How and When to Be Your Own Doctor

by Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon


Chapter Seven
The Analysis of Disease States:
Helping the Body Recover


From the Hygienic Dictionary

Diagnosis. [1] In the United States, making a diagnosis implies that you are a doctor duly licensed to engage in diagnostic function. . . . The making of a diagnosis is reserved only for doctors. . . . The term "analysis" does not have such an explicit legal definition. Thus, it is the term of choice of iridologists and the one most often used by them. It is essential for the survival and promotion of iridology that those who choose to engage in its practice avoid naming any disease condition. As we have seen, to do so is to infringe on rights reserved exclusively for doctors and can land the iridologist, sooner or later, in a snarl of legal troubles.
    It is better for the iridologist to refrain from suggesting to a person that he has any particular disease, letting such diagnostics remain the province of licensed doctors. In so doing, the iridologist will avoid transgressing the law and stepping on the toes of those who are legally qualified to diagnose.
    It is indeed unfortunate that one of the greatest pitfalls awaiting the iridologist is the temptation to name diseases. The feelings of satisfaction and power resulting from conferring a name are deeply rooted in the human psyche. For example, the Bible tells us that man's first task on Earth was to name the animals, thus giving him power and dominion over them.
    Strong is the temptation to name diseases because nearly everyone has come to expect that his malady has a name. Patients have come to expect, and doctors have been trained to make, a diagnosis. . . . "After all," the patient may reason, "how can you hope to deal with my condition if you aren't knowledgeable enough to call it by name?"
    It is not necessary to name diseases in order to exercise dominion over them. Dr. Bernard Jensen, Visions of Health.


    In self defense, I must make it very clear from the first word that hygienists and most other naturopaths of various persuasions, and especially I myself, have never in the past, never!, and do not now, diagnose, treat or offer to cure, disease or illness. Diagnosis and curing are sole, exclusive privileges of certified, duly-licensed medical doctors and may only be done with a grant of Authority to do so from the State. Should an unlicensed person diagnose, offer to treat or attempt to cure disease or illness, they will have committed a felonious act. With big penalties. Therefore, I do not do it.
    When one of my clients comes to me and says that a medical doctor says they have some disease or other, I agree that the medical doctor says they have some disease or other, and I never dare say that they don't. Or even confirm on my own authority that I think they do have some disease or other.
    What I can legally do for a client is to analyze the state of their body and its organs, looking for weaknesses and apparent allergies. I can lawfully state that I think their liver tests weak, the pancreas appears not to be functioning well in terms of handling meat digestion, that the kidney is having a hard time of it. I can say I see a lump sticking out of their body when one is obviously sticking out of their body; I can not say that lump is cancerous but I can state that the cells in that lump test overly strong and that if I myself had a mass of growing cells testing overly strong and if I believed in the standard medical model, then I would be rushing my overly strong testing cells to an oncologist. But I don't dare say the person has a cancer. Or diabetes. Or is getting close to kidney failure. That is a diagnosis.
    To me, diagnosis is a form of magic rite in which the physician discovers the secret name of the devil that is inhabiting one's body and then, knowing that secret name, performs the correct rite and ritual to cast that demon out. I don't know why people are made so happy knowing the name of their condition! Does it really matter? Either the body can heal the condition or it can't. If it can, you will recover (especially if you give the body a little help). If the body can't heal a condition you will die or live a long time being miserable. No "scientific" medical magic can do better than that.
    By describing a disease in terms of its related organ weaknesses, instead of pinning a Latin name on it, I am able to assist the body to achieve recovery in a superior way that the physician rarely does. By discovering that the body with the lump of overly strong cells also has a weak spleen, liver and thymus gland, I can take actions to strengthen the spleen, liver and thymus. If the body can strengthen its spleen, liver and thymus, then the overly strong cells miraculously vanish. But of course I and what I did did not cure any disease. Any improvements that happen I assign (correctly) to the body's own healing power.
    The way I analyze the organic integrity of the body is through a number of related methods, including the general appearance of the body, the patient's health history, various clues such as body and breath odor, skin color and tone, and especially, biokinesiology, the applied science of muscle testing. Biokinesiology can be used to test the strength or weakness of specific organs and their function. A weak latissimus dorsi muscle indicates a weak pancreas, for example. Specific acupuncture points can be tested in conjunction with muscle strength to indicate the condition of specific organs or glands. The strength of the arm's resistance to downward pressure could be calibrated with a spring scale and precisely gauged, but experienced practitioners have no need for this bother, because they are able to pick up subtle changes in the arms resistance that are not apparent to the testée. Thus muscle testing becomes an art form, and becomes as effective as the person using it is sensitive and aware.
    Biokinesiology works because every organ and gland in the body is interconnected with other parts of the body through nerve pathways and nerve transmissions, which are electrical and can be measured through muscle testing. This may seem too esoteric for the "scientific" among you, but acupuncture points and energy manifestations around and in the body–are now accepted phenomena, their reality demonstrated by special kinds of photography. Acupuncturists, who heal by manipulating the body's energy field with metal needles, are now widely accepted in the western hemisphere. Kinesiology utilizes the same acupuncture points (and some others too) for analytic purposes so it is sometimes called "contact reflex analysis."
    I have studied and used Kinesiology for 25 years with the majority of my clients with very good success. There are some few people who are very difficult to test because they are either too debilitated, lack electrical conductivity, or their state of mind is so skeptical and negative about this type of approach that they put up an impenetrable mental barrier and/or hold their body so rigidly that I can hardly determine a response. A skilled can overcome the obstacle of a weak body that can barely respond, but the person who is mentally opposed and determined to prove you wrong should not be tested. If you proceed it is sure to have an unsatisfactory outcome for all concerned. For even if I manage to accurately analyze the condition of a skeptical client, they will never believe the analysis and will not follow suggestions.
    The "scientific," open-minded, "reasonable" client can be better approached using an academic-like discussion based on published literature that demonstrates how people with similar symptoms and complaints do very well on a particular dietary regimen and supplements. This type of person will sometimes follow dietary recommendations to the last letter, because their scientific background has trained them to be obedient.
    When a client comes to me, I like to take a real good look at who is sitting in front of me. I take my leisure to find out all about their history, their complaints, their motivation to change, their experience with natural healing, their level of personal responsibility, whether or not they have to work, whether or not they can take time out to heal, will they fast or take supplements, do they have sufficient finances to carry a program through to a successful completion, do they have people closely connected to them that are strongly opposed to alternative approaches, can they withstand some discomfort and self-denial, do they have toxic relationships with other people that are contributing to their condition, are they willing to read and educate themselves in greater depth about natural healing, etc. I need to know the answers to these questions in order to help them choose a program which is most likely to succeed.
    Even though fasting is the most effective method I know of, it is not for people who are compelled to keep up a work schedule, nor is it for people who are very ill and do not have anyone to assist them and supervise them. Nor is it for people who do not understand fasting and are afraid of it. People who have associates that are opposed to it, and people who do not have a strongly-functioning liver or kidneys should not fast either. Seriously ill people that have been on a meat-heavy diet with lots of addicting substances need a long runway into a fast so as to not overwhelm their organs of elimination. Does the person in front of me have an eating disorder, or an otherwise suicidal approach to fasting, etc. Clearly fasting is not for everyone, and if I recommend it to the wrong person, the result will be a bad reputation for a marvelous tool.
    Given that many clients can not fast without a lot of preparation, the majority of my clients start out with a gentle detox program that takes considerably more time, but works. These gradients have been outlined under the healing programs for the chronically ill, acutely ill, etc.
    To help rebuild poorly functioning organs, I sometimes use a specialized group of food supplements called protomorphogens. These are not readily available to the general public and perhaps should not be casually purchasable like vitamins, because, as with many prescription drugs, supervision is usually necessary for their successful use. If the FDA ever succeeds at making protomorphogens unavailable to me, I could still have very good results. (At this time the Canadian authorities do not allow importation of protomorphogens for resale, though individuals can usually clear small shipments through Canada Customs if for their own personal use.) But protomorphogens do facilitate healing and sometimes permit healing to occur at a lower gradient of handling. Without them a body might have to fast to heal, with the aid of protomorphogens a person might be able to get better without fasting. And if protomorphogens are used (chewed up--ugh!) while fasting, healing is accelerated.
    Protomorphogens are made from freeze-dried, organically-raised animal organ meats (usually calf or lamb) combined with very specific vitamins, herbs and other co-factors to potentiate the effect. I view protomorphogens as containing nutritional supplementation specific for the rebuilding of the damaged organ.
    Doctor Royal Lee, a medical genius who developed protomorphogens therapy in the 50s and who spent several stints in prison in exchange for his benevolence and concern for human well-being, also founded the company that has supplied me with protomorphogens. After decades of official persecution and denial of the efficacy of protomorphogens by the power structure, it looks like they are about to finally have their day. As I write this book cutting-edge medical research companies are developing therapies using concentrated animal proteins (protomorphogens) to treat arthritis, multiple sclerosis, eye inflamations and juvenile diabetes. The researchers talk as though they are highly praiseworthy for "discovering" this approach.
    Unfortunately, this development is likely to cut two ways. On one hand, it vindicates Dr. Lee; on the other, when these drug companies find a way to patent their materials, they may finally succeed at forcing protomorphogens (currently quite inexpensive) off the non-prescription market and into the restricted and profitable province of the MD.
    I divide clients into two basic types: simple cases and complex ones. When I was treating mental illness, occasionally I had a client who had not been sick for too long. I could usually make this client well quite easily. But if the person had already become institutionalized, had been psychotic for many years, had received much prior treatment, then their case had been made much more difficult. This sort had a poor prognosis. A very similar situation exists with physical illnesses. Many people get sick only because they lack information about how to keep themselves healthy and about what made them sick. Once they find out the truth, they take my medicine without complaint and almost inevitably get better very rapidly. Some of these people can be quite ill when they first come to me but usually they have not been sick for very long. Their intention when coming into my office is very positive and have no counter intentions to getting better. There are no spiritual or psychological reasons that they deserve to be sick. If this person had not found me, they almost certainly would have found some other practitioner who would have made them well. This type of person honestly feels they are entitled to wellness. And they are.
    However, some of the sick are not sick for lack of life-style information; they suffer from a mental/spiritual malady as well, one that inevitably preceded their illness by many years. In fact, their physical ailments are merely reflections of underlying problems. This patient's life is usually a snarl of upsets, problems, and guilty secrets. Their key relationships are usually vicious or unhealthy. Their level of interpersonal honesty may be poor. There are usually many things about their lives they do not confront and so, can not change. With this type of case, all the physical healing in the world will not make them permanently better because the mental and emotional stresses they live under serve as a constant source of enervation.
    Cases like this usually do not have only one thing wrong with them. They almost always have been sick for a long time; most have been what I call "doctor hoppers," confused by contrary diagnoses and conflicting MD opinions. When I get a case like this I know from the first that healing is going to be a long process, and a dubious one at that. On the physical level, their body will only repair one aspect of their multiple illnesses at a time. Simultaneously, they must be urged to confront their life on a gentle gradient. There is usually a lot of backsliding and rollercoastering. The detoxification process, physical and psychological, can take several years and must happen on all the levels of their life. This kind of case sees only gradual improvement interspersed with periods of worsening that indicate there remains yet another level of mental unawareness that has to be unraveled.
    Few medical doctors or holistic therapists really understand or can help this kind of case. To do so, the doctor has to be in touch with their own reactive mind and their own negative, evil impulses (which virtually all humans have). Few people, including therapists, are willing to be aware of their own dark side. But when we deny it in ourselves, we must pretend it doesn't exist in others, and become its victim instead of conquering it. Anyone who denies that they have or are influenced by their own darker aspects who seem to be totally sweet and light, is lying; proof of this is that they still are here on Earth.
    All this generalizing about diagnostic methods and clinical approaches could go on for chapters and more chapters, and writing them would be fine if I were teaching a group of health clinicians that were reading this book to become better practitioners. But I'm sure most of my readers are far more interested in some complaint of their own or in the health problem of a loved one, and are intensely interested in one might go about handling various conditions and complaints, what types of organ weaknesses are typically associated with them, and what approaches I usually recommend to encourage healing. And, most importantly, what kind of success or lack of it have I had over the past twenty five years, encouraging the healing of various conditions with hygienic methods.
    In the case studies that follow I will mostly report the simpler, easier-to-fix problems because that is what most people have; still, many of these involve life-threatening or quality-of-life-destroying illnesses. I will tell the success story of one very complicated, long-suffering case that involved multiple levels of psychological and spiritual handling as well as considerable physical healing.

Arthritis
    Some years back my 70 years old mother came from the family homestead in the wilds of northern British Columbia to visit me at the Great Oaks School. She had gotten into pathetic physical condition. Fifteen years previously she had remarried. Tom, her new husband, had been a gold prospector and general mountain man, a wonderfully independent and cantankerous cuss, a great hunter and wood chopper and all around good-natured backwoods homestead handyman. Tom had tired of solitary log cabin life and to solve his problem had taken on the care and feeding of a needy widow, my mom. He began doing the cooking and menu planning. Tom, a little older than my mother, had no sense about eating but could still shoot game. Ever since their marriage she had been living on moose meat stews with potatoes and gravy, white flour bread with jam, black tea with canned milk, a ritual glass of brandy at bedtime, and almost no fresh fruit or vegetables.
    In her youth, my mother had been a concert pianist; now she had such large arthritic knobs on all of her knuckles that her hands had become claws. Though there was still that very same fine upright in the cabin that I had learned to play as a child, she had long since given up the piano. Her knees also had large arthritic knobs; this proud woman with a straight back and long, flowing strides was bent over, limping along with a cane. She was also 30 pounds overweight and her blood pressure was a very dangerous 210 over 140, just asking for a stroke.
    Instead of a welcoming feast, the usual greeting offered to a loved one who has not been seen for a few years, I immediately started her on a juice fast. I gave her freshly prepared carrot juice (one quart daily) mixed with wheat grass juice (three ounces daily) plus daily colonics. She had no previous experience with these techniques but she gamely accepted everything I threw her way because she knew I was doing it because I loved her and wanted to see her in better condition. She also received a daily full body massage with particular attention to the hand and knees, stimulating the circulation to the area and speeding the removal of wastes. Every night her hands and knees were wrapped in warm castor oil compresses held in place with old sheeting.
    I did not use any vitamins or food supplements in her case. I did give her flavorful herbal teas made of peppermint and chamomile because she needed the comfort of a hot cupa; but these teas were in no way medicinal except for her morale.
    In three weeks on this program, Grannybelle, as I and my daughters called her, had no unsightly knobs remaining on either her knuckles or knees and she could walk and move her fingers without pain within a normal range of movement. The big payoff for me besides seeing her look so wonderful (20 years younger and 20 pounds lighter) was to hear her sit down and treat us to a Beethoven recital. And her blood pressure was 130 over 90.

Breast Cancer
    I have worked with many young women with breast cancer; so many in fact, that their faces and cases tend to blur. But whenever I think about them, Kelly inevitably comes to mind because we became such good friends. Like me, Kelly was an independent-minded back country Canuck. At the age 26, she received a medical diagnosis of breast cancer. Kelly had already permitted a lumpectomy and biopsy, but had studied the statistical outcomes and did not want to treat her illness with radical mastectomy, radiation and chemotherapy because she knew her odds of long-term survival without radical medical treatment were equal to or better than allowing the doctors to do everything possible. Nor did she want to lose even one of her breasts. She knew how useful her breasts were because she had already suckled one child, not to mention their contribution to one's own self-image as a whole person. I admired Kelly's unusual independent-mindedness because she comes from a country where universal health coverage is in place; her insurance would have paid all the costs had she been willing to accept conventional medicine, but Canadian national health insurance does not cover alternative therapy.
    Kelly stayed with me for nearly two months as a residential faster, because she needed to be far from the distractions of a troubled family life. With financial support from her parents and child-care from her friends she was able to take time out to give the recovery of health top priority in her life without worrying about whether her small son was being well cared for. This peace of mind was also very important to her recovery.
    Analysis with biokinesiology showed a pervasively weak immune system, including a weak thymus gland, spleen, and an overloaded lymphatic system. Her liver was weak, but not as weak as it might have been, because she had become a vegetarian, and had been working on her health in a haphazard fashion for a few years. Kelly's body also showed weaknesses in pancreatic and adrenal function as well as a toxic colon. Most immediately worrisome to her, biokinesiology testing showed several over-strong testing lumpy areas in the breasts and over-strong testing lumpy lymph nodes in the armpits. Cancerous tumors always test overly strong
    Kelly's earlier life-style had contributed to her condition in several ways. She had worked for years in a forestry tree nursery handling seedling trees treated with highly toxic chemicals. She had worked as a cook in a logging camp for several seasons, eating too much meat and greasy food. And she had also spent the usual number of adolescent and young adult years deeply involved in recreational drug use and the bad diet that went with it.
    Kelly started right in on a rigorous water fast that lasted for one entire month. She had a colonic every day, plus body work including reflexology, holding and massage of neurolymphatic and neurovascular points, and stimulation of acupuncture points related to weak organ systems and general massage to stimulate overall circulation and lymphatic drainage. She took protomorphogens to help rebuild her weakened organs; she took ten grams of vitamin C every day and a half-dose of life extension vitamin mix in assimilable powdered form; she drank herbal teas of echinacea and fenugreek seeds and several ounces of freshly squeezed wheat grass juice every day. Twice each day she made poultices out of clay and the pulp left over from making her wheat grass juice, filled an old bra with this mixture and pressed it to her breast for several hours until the clay dried. Shortly, I will explain all the measures in some detail.
    These physical therapies were accompanied by counseling sessions dealing with some severe and long-unresolved problems, response patterns and relationships that triggered her present illness. Her son's father (Kelly's ex) was suppressive and highly intimidating. Fearful of him, Kelly seemed unable to successfully extricate herself from the relationship due to the ongoing contact which revolved over visitation and care of their son. But Kelly had grit! While fasting, she confronted these tough issues in her life and unflinchingly made the necessary decisions. When she returned to Canada she absolutely decided, without any nagging doubts, reservations or qualifications, to make any changes necessary to ensure her survival. Only after having made these hard choices could she heal.
    I one respect, Kelly was a highly unusual faster. Throughout the entire month on water, Kelly took daily long walks, frequently stopping to lie down and rest in the sun on the way. She would climb to or from the top of a very large and steep hill nearby. She never missed a day, rain or shine.
    At the end of her month on water Kelly's remaining breast lumps had disappeared, the lymphatic system and immune system tested strong, as well as the liver, pancreas, adrenals, and large intestine. No areas tested overly strong.
    She broke the fast with the same discipline she had conducted it, on carrot juice, a cup every two hours. After three days on juice she began a raw food diet with small servings of greens and sprouts well chewed, interspersed at two hour intervals with fresh juicy fruits. After about ten days on "rabbit food," she eased into avocados, cooked vegetables, nuts, seeds, and whole grains and then went home.
    As I write this, it is eight years since Kelly's long fast. She still comes to see me every few years to check out her diet and just say hello. She has had two more children by a new, and thoroughly wonderful husband and suckled them both for two years each; her peaceful rural life centers around this new, happy family and the big, Organic garden she grows. She religiously takes her life extension vitamins and keeps her dietary and life-style indiscretions small and infrequent. She is probably going to live a long, time.
    I consider Kelly's cluster of organ weaknesses very typical of all cancers regardless of type or location, as well as being typical of AIDS and other critical infections by organisms that usually reside in the human body without causing trouble (called "opportunistic"). All these diseases are varieties of immune system failure. All of these conditions present a similar pattern of immune system weaknesses. They all center around what I call the "deadly triangle," comprised of a weak thymus gland, weak spleen, and a weak liver. The thymus and spleen form the core of the body's immune system. The weak liver contributes to a highly toxic system that further weakens the immune system. To top it off, people with cancer invariably have a poor ability to digest cooked protein (animal or vegetable) (usually from a weak pancreas unable to make enough digestive enzymes) and eat too much of it, giving them a very toxic colon, and an overloaded lymphatic system.
    Whenever I analyze someone with this pattern, especially the entire deadly triangle, I let the person know that if I had those particular weaknesses I would consider my survival to be at immediate risk I'd consider it an emergency situation demanding vigorous attention. It does not matter if they don't yet have a tumor, or fibroid, or opportunistic infection; if they don't already have something of that nature they soon will.
    Here's yet another example of why I disapprove of diagnosis. By giving the condition a name like "lymphoma" or "melanoma", "chronic fatigue syndrome" "Epstein-Barr syndrome" or "AIDS," "systemic yeast infection", "hepatitis" or what have, people think the doctor then understands their disease. But the doctor rarely understands that all these seemingly different diseases are essentially the same disease–a toxic body with a dysfunctional immune system. What is relevant is that a person with the deadly triangle must strengthen their immune system, and their pancreas, and their liver, and detoxify their body immediately. If these repairs are accomplished in time, the condition goes away, whatever its Latin name may have been.
    Now, about some of the adjuncts to Kelly's healing. Let me stress here that had none of these substances or practices been used, she probably still would have recovered. Perhaps a bit more slowly. Perhaps a bit less comfortably. Conversely, had Kelly treated her cancer with every herb, poultice and vitamin known to man but had neglected fasting and colonics, she might well have died. It has been wisely said that intelligence may be defined as the ability to correctly determine differences, similarities, and importances. I want my readers to be intelligent about understanding the relative importances of different hygienic treatment and useful supporting practices.
    Echinacea and chaparral leaves, red clover flowers, and fenugreek seeds are made into medicinal teas that I find very helpful in detoxification programs, because they all are aggressive blood or lymph cleansers and boost the immune response. These same teas can be used to help the body throw off a cold, flu, or other acute illness but they have a much more powerful effect on a fasting body than on one that is eating. Echinacea and chaparral are extraordinarily bitter and may be better accepted if ground up and encapsulated, or mixed with other teas with pleasant flavors such as peppermint or lemon grass. These teas should be simmered until they are at the strongest concentration palatable, drinking three or four cups of this concentrate a day. If you use echinacea, then chaparral probably isn't necessary and visa versa. Red clover is another blood cleanser, perhaps a little less effective but it has a pleasant, sweet taste and may be better accepted by the squeamish.
    If there is lymphatic congestion I always include fenugreek seed tea brewed at the strength of approximately one tablespoon of seeds to a quart of water. Expect the tea to be brown, thick and mucilaginous, with a reasonably pleasant taste reminiscent of maple syrup.
    Kelly used poultices of clay and wheat grass pulp on her lumps, somewhat like the warm castor oil poultices I used on my mother's arthritic deposits. Poultices not only feel very comforting, but they have the effect of softening up deposits and tumors so that a detoxifying, fasting body is more able to re absorb them. Poultices draw, pulling toxins out through the skin, unburdening the liver. Clay (freshly-mixed potters clay I purchase from a potters' guild), mixed with finely chopped or blended young wheat grass (in emergencies I've even used lawn grasses) makes excellent drawing poultices. Without clay, I've also used vegetable poultices made of chopped or blended comfrey leaves, comfrey root, slightly cooked (barely wilted) cabbage leaves, slightly steamed onion or garlic (cooked just enough to soften it). These are very effective to soften tumors, abscesses and ulcers. Aloe poultices are good on burns. Poultices should be thought of as helpful adjuncts to other, more powerful healing techniques and not as remedies all by themselves, except for minor skin problems.
    Poultices, to be effective, need to be troweled on half an inch thick, extending far beyond the effected area, covered with cheese cloth or rags torn from old cotton sheets so they don't dry out too fast. Fresh poultices needs to be applied several times daily. They also need to be left on the body until they do dry. Then poultices are thrown away, to be followed by another as often as patience will allow. Do not cover poultices tightly with plastic because if they don't dry out they won't draw much. The drawing is in the drying.
    Sometimes poultices cause a tumor or deposit to be expelled through the skin rather than being adsorbed, all with rather spectacular pus and gore. This phenomena is actually beneficial and should be welcomed because anytime the body can push toxins out through the skin, the burden on the organs of elimination are lessened.
    Wheat grass juice has a powerful anti-tumor effect, is very perishable, is laborious to make, but is worth the effort because it contains powerful enzymes and nutrients that help detoxify and heal when taken internally or applied to the skin. As a last resort with dying patients who can no longer digest anything taken by mouth I've implanted wheat grass juice rectally (in a cleansed colon). Some of them haven't died. You probably can't buy wheat grass juice that retains much medicinal effect because it needs to be very fresh and should be drunk within minutes of squeezing. Chilled sharply and immediately after squeezing it might maintain some potency for an hour or two. Extracting juice from grass takes a special press that resembles a meat grinder.
    The wheat is grown in transplant or seedling trays in bright light. I know someone who uses old plastic cafeteria trays for this. The seed is soaked overnight, spread densely atop a tray, covered shallowly with fine soil, kept moist but not soggy. When the grass is about four inches high, begin harvesting by cutting off the leaves with a scissors and juicing them. If the tray contains several inches of soil you usually get a second cutting of leaves. You need to start a new tray every few days; one tray can be cut for three or four days. (Kulvinskas, 1975)
    More wheat grass juice is not better than just enough; three ounces a day is plenty! It is a very powerful substance! The flavor of wheat grass juice is so intense that some people have to mix it with carrot juice to get it down. DO NOT OVERUSE. The energizing effects of wheat grass can be so powerful that some people make a regular practice of drinking it. However, I've seen many people who use wheat grass juice as a tonic become allergic to it much as antibiotic dependent people do to antibiotics. Better to save wheat grass for emergencies.
    I also have treated my own breast cancers–twice. The first time I was only 23 years old. One night I noticed that it hurt to sleep the way I usually did on my left side because there was a hard lump in my left breast. It was quite large–about the size of a goose egg. Having just completed RN training two years prior, I had been well brain washed about my poor prognosis and knew exactly what requisite actions must taken.
    I scheduled a biopsy under anesthetic, so that if the tumor was malignant they could proceed to full mastectomy without delay. I was ignorant of any alternative course of action at the time.
    I might add that before I grew my first tumor I had been consuming large amounts of red meat in a mistaken understanding gained in nursing school that a good diet contained large amounts of animal protein. In addition to the stress of being a full time psychology graduate student existing on a very low budget, I was experiencing I very frustrating relationship with a young man that left me constantly off center and confused.
    A biopsy was promptly performed. The university hospital's SOP required that three pathologists make an independent decision about the nature of a tumor before proceeding with radical surgery. Two of the pathologist agreed that my tumor was malignant, which represented the required majority vote. But the surgeon removed only the lump, which he said was well encapsulated and for some reason did not proceed with a radical mastectomy. These days many surgeons routinely limit themselves to lumpectomies.
    I never did find out why I awakened from general anesthetic with two breasts, but I have since supposed that due to my tender age the surgeon was reluctant to disfigure me without at least asking me for permission, or giving me some time to prepare psychologically. When I came out of anesthesia he told me that the lump was malignant, and that he had removed it, and that he needed to do a radical mastectomy to improve my prognosis over the next few years. He asked me to think it over, but he signed me up on his surgery list for the following Monday.
    I did think it over and found I was profoundly annoyed at the idea of being treated like I was just a statistic, so I decided that I would be unique. I made a firm decision that I would be well and stay well–and I was for the next fifteen years. The decision healed me.
    When I was 37 I had a recurrence. At the time I had in residence Ethyl and Marge, the two far-gone breast cancer cases I already told you about. I also had in residence a young woman with a breast tumor who had not undergone any medical treatment, not even a lumpectomy. (I will relate her case in detail shortly.) I was too identified emotionally with helping these three, overly-empathetic due to my own history. I found myself taking on their symptoms and their pain. I went so far into sympathy as to grow back my tumor–just as it had the first time–a lump mushroomed from nothing to the size of a goose egg in only three weeks in exactly the same place as the first one. Just out of curiosity I went in for a needle biopsy. Once again it was judged to be malignant, and I got the same pressure from the surgeon for immediate surgery. This time, however, I had an alternative system of healing that I believed in. So I went home, continued to care for my very sick residents, and began to work on myself.
    The first thing I had to confront about myself was that I was being a compassionate fool. I needed to learn how to maintain my own personal boundaries, and clearly delineate what stuff in my mind and my body was really mine and what was another's. I needed to apply certain mental techniques of self-protection known to and practiced by many healers. I knew beyond doubt that I had developed sympathetic breast cancer because a similar phenomena had happened to me before. Once, when I had previously been working on a person with very severe back pain with hands-on techniques, I suddenly had the pain, and the client was totally free of it. So I protected myself when working with sick people. I would wash my hands and arms thoroughly with cold water, or with water and vinegar after contact. I would shake off their "energy," have a cold shower, walk bare foot on the grass, and visualize myself well with intact boundaries. These prophylaxes had been working for me, but I was particularly vulnerable to people with breast cancer.
    I also began detoxification dieting, took more supplements, and used acupressure and reflexology as my main lines of attack. My healing diet consisted of raw food exclusively. I allowed myself fruits (not sweet fruits) and vegetables (including a lot of raw cabbage because vegetables in the cabbage family such as cauliflower and broccoli are known to have a healing effect on cancer), raw almonds, raw apricot kernels, and some sprouted grains and legumes. I drank diluted carrot juice, and a chlorophyll drink made up of wheat grass and barley green and aloe vera juice. I took echinaechia, red clover, and fenugreek seeds. I worked all the acupuncture points on my body that strengthen the immune system, including the thymus gland, lymph nodes, and spleen. I also worked the meridians, and reflex points for the liver, and large intestine. I massaged the breast along the natural lines of lymphatic drainage from the area.
    Last, and of great importance, I knew that the treatment would work, and that the tumor would quickly disappear. It did vanish totally in three months. It would have gone away quicker if I had water fasted, but I was unable to do this because I needed physical strength to care for my resident patients and family.
    Eighteen years have passed since that episode, and I have had no further reappearance of breast tumors. At age 55 I still have all my body parts, and have had no surgery except the original lumpectomy. Many, viewing my muscles and athletic performance, would say my health is exceptional but I know my own frailties and make sure I do not aggravate them. I still have exactly the same organ deficiencies as other cancer patients and must keep a very short leash on my lifestyle.
    If for some reason I wanted to make my life very short, all I would have to do would be to abandon my diet, stop taking supplements, eat red meat and ice cream every day and be unhappy about something. Incidentally, I have had many residential clients with breast cancer since then, and have not taken on their symptoms, so I can assume that I have safely passed that hurdle.
    I've helped dozens of cases of simple breast cancer where my treatment began before the cancer broadly spread. Kelly's case was not the easiest of this group, nor the hardest. Sometimes there was lymphatic involvement that the medical doctors had not yet treated in any way. All but one of my early-onset breast cancer cases recovered. I believe those are far better results than achieved by AMA treatment.
    Before I crow too much, let me stress that every one of these women was a good candidate for recovery–under 40 years old, ambulatory and did not feel very sick. And most importantly, every one of them had received no other debilitating medical treatment except a needle biopsy or simple lumpectomy. None of these women had old tumors (known about for more than six months) and none of the tumors were enormous (nothing larger than a walnut).
    Clearly, this group is not representative of the average breast cancer case. Hygienic therapy for cancer is a radical idea these days and tends to attract younger people, or older, desperate people who have already been through the works. In every one of my simple cases the tumors were reabsorbed by the body during the thirty days of water fasting and the client left happy.
    Except one. I think I should describe this unsuccessful case, this "dirty case," so my readers get a more balanced idea of how fearsome cancer really isn't if the sick person can clearly resolve to get better and has no problem about achieving wellness.
    Marie was an artisan and musician from Seattle who grew up back East in an upper-middle class dysfunctional family. She was in her late twenties. She had been sexually abused by an older brother, was highly reactive, and had never been able to communicate honestly with anyone except her lesbian lover (maybe, about some things).
    Three years prior to coming to see me Marie had been medically diagnosed as having breast cancer and had been advised to have immediate surgery. She ignored this advice; Marie never told her friends, said nothing to her family and tried to conceal it from her lover because she did not want to disrupt their life together.
    On her own, she did begin eating a Macrobiotic diet. In spite of this diet, the tumor grew, but grew very slowly. After two years the tumor was discovered by her lover, who after a year of exhausting and upsetting arguments, forced Marie to seek treatment. Since Marie adamantly refused to go the conventional medical route, she ended up on my doorstep as a compromise.
    By this time the tumor was the size of a fist and had broken through the skin of the left breast. It was very ugly, very hard. Biokinesiology showed the usual deadly triangle and other associated organ weakneses typical of cancer. Marie began fasting on water with colonics and poultices and bodywork and counseling and supplements. At the end of the water fast, Marie looked much healthier, with clear eyes and clear skin and had a sort of shine about her, but the tumor had only receded enough for the skin to close over it; it was still large, and very hard. To fully heal, Marie probably needed at least two more water fasts of equal length interspersed with a few months on a raw food diet. But she lacked the personal toughness to confront another fast in the near future. Nor was she emotionally up to what she regarded as the deprivation of a long-term raw foods healing diet.
    So I advised her to seek other treatment. Still unwilling to accept standard medical management of her case, Marie chose to go to the Philippines to have "psychic surgery." She was excited and optimistic about this; I was interested myself because I was dubious about this magical procedure; if Marie went I would have a chance to see the results (if any) on a person I was very familiar with. Marie had her tickets and was due to leave in days when her lover, against Marie's directly-stated wishes, called her parents and informed them of what was happening.
    The parents had known nothing of Marie's cancer and were shocked, upset, outraged! They had not known Marie was a lesbian, much less that their daughter was flirting with (from their view) obvious quackery. Their daughter needed immediate saving and her parents and brother (the one who had abused her) flew to Oregon and surprisingly appeared the next day in a state of violent rage. They threatened lawsuits, police, incarceration, they threatened to have their daughter civilly committed as unable to take care of herself. They thought everything Marie had done for the last three years was my fault. I was lucky to stay out of jail. Of course, all of this was why Marie had not told them in the first place; she had wanted to avoid this kind of a scene.
    Marie did not have enough personal integrity to withstand the domination of her immediate family. They put her in a hospital, where Marie had a radical mastectomy, chemotherapy and radiation. Assured that they had done everything that should have been done, the self-righteous parents went back home. Marie never recovered from chemotherapy and radiation. She died in the hospital surrounded by her lesbian friends who took dedicated, ever-so-sympathetic turns maintaining an emotional round-the-clock vigil.
    Marie's death was partly my fault. She was an early case of mine. At the time I did not yet understand the total effect of lack of ethics and irresponsibility on illness. Had Marie really wanted to live in the first place, she would have sought treatment three years earlier. In our counseling sessions she always evaded this question and I had not been wise enough to pin her down with my knee on her chest and make her answer up. Marie had too many secrets from everybody and was never fully honest in any of her relationships, including with me. I think she only came to Great Oaks at her lover's insistence and to the day she died was trying to pretend that nothing was wrong.
    All Marie really wanted from her life was to be loved and have a lot of loving attention. In the end, her dramatic death scene gave her that, which is probably why she manifested cancer and kept it and eventually, died from it.
    The name for this game is "secondary gain." A lot of sick people are playing it. Their illness lets them win their deepest desire; they get love, attention, revenge, sympathy, complete service, pampering, create guilt in others. When sick people receive too much secondary gain they never get well.
    One of the hardest things about being a healer is that one accumulates an ever-enlarging series of dirty, failed cases like this one. It is depressing and makes a person want to quit doctoring. Whenever I get involved with a case I really want them to get better. My life is put entirely out of joint for several months dealing with a residential faster. My schedule is disrupted; my family life suffers; my personal health suffers. No amount of mere money could pay for this. And then some of these people go and waste all my help to accomplish some discreditable secret agenda that they have never really admitted to themselves or others.

Constant Complaints
    Alice was a middle-aged woman who couldn't understand why she had always felt tired, even when she was young. Her life had been this way ever since she could remember. Most puzzling to her was why her life was so Job-like. She did everything the proper way. Doing things correctly was important to her, and fitted her Puritan background. Alice supported all the right causes, did good works, was active in a Unitarian church and bought all her food at the healthfood store–and made sure it was organically grown.
    But in spite of Alice's righteous living, her existence was a treadmill of constant, minor complaints. She was constantly exhausted, so much so she had difficulty getting up in the morning and feared she might have chronic fatigue syndrome (whatever that is). Alice suffered bouts of depression over thoughts like these, and had many acute illnesses like colds that hung on interminably and would not go away. She had a constant post-nasal drip. Though she enjoyed life, her body was a millstone around her neck.
    I've had a lot of clients exactly like Alice. Sometimes they complain of headaches; sometimes constant yeast or bladder infections. Whatever the complaints, the symptoms are rarely severe enough to classify themselves as someone who is seriously ill, but their symptoms rarely go away and they almost never feel good. Medical doctors rarely find anything wrong with them, though they will frequently prescribe an antibiotic to treat a somewhat constant infection, or an antihistamine for sinus symptoms. Getting a new prescription drug makes the complaint go away for a short time until their resistance is lowered again and the very same complaint returns. These people frequently depend on over the counter pills and are routinely prescribed sleeping remedies and antidepressants. If instead of this route they will but take my medicine they are usually easy to fix and afterwards are amazed that it was all that simple and that so much of their life has been less than it could have been.
    Alice had been through the medical doctor route. She had become quite familiar with antibiotics for her colds and flu, and also took synthetic thyroid hormone–the doctor had diagnosed her fatigue as being caused by an underactive thyroid, which was partly correct–but the thyroid medication didn't give her much more energy. Alice had been supporting this medical doctor in grand style for over thirty years but never obtained the relief she sought.
    I put Alice through my usual two hour first-time-visit thorough analysis. For two weeks before coming to see me she had saved tiny samples of everything she ate, wrapped them in plastic film, carefully labeled, and put them in the freezer. Along with these food samples and a typed list of all these foods, she brought a big box full of her condiments, herb teas, vitamins, spices, prescription medications, over the counter drugs, oils, grains, breads, crackers and small samples of her usual fresh vegetables and fruits. Even her water. Her entire kitchen! By biokinesiology we proceeded to test all of her foods for allergic reactions. I also tested the integrity of her organs and glands and in the process, got a detailed medical history and list of her complaints.
    Alice had exhausted adrenals, and they probably had been that way for thirty years. Her pancreas was now too weak to digest the legumes that made up a large part of her vegetarian diet. She was allergic to wheat, soy, and dairy products and had especially been eating dairy in the mistaken notion that it was necessary to keep up her protein intake. Really very typical. So many health food store shoppers these days mistakenly believe that, because they are vegetarian and do not eat meat, they especially need to boost their protein intake with dairy and soy. Unfortunately, so many North Americans are highly allergic to dairy and unfortunately, soy products are as hard or harder to digest than cooked meats.
    Alice was especially shocked to discover that she was allergic to such foods as cabbage family vegetables, alfalfa sprouts and citrus. Most people don't think that anyone could be allergic to something as healthy as alfalfa sprouts. The doctor was right about one thing; her thyroid was underperforming. He had not noticed that her heart was weak.
    Medical doctors rarely discover an organ weakness until that organ actually begins to catastrophically fail. A busy honest doctor will usually tell the complaining patient there is nothing wrong with them: go home, take two aspirin, accept the fact that your body is not perfect and don't worry about it. A hungry doctor will be delighted to perform countless lab tests, seeking any possible reason for the complaint. This can go on as long as the patient has money or as long as the insurance company will pay. They rarely find anything "wrong" and the patient is far better off if the doctor doesn't discover something "serious" to treat because their treatment may carry with it consequences far more severe than the complaint. For example, I have seen dozens of people whose lives were virtually ruined after surgical treatment for chronic back pain.
    Biokinesiology is actually a far more sensitive system of analysis than lab tests. It picks up weaknesses at a very early stage so total organ failure can be prevented. Rarely will any of the organ weaknesses I discover be confirmed by a medical doctor. First I put Alice on a six week cleanse. She did one week on fresh, raw food; one week on dilute carrot juice with some green leafy vegetables juice too; one week on water fasting; and then she repeated the series. After six weeks of detoxification, I gave Alice a life extension megavitamin formula, discovered she could not handle the acid form of vitamin C (that she had already been taking) and had her start on protomorphogens to rebuild her weakened endocrine system, her exhausted adrenals and weak pancreas. She also began taking pancreatic enzymes when she ate vegetable protein. She was put on a maintenance diet that eliminated foods she was allergic to; the diet primarily consisted of whole grains, nuts, cooked and raw vegetables, and raw fruits. On her maintenance diet Alice had a profound resurgence of energy and rediscovered a sense of well-being she had not known for decades. She began to feel like she had when she was a child. Her constant sinus drip was gone. She was able to stop taking synthetic thyroid hormones and instead, supported her endocrine system with protomorphogens.

A Rampaging Infection
    At the age of 40, John, an old bohemian client of mine, came into a moderate inheritance and went "native" in the Fiji Islands in the South Pacific. He spent about four months hanging out with the locals. Life there was so much fun that John completely forgot that his body was actually rather delicate, that many of his organs were weak, and that to feel good, he had to live a fairly simon-pure life.
    But the jovial, accepting, devil-may-care Fijians enjoyed a constant party, even more so because John's money allowed the Fijians to manifest powerful, tropical, home-grown strains of recreational herbs to smoke in abundance, beer and rum and worse, the Fijians (and John) constantly used a very toxic though only mildly-euphoric narcotic called kava, something Europeans usually have no genetic resistance to. The Fijians (and John) also ate a lot of freshly-caught fish fried in grease, well-salted, and huge, brain-numbing bowls of greasy starches, foods that they call i'coi, or "real food" as opposed to things like fruit and vegetables that aren't real food because they don't knock you to the floor for hours trying to digest them in a somnambulant doze.
    John miraculously kept up with this party for a few months and then, while scuba diving, got some small coral scratches on his leg. These got infected. The infections got worse. Soon he had several huge, suppurating, ulcerous sores on his legs and worse, the infections became systemic and began spreading rapidly. He was running a fever and was in considerable pain. So John booked an emergency ticket home and fled to find Doctor Isabelle. When I met his plane he was rolled out in a wheelchair, unable to walk because of pain and swelling in his legs.
    John was violently opposed to ordinary medical treatment; he especially would not have taken antibiotics even if he had died without them because previous courses of antibiotics had been the precipitant of life-threatening conditions that first brought John to my care. John used his last strength to get to me because he knew that had a hospital gotten its clutches on him the medical doctors would have done exactly as they pleased.
    I gave John a colonic, a gentle, mental spanking, and put him to bed without any supper. He started water fasting and did colonics every day. He began gobbling vitamin C (as calcium ascorbate) a few grams every hour. I put huge poultices on his sores made of clay and chopped lawn grass (we needed a week or so before a tray of wheat grass would be ready). John's sores were amazing. Every day a new one seemed to appear on a different part of the body. The old ones kept getting bigger and deeper. The largest original ones were about three inches in diameter, smelled horribly and had almost eaten the flesh down to the bone. His pain was severe; there was no position John could assume that didn't irritate one sore or another, and it was a good thing my house was remote because John frequently relieved his pain by screaming. John was never delirious, but he was always original. He did not have to scream, but enjoyed its relief and howled quite dramatically. I wore earplugs.
    After about two weeks of water fasting, John counted up the total of his sores. There were forty three. Seven or eight of them were enormous, two or three inches in diameter and well into the flesh, but the last ones to appear were shallow, small and stayed small. After that point no more new ones showed up and the body began to make visible headway against the infection. Very slowly and then more and more rapidly, the sores began to close up and heal from the edges. John's fever began to drop. And he had less pain. I should mention that John brought an extremely virulent and aggressive pathogenic organism into our house to which we Americans had no resistance. Both my husband and I were attacked where the skin had been broken. However, unlike John, in our cases, our healthy bodies immediately walled-off the organism and the small, reddened pustules, though painful, did not grow and within a week, had been conquered by our immune systems. And after that we had an immunity.
    After about three weeks of his fasting we were thoroughly tired of hearing John's cathartic howls, tired of nursing a sick person. We needed a break. John at this point could walk a bit and was feeling a lot better. John had previously water fasted for 30 days and knew the drill very well. So we stocked up the vitamin C bottle by his bed and went to town for the weekend to stay in a motel and see a movie. As they say in the Canadian backwoods, we were bushed.
    John had promised to be good. But as soon as we left he decided that since he felt so very much better, he could break his fast. He knew how to do this and fortunately for him, (it was very much premature for John to eat) did it more or less correctly, only eating small quantities of raw fruits and vegetables. But by the time we got back home three days later, John had relapsed. The pain was rapidly getting much worse; the sores were growing again and a few small new ones appeared. Dr. Isabelle again took away his food and gave him another verbal spanking a little more severe than the one he'd had a few weeks earlier and put him to bed again without his supper.
    After two more weeks on water, John had gained a great deal on the sores. They were filling in and weren't oozing pus, looked clean and the new forming meat looked a healthy pink instead of purple-black. But John had been very slender to start with and by now he was getting near the end of his food reserves. He probably couldn't have fasted on water for more than one more week without starvation beginning. But this time, when he broke his fast, it was under close supervision. I gave him dilute juice only, introduced other sustenance very cautiously and made absolutely sure that reintroducing nourishment would not permit the organism to gain. This time it didn't. John's own immune system, beefed up by fasting, had conquered a virulent organism that could have easily killed him.
    Before the era of antibiotics, before immunizations to the common childhood illnesses, people frequently died of infections as virulent as the one that attacked John. They usually died because they "ate to keep up their strength." Most of these deaths were unnecessary, caused by ignorance and poor nursing care. For example, standard medical treatment for typhoid fever used to consist of spoon-fed milk–sure to kill all but the strongest constitution. Even without the assistance of massive doses of vitamin C, if people would but fast away infections they could cure themselves of almost all of them with little danger, without the side effects of antibiotics or creating mutated antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria.
    Dr. John Tilden, a hygienist who practiced in the '20s, before the era of antibiotics, routinely fasted patients with infectious illnesses. Supporting the sick body with wise nursing, he routinely healed scarlet fever, whopping cough, typhoid, typhus, pneumonia, peritonitis, Rocky Mountain fever, tuberculosis, gonorrhea, syphilis, cholera, and rheumatic fever. The one common infection he could not cure was diphtheria involving the throat. (Tilden, Impaired Health, Vol. II).
    Recently, medical gerontologists have discovered another reason that fasting heals infections. One body function that deteriorates during the aging process is the production of growth hormone so the effects of growth hormone have been studied. This hormone also stimulates the body to heal wounds and burns, repair broken bones, generally replace any tissues that have been destroyed and, growth hormone stimulates the immune response. Growth hormone also maintains muscle tone and its presence generally slows the aging process.
    Growth hormone might make a wonderful life-extension supplement; on it a middle-aged person might readily maintain the muscle tone of youth while slowing aging in general. Unfortunately, growth hormone cannot at this time be inexpensively synthesized and is still far too costly to be used therapeutically except to prevent dwarfism. However, any technique that encourages a body to produce more of this hormone would be of great interest to life extensionists.
    The body only produces growth hormone at certain times and only when certain nutrients are present in the blood. Gerontologists call these nutrients "precursors." The precursors are two essential amino acids, argenine and ornithine and certain vitamins such as C and B 6. But having the precursors present is not enough. Growth hormone is only manufactured under certain, specific circumstances: for about one hour immediately after going to sleep and then only if the blood supply is rich with argenine and ornithine but contains few other amino acids; it is also manufactured during heavy aerobic exercise that goes on for more than thirty minutes; and growth hormone is produced at an accelerated rate when fasting. (Pearson and Shaw, 1983). I did not know this when I was fasting John, but now, I would give argenine and ornithine to someone with a serious infection as well as massive quantities of vitamin C.

Chronic Back Pain
    Barry was a carpenter who couldn't afford to lose work because he was unable to bend or twist or lift. He frequently had bouts of severe back pain that made working almost impossible. Upon analysis by biokinesiology I found that he had a major problem with large intestine weakness and secondarily, adrenal weakness.
    Constipation frequently causes back pain. The muscles of the back have nerve pathway connections to the large intestines; weakness in the intestine causes weakness of the back and makes it prone to injury. But the problem is the intestine, not the back. And the only way to make the back stay better is to heal the intestine. Many athletes have very similar problems. For example, they get knee injuries and think there is something wrong with their knee. Or they get shoulder injuries and think their shoulder is weak. These people are only half right. Yes, their knee or their shoulder is weak. But it could become strong and almost uninjurable if the underlying cause of the weakness is corrected.
    The knee for example, has nerve pathway connections to the adrenal glands and kidneys. The shoulder has similar connections to the thyroid. The foot is weakened by the bladder. The treatment should first be on the weakened gland or organ and secondarily, on the damaged muscle tissue. I have solved numerous sports-related knee problems with protomorphogens for the adrenals and elimination of food allergies that make the adrenals work overtime. I have fixed bad shoulders by rebuilding the thyroid.
    In Barry's case, it was the intestine. I asked him about his bowel function and he said that he was never constipated, had "a daily bowel movement without a lot of straining." But having given some 6,000 colonics, I knew better. There should have been no straining; Barry was trying very hard to be regular–he should not have had to effort. Fortunately, it struck him as true that he needed to detoxify and I managed to convince him to water fast. He probably figured, why not since he couldn't work anyway. Barry was a tall, skinny man to start with and you would think he hardly carried any fat at all, but he fasted on water for 30 days, receiving a colonic every day, while I did bodywork on his damaged back. He sure was constipated and couldn't deny the evidence that floated by through the sight tube of the colonic machine. By the end of the fast his colon was fairly repaired and free of old fecal material. And Barry had become a tall, gaunt-looking guy who had lost about 20 pounds you wouldn't think he had to spare.
    After a few weeks of careful weaning back on to food, Barry felt pretty good, terrific even. He had no back pain and found out for the first time what not being constipated meant. It no longer took "not very much effort" to move his bowels; they moved themselves. That was ten years ago. A few months ago, Barry looked me up, just to say thanks and to let me know that he had not had any more back problems and had generally felt good because he had more or less stayed on the improved diet I had instructed him about during his fast.

Painful Menstruation
    Elsie was twenty. She came to see me because I had helped Elsie's mother overcome breast cancer many years earlier. Elsie began to have very painful periods with profuse bleeding and abdominal pain. Her nutrition had been generally good because her mother couldn't survive on the average American diet and had long ago converted her family to vegetarianism. And like her mother, Elsie had been taking vitamins for many years.
    A medical doctor diagnosed Elsie as having endometriosis, meaning, the lining of her uterus had migrated to the fallopian tubes, where it continued to bleed regularly into the abdominal cavity, following the same hormonal cycle as the endometritial tissue that lines the uterus. The doctor offered to try hormonal manipulation and if this proved unsuccessful, offered a hysterectomy. That would certainly eliminate the symptoms!
    But Elsie did not wish to eliminate her ability to have children and preferred not to risk throwing her hormones off balance. So she came to me. My analysis showed that she had weak ovaries and weak uterus. These were secondary to a toxic colon, toxic because she had a weak gall bladder and weak pancreas that reduced her digestive capacity and turned her improperly combined Organic, vegetarian legume-rich diet into toxemia. Checking her foods for allergies I discovered the normal pattern: Elsie was intolerant to dairy, wheat, eggs, corn, soy and concentrated sugars.
    Being no stranger to fasting (her mother had fasted at length ten years previously) Elsie undertook a 30 day cleanse on vegetable juice with daily enemas, taking vitamins in powdered form. After the fast I put her on protomorphogens for her reproductive organs and pancreas. The gall bladder had healed by itself during fasting–gall bladders usually heal easily. Her maintenance diet included using pancreatic enzyme supplements when eating vegetable proteins and Elsie eliminated most fats so her gall bladder would not be stressed. The fasting also overcame her allergic reactions to corn and wheat but she was still unable to handle soy products, eggs or dairy. After six months Elsie no longer needed protomorphogens, had no abdominal pain and her periods were normal.
    You may well be wondering how or why detoxification of the bowels allowed the body to repair the uterus. The large intestine is a sort of nest that cradles the reproductive organs, including the ovaries, uterus, and in the case of the male, the prostate gland. A toxic colon is like having one rotten apple in a basket, it contaminates the whole batch. Many problems in the abdominal area are caused by a toxic colon, including chronic back pain, ovarian cysts, infertility, birth abnormalities, bladder infections and bladder cancer, painful menstruation, fibroids and other benign growths as well as malignant ones, and prostatitis or prostate cancer. Detoxing the body and cleaning out the colon should be a part of the healing of all of these conditions.

Irritable Bowels
    Some peoples' lives don't run smoothly. Jeanne's certainly didn't. She was abandoned to raise three little kids on welfare. Her college diploma turned out to be useless. Jeanne used to help me at Great Oaks in exchange for treatment. During those early years she had done a 30 day juice fast with colonics. Twenty years later at age 60, having survived three children's growing up, surviving the profound, enduring loss of one who died as an adult, after starting up and running a small business that for many years barely paid its way, and experiencing an uninsured fire that took her house, she began to develop abdominal pains the doctors named "irritable bowel syndrome" or "colitis." The MD offered antibiotics and antispasmodics but Jeanne had no insurance, the remedies were unaffordable. She also retained considerable affinity for natural medicine.
    Prior to these symptoms her diet had been vegetarian, and had included large quantities of raw fruits and vegetables and whole grains. But the bran in bread was irritating to her bowels, she could no longer digest raw vegetables or most raw fruit.
    Jeanne's vital force was low; her healing took time. She started on a long fast supported by powdered vitamins, vegetable broth and herb teas, but after three weeks was too weak to do her own enemas at home and could not shop for vegetables to cook into broth. So she had to add one small serving of cooked vegetable per day, usually broccoli or steamed kale. This lasted for one more week but Jeanne, having no financial reserves, had to return to work, and needed to regain energy quickly. Though not totally healed, she progressed to a maintenance diet of cooked grains and vegetables and food supplements, very much like a Macrobiotic diet. She felt better for awhile but wore down again after another stressful year.
    Her abdominal pains gradually returned though this time she noticed they were closely associated with her stresses. About one year after ending her first fast, as soon as she could arrange to take time off, she began another. This time to avoid extreme weakness, she took vegetable broth from the outset, as well as small amounts of carrot juice and one small serving of cooked vegetable a day for three weeks. Again, this rest allowed the digestive tract to heal and the pain went away. She returned to her Macrobiotic diet with selected raw foods that she could now handle without irritating her bowel.
    She was now healthier then she had been in many years. With improved energy and a more positive attitude, Jeanne returned to University at age 65 and obtained a teaching certificate. Now she is making good money, doing work she enjoys for the first time in 35 years. I hope she has a long and happy life. She is entitled to one!

A Collection of Gallbladders
    Gallbladder cases are rather ho-hum to me; they are quick to respond to hygienic treatment and easy to resolve. I've fixed lots of them. But an inflamed gallbladder is in no way ho-hum to the person afflicted with it. I've been frequently told that there are no worse pains a body can create than an inflamed gallbladder or the sensations accompanying the passing of a gall stone. I hear from kidney patients that passing a kidney stone is worse but I've never had a patient who experienced both kinds of stones to give me an honest comparative evaluation.
    The only thing dangerous about simple gallbladder problems is ignoring them (between the bouts of severe pain they can cause) because then the inflamed gallbladder can involve the liver. I already told the story of how my own mother lost half her liver this way.
    The condition is usually caused by a combination of hereditary tendency, general toxemia, and/or a high-fat diet, especially one high in animal fats. The liver makes bile that is stored in the gallbladder, to be released on demand into the small intestine to digest fat. A toxic, overloaded liver makes irritating sediment-containing bile that inflames the gallbladder and forms stones. A high-fat diet forces the liver to make even more of this irritant.
    A toxic, overloaded, inflamed, blocked gallbladder is capable of causing an enormous array of symptoms that can seem to have no connection at all to their cause. In part these same symptoms are caused by a toxic, constipated colon that, in part, got that way because of poor fat digestion over a long time. These symptoms include: severe back pain; headache; bloating; burping; nausea; insomnia; intestinal gas; generalized aches and pains.
    Medical doctors used to remove a troublesome gallbladder without hesitation; it was an organ they considered to be highly dispensable. Without one, the bile duct takes over as a bladder but its capacity is much smaller so the person's ability to digest fats has been permanently crippled, leading to increased toxemia and earlier aging if fats are not eliminated from the diet. These days the medicos have a new, less invasive procedure to eliminate stones; they are vibrated and broken-up by ultrasonics without major surgery. Inflamed gallbladders are usually removed because gallbladder inflammations resist treatment by antibiotics.
    There are several very effective natural gallbladder remedies. The best is a three week fast, taking the juice of one or two lemons every day, along with colonics. The lemon juice tends to clear the bile duct. The fast allows the gallbladder to heal from inflammation. In cases that aren't too severe I have had very good results simply eliminating fats from the diet and using a food supplement derived from beet tops called AF Betafood. However, in all these cases, once the gallbladder is no longer "acting up," the person must stay on a low fat diet. Any fats they do eat must be vegetable and in small quantities.
    By healing their gallbladders and cleansing their colons, several of my clients have resolved severe, debilitating back pain, pain so severe that the suffers were becoming bedridden. Medical doctors don't associate gallbladder disease with back pain.

The Frightening Heart
    Heart disease is one of the major causes of death among North Americans. It evokes images of resuscitation, of desperate races against time, trying to restart an arrested heart before the brain dies. It makes people think of horribly expensive surgery, last wills and testaments, terrible, paralyzing pain. Heart disease is a great profit center for the medical profession.
    Most heart problems are very easy to fix by holistic approaches, even many hereditary weaknesses and malfunctions can be healed, if the work is done before too much organic damage occurs. But it rarely is easy to get the people to take the necessary medicine; everything in their lives must change–and fast.
    First of all, people with heart problems must rapidly reach and maintain normal weight. This can be done by fasting or by dietary change, usually by eliminating all fats, sugars and refined starches. Alcohol and tobacco must instantly and forever become only past memories. It is almost as essential to eliminate flesh protein foods and dairy. Should that prove entirely too painful, fish in small quantities and only one or two times a week is tolerable.
    For starters, a long fast, especially one involving lots of bed rest, is ideal. This gives the heart a chance to heal while the body weight is adjusted. A period of intense rest even without water fasting will accomplish almost as much. Even someone with the potential for heart disease who has not yet had a heart attack would be well-served to spend a month in bed, losing weight on juice, or sitting in a rocker on the porch eating only raw foods. After the weight is down to normal or close to normal and the heart tests stronger, an exercise program should be started.
    Exercise has to become a religion. A daily aerobic program must be started on a carefully managed gradient, using the pulse rate as an regulator, at first raising their maximum heart rate to a point just below 150 percent of its resting pulse and keeping it there for thirty minutes. One can walk, jog, ride a bicycle or use an exercise machine. Actually, everyone should do this, even those with no heart problems. My husband, who hates the boredom of exercise, enjoys a ski machine in front of the TV while the stock market program is on. He finds the TV interesting enough that he pays no attention to his workout. Daily aerobic exercise will strengthen the heart, gradually slowing the heart's resting pulse rate, indicating that the heart has become much stronger, pumping more blood with each pulse. As the resting pulse drops the exercising heartbeat can be increased to double the resting rate.
    Highly aggressive, competitive, stress-oriented people have to give up being adrenaline junkies and learn to relax and assume a laid-back approach to living. Or die soon. An adrenaline junkie is someone that enjoys the feeling they get when operating under stress. Stress and the adrenaline it releases produce a kind of a drug-high. Many stressaholics cannot give up their adrenaline addiction while maintaining their previous employment and life-style, even though their life is at stake. In this sense they are like alcoholics, who should not take employment tending bar. To survive for long these people may have to retire or change professions. Stockbrokers may have to become Organic farmers; journalists may have to operate a news stand or bookstore, or work part-time covering the society page and dog shows. Women frequently turn their family life into a stress-filled drama too.
    With heart problems a life extension megavitamin program is essential, even for twenty somethings if they have heart disease. The sixty milligrams of Co-Enzyme Q-10 I recommend for the average middle aged person will not be enough for heart cases; they should take at least 120 milligrams daily and consider up to 250 mg. This much Q-10 greatly boosts the energy output of the heart on a cellular level. Vitamin E should also be increased, to between 600 and 2,000 iu daily. I also rebuild diseased hearts with protomorphogens; usually they must stay on protomorphogens for the rest of their lives. Niacin taken several times a day in doses, sufficient to dilate the capillaries and cause a skin flush (50 to 200 milligrams), increases the blood flow to nourish the heart. The amino acid L. Carnitine is also useful by increasing the energy output of the heart much like Co-Enzyme Q-10.
    When I put people on this program, the supplements and other measures gradually take effect, and over months the patient begins to feel enormously better. Inevitably they come to dislike the side-effects of the various medications their medical doctor has put them on and they begin to wean themselves off of heart-stimulating poisons like digitalis. Another benefit of my program is that inevitably, blood pressure also drops to a normal range so if they have been on blood pressure medication they quit that too. Their diuretics also become unnecessary. The money they save more than pays for their supplements and the sense of well-being they feel is beyond value.

Other Kinds Of Cancer
    There seem to be many other kinds of cancer, at least if you believe the medical doctors. They divide up cancers and their treatments by their location in the body and by the type of cancer cells present. I do not see it that way. To me, a cancer is a cancer is a cancer, and there is only one kind: it is an immune system collapse, consequence of the deadly triangle of weak spleen, thymus and liver, plus a toxic large intestine and weak pancreas. That organ profile is found in skin cancer, prostate cancer, leukemia, brain cancer, cancer of what have you. How fast or how slowly the cells multiply or spread, where they are located, what the cancer cells look like in a microscope, these are irrelevant factors compared to the body's ability to conquer the disease. Or die from it.
    If the body's immune system can stop the growth of the cancers and begin to turn them back before the cancer cells impinge catastrophically on some vital function, the person can usually survive. Even if the body cannot completely eliminate all the cancer cells, but regains enough immune function to keep the existing cancers in permanent check, a person can survive many years with an existing, stable cancer without undue pain or discomfort. Still having a non-growing tumor after a long fast indicates that a person is a lot better than they were before fasting.
    I believe that virtually everyone has cancer cells in their body, just like viruses and bacteria. But most people do not develop cancer as a disease because their immune function is strong so these misbehaving cells are destroyed as fast as they appear. Mutated, freely-multiplying cells are caused by peroxidized fats, by free radicals in the body, by radiation (there has always been background radiation on Earth), by chance mutation. There are naturally occurring highly carcinogenic substances in ordinary foods that are unavoidable. In fact some of these naturally occurring substances are far more dangerous than the toxic residues of pesticides in our foods. The body is supposed to deal with all these things; they are all called insults. It is rarely the insult, but the failure of the body to eliminate cancerous cells promptly that causes the disease called cancer. So the treatment I recommend for cancer in general is the same as the one described for breast cancer cases. Restore the immune function.
    However, as much as I lack respect for conventional medical cancer therapies, I do think surgery can have a useful place in cancer treatment along with hygienic methods. Some people just cannot confront the lump(s). Or they are so terrified of having a cancer in their body that their emotions suppresses their own immune function. Even though surgery prompts a cancer to spread more rapidly, without their lumps some cancer patients feel more positive. If surgery is done in conjunction with rebuilding the immune system, the body will prevent new cancers from forming.
    Removal of a large mass of cancer cells can also lighten the immune system's task. Not having to kill off and reabsorb all those cells one-by-one from a huge cancer mass, the body can better conquer smaller groups of cancer cells. And the die-off of large cancers produces a lot of toxins, burdening the organs of elimination. This is an argument for the potential benefit of a lumpectomy. However, I do not support mastectomies, or the type of surgery that cause massive damage to the body in a foolish attempt to remove every last cancer cell, as though the cells themselves were the disease.
    Sometimes cancer tumors are well-encapsulated, walled off and can be easily removed without prompting metastasis. This type of tumor may not be completely reabsorbed by the body in any case; though the immune system may have killed it, an empty shell remains, like a peanut shell. Sometimes the judgment calls about surgery can get dicey. When surgery involves removing an organ. I oppose the loss of useful body parts.
    I have also known and helped people who believed they couldn't recover without radiation and chemotherapy. What people believe is, is. The emotions generated when a personal reality is suppressed, ignored or invalidated will overwhelm an immune system. I always tell those people who sincerely believe in it to go ahead with standard medical treatment (while I'm privately praying the doctors won't cause too much damage). However, when I am supporting a body with supplements and dietary reform, have put that body on a raw-food cleansing diet or even a raw food diet with nuts and grains that hardly detoxifies, and then the person has had chemotherapy and radiation, the medical doctors in attendance are inevitably amazed that the side effects are much milder than anticipated, or non-existent. And fewer courses of chemotherapy are needed than the doctors expected.
    For example, I worked with a little boy with leukemia. His mother brought him to me while trying to resolve a conflict with her ex-husband about the boy's treatment. The father demanded the standard medical route; the mother was for natural therapy. Eventually the father won in court, but I had the boy on my program for three months before the doctors got their hands on him. Even during chemotherapy and radiation the mother kept the boy on my program. Throughout the doctors' treatment he had so few bad side effects that he was able to continue in school and play with the other children; he did not lose his hair (which would have made him feel like a freak). He recovered. I don't mind that the medical doctors took credit, but to my thinking, he recovered despite their therapy.

Onion Cases
    All too many of my cases are what I privately refer to as onion cases. By this I mean the opposite of a simple case. There are multiple complaints. I call them onion cases because these people get better in layers, like pealing an onion. As each skin comes off, the next becomes visible. Sometimes when the patient overcomes an existing complaint, another appears that was not there in the beginning, probably this new one is a complaint that they had at an earlier point in their life, one that had gone away. Onion cases take a long time to completely heal, sometimes years. There frequently are psychological aspects to the case that surface with different physical problems. If I were not an effective psychologist I could not succeed with most of them. The average medical doctor probably considers onion cases to be hypochondriacs, but they usually are not.
    Almost always the first symptoms that demand attention are the most life-threatening, like immune system failures, liver failures, pancreatic failures, nervous system failures and heart failures. With these eliminated, new complaints appear. Often these are endocrine system imbalances or weak endocrine glands, anemias, mild heart conditions. Then it gets down to eye or ear infections, muscular or skeletal weaknesses, mild skin problems, sinusitis, teeth problems; things that aren't serious but that do degrade the quality of life. Each one of these layers also carries with it a psychological component; each of these layers can take three to six months to resolve.
    I had a pretty good idea from the first visit that Daniel, not yet 30, was going to take some time to get well. He already had a degenerative condition not usually seen until middle age–crippling gout and arthritis. He had badly distorted joints, walked with considerable pain, lacked a full range of movement, had enormous fatigue and consequently, a well-justified depression. Daniel was about to give up working as no longer possible, but he liked his job. And he certainly needed it.
    Daniel's analysis showed massive allergies to foods, a systemic yeast and multiple virus infections and multiple organ weaknesses: a life-threateningly weak immune system, weak pancreas, weak adrenals, weak large intestine. Because he could hardly accept anything he wasn't allergic to and because he could not afford to quit working even for a few weeks (though he was about to be forced into complete disability) I put him on a Bieler fast. This is a monodiet of fairly substantial quantities of either well-cooked green beans or well-cooked zucchini, the choice between these two foods depending on the acid-base balance of the blood. (Henry Bieler, 1965) In Daniel's case my choice was zucchini, one pint of plain zucchini puree with a little kelp and garlic added (no salt, no butter, no nothing else) every few hours. I also put him on heavy vitamin support and protomorphogens for his desperate immune system. While on the Bieler fast he did daily enemas at home. Had colonics been available to him, Daniel couldn't have afforded them.
    Within three weeks he was far more comfortable, had less pain, more energy even though he was still eating nothing but zucchini, had less swelling in his joints. During the first month he lost about ten pounds and had been skinny to start with. I then added other cooked nonstarchy vegetables to his diet and we continued the same protomorphogen and supplement program for another month.
    Once each month Daniel came to see me. Each time he had slightly improved organ strength and was able to tolerate a few more foods. By the third month he stopped losing weight because we added small quantities of cooked rice and millet to his diet. However, to continue his detox, I had him water fast one day a week, staying in bed and resting all day. At the start and end of the fasting day he also took an enema. He continued a weekly one-day fast for many months. By the fourth month, his immune system testing stronger, a new problem appeared. Daniel had intestinal parasites. So I also put him on a six month program to eliminate those.
    Daniel required monthly dietary adjustments because he quickly became allergic if he ate very much of anything very often–broccoli or rice for example. During this time he became aware of many negative emotions associated with childhood, of young adult frustrations and disappointments. He was really very angry about many things in his life, even though he had for many years maintained an invariably pleasant social veneer. But now he began expressing some of these feelings to me and to his associates.
    Daniel had an abusive girlfriend, but as he improved this relationship became insufferable. So he broke off with this woman and found a new relationship that was much more positive, one based on mutual respect and admiration. There are frequently strong connections between repressed anger and depository diseases like arthritis and gout. Daniel could not permit himself to constantly be made angry and still get well.
    His next layer of symptoms did not appear until nearly eighteen months after he had first come to see me. By this time he had good energy, had returned to hiking and skiing, camping and canoeing. He had worked as a printer but was now bootstrapping his own print shop on a shoestring, and became entirely self-employed. He had a good romantic relationship. The parasites were gone; his gout and arthritis was virtually gone; many of his food allergies were gone. Now his body was demanding that its acid/base balance be adjusted and he began to pay attention to the minor back problems he had all along. Daniel had also developed a new problem–inflammation of the eye. It was so severe that he went to an opthamologist seeking immediate relief because he could hardly see. I put him on massive doses of vitamin C and protomorphogens for the eye and we attacked the other problems.
    Now I still see Daniel every three months for minor dietary and supplement adjustments. His emotional space is very positive. His business is doing well. His love life is doing well. He has developed no new problems and all the old ones are under control. His organ systems, though better, will never tolerate many insults, physical or mental, but if he lives within his limits, he has every chance of a long and happy life.
    Daniel has become a friend of mine by now and I like to see him but I expect I won't see Daniel very much at all any more. He has learned what he needs to know to take care of himself. This is a typical onion case that resolved successfully. However this case might not have worked out so well had Daniel not possessed a high degree of personal integrity and bravery, had he not faced and resolved his emotional conflicts. Fortunately, Daniel had always conducted an ethical life, without dishonesty or a secret collection of disreputable acts. Bodies are easy to fix; they are carbon oxygen engines that work on chemistry and respond unfailingly to physical measures. But the entity that runs the body is not so simple. The thoughts and emotions of the spirit impinge on a body as powerfully or more powerfully than all the vitamins, dietary reform or protomorphogens I can provide. The mind, and the spirit behind that mind, can make a body sick or can prevent it from getting well or staying well despite everything I do.

Unethical Illness
    I see a lot of spiritually-induced physical illness in my practice. Maybe more than my share. Maybe its karmic; it tends to find me because I understand it. And it comes up my driveway because people who have it often become doctor shoppers, and seek out a naturopath as a last resort after exhausting everything that modern medical science has to offer. I have had large numbers of undiagnosable people that suffer greatly but who medical doctors can find nothing wrong with and label psychosomatic. I have also repaired people given specific medical diagnoses that standard physical remedies cannot make better.
    In most of these cases, the physical illness is secondary to, is an overlay of a more fundamental spiritual cause. On this type of case there are inevitably severe problems connected with close friends, relatives and business associates. The sick person inevitably blames the friends, relatives and business associates and takes no responsibility. The problems seem unresolvable. When I probe deeply enough into these problems, I begin to discover the real infection below. The sick person, so fond of complaining about all the terrible things done to them by the people they have or have had problems with, or sometimes, so proud of not complaining about all the terrible things done to them. Actually, almost inevitably this person has committed a huge mass of secret crimes, viciousness and betrayals, rarely indictable felonious acts, but crimes none the less, disreputable deeds that must be kept secret.
    These deeds are always completely justified; the sick person always claims to have been right for having done them and it is next to impossible for me as a therapist to get them to take responsibility for their sins. But at the deep, center of almost all people is an honest, decent soul that knows what it has really done and feels guilty and judges itself. That is why it says in the Bible, 'judge not, lest you be judged'. It is not the judgment of the Deity we have so much to fear; we are own worst judge, jury, and executioner, and eventually extract from ourselves full payment with compound interest for all harmful acts.
    People frequently punish themselves with severe, incapacitating illness or even death. A spiritual illness will not respond very well to physical treatment until the spiritual malaise's is resolved. This case has to find enough courage to become honest with themselves, to admit their deeds in all their disgusting detail and then to make amends, or if amends are not possible, to at least cease and desist. They have to take personal responsibly for what they really are being and what they have really done and most importantly, accept that they are responsible for creating their own illness. It is not a virus, a cancer cell or something that just fell out of the universe and struck them, innocent victims that they are. They have made their illness and only they can uncreate it.
    Unfortunately, few people who have spent a lifetime indulging themselves in this degree of irresponsibility have the integrity to change. This is a tough case. Especially so because they think they are physically ill, they did not come to me to be defined as a "mental" case and tend to reject such approaches.