then ulceration, then induration, which is, I think, a scarring in a pre-cancerous condition and the next stage is cancer. I’m pretty sure that’s not seven, I left one out there, but that’s their linier approach or model to looking at disease. And, it pretty much holds true. I like to bring in the spiritual and psychological aspects of health. I think a more holistic or balanced way to look at the factors that cause disease are to understand that every illness has a psychological, an emotional, a physiological and a spiritual aspect.

In the beginning when I was learning about what caused my disease, all I was reading about, from the natural hygiene writers, was toxemia, toxemia, toxemia. Later, as I started meeting some therapists, health counselors, and spiritual advisors, I came to hear and I totally believe it’s true that those four factors, including the spiritual factors, must be considered in having a role in every kind of illness.

By looking at it that way, it gives us a bigger 360 degree picture of why we got sick and we get out of the trap of just focusing on toxins in our body. And, I can follow up on anymore questions you have about that, Mike.

(Note: On pages 24 through 28 below is the article “The Seven Stages of Disease” by Dr. Robert Sniadach)

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Mike: If disease is present and people need some healing, what do you feel is the best way to awaken their self-healing body?

Dave: Well, we need to start with education and education needs to be based on physiology. Physiology is the science of basically how the body works. We need to know the physiology, the workings of the disease process in the body. We need to understand that everything that the body expresses is expressed for an intelligent reason and every disease symptom is created by the body for useful purpose.

We have a living body. The body just doesn’t do crazy things for no good reason. Germs don’t come in the body and tell the body what to do and start doing things to the body which directs the body’s actions. The body responds to invaders, to toxins, to threats by enacting all kinds of processes which we call symptoms to restore health. So, we’ve all been taught in ways which are incorrect as to what the body is doing when it’s sick.

We need to really examine our beliefs and probably pretty much throw all of them away when it comes to health and disease and learn how to think accurately about our body’s processes. I was scared and lonely and desperate when I was sick. After reading Natural Hygiene one night, it all made sense and believe me, this not rocket science here to understand natural hygiene. You don’t have to study physiology books and go to advanced schools take advanced courses to understand the disease processes of the body.

Once I understood that my body was creating inflammation to purify itself and it was creating the ulcerations which were all over my colon and giving me all the bloody bowl movements -- My body was creating those open sores on my body to get rid of toxins because it was so overloaded and that if I stopped poisoning my body through what I was eating with the medicines and what I was eating that my body would just finish the purification process and I would heal up.

It made sense, I applied it, it happened, on the fourth day I was jumping for joy because I knew it was true and it was happening. I healed up within four weeks after being sick for eight years. We need to understand the physiology and let go of a lot of beliefs about treatments and therapies and modalities. We need to understand that our body has all the self-healing power we need. Over 99% of the cases in people, they can heal every single disease they have. Their body has the ability to do it, and actually the symptom’s their body’s expressing is the self-healing process, it’s just a sign of the self-healing process.

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If we understand what the body’s doing when we have disease, and are empowered to just let the body do it without worry, without interfering with the body, the body will heal up in the least amount of time. If we want to tinker with the body and try to change the energy and do all kinds of things while we are awake during the day -- We’re usually just wasting energy which the body would rather use for healing itself. The body’s self-healing wisdom intelligence is way beyond what we can even imagine.

If we imagine the fanciest computer in the world, the wisdom, the intelligence, the activities that go on in one cell in our body just works all that technological stuff which man came up with. Our body knows how to repair a cell which is just a micro universe in there and orchestrate all this incredible healing and all the synthesis of new cells and balancing hormones. It knows how to do all that and it does it best when we lie down and rest and sleep and get out of the way.

People tend to think that this sounds preachy and they think they know better, they’d rather do a colonic or Reiki, have acupuncture needles stuck in them, try different herbs, or whatever. But, I’m trying to get these points across in a loving way because I’ve experienced it. Everybody who experiences it in a pure way where you just rest, fast, and let the body take over and do it, they arrive at the condition of health much faster than the people who are messing with the body and doing all kinds of therapies which really never lead to lasting health.

It’s an amazing experience to do a fast or, and I don’t recommend it, become sick and go through the rebuilding process like I did because you learn really how the body works and you can’t get that information out of a text book. So, I feel qualified to help people do this because I haven’t just read it in the books, I’ve gone through it. I’ve learned from many, many other people in talking with them, that most of what I experienced is universal. I’m not just out there to teach what I went through.

It’s like I want to teach healing physiology and also teach people about the psychological, emotional and spiritual factors which also have to be in place in order for the body to heal and become healthy again. It is a big subject. I absolutely love talking about it and basically it’s just a very simple subject. The body has just awesome wisdom and intelligence and it knows how to repair itself and rebuild itself and it’s a process that may not be quick, it may take a lot of time and patience.

We may need a health coach, I certainly did. I would check in with Dr. Lawrence Gallant, I would call T.C. Fry a couple of times a year and get some encouragement when I was down. Eventually I arrived at a state of

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really high wellness and just felt so grateful that I could pass this information on to people.

Basically, it starts with reading some natural hygiene books. Dr. Herbert Shelton wrote many, many volumes like forty books and of course some really great books like “Natural Hygiene: The Pristine Way of Life”, “Superior Nutrition”, “Fasting to Save Your Life”. I think those are the three basics that everybody should read if they want to learn about health. Natural hygiene is the science of health and it should incorporate all the factors that have to do with health.

Some people knock natural hygiene because it doesn’t talk about emotions and spirituality. It should. Maybe the writers such as Shelton were not into spirituality and didn’t understand emotions which is --Most people agree is true about Shelton. I’m not trying to knock the man, just trying to point out that there’s a lot to learn about health beyond just the physiology. If we can put it all together and relax into it and give it time, then we can create really true health and live a good healthy spiritual life.

Mike: I was very lucky when I had health challenges because we had the raw food festival come through town. So I was able to consult with some of the natural hygienists working with Healthful Living International and got to talk to Tim Trader, Doug Graham, and Roz Gruben. They were able to give me advice and coach me through some water fasts which helped me regain my health. It was the most amazing experience. Do you feel it’s important to have a coach guide you through water fast or is it okay to go through it on your own if you’ve read all the books?

Dave: Well, it’s definitely important to read one book on fasting. I suggest Dr. Shelton’s book, “Fasting to Save Your Life”. He wrote another great book “Fasting for Renewal of Life” or some other title like that, I saw both of those books. We need to learn about fasting. I think most people, almost everyone, can do a water fast on their own for one to three days. I can’t say enough how important it is to be home and resting and not driving and doing chores and working on the computer and doing all kinds of busy things while we’re fasting.

Dr. Shelton said we should only fast when we need to fast. If we need to fast, we have a serious condition which the body needs to correct. Obviously we should be conserving energy which is what fasting is all about. We should be staying home and lying down and resting. It’s giving the body a rest to correct itself. Instead of expending all of our energy during the day or most of it for doing chores, we’re conserving energy and liberate, or allowing the body to fully express its self-healing powers.

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Ninety percent of our daily energy is going to the body healing itself, restoring itself, rejuvenating, repairing the cells and so forth. If we read the books we become empowered to understand the processies. If the detox gets too bad then we need to understand what’s going on and not get scared and freak out and start doing something which is just going to make the recovery even longer.

If we want to do a fast which is longer than three days, then I really recommend that we do it at a fasting center. My three or four friends who are qualified and experienced fasting doctors, Dr. Tim Trader, Dr. Doug Graham, Dr. Robert Sniadach, and Dr. Virginia Vetrano, who doesn’t really fast people anymore but she certainly used to assist Dr. Shelton in fasting ten’s of thousands of people at their health school. They don’t guide people by phone when it comes to fasting.

In some rare cases they have, I should say, but for the most part they just won’t do it because you can’t see the client or the patient and the person really needs attention. There’s a few, really good fasting centers in this country but really not enough. If you go to an experienced fasting center like, or qualified fasting center, like Dr. Alan Goldhamer’s place here in my county, True North Health Center, you’ll get really good care.

Once you get into the third or fourth day when you start getting really woozy, your heart starts pounding sometimes, and maybe you’re detoxing and having all kinds of harsh symptoms, that’s when you really need the doctor there because we really can’t think clearly. We don’t know how to respond to those things. Sometimes those symptoms last just for a short while and then we have just a really wonderful time doing a longer fast.

Also like Dr. Tim Trader who gave a talk earlier this year here at my home office, he said, “I don’t care how you do a fast. I’m more concerned with how you break the fast.” Doug and Tim and Robert, they will guide a fasting patient for two or three weeks to properly reintroduce foods. That’s a pitfall which almost everybody falls into which is overeating, eating too much food, too much fancy food too soon after fasting. To re-acclimate the food it takes a while and we certainly need to eat very simply the first few days.

I want people to get great information on fasting because it may be exactly what we need to save our life. At some point, I think we’re gonna need to know especially in older age if we want to save our life and avoid going to the doctor or going to the hospital and have them pump us with drugs or start cutting us. We need to learn how to take care of our body and fasting is the most efficient way for the body to heal itself.

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For that reason I’ve had Tim up here, and Doug here for a couple of talks on fasting. At Raw Stock we’re gonna have, like last year, one of our hay bail stations where we have different topics. One of them is going to be devoted to fasting again. Robert and Doug and Tim are going to give talks on fasting. Also, I should mention Dr. Rick Dina, he’s also a fasting doctor, he will give a talk on fasting, too.

Mike: There’s a group of us here in Portland who are organizing a car pool down to the Raw Stock Festival and I’m very excited. I haven’t been to it yet because we’ve always had the festival come through Portland, but, yeah, it sounds amazing. Can you tell us a little bit about Raw Stock?

Dave: Yeah, and I’m really glad that you guys are car pooling because this site is my friends farm and there’s not a ton of parking. It’s real important that people car pool and that way we don’t clog up the roads because there’s private residences surrounding the farm. We can’t afford any complaints so we’re encouraging everybody to car pool.

If you want information, if you want to get in on our car pool list, we have it posted at www.rawstock.us So, you can email me, dave@livingnutrition.com and say, “Hey, Dave, I want to be on the car pool list!”, and you give me your name and either phone number or email or both and we’ll get you on there. Raw Stock is the most lively, amazing thing I’ve ever imagined. I still can’t totally fathom that we’ve made it happen. Last year it was just the most fantastic one we ever put on and everybody was happy and we’re just totally pleased.

I created Raw Passion Seminars about seven or eight years ago because I got into a position of being a really big networker and one of the co-leaders of the Raw Food Movement. My mission was to give people the best education possible by the healthiest, most vivacious raw food leaders and so I created Raw Passion Production. I didn’t create it for me to get up there and speak. I was pretty new at speaking and pretty shy and nervous about it. I created it so that my best friends like Roe Gallo and Paul Nison to get up on stage and give talks.

At our first event, we had Paul and Roe and RC Dini, we had an absolute blast. I didn’t know Doug Graham that well then, but he said, “Dave, I want to be apart of Raw Passion”, I said “Your part of Raw Passion!”. Then we did a few more events. We did them all over the country, about seven or eight of them, and they’ve gotten better and better.

Then I had the idea of doing the summer raw food jamboree at my friend’s farm, McDonalds Farm in Sebastopol, California, where I was living for a couple of years. It’s a big apple orchard with a big rectangular flat area

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where we set up a big 20 x 40 foot tent and we make a stage. Out in the orchard there are hundreds of apple trees and we set up these hay bail circular stations where we give lectures from. We also have a big meadow where we throw down straw, where we have yoga and tai chi and other sports games that Doug loves to lead. We have the most amazing summer fruits and vegetables and the most amazing raw food.

We’re educators and we put on the most high quality, top notch, and congruent holistic health education event that we can imagine. I have many raw food friends and Doug, too. Educator friends who come and they teach, for free, no one gets paid. Doug and I have been doing this for years. We’re still in the hole by a few thousand dollars. So this is obviously a labor of love and we of course, obviously, Doug and I, who are business partners, we love having a good time, a good healthy time and putting on some really good quality entertainment.

Having the best food, all these amazing fresh figs that Victorio Corearo brings down after foraging all over Northern California and Oregon, and giving people the best quality education. So, it got – I forget the number 12 or 15 different educators coming from all over the country to give several talks to people. I think this is just a really wonderful way to learn: out in nature just eating whole unprocessed raw foods.

A few years ago I started these Raw Passion Jamboree’s at the farm and one evening someone was giving a talk. Doug and I were sitting down next to each other and he whispered a word in my ear which made my eyes roll back. He whispered to me the word “RawStock”. I never thought of the concept before and, to me, someone who’s seen footage of the Woodstock movie and listened to those amazing songs and lived through the Woodstock era, it blew my mind.

I said to Doug, “Doug, we’re not ready for Raw Stock.” That is way too big, I was trying to tell him. We are both incredibly passionate about doing the biggest and best finest things we can do. I said, “Doug, this event here wears me out as it is.” I was envisioning two or three thousand people with nonstop bands and all kinds of incredible fun. I said “Doug, no, we’re not ready for Raw Stock. So, ten days went by and I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

Then, after ten days I emailed Doug wherever he was, somewhere else in the country. I said, “Doug, we’re gonna do Raw Stock next year.” So the wheels were set in motion and we started planning and this will be our third one. For next year we have to find a bigger site because we can’t do it at the farm anymore, we’ve outgrown it. We hope to find a really neat big place out in nature. It hasn’t manifested itself yet, but I will be

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looking at one next week in Northern California about an hour north of here.

Hopefully -- We definitely feel like we’ll be doing this every year for a long, long time. It just really -- Our creative juices just really get into it. It just really makes the juices flow and we just feel incredibly happy and satisfied that so many people have gotten really good information and love it. Of course the best part is seeing the people and getting to connect with old friends. I went to the first, I think, three Portland Raw Food Expos and I just totally enjoyed them.

Since we all have our own slant on how to teach health, Doug and I really want to do this the natural hygiene way and do it in my own backyard. I was really driven to do it. This year I feel like we really got the best line up and the best musical acts that I could ever imagine. The show this year is going to be just totally out of site and I could just gush for a long, long time about what we’re going to be doing.

Mike: That is wonderful. There’s nothing better than being at a festival surrounded by like-minded folks. We’re all into the same way of eating. I’ll miss Portland Festival this year. I’m very excited to head down to Raw Stock.

Speaker: Hey Mike we have about 15 minutes left on this call.

Mike: Okay. We can open up the line for questions now and at the last five minutes it’ll start beeping. For the last two minutes it will keep on beeping, so we can just talk through that.

Dave: Okay.

Mike: Caller, you can say your name and where you’re from.

Participant: Mayden, Maryland, Hi. I had a question. I’ve been hearing you speak and you talk a lot about fruit, but I’ve been a raw fooder for about two months now and I can’t do fruit because I have Candida, any suggestions on that?

Dave: Yes, are you 100% raw or -- ?

Participant: Yes, I kind of went straight forward. I went from total SAD (Standard American Diet) to 100% raw.

Dave: When you eat fruit, what happens?

Participant: I get really bad headaches and rashes.

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Dave: Many people have overcome Candida eating a diet of mostly fruit.

Participant: Really.

Dave: There’s a few basics I’m going to give you because our time is short. I don’t want to sound like I’m being short with you or snappy. I’m going to give you the basics and I hope this is really information that makes you happy. You can eat as much fruit as you like provided that you follow good food combining. You don’t mix it with fats and you don’t overeat on fatty foods which means no more than about three or four ounces of nuts per day. Eat just one kind of fatty food per day because it’s the fat which blocks the sugar uptake into your cells and makes all the sugar backup.

If you’re off of starchy foods, if you’re off of dairy foods and junk foods, and you follow the food combining and you just have one fatty food for dinner, you can have as much fruit as you want. I’m not saying this lightly, because I’ve talked to all the other natural hygiene doctors, such as Doug Graham and so forth, and they’ve all coached people and helped them overcome Candida. Yes, the fruit has sugar in it, but remember fruit is about 80% to 95% water.

It’s not like eating solid sugar, it’s not like eating dried fruits. I’m talking about eating juicy fruits, and you can have all you like. You’ll clean out, the junk will come out of your skin after a few weeks, your skin will clear up, the symptoms will be gone. So, you just have to understand that your body needs to clean out and you will not have these Candida symptoms. The Candida will wash out the internal environment. The pH will become the proper pH so that Candida can’t live in there anymore. It’ll wash out, your body will detoxify and the Candida is not going to come back if you’re a 100% raw fooder unless you’re eating…

Participant: And that’s just by eating fruit?

Dave: Absolutely, it’s happened so many times that it is true. I know many people who eat mostly fruit and it seems especially women have come into this diet with Candida and it washes away. So, you have to remember that fruit did not cause the Candida. It’s really not logical to think that it is what’s going to perpetuate your Candida.

Participant: And how long do think it will take to fully restore the pH balance?

Dave: I would read my article on detoxification. It’s on my http://www.selfhealingempowerment.com website.

Participant: Okay, and I have all of that.

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Dave: Or it’s been in my magazine or in a couple of my books. If you’re doing the diet properly, if you’re not stressed from, say, a hectic job, if your adrenals are not burnt out, then most people will clean out the grossest stuff in their body within about a month. I’ve known people, their skin breaks out and they have some diarrhea, headaches the first month. Then, everything becomes clear and they are doing 100 times better after those first four to six weeks.

You need a lot of rest when the body is detoxing because we become tired. We can’t get down and conclude that “Oh, this diet doesn’t work, the Candida is going to get worse and worse and worse”. Like I said before, if we understand the physiology and let the body just clean out and if you have some mentors, if you’ve seen some other raw fooders who have gone through it, then you’ll feel good about it and say “Okay, I’m just going through this phase which will only take a few weeks and I’m gonna stick with it, and I’m gonna keep on going, and I’m gonna look as good as some really healthy looking raw fooders who eat a lot of fruit and have a really enjoyable life”.

Participant: Okay, great, thank you.

Mike: Are there any other questions?

Participant: This is Christine from Montana. I have a daughter who’s 13, she’s been eating raw. I’ve been eating raw for a year and my daughter’s been eating raw since Christmas and she still hasn’t lost any weight and she eats a lot of fruit, watches her food combining. It seems like her colon is still impacted and I’m wondering if it’s just a matter of more time or do you ever use herbs to help breakup impaction in the colon?

Dave: What’s her height and weight?

Participant: She’s 5’4” about one hundred and -- 5’3” one hundred twenty. She doesn’t need to lose much but she’s -- It’s enough that she feels uncomfortable.

Dave: Does she tend to be constipated and not have a bowl movement everyday?

Participant: Yes, she gets constipated very easily.

Dave: Does she exercise?

Participant: Yes, she plays soccer.

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Dave: Okay. Well, this is pretty typical especially in women. Their bowels tend to be constipated and sometimes even eating the juiciest diet, I have a former girlfriend who was this way and she’s not overweight, but she used to sometimes live on watermelon in the summer and she would still complain that her bowls wouldn’t move. Like I said before, you have to look at all the aspects of health. In her case, I think, emotions were the biggest factor. She was tense and living in anxiety all the time.

Our gut is obviously deeply connected to our emotions. I guess we can’t get into it too much but, you can take a look at the mental and emotional makeup of your daughter and see if she has any fears or stress going on which is making her gut become tense. When our gut is not relaxed or we don’t feel comfortable or well, if we’re under pressure, peer pressure or whatever, our gut becomes tight and we don’t eliminate well and that’s a big reason why I came down with colitis symptoms. I was uptight, my gut became -- I had all these emotional contractions in my gut and that’s how I was responding to stress.

It will also help your daughter if she does a lot of stretching and yoga for her lower back and pelvis. I don’t think because she’s young and she’s not overweight that she has much impaction going on. It’s definitely going to help her to eat a high water content diet and not eat dry hard foods everyday and certainly just really minimize them. Eventually as she becomes healthy emotionally and is not stressing her bowel with hard foods, then her bowel will relax and if she’s getting enough sleep her body will have enough nerve energy to have the bowel movements.

Basically, when people are not having bowel movements, they could be impacted especially if they’re really overweight and eating meat and all kinds of starchy foods. But, your daughter is not doing that, so I would just say that she just needs time and she now needs a lot of extra rest. Nerve energy is what powers the peristalsis and we don’t have enough nerve energy if we’re stressed and not getting enough rest during the day and not getting enough sleep. Nerve energy only comes from one place, from sleep. Getting extra sleep is like recharging our batteries to a higher level than before and when we have enough nerve energy flowing through our organs, through our bowel, then peristalsis is easy.

Participant: Okay, thank you.

Dave: Sure, any more questions?

Participant: This is Tina. I have a question about hunger. A true sign of hunger, when your stomach is growling, I’ve heard it’s not really a sign of hunger, is that true? Because I know when my stomach is growling I need to eat.

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Dave: That’s a great question. It takes about five or ten minutes to explain it. I just want to mention that -- Boy my mind is -- I got so much information. I can’t remember if it’s in the current issue of Living Nutrition or the upcoming issue. There’s an article on “What Is Hunger?” There’s actually two articles one by Dr. Vetrano and there’s also another one by Dr. Vetrano with Victoria Bidwell. So, Shelton and Dr. Vetrano write that true hunger is experienced as a sensation in the back of the throat. I know from experience and studies that grumbling of the stomach really isn’t even hunger.

It takes years of cleaning out and eating properly and getting beyond emotional attachments or getting beyond emotional eating patterns to understand that when our belly is empty and gurgling that usually that’s got nothing to do with hunger, it’s not hunger. When our belly becomes empty and it’s gurgling, it just means just that. Most people don’t even experience true hunger because they’re eating really a lot of food through out the day because it’s available for us modern humans. It takes -- I would read those two articles -- you can email me dave@livingnutrition.com and I’ll email them right back to you tomorrow morning. You’ll learn a lot from them. Also, I’ve written an article on somatic inquiry, inquiring into the gut to find out what these feelings are.

Participant: Hi Dave, this is Renee from Atlanta. I wanted to ask you a quick question about -- Do I have time for another question?

Dave: Okay, fire away.

Participant: What are your suggestions for getting younger kids like teenagers and younger to get started on a raw diet? What kind of ideas do you have that will make it appealing to them?

Dave: Take them to a Raw Food Seminar, one where they can maybe participate in making the food and seeing other children. Like a seminar that maybe Victoria Boutenko, or Jackie and Gideon Graff put on seminars. Their site is http://www.sproutrawfood.com and their yahoo group is http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/sproutrawfood/ So you’re in Georgia?

Participant: Right, yes.

Dave: Yeah, I would try to go to some potlucks with them and also I would get them the Boutenko’s book, Raw Kids, titled “Eating Without Heating”.

Participant: Are you in Seattle? My oldest lives in New York, he’s a vegetarian now but my youngest daughter lives in Seattle now with her dad. So, I wanted to know if you know anything in Washington, Seattle area?

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Dave: My friend, Dr. Doug Graham, knows a lot of raw food activities up there so, email me and I’ll connect you with Doug. Actually, the raw family wrote a book called “The Raw Family” and “Raw Kids”.

Participant: I have that, right. I just bought those two to see if that’ll help.

Dave: You can read those books, you can get a bunch of food and just like have a creative, playful day. “Primal Mothering in a Modern World” by Hygeia Halfmoon. I sell that one at livingnutrition.com, it’s about fruitarian mothering. It gives great ideas about making fruit pops and sharing food together.

Participant: Great, okay, thank you.

Dave: Sure.

Mike: Was that a two minute warning?

Keith: That’s about 30 seconds.

Mike: Oh, 30 seconds, okay, thank you everyone, I’m so glad you could join us on this call and thank you Dave it’s a great pleasure to have you on the call.

Dave: Well, thanks for doing this, Mike and that was fun I could go another hour, but next time if you want another speaker, if you want me to do it again I’ll be glad to do it.

Participants: Oh that’ll be great, thanks. Thank you.

Dave: You’re welcome, bye, Mike.

Mike: Bye Dave, see you at Raw Stock have a good night.

Keith: Have a great night everyone.

Mike: Thank you Keith.

“To come upon the gift that is enlightenment, it is vital to take frequent time for inner silence, and the best place to find that silence—until you have awakened to it within you—is to go out into nature.

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Being in nature connects you, literally, with your own inner, essential nature. The experience of being in nature is invariably transforming, healing, renewing.”

– Dr. Jim Dreaver

The Seven Stages of Diseaseby Dr. Robert Sniadach

rwsniadach@transformationinstitute.org

http://www.transformationinstitute.org/

There are seven stages of disease. The underlying cause of disease in all stages is enervation and subsequent toxicosis.

1. Enervation

This first stage is called enervation. Most people call it nervous exhaustion, or just plain “tired and run down.” Enervation is a state in which the body is either not generating sufficient vital energy for the tasks the body must perform, or the tasks the body must perform may be greater than the normal vital energy supply can cope with.

In any event, the body becomes impaired, and an impaired body generates less vital energy if the conditions of overwork or non-regeneration persist. The great revitalizer is sleep, for sleep regenerates vital energy. Insufficient sleep and rest are the primary causes of enervation. Once enervation exists, all body functions are debilitated and diminished. This can quickly lead to:

2. Toxicosis

When toxic substances from whatever source saturate the blood and tissues, the lymph system and interstitial fluids, then the condition of toxicosis exists. Living cells are surrounded by waste products - garbage.

Tissue and blood saturation with toxic materials can be caused by both internally generated wastes and pollutants taken in from the outside which the body has not been able to eject from its domain. Intoxication occurs when we overload the body with toxic materials from the outside, or we fail to observe our capacities, and overwork, get insufficient sleep, or are subjected to great stress, or when any number of other factors deplete the body of vital energy or prevent its sufficient regeneration.

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For instance, stresses, emotional shocks, or traumatic experiences can drain our bodies of vital energy very quickly. Often toxicosis creates feelings of unease, vague discomfort and subtle negative emotional states. At some level of intoxication we begin to experience the next stage of disease which is called:

3. Irritation

Irritation results from toxic materials being sensed by our nervous system. Any toxic material, be it salt, caffeine, condiments or external chemicals will irritate or stimulate. This is a condition wherein the body sets in force its defensive mechanisms and accelerates its internal activities.

This might well be likened to an alarm aboard ship where all hands are summoned. A frenzy of activity results in a bout with enemy forces. Unfortunately, this often temporarily makes us feel good or hyperactive or even euphoric. It is distressing to see a euphoric condition arise out of a situation that is damaging to the organism. If the causes of enervation/intoxication/irritation remain in force and the body can’t cope with it the body initiates a responsive crisis called:

4. Inflammation

This is usually the stage in which physicians recognize pathology. It is the stage where sufferers are keenly aware of a problem, for it involves pain. As well, it involves bodily redirection of vital energies. The intestinal tract is closed down. Energy that would normally be available for digestive activity is preempted and redirected to the massive effort to cope with a severe condition of intoxication. Energy is also redirected from use by the muscles. There is little or no desire to be active; all sensibilities demand that you sleep and rest. Lest the integrity of the organism be dealt a mortal blow or become crippled, the body musters its all to the emergency.

In inflammation, the toxicants have usually been concentrated in an organ or area for a massive expulsive effort. The area becomes inflamed due to the constant irritation of the toxic materials. When inflammation exists we are said to have an “itis,” appendicitis, tonsillitis, sinusitis, hepatitis, or nephritis for example. The names of “itises” are usually after the organ or tissue area that is inflamed.

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Thus if we have a cold we have rhinitis. If we have inflammation of the sinus cavities we have sinusitis. If we have inflammation of bronchial tissue we have either bronchitis or asthma. And so it goes. We have these peculiar pathologies because in each case the body elected to eliminate the extraordinary toxic load through the organ affected.

For instance, asthma exists because the body has selected the bronchi as an outlet for toxic materials. The condition is chronic because the toxic condition is unceasing. While the sufferer continues to intoxicate himself or herself, the body continues to eliminate the overload through the bronchi or alveolar tissue.

Why does the body choose one site or another for elimination? There are many variables to consider to answer this question. There is the predisposing genetic “constitution” that you are born with. Some of us can handle increased elimination through normal channels, while others do not have this capacity and the body has to rid itself of the extra poisons through the skin via pimples, rashes, etc. Also we must consider that the type of toxic material being eliminated will tend to be detoxified by one or more particular organs. Also the outlet that is most convenient for excretion, nose, eyes ears, throat, lungs, bladder, rectum, etc. will be utilized to expel the morbid material.

Inflammation or fever is a body crisis response to a life-threatening situation. The body and the body alone creates the fever. It is an evidence or symptom of increased and intense body activities directed at cleansing and repair. The extraordinary energies employed for a fever are at the expense of energies normally involved in digestion, work or play, thinking and seeing, etc.

Fever is a healing activity. The idea of suppressing it is equivalent to hitting a drowning man over the head so he'll stop struggling. For instance, if rhinitis or influenza sufferers are drugged, it amounts to hitting the body's healer over the head. Thus, the eliminative effort is suppressed, and the toxicity increases until other organs, usually the lungs, become saturated - not only with the toxicity but the drugs administered as well.

When body vitality reasserts itself a condition known as pneumonia is likely to result. Inflammation is the fourth stage of disease and is the body’s most intense effort to cleanse and restore itself. The next stage of disease is destructive and degenerative. It will result if the causes of general body intoxication are continued.

5. Ulceration

Ulceration means that a staggering amount of cells and tissue structures are being

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destroyed. Physiological systems are wiped out due to the body's inability to live in an unceasing toxic media. Where tissue is destroyed there remains a void.

An example is a canker sore of the mouth. Lesions or ulcers can occur in other areas of the body also. These conditions are often intensely painful, for there are exposed nerves. While the body may use an ulcer as an outlet for extraordinary toxic buildup thereby relieving itself, it will heal the ulcer if causes are discontinued, or if the toxicity level is significantly lowered. This process of repairing the damage is like patching up pants with holes in them. This patching up process is called induration.

6. Induration

Induration is a hardening of tissue or the filling in of tissue vacancy with hard tissue. Scarring is a form of induration. But in this stage of disease, there is direction and purpose in hardening. The space is filled, and the toxic materials that threaten bodily integrity are encapsulated in a sac of hardened tissue.

The ulcer and the toxic materials are sealed off by the hardening of the tissue around them. This is a way of quarantining the toxic materials, often called tumor formation. It is this condition that is often diagnosed as cancer when in fact no cancer exists. Induration is the last stage during which the body exerts intelligent control. Should the pathogenic practices which brought matters to this stage be continued, cells and tissue systems go wild. They survive as best they can on their own.

Cells become parasitic - living off the nutrients they can obtain from the lymph fluid but contributing nothing to the body economy. They have become disorganized. Their genetic encoding has been altered by the poisons. Thus, they are not capable of intelligent normal organized action within the context of a vital economy. When cells go wild in this manner, the condition is called cancer.

7. Cancer

The endpoint of the evolution of disease is cancer. It is the last stage of disease and is usually fatal, especially if the causes that brought it about are continued. Cessation of causes and indulgence of healthful practices may arrest it, for they can so revitalize the body that they may even destroy the cancer cells. It's all relative.

MIKE SNYDER 07/27/05

Cancer cells live in a hostile environment but still divide and flourish as long as nutrients are available to them. Cancer cells may be regarded as cells that have become independent and have reverted to the status of uncontrolled primitive cells -- cells that live entirely on their own as do protozoa. These stages of disease are quite distinct in their characters, yet the lines are more or less arbitrarily drawn. This often happens in attempts at categorization where one form evolves into another. The dividing lines have no clear-cut delineation.

People sometimes ask when cancer begins. Natural Hygienists say that it begins with the first cold or rash of childhood. The first crisis a baby endures begins the pathological chain that leads to cancer. This evolutionary chain begins then because the phenomenon of life is one constant violation of the laws of life from beginning to end.