by Dr David Olarsch | Sep 1, 2007 | Articles
Dr. Valery Mamonov, brilliant Russian author and researcher, has graciously allowed NaturopathicHealth.net to publish this essential list. Dr. Mamonov is a friend of Dr. David’s and his book and video are highly recommended. His book is Control for Life Extension, and his video is Live Long with Freedom. Visit Dr. Mamonov’s website longevitywatch.com.
1. Avoid Injuries, Trauma and Doctors
Avoid injuries and psychological trauma. More than looking for entertainment or pleasures, longevity personality is a master of avoiding harm of any kind. They drive safely and do their daily activities in their home and out there with security and precautions. They don’t engage in dangerous activities, overstrain with physical exertions or put themselves in a stressful situation. Longevity personality avoids doctors, both allopathic and alternative, unless in case of emergency. They think doctors are not bad guys, they just don’t know the cause of person’s illness and don’t understand their unique type. Their drugs, antibiotics, and treatments all have strong side effects, including death. Regular medical check-ups and non-invasive tests are necessary, though. Longevity personality takes good care of themselves, invests their time and efforts in their health and fitness, and prefers to be self-sufficient. They free themselves from help outside, unless it is absolutely necessary. They have reclaimed ownership for their life. We can definitely learn from them to be healthy and happy, enjoy our life and live long with freedom.
2. Marry Peace of Mind and Be Happy
Be happy. Develop a positive attitude, don’t allow negative thoughts and words. Avoid mixing with negative people. Watch out. Whatever comes to you, be happy with it. Learn from the mistakes of others more than from your own mistakes. Do prayers, practice meditation. Take a stressful situation as an opportunity to manifest your strength. Improve your health and prolong your life doing everything with passion. Be strong, because others will be against you. Start loving yourself. God created you and gave you a blessing of life. Enjoy it. Enjoy your life in America. America is the greatest country in the world and you are fortunate to be born in it. Don’t take it for granted, appreciate it. Start your day with a gratitude to the Creator that you are alive and well, with prayer, meditation or with positive affirmations. Believe in God. Connect to your spiritual self. Many centenarians and long lived people attribute their longevity to believing in God.
3. Express Yourself, Have Fun and be Here and Now
Avoid worrying about the future or regret about past, and be here and now. Time stops running now and you don’t age, if you live now and here. Express yourself freely, rest a lot, and if you are irritable, have a few more hours of sleep. You will feel much better. Distinction between good and bad has limitations, but universe perceived as a whole is unlimited. Practice easy-going behaviors and be confident and content. Focus on having lots of fun and enjoy your sexual relationship. Have your partner eat garlic also and enjoy your anti-inflammatory sex life often and for many years ahead. Don’t allow yourself to be depressed, often by an insignificant reason. Don’t insist on others doing things your way, allow them to express themselves. Live your life and let them live their own life. But do not allow others to control your life, be selfish in doing things that are good for you. Make yourself a priority #1. If they don’t like the way you behave, it is, like with garlic, their problem, not yours. Be an observer more than a mess maker. Whatever you do or behave, never feel guilty. You’ve done everything right, for that moment and situation. They are sometimes above you and you have to comply with them.
4. Become Best Friends with Temperance and Moderation
Practice moderation, temperance. Frank Shomo, who lived to be 108, used to say, “Don’t bend elbow too much.” Simplify your life and get rid of many belongings that take space in your head and in your home.
5. Cleanse and Purify Yourself
Cleanse and purify your body, avoid pollutants and rid of toxins, bacteria and parasites. Multiple pollution’s: air, water, food, EMF, sound pollution and sick people around us and acidifying cooked food all put a great stress on our elimination organs. We suffer of constipation, toxic liver, gall bladder, kidney and bladder stones, sludged lymphatic system and clogged arteries. Enemas for colon cleanse, liver-gallbladder flush, kidneys flush, lymph and blood vessels cleanse can be done at your home. And I will show you how.
6. Move Your Body, Exercise Your Brain
Do aerobic, resistance, breathing and flexibility exercises. Long lived people are slim and trim. Do yoga, go to sauna, you need to sweat to expel toxins from your body. You can exercise your brain by memorizing holy books, prayers, reciting poems, learning a foreign language, anatomy, physiology, mathematics or playing piano, organ and other musical instruments.
7. Eat Less Calories
Practice calorie restriction. The less you eat, the longer you live. Food is a double edge sword—it gives us life and takes it away. Don’t worry about your life-long food intake—lasting longer, you will eat more in the long run. Daily calorie intake and longevity graph has an optimal peek for long lived people and centenarians—they eat in average 1,500 calories a day, as compared to 3.400 calories for an average American. Spiritual breatherians (well documented cases of people who abstained from food for decades) and sumo wrestlers of Japan on both extremes of the graph do not live long. My finding is in sync with an article from the Wall Street Journal on calorie restriction.
8. Eat Your Twelve Longevity Super Foods
Eat your twelve longevity super foods: sea weed, flax seeds, pomegranates, aloe vera, garlic, bee pollen, broccoli, apricots, grapes, prunes, seeds/nuts and green leafy vegetables including sprouts. Eat your superstar longevity food—sea weed. Put it and other longevity foods in the powerful blender like Vita-Mix for breaking into tiny particles for better digestion. It blends in seconds and thus minimizes oxidation.
9. Drink Green Juices, Eat Green Smoothies
Drink fresh green and vegetable juices every day. Eat green smoothies made from vegetables, sees and nuts, sprouts and and leafy greens. Invest in wheat grass juicer and powerful blender. Juice and smoothie bars are plentiful nowadays. If you don’t like their recipes, you can bring your own flax seed sprouts, barely grass, almonds and pumpkin seeds soaked in water and ask them to make a juice or a smoothie for you.
10. Don’t Bring Inside Dead Food, Bring in Life Food
Avoid or minimize bringing inside your holy body temple dead food including sugar, and white flour products, animal and dairy products, salty and processed, man-made food, most processed fats, oils and fried foods. Instead, maximize your intake of living foods, such as wild and organic greens, fruits, berries, vegetables, seeds, nuts and some mushrooms and fermented foods. Some blood types may need, though, small amounts of organic meats, eggs and dairy products.
11. Eat Less Animal Protein and Fat
Avoid excessive protein and fat consumption, especially animal proteins. We need much less protein to stay healthy and fit, than most nutrition authorities recommend. Protein is a double-edged sword. It leaves toxic residue: uric acid, urea and ammonia. Excessive protein consumption is strongly linked to an increased death rate from cancer-graph for 87 counties. My finding is in sync to Dr. Colin Campbell’s book The China Study and Dr. Neil Nedley’s book Proof Positive.
12. Know Your Body and Personality Type
We are all unique. Thou shalt know thyself. Do self-assessment. The book “Control for Life Extension: A Personalized Holistic Approach,” helps you understand your unique body and personality type and do everything right for your type. Eight Western and five Oriental diagnostic systems are used for self-assessment: heredity, lifestyle, blood type, metabolic type, somatype, personality type, instincts, temperaments, Ayurvedic dosha type, yin-yang type, five elements type, chakra profile and horoscope. Self-asssemesment is done though charts—you highlight entries in the charts that are appropriate you you, count them and put result of the assessment on the graph. After you are done thorough all 13 systems, you will have your unique multifaceted profile. Food choices for your type are at the end of the book. Other features of lifestyle suitable to your type are throughout the book.
Valery Mamonov, Ph.D.
by Dr David Olarsch | Nov 22, 2006 | Articles
Dr. David Olarsch
In the fall of 2006, I became one of a handful of doctors certified in a protocol for helping those who are suffering from thyroid problems. Called Wilson’s Temperature Syndrome (also called Wilson’s Thyroid Syndrome, WT3 Therapy), it affects many people. WTS refers to the low body temperature that many of us have. Some of the major symptoms include low body temperature (have you ever taken your temperature when you are not sick?), feeling chilled, cold hands (and feet, nose, buttocks), low energy, inability to lose weight or keep it off, and many other common malady’s that some people just can’t get rid of. For more details, go to Wilson’s Temperature Syndrome.
What is remarkable about this revolutionary approach, is that the fix is often permanent and can positively affect many other bodily functions. By adjusting your body’s thermostat, many other problems go away. For years, this condition—called hypothyroidism or hypothyroid—has been difficult to treat successfully. Previous measures included drugs such as synthroid or Armour thyroid, and required a lifetime commitment to the drugs. And, after a while, patients didn’t feel much better.
At my training, I met other doctors that have seen remarkable results, and most of what I learned fit in with my experience’s in my office practice. It can be a long and brutal struggle for some to balance their thyroid. Many have asked me “Is there help for my thyroid?” It is very gratifying to see many people enjoy life once again and to feel wonderful. This protocol has made a big difference in their lives, their families and even their careers.
In addition to the common reasons the thyroid goes out of balance, there are some other reasons we are seeing near epidemic levels of thyroid problems. A traumatic event, such as death of a loved one, divorce or a serious injury can lower thyroid function. A car accident or other severe shock can also cause this. Two other very important factors that reduce thyroid efficiency (or damage the thyroid) are thyocyanide in cigarette smoke and fluorides in municipal water supplies and toothpaste.
Some of the common reasons the thyroid can become weak include: prolonged stress, mercury (from “silver” dental fillings, vaccines, and the environment), poor diet, lack of iodine (no longer in our topsoil, an essential mineral), genetic inheritance, excessive dieting, even childbirth, and perhaps the most shocking: from eating soy products. Soy products, which Americans have been encouraged to gorge on, have enzymes that can inhibit thyroid hormone production. In some countries, pregnant women and babies are told to avoid soy products, along with mercury dental fillings and certain fish that are high in toxic metals. See elsewhere on this website for further information on which soy products to avoid and which are beneficial.
What is the thyroid and why is it so important? One word: metabolism! This little gland, which has 2 lobes (right & left side) and resides in our neck, performs some vital functions. The hormones it produces affect metabolism, calcium distribution, body temperatures, digestion, fat & protein synthesis, white blood cell activity, blood flow and sex hormones! Low thyroid function can have a disturbing effect in young children of slow growth and general lack of mental and physical development.
The ramifications of a low functioning thyroid affects every tissue, organ and cell in the body. It is associated with slow nutritional absorption, decreased libido and lack of motivation (see symptom list at the link above). Thanks to what I have learned, we now have some powerful tools to heal and restore this organ.
I’ll elaborate the process and where it goes wrong. The hypothalamus stimulates the pituitary gland (both are contained in the brain) to produce thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH). TSH then stimulates the thyroid to produce and release thyroxine (T4). T4 is then converted into triiodthyronine (T3), which is vital for life and four times more active than T4. This conversion of T4 to T3 takes place in the cells. (T4 can also be converted into reverse T3, which is physiologically inactive.)
Under significant physical, mental, or emotional stress the body slows down the metabolism by decreasing the amount of raw material (T4) that is converted to the active thyroid hormone (T3). This is done to conserve energy. However, when the stress is over, the metabolism is supposed to speed up and return to normal. This process can become derailed by a buildup of reverse T3 (rT3) hormone. Reverse T3 can build to such high levels that it begins to start using up the enzyme that converts T4 to T3. The body may try to correct this by releasing more TSH and T4 only to have the levels of rT3 go even higher. A vicious cycle is created where T4 is never converted into active T3. Certain nationalities are more likely to develop Wilson’s syndrome: those whose ancestors survived famine, such as Irish, American Indian, Scotch, Welsh, and Russian. Interestingly, those patients who are part Irish and part American Indian are the most prone of all. Women are also more likely than men to develop Wilson’s syndrome.
Armour Thyroid and other prescription thyroid glandulars (including Nuthroid and Westhroid), contain both T4 and T3. Synthroid and other synthetic thyroid medications contain T4 only. Since some individuals have a difficult time converting inactive T4 to active T3, these medications may not work at the cellular level. Individuals may take T4 medications for years and never notice much improvement.
Denis Wilson, M.D., refined some of the pioneering clinical research first performed by Broda Barnes, M.D. Dr. Wilson showed that symptoms of low thyroid function could be present with normal thyroid blood tests. The group of symptoms that he studied he called Wilson’s syndrome. These symptoms can include severe fatigue, headache and migraine, PMS, easy weight gain, fluid retention, irritability, anxiety, panic attacks, depression, decreased memory and concentration, hair loss, decreased sex drive, unhealthy nails, constipation, irritable bowel syndrome, dry skin, dry hair, cold and/or heat intolerance, low self-esteem, irregular periods, chronic or repeated infections, and many other complaints.
I consider myself and my patients quite fortunate that I have had the opportunity to study with Dr. Wilson and others who have pioneered this exciting new protocol for low body temperature. Please take some time to study it for yourself, and keep in mind that in my office practice, I treat the whole person, not just one organ or system. WT3 therapy is a wonderful addition to my holistic approach to honoring our biochemical individuality.
Dr. David Olarsch
by Dr David Olarsch | Jun 14, 2005 | Articles
Save Our Supplements.org
About the Coalition
The Coalition to Preserve DSHEA’s mission is to safeguard the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA), the 1994 law allowing citizens across the United States access to and information about dietary supplements that benefit their health.
The Coalition reaches out to dietary supplement consumers through the Website SaveOurSupplements.org to educate citizens about the threats to supplement access and simple actions they can take to save our supplements.
Additionally, the Coalition aims to educate current legislators and staff about the effectiveness of DSHEA and the benefits it provides to all Americans. The Coalition makes personal visits to legislators and their staff to provide them with information about existing and future legislation.
The Coalition to Preserve DSHEA is a non-profit C-6 organization funded through donations from suppliers of dietary supplement products and services. One hundred percent of funding is expressly targeted toward unique Coalition projects and is not used for other industry programs or to pay for existing salaries, operating overhead and other costs.
Save Our Supplements.org
by Dr David Olarsch | Mar 1, 2005 | Articles
Naturopathy, or Nature Cure, is the only true science of healing based on the universal laws of nature; it aims to eliminate the cause as well as to correct the effects of disease; it necessitates perfect nutrition and elimination, perfect oxygenation, perfect circulation, perfect generation.
Nature Cure does not suppress disease, nor merely counteract symptoms; it restores health through the regulation of body functions, by eliminating disease products and disease cause; in other words, by establishing a process of reconstruction and regeneration in the body.
The modern nature cure physcian must understand and employ every method of healing that is in accord with the natural physiological action of the body, and all that is good in all the natural methods of healing, for in serious chronic diseases any single method, whether it be diet, hydrotherapy, chiropractic, neuropathy, osteopathy, spondylotherapy, or any agent or other form of manual or mechanical manipulation is not sufficient by itself to achieve perfect, speedy and lasting results.
Naturopathy, or nature cure, is the greatest ecletic system of healing; it is the practical realization and application of all that is good in natural science, philosophy and religion. Its doctrine is based on the one uncontrovertible universal law—that the primary cause of disease (barring accidental or surgical injury to the human organism and surroundings hostile to human life) is:
Violation of Nature’s Laws
This violation causes: lowered vitality; abnormal composition of blood and lymph; accumulation of waste matter, morbid materials and poisons.
Acute disease is, in reality, the result of nature’s efforts to eliminate from the organism waste matter, foreign matter and poisons, and to repair injury to living tissues.
Chronic disease is the inabilty of the organism to react by acute efforts or healing crisis “against constitutional disease conditions.”
Healing crisis is an acute reaction towards recovery in conformity with nature’s constructive principle, resulting from the ascendancy of nature’s healing forces over disease conditions.
Cure is the readjustment of the human organism from abnormal to normal conditions and functions.
In order to accomplish a cure, Naturopathy uses the natural, harmless, drugless, non-surgical agencies, such as:
Scientific food selection and combination.
The uses of water, air, light and exercise.
The mechanical remedies, such as: Scientific manipulation, orthopedics or corrective gymnastics, chiropractic or structural adjustment, kinesi-therapy, neuropathy, naprapathy, spondylo-therapy and mechano-therapy.
Normal suggestion and the prayer of faith.
The modern manipultive and corrective methods, such as osteopathy, neuropathy, naprapathy, chiropractic, spondylo-therapy, etc., have all added greatly to the efficiency of Nature Cure, and if intelligently applied, achieve marvelous results, but applied with a false idea regarding the cause of disease and its removal, they can only give temporaty and never lasting relief—and sometimes they may do grave harm.
The average person knows very little about the conditions of his own body and is in absolute ignorance of its physical operations.
Therefore, he considers disease to be a condition which is “caught.”
He never realizes that the foundation for these conditions is laid deep within the system and has been progressing sometimes for a life time, sometimes for years before the outbreak occurs and that many alterations in organic functions and circulation are necessary before disease conditions will manifest.
The nature cure physician by his accurate and unfailing methods of analysis and “Iridology” or the “diagnosis from the eye,” determines with perfect certainty from the iris of the eye the normal and abnormal conditons of the organism in general and of the different organs in particular, and can detect any tendancy toward disease long before the individual is aware of trouble in the body. He can therefore advise the necessary correction that will prevent any disease condition from making progress in the body.
The eye is not only the mirror of the soul, but it discloses with absolute certainty the different mental and physical conditions of the body—it reveals the morbid changes going on in the system, and the discovery and perfection of the diagnosis from the eye (by M. Peczely, M.D., Hungary, 1861) is one of the greatest achievements of the human mind.
But why is it that this accurate diagnostic science is not universally adopted by the physicians of all schools? Why do they grasp in the dark instead of looking in the light? Because it discloses the fallacy of their teachings and unmistakably reveals the direful results of chronic drug-poisoning and ill-advised operations.
For nature makes known, and reveals by signs, marks and discolorations in the iris of the eye, not only all acute and chronic inflammatory and catarrhal conditions; all inherited and acquired tendencies towards health and disease, the condition of the body in general and the state of every organ in particular, but it also reveals accurately the destruction of tissues by various drug-poisons and the changes in tissues by accidental injury or by surgical mutilations.
By Nature Cure only do these signs disappear after thorough and gradual purification of the system and readjustment of the organism to normal conditions.
In this manner, Nature Cure becomes the only safe, sane preventive of disease—and is the only system which holds out the hope of ultimate recovery and perfect, permanent health to the sufferer.
The physician who does not understand the laws of nature, has no objective toward which to work; he looks upon the counteraction of symptoms as the cure, whereas this very suppression of symptoms lays the foundation for chronic disease.
The Nature Cure physician, being a true physician, is the one who helps you to help yourself.
He is the one who knows the intelligent application of nature’s laws, that the results of ignorance can be corrected by the application of intelligence.
Evil “is not an accident, not an aribitrary punishment, not always an error of mortal mind.”
It is the natural and inevitable result of violations of nature’s laws.
It is instructive and corrective in purpose and will remain with us only as long as we need its salutary lessons.
The more we study the rules of the laws of nature, and the more we follow them, the more comes the painful convictions forced upon us that mankind of today is, as it were, struck with blindness, when it is a question of protecting one-self from sickness or of healing one-self of such ailments as have been systematically developed and contracted.
The multitude has, indeed, so far accustomed itself to the unhappy fate, to the deep despair and misery of its fellow-creatures, as to jump to the false conclusion that there is no remedy for certain diseases and that poverty, sickness and misery cannot be banished from the world.
It seems inevitable that an age so advanced as ours, which has made such wonderful discoveries, and in which the advancement of science plays such an important part, can not remain behind where the mental and physical weal and woe of the individual are at stake. The laws of nature are simple, too simple, for those who search in vain, in the deep and obstruse, and it is the overlooking of these simple laws, which is the cause of the failures in the treatment of disease, and the use of empirical methods.
By natural methods, all diseases are curable, but there are incurable patients, for if there is not sufficient vitality of the body to enable a reaction to follow and a healing crisis to be got over, there is no chance for recovery. Happily, these cases are rare—and with a firm belief and absolute confidence in nature’s benevolent healing-factors, and with unswerving obedience to the instructions of the Nature Cure Physician—a perfect cure will follow.
The Nature Cure Physician’s sheet anchor is Law—the immutable law of nature; he gives nature what she requires and her work will be perfect.
What a glorious vista! Life restored, Life sustained, Life prolonged!
Therefore return to nature; go for inspiraton not to the murky atmosphere of the dissecting and vivsection rooms, not to the poison bottle, but to the field and forest. Learn to live in harmony with the laws of nature, learn the dangers of the violations of nature’s laws and their correction and prevention by rational living and treatment; then we shall have true types of beautiful manhood and womanhood, and the children thus born and reared in harmony with nature’s law will be the future masters of the earth.
Rene V. Thirion, N.D., M.D.
by Dr David Olarsch | Jan 5, 2005 | Articles
I. Gerald Olarsch, N.D.
January 5, 2005
The last known writings of Dr. David Olarsch’s father, Dr. I. Gerald Olarsch, was a heartfelt article about why to give a baby the best chance of long-term health. Dr. Jerry, as he was often called, raised his children the healthy way and was very active with the healthcare of his beloved grandchildren as well as numerous patients.
Good health for a baby begins before conception. Ideally, parents to be should begin practicing better nutrition at least six months before pregnancy occurs. We know that the quantity and quality of the sperm will improve considerably in the male if his diet “gets cleaned up” (goodbye to alcohol, sugar and white flour!). The addition of some basic vitamin supplements to the diet with extra emphasis on zinc and vitamin E will usually enhance the probability of conception and, in most cases, further aid the birth of a healthier child.
Mother to be should begin by visiting her local health food store and “picking the brains” of the employees as to better foods, good books on nutrition, etc.
Isn’t the thought of bringing a healthy child into the world through your own personal efforts and knowledge, rather than through the typical standard medical approach, so much more empowering? With the standard medical approach, you’re told all will be well if you just eat three good meals a day (who does?!), and get a pat on the shoulder from the doctor on the way out the door!
My approach over the years with my patients was: the more you read the more you understand, therefore, the more you help yourself. If you’re too lazy to read you’ll never get better.
Today, more people are aware of the chemicals in our foods, water, and air than ever before. If we think back over the years and realize all the various pollutants we’ve accumulated in our bodies, then you will realize why I emphasize detoxifying (cleaning up) your body first before conception.
To further help you to begin anew I would suggest you ask a friend or a person at your local health food store for the name of a good nutritionist or naturopathic physician.
Just think, husband and wife healthy, baby healthy, all adds up to make for a much happier marriage without the stress of a sickly, crying baby waking you up at all hours and you getting rundown from all this because your own poor nutrition won’t sustain you!
And now for the most crucial part for the healthiest baby—breast feeding. Back in the late 20’s and early 30’s, many medical doctors had the crazy idea (I’ve often wondered if certain processed food companies pushed for this through the medical schools!) that breast feeding was unnecessary and old-fashioned. So, as the story goes, most young mothers didn’t want to be out of step with modern society and proceeded to run to their nearest drug store to purchase the latest in canned formulas and bottles, etc. What a boon for the pharmaceutical industry!
I. Gerald Olarsch, N.D.
by Dr David Olarsch | Dec 24, 2004 | Articles
erson a long time to grasp this theory. Some may even look upon it with a certain amount of derision, some may even think it humorous, but if you will study the subject carefully, study your own body, and do not have too much faith in authorities, depend upon your own mind, you will be compelled to admit the accuracy of these conclusions and when you accept them in their entirety you will have to discard drugs forever. And if these theories are accurate the methods that are being used in all civilized countries in the treatment of disease are actually terrifying. If these theories are true, then millions of human beings have gone to their graves who might just as well be here with us tonight.
The principal reasons for keeping these theories in the background, is because there is but little financial reward to those who advise them. the ordinary medical practitioner who is broad minded enough to use them in his practice, frequently loses his patients. He sometimes loses most of is practice, for his patients are cure too quickly and the time soon coms when they no longer need him. He is not able to keep a patient very long. There is no need of prolonging sickness when these theories are followed. The methods of recovery are entirely too simple to be financially profitable. Take our own institution here, for instance. When a patient comes here and grasps our theories in all their wondrous simplicity (and this is not difficult for we do not try to make them mysterious, we want every patient to understand them), when a patient comes here and possesses himself of the theories we teach, if he is attacked by a complaint of any kind after his return home, he knows how to cure himself. There is no need of coming here every few months to recuperate. A visit to this institution is an education. To most people, in fact, it is a revelation. It gives them different views of life. It teaches them great truths that are worth more than mere money.
There is a vast deal of humbug everywhere in what is often termed science. If a man wants to bamboozle the public, he usually sets froth his theories in intricate statements that he does not understand himself, and nobody else can understand. The average individual noting their intricate character immediately concludes that a man must, indeed, be wonderful to comprehend such deep problems.
Showing the nature of disease, I remember some time ago hearing of a consumptive patient who acquired smallpox. I am of the opinion that it would have been difficult for him to have acquired smallpox if his former disease had been very far advanced. You all know the nature of smallpox. In serious cases it “breaks out” in sores all over the body, which eliminate pus, and when cases are very bad or poorly treated, the disease leaves deep scars all over the body. Now the smallpox in the instance referred to, cured the consumptive patient. In accordance with medical theories, a result of this kind is almost unbelievable; but the explanation of the cure in this case is simple. Impurities that were being eliminated through the lungs in the form of pus, which is quite usual in consumptive cases, were diverted to the surface and eliminated through the running sores which are one of the symptoms of smallpox, and when her recovered from smallpox, his body had been so purified that there was nothing left of his consumption.
Illustrating how the impurities of the body may be diverted from one source of elimination to another, there is a physician of considerable reputation who treats consumptive patients by simply blistering the chest. This blistering process brings about an inflammation on the outside surface of the chest and the impurities or poisons that have been thrown out through the lungs are diverted to the surface for elimination. This theory also proves that disease is nothing more than poisons in the blood, and when poisons are thrown out, the disease is cured. There is but little difference whether disease is acute or chronic in form. The chronic disease is in nearly every case an acute disease that has been made chronic. When you are attacked by the symptoms of an acute disease, and you ignore the causes by taking some drug to divert the symptoms, and if a process of this kind is continued year after year, you are absolutely certain to acquire in the end a chronic disease. To be sure, this chronic disease may be entirely different in character to the acute disease, but nevertheless it has resulted from your habit of preventing the body from curing itself through the aid of the various attacks of the acute disease from which you previously suffered. For you must remember that an acute disease is merely an attempt of the body to cure itself. Drugs are to blame for nearly every chronic disease.
The statement has been made very often that we are a race of semi-invalids, and there is much truth in the charge, but I believe in health of the right kind. Health that is exhilarating, that thrills one with surplus power, that makes one feel that life is something more than the dull, monotonous existence with which most persons seems satisfied. The average individual merely exists. He does not live in every sense of the word, and when the question is propounded, “Is life worth living?” many have good reason for hesitating before making a reply. If you are living in every sense of the word, if you know the meaning of health and strength of the highest degree, if you have been fully, completely developed, you are at times thrilled with the pleasure of mere living. Living then, to you, is beautiful, you are full of strength, you have a surplus supply of vim and energy. You are in complete possession of superior manhood or womanhood. When you possess such a power, an irresistible force presses you onward. Your pleasures come from activity. You are active because you love it. You work because you find pleasure in it, and when you fully accept these theories of life, when you learn the cause of disease, you are filled with self-confidence. There is no need to worry, no mater what disease may attack you. You can be self-composed, you can say to yourself, “I fear no disease, for I am so strong that I cannot be attacked by disease.” When you possess superb health, when your blood contains the elements that maintain the highest degree of physical vigor, disease germs are harmless. You might say that they would be devoured or eliminated from the body as easily as water runs off a duck’s back.
Then there is a theory that we have within ourselves the protective germs, and when we are filled with life and health of the highest degree these germs are always fighting for our good, and when they come in contact with the germs of disease, a fearful battle ensues within us. Imagine, if you can, a battle between the germs of health and disease, that some say is going on all the time within us, and if this theory is true, then all we have to do is to maintain that state of vigor which is essential to ensure that strength to the germs of health which will make them victorious and all their battles. There may be a great deal of “guesswork” in these theories, but there is no guessing in the theories of disease that I have propounded. I have proven their accuracy over and over again, thousands of times, and I have in my files thousands of letters that furnish additional proof. The editing of a magazine such as I publish, is a liberal education, and when I receive letters from all over the world, from persons who have experimented with these theories, and when they say, “I have suffered from this and that disease, and I’ve tried every method known to medical science and have failed to secure results, and after trying your simple suggestions I have been able to secure that health and strength that has been denied me for many years,” then there is no question as to the accuracy of one’s conclusions. They have been tried over and over again thousands of times, they have brought results where every known means advocated by the medical fraternity have failed; they are simple, they bring certain results in practically every instance, and it is a case of believing what you see with your own eyes.
Nearly twenty years have elapsed since I first had occasion to try out these fundamental principles. At that time I was considerable of an athlete; I was indulging in all sorts of athletic contests, and though I have been in the habit of eating but two meals a day for nearly twenty-five years, for a while at that period, I had been eating three meals a day, and I follow this habit because I am healthier and stronger on two meals a day than on three. In fact, I might say for the last month I have only eaten one meal daily, and my health and endurance have increased because of the change from two to one meal a day. Going back, however, to the particular occasion to which I refer, I would say that at that time I contracted a cold. I tried to cure it by increasing my exercise. I ran a number of miles and worked in the gymnasium to induce profuse perspiration. I thought I could eliminate the cold in this manner, but it was apparently too deep seated. I gradually grew worse, and I soon noted various symptoms of pneumonia, the knife-like pain in chest, etc., etc. The problem as to the means of cure finally became acute. Though I had never tried fasting before, I concluded to stop eating. I decided that the impurities were being fed by the food that I put into my stomach. In two days I noticed a difference, a slight change for the better, and I was practically cured in four or five days.
Now suppose I had gone to a medical practitioner and described my symptoms, what would have been the result? He would have said, “You go to bed at once! Why you are seriously sick!” I would have followed his advice, I would have been housed up in a room with closed windows for fear of a draft, I might have been fed on milk and whiskey and a lot of other “stuff,” and if I had followed methods of that kind, I would not be here. I am positive of this conclusion because many years ago I had all the symptoms of incipient consumption, and after building the vigorous health that I now enjoy, I became an enthusiast, a crank, as many might call me. When I first began to search for a cure, I tried everything, all kinds of drugs and dopes. I grew worse, slowly but surely, and as a last resort became interested in exercise, nothing but exercise, and as I was simply dying for the need of some activity of this kind, I recovered. I built myself into a strong man, and the more strength I acquired, the more enthusiastic I grew, the more thoroughly I became convinced that drugs were needless, that the pretensions as to their being able to cure disease were the grossest sort of humbug. You may say that I am a little bit prejudiced, and perhaps I am; but if you had been compelled, as I have been, day after day for many years, to read letters from thousands of victims of drugs, you might be prejudiced against the drugging methods. I believe every man and every woman is entitled to superb health. If you have enough vitality to live, you have enough strength to be healthy. Life, if it is worth living at all, is worth living in its highest, noblest sense. If you cannot be a man or a woman in every way, you might just as well get “off the earth.” Take advantage of every opportunity to develop your body, make yourself strong and capable. Do not let those around you dictate to you. This subject, my friends, is inexhaustible. One could lecture night after night for months, and not begin to give all the details that ought to be known by every individual. Every person should study these vastly important questions for himself. Do not depend on others. Remember you are gifted with the God-given power of reasoning. Use it! Stop allowing others to dictate to you. Don’t allow others to domineer over you. When anyone gives you advice, tell him that you are from Missouri, and you want him to show you, and if you go on striving and struggling for these magnificent rewards, you are sure in the end to reap a harvest that will be satisfactory in every way.
Bernarr Macfadden
by Dr David Olarsch | Dec 8, 2004 | Articles
A friend of Dr. David’s was generous to supply us with some of her favorite healing recipes for fresh juices. She is a gifted nutritionist with a great amount of experience treating chronic, degenerative diseases such as cancer, MS and digestive disorders.
Protein and Iron 3/4 cup pumpkin seeds
12 ounces spring or filtered water
Place in a blender, blend on low until seeds break up, then blend on high until seeds and water turn into a milk. Strain seed milk, press pulp.
add:
1 banana
1 raw free-range egg yolk (wash egg first)
1 tsp. raw carob powder
2 Tbsp. Flax Seed Oil
2 tsp. Spirilina Powder
Blend on high until smooth
Pineapple/Strawberry (colon cleanser) 8 ounces apple juice
4 ounces filtered or spring water
1/2 cup frozen pineapple
1/2 cup strawberries
2 tbsp. Flax Seed Oil
1 Tbsp raw organic honey (optional)
Banana Mango juice of one green coconut or 1 can coconut milk (organic, no sugar)
1 banana
3/4 cup mango
2 Tbsp. Flax Seed Oil
2 Tsp Spirulina
1 Tbsp. raw organic honey (optional)
Blend on high until smooth
Digestive Problems 8 ounces organic apple juice
4 ounces filtered or spring water
3/4 cup mango
1/2 cup papaya
2 Tbsp. flax Seed Oil
1 Tbsp. Borage oil
1 Tbsp. raw organic honey
Blend until smooth
Juices
Potassium, protein, body building
Carrot 7 liquid ounces
Spinach 1/2 bag
Celery 5 liquid ounces
Parsley 1/2 bunch
Endocrine
Carrot 10 liquid ounces
Beet 3 liquid ounces
Cucumber 3 liquid ounce
Digestive health
Carrot 10 liquid ounces
Spinach 6 liquid ounces
This juice is good for healing leaky gut, dysbiosis, malabsorbtion, cancer, restoring digestive function.
Arthritis
Carrot 9 liquid ounces
Celery 7 liquid ounces
Constipation
Celery 10 liquid ounces
Apple 6 liquid ounces
When juicing carrots please eliminate starches, dairy and sugar.
Flush
Lettuce 3 liquid ounces
cucumber 5 liquid ounces
celery 5 liquid ounces
parsley 1 liquid ounces
kale 2 liquid ounces
by Dr David Olarsch | Oct 21, 2004 | Ask Dr David
Ask Dr. David
by Dr. David Olarsch
Practice of Naturopathic Medicine
Q: What can I do about dry eyes?
A: Dry eyes are a common complaint. Contact lenses, hormone imbalances, wind, dust or dry weather can conspire to cause your eyes to itch and sting. It often becomes worse in the winter, along with sensitivity to bright light, such as car headlights. These may be symptoms, the body telling us, that we need more Vitamin A and the essential fatty acids. Good sources of Vitamin A include fish, apricots, eggs, orange vegetables such as pumpkins, sweet potatoes, carrots and squash. Supplements such as Vitamin A&D and D. Salina Beta Carotene are helpful. For the essential fatty acids, we usually need Omega-3’s, commonly called the “good fats.” Flax seed oil in liquid or capsules, and Super Omega-3 capsules are great sources. Food sources of Omega-3’s include most fatty fish (wild salmon, sardines). For a wonderful website full of information on Omega-3’s, go to Omega-3info.com
Sometimes these complaints are helped by strengthening the eye muscles and surrounding tissue. While that could be an entire article on it’s own, the short version is that raw sunflower seeds, the above mentioned foods and supplements, along with our formulas Vision Support and Eye Tonic, can do wonders to improve overall eye health and function. Vitamin C (fruits, broccoli, red peppers) is necessary for eye health also, as a large amount of it is stored behind the eye. Vitamin C is depleted by smoking, chemicals and pollution. People with cataracts and glaucoma have low amounts of Vitamin C behind their eye. Keeping fluid intake at the proper level (see How much water should one drink?) may be a factor for some people.
An added benefit of supplementing the above nutrients is improved skin. Patients increasing these nutrients often report softer skin, less dry skin patches, less dry lips, improvement in their dry eyes and less sensitivity to bright light. Nature intended for us to increase our intake of these nutrients by making them available in the fall to build up our body reserves for winter. Finally, run a humidifier in your home, turn the heat down in the night-time, and keep house plants, which naturally humidify the air.
David G. Olarsch, N.D.
by Dr David Olarsch | Jun 20, 2004 | Articles
“Modern Miracle Men”
by Rex Beach, June 1936
Presented by Mr. Fletcher
United States GPO
Washington, D.C., 1936
[Senate Document 264 was written in 1936, and submitted as part of a Congressional investigation into U.S. farming practices. The leading authorities of the day had been sounding the alarm that depleted soils were causing a significant decline in the nation’s health, evidenced by a steady increase in degenerative diseases. But when Congress saw the price tag on repairing the nation’s farm and range soils, they swept their own investigation under the carpet.]
Introduction
Concerning Dr. Charles Northen: “This quiet, unballyhooed pioneer and genius in the field of nutrition demonstrates that countless human ills stem from the fact that impoverished soil of America no longer provides plant foods with the mineral elements essential to human nourishment and health! To overcome this alarming condition, he doctors sick soils and, by seeming miracles, raises truly healthy and health-giving fruits and vegetables.”
—Rex Beach
Do you know that most of us today are suffering from certain dangerous diet deficiencies which cannot be remedied until the depleted soils from which our foods come are brought into proper mineral balance? The alarming fact is that foods, fruits and vegetables and grains, now being raised on millions of acres of land that no longer contain enough of certain needed minerals, are starving us—no matter how much of them we eat! This talk about minerals is novel and quite startling. In fact, a realization of the importance of minerals in food is so new that the textbooks on nutritional dietetics contain very little about it. Nevertheless, it is something that concerns all of us, and the further we delve into it the more startling it becomes.
You would think, wouldn’t you, that a carrot is a carrot—that one is about as good as another as far as nourishment is concerned? But it isn’t; one carrot may look and taste like another and yet be lacking in the particular mineral element which our system requires and which carrots are supposed to contain. Laboratory tests prove that the fruits, the vegetables, the grains, the eggs, and even the milk and the meats of today are not what they were a few generations ago (which doubtless explains why our forefathers thrived on a selection of foods that would starve us!). No man of today can eat enough fruits and vegetables to supply his system with the minerals he requires for perfect health, because his stomach isn’t big enough to hold them! And we are running to big stomachs.
No longer does a balanced and fully nourishing diet consist merely of so many calories or certain vitamins or a fixed proportion of starches, proteins, or carbohydrates. We now know that it must contain, in addition, something like a score of mineral salts.
It is bad news to learn from our leading authorities that 99 percent of the American people are deficient in these minerals, and that a marked deficiency in any one or more of the important minerals actually results in disease. Any upset of the balance, any considerable lack of one or another element, however microscopic the body requirement may be, and we sicken, suffer, shorten our lives.
This discovery is one of the latest and most important contributions of science to the problem of human health. So far as the records go, the first man in the field of research, the first to demonstrate that most human foods of our day are poor in minerals and that their proportions are not balanced, was Dr. Charles Northen, an Alabama physician now living in Orlando, Florida. His discoveries and achievements are of enormous importance to mankind.
Following a wide experience in general practice, Dr. Northen specialized in stomach diseases and nutritional disorders. Later he moved to New York and made extensive studies along this line, in conjunction with a famous French scientist from the Sorbonne. In the course of that work, he convinced himself that there was little authentic, definite information on the chemistry of foods and that no dependence could be placed on existing data.
He asked himself how foods could be used intelligently in the treatment of disease, when they differed so widely in content. The answer seemed to be that they could not be used intelligently. In establishing the fact that serious deficiencies existed and in searching out the reasons therefore, he made an extensive study of the soil. It was he who first voiced the surprising assertion that we must make soil building the basis of food building in order to accomplish human building.
“Bear in mind,” says Dr. Northen, “that minerals are vital to human metabolism and health—and that no plant or animal can appropriate to itself any mineral which is not present in the soil upon which it feeds.
“When I first made this statement I was ridiculed, for up to that time, people had paid little attention to food deficiencies and even less to soil deficiencies. Men eminent in medicine denied there was any such thing as vegetables and fruits that did not contain sufficient minerals for human needs. Eminent agricultural authorities insisted that all soil contained all the necessary minerals. They reasoned that plants take what they need, and that is the function of the human body to appropriate what it requires. Failure to do so, they said, was a symptom of disorder.
“Some of our respected authorities even claimed that the so-called secondary minerals played no part whatever in human health. It is only recently that such men as Dr. McCollum of Johns Hopkins, Dr. Mendel of Yale, Dr. Sherman of Columbia, Dr. Lipman of Rutgers, and Drs. H.G. Knight and Oswald Schreiner of the Untied States Department of Agriculture have agreed that these minerals are essential to plant, animal, and human feeding.
“We know that vitamins are complex chemical substances which are indispensable to nutrition, and that each of them is of importance for the normal function of some special structure of the body. Disorder and disease result from any vitamin deficiency. It is not commonly realized, however, that vitamins control the body’s appropriation of minerals, and in the absence of minerals they have no function to perform. Lacking vitamins, the system can make some use of minerals, but lacking minerals, vitamins are useless.
“Neither does the layman realize that there may be a pronounced difference in both foods and soils—to him one vegetable, one glass of milk, or one egg is about the same as another. Dirt is dirt, too, and he assumes that by adding a little fertilizer to it, a satisfactory vegetable or fruit can be grown.
“The truth is that our foods vary enormously in value, and some of them aren’t worth eating as food. For example, vegetation grown in one part of the country may assay 1,100 parts per billion of iodine, as against 20 in that grown elsewhere. Processed milk has run anywhere from 362 parts per million of iodine and 127 of iron, down to nothing.
“Some of our lands, even in a virgin state, never were well balanced in mineral content, and unhappily for us, we have been systematically robbing the poor soils and the good soils alike of the very substances necessary to health, growth, long life, and resistance to disease. Up to the time I began experimenting, almost nothing had been done to make good the theft. The more I studied nutritional problems and the effects of mineral deficiencies upon disease, the more plainly I saw that here lay the most direct approach to better health, and the more important it became in my mind to find a method of restoring those missing minerals to our foods.
“The subject interested me so profoundly that I retired from active medical practice and for a good many years now I have devoted myself to it. It’s a fascinating subject, for it goes to the heart of human betterment.”
The results obtained by Dr. Northen are outstanding. By putting back into the foods the stuff that foods are made of, he has proved himself to be a real miracle man of medicine, for he has opened up the shortest and most rational route to better health.
He showed first that it should be done, and then that it could be done. He doubled and redoubled the natural mineral content of fruits and vegetables. He improved the quality of milk by increasing the iron and the iodine in it. He caused hens to lay eggs richer in the vital elements. By scientific soil feeding, he raised better seed potatoes in Maine, better grapes in California, better oranges in Florida and better field crops in other states. (By “better” is meant not only improvement in food value but also an increase in quality and quantity.)
Before going further into the results he has obtained, let’s see just what is involved in this matter of “mineral deficiencies,” what it may mean to our health, and how it may affect the growth and development, both mental and physical, of our children. We know that rats, guinea pigs and other animals can be fed into a diseased condition and out again by controlling only the minerals in their food.
A 10-year test with rats proved that by withholding calcium they can be bred down to a third the size of those fed with an adequate amount of that mineral. Their intelligence, too, can be controlled by mineral feeding as readily as can their size, their bony structure, and their general health.
Place a number of these little animals inside a maze after starving some of them in a certain mineral element. The starved ones will be unable to find their way out, whereas the others will have little or no difficulty in getting out. Their dispositions can be altered by mineral feeding. They can be made quarrelsome and belligerent; they can even be turned into cannibals and be made to devour each other.
A cage full of normal rats will live in amity. Restrict their calcium and they will become irritable and draw apart from one another. Then they will begin to fight. Restore their calcium balance and they will grow more friendly; in time they will begin to sleep in a pile as before. Many backward children are “stupid” merely because they are deficient in magnesia. [Magnesium] We punish them for our failure to feed them properly.
Certainly our physical well-being is more directly dependent upon the minerals we take into our systems then upon calories or vitamins or upon the precise proportions of starch, protein, or carbohydrates we consume.
It is now agreed that at least 16 mineral elements are indispensable for normal nutrition, and several more are always found in small amounts in the body, although their precise physiological role has not been determined. Of the 16 indispensable salts, calcium, phosphorus and iron are perhaps the most important.
Calcium is the most dominant nerve controller; it powerfully affects the cell formation of all living things and regulates nerve action. It governs contractility of the muscles and the rhythmic beat of the heart. It also coordinates the other mineral elements and corrects disturbances made by them. It works only in sunlight. Vitamin D is its buddy. Dr. Sherman of Columbia asserts that 50 percent of the American people are starving for calcium. A recent article in the Journal of the American Medical Association stated that out of 4,000 cases in New York Hospital, only 2 were not suffering from a lack of calcium.
What does such a deficiency mean? How would it affect your health or mine? So many morbid conditions and actual diseases may result that it is almost hopeless to catalog them. Included in the list are rickets, bony deformities, bad teeth, nervous disorders, reduced resistance to other diseases, fatigability, and behavior disturbances such as incorrigibility, assaultiveness and nonadaptability.
Here’s one specific example: The soil around a certain Midwest city is poor in calcium. Three hundred children in this community were examined and nearly 90 percent had bad teeth, swollen glands, enlarged or diseased tonsils. More than one-third had defective vision, round shoulders, bowlegs and anemia.
Calcium and phosphorus appear to pull in double harness. A child requires as much per day as two grown men, but studies indicate a common deficiency of one or the other as the cause of serious losses to the farmers, and when the soil is poor in phosphorous their animals become bone-chewers. Dr. McCollum says that when there are enough phosphates in the blood there can be no dental decay.
Iron is an essential constituent of the oxygen-carrying pigment of the blood: iron starvation results in anemia, and yet iron cannot be assimilated unless some copper is contained in the diet. In Florida, many cattle die from an obscure disease called “salt sickness.” It has been found to arise from a lack of iron and copper in the soil and hence the grass. A man may starve for want of these elements just as a beef “critter” starves.
If iodine is not present in our foods the function of the thyroid gland is disturbed and goiter afflicts us. The human body requires only fourteen-thousandths of a milligram daily, yet we have a distinct “goiter belt” in the Great Lakes section, and in parts of the Northwest the soil is so poor in iodine that the disease is common.
So it goes, down through the list, each mineral element playing a definite role in nutrition. A characteristic set of symptoms, just as specific as any vitamin-deficiency disease, follows a deficiency in any one of them. It is alarming, therefore, to face the fact that we are starving for these precious, health-giving substances.
Very well, you say, if our foods are poor in the mineral salts they are supposed to contain, why not resort to dosing?
That is precisely what is being done, or being attempted. However, those who should know assert that the human system cannot appropriate those elements to the best advantage in any but the food form. At best, only a part of them in the form of drugs can be utilized by the body, and certain dieticians go so far as to say it is a waste of effort to fool with them. Calcium, for instance, cannot be supplied in any form of medication with lasting effect.
But there is a more potent reason why the curing of diet deficiencies by drugging hasn’t worked out so well. Consider those 16 indispensable elements and those others which presumably perform some obscure function as yet understood. Aside from calcium and phosphorous, they are needed only in infinitesimal quantities, and the activity of one may be dependent upon the presence of another. To determine the precise requirements of each individual case and to attempt to weigh it out on a druggist’s scale would appear hopeless.
It is a problem and a serious one. But here is the hopeful side of the picture: Nature can and will solve it if she is encouraged to do so. The minerals in fruit and vegetables are colloidal; i.e. they are in a state of such extremely fine suspension that they can be assimilated by the human system: It is merely a question of giving back to nature the materials with which she works.
We must rebuild our soils: Put back the minerals we have taken out. That sounds difficult but it isn’t. Neither is it expensive. Therein lies the short cut to better health and longer life.
When Dr. Northen first asserted that many foods were lacking in mineral content and that this deficiency was due solely to an absence of those elements in the soil, his findings were challenged and he was called a crank. But differences of opinion in the medical profession are not uncommon—it was only 60 years ago that the Medical Society of Boston passed a resolution commending the use of bathtubs—and he persisted in his assertion that inasmuch as foods did not contain what they were supposed to contain, no physician could with certainty prescribe a diet to overcome physical ills.
He showed that the textbooks are not dependable because many of the analyses in them were made many years ago, perhaps from products raised in virgin soils, whereas our soils have been constantly depleted. Soil analyses, he pointed out, reflect only the content of samples. One analysis may be entirely different from another made ten miles away.
“And so what?” came the query.
Dr. Northen undertook to demonstrate that something could be done about it. By re-establishing a proper soil balance he actually grew crops that contained an ample amount of desired minerals.
This was incredible. It was contrary to the books and it upset everything connected with diet practice. The scoffers began to pay attention to him. Recently, the Southern Medical Association, realizing the hopelessness of trying to remedy nutritional deficiencies without positive factors to work with, recommended a careful study to determine the real mineral content of foodstuffs and the variations due to soil depletion in different localities. These progressive medical men are awake to the importance of prevention.
Dr. Northen went even further and proved that crops grown in a properly mineralized soil were bigger and better; that seeds germinated quicker, grew more rapidly and made larger plants; that trees were healthier and put on more fruit of better quality. By increasing the mineral content of citrus fruit he likewise improved its texture, its appearance and its flavor.
He experimented with a variety of growing things, and in every case the story was the same. By mineralizing the feed at poultry farms, he got more and better eggs; by balancing pasture soils, he produced richer milk. Persistently he hammered home to farmers, to doctors, and to the general public the thought that life depends upon the minerals!
His work led him into a careful study of the effects of climate, sunlight, ultraviolet and thermal rays upon plant, animal and human hygiene. In consequence he moved to Florida. People familiar with his work consider him the most valuable man in the state. I met him by reason of the fact that I was harassed by certain soil problems on my Florida farm which had baffled the best chemists and fertilizer experts available.
He is an elderly, retiring man, with a warm smile and an engaging personality. He is a trifle shy until he opens up on his pet topic; then his difference disappears and he speaks with authority. His mind is a storehouse crammed with precise, scientific data about soil and food chemistry, the complicated life processes of plants, animals, and human beings—and the effect of malnutrition upon all three. He is perhaps as close to the secret of life as any man anywhere.
“Do you call yourself a soil a or a food chemist?” I inquired.
“Neither. I am an M.D. My works lie in the field of biochemistry and nutrition. I gave up medicine because this is a wider and a more important work. Sick soils mean sick plants, sick animals, and sick people. Physical, mental, and moral fitness depends largely upon an ample supply and a proper proportion of the minerals in our foods. Nerve function, nerve stability, nerve cell-building likewise depend thereon. I’m really a doctor of sick soils.”
“Do you mean to imply that the vegetables I’m raising on my farm are sick?” I asked.
“Precisely! They’re as weak and undernourished as anemic children. They’re not much good as food. Look at the pests and the diseases that plague them. Insecticides cost farmers nearly as much as fertilizer these days.
“A healthy plant, however, grown in soil properly balanced, can and will resist most insect pests. That very characteristic makes it a better food product. You have tuberculosis and pneumonia germs in your system but you’re strong enough to throw them off. Similarly, a really healthy plant will pretty nearly take care of itself in the battle against insects and blights—and will also give the human system what it requires.”
“Good heavens! Do you realize what that means to agriculture?”
“Perfectly. Enormous savings. Better crops. Lowered living costs to the rest of us. But I’m not so much interested in agriculture as in health.”
“It sounds beautifully theoretical and utterly impractical to me,” I told the doctor, whereupon he gave me some of his case records.
For instance, in an orange grove infested with scale, when he restored the mineral balance to part of the soil, the trees growing in that part became clean while the rest remained diseased. By the same means he had grown healthy rosebushes between rows that were riddled by insects.
He has grown tomato and cucumber plants, both healthy and diseased, where the vines intertwined. The bugs ate up the diseased and refused to touch the healthy plants! He showed me interesting analyses of citrus fruits the chemistry and the food value of which accurately reflected the soil treatment the trees had received.
There is no space here to go fully into Dr. Northen’s work but it is of such importance as to rank with that of Burbank, the plant wizard, and with that of our famous physiologists and nutritional experts.
“Healthy plants mean healthy people,” said he. “We can’t raise a strong race on a weak soil. Why don’t you try mending the deficiencies on your farm and growing more minerals into your crop?”
I did try and I succeeded. I was planting a large acreage of celery and under Dr. Northen’s direction I fed minerals into certain blocks of land in varying amounts. When the plants from this soil were mature I had them analyzed, along with celery from other parts of the state. It was the most careful and comprehensive study of the kind ever made, and it included over 250 separate chemical determinations. I was amazed to learn that my celery had more than twice the mineral content of the best grown elsewhere. Furthermore, it kept much better, with and without refrigeration, proving that the cell structure was sounder.
In 1927, Mr. W.W. Kincaid, a “gentleman farmer” of Niagara Falls, heard an address by Dr. Northen and was so impressed that he began extensive experiments in the mineral feeding of plants and animals. The results he has accomplished are conspicuous. He set himself the task of increasing the iodine in the milk from his dairy herd. He has succeeded in adding both iodine and iron so liberally that one glass of his milk contains all of these minerals that an adult male requires for a day.
Is this significant? Listen to these incredible figures taken from a bulletin of the South Carolina Food Research Commission: “In many sections three out of five persons have goiter and a recent estimate states that 30 million people in the United States suffer from it.”
Foods rich in iodine are of the greatest importance to these sufferers.
Mr. Kincaid took a brown Swiss heifer calf which was dropped in the stockyards, and by raising her on mineralized pasturage and a properly balanced diet made her the third all-time champion of her breed! In one season she gave 21,924 pounds of milk. He raised her butterfat production to 410 pounds in 1 year to 1,037 pounds. Results like these are of incalculable importance.
Others besides Mr. Kincaid are following the trail Dr. Northen blazed. Similar experiments with milk have been made in Illinois and nearly every fertilizer company is beginning to urge use of the rare mineral elements. As an example I quote from statements of a subsidiary of one of the leading copper companies:
Many states show a marked reduction in the productive capacity of the soil in many districts amounting to a 25 to 50 percent reduction in the last 50 years…Some areas show a tenfold variation in calcium. Some show a sixty-fold variation in phosphorous…Authorities see soil depletion, barren livestock, increased human death rate due to heart disease, deformities, arthritis, increased dental caries, all due to lack of essential minerals in plant foods.
“It is neither a complicated nor an expensive undertaking to restore our soils to balance and thereby work a real miracle in the control of disease,” says Dr. Northen.
“As a matter of fact, it’s a money-making move for the farmer, and any competent soil chemist can tell him how to proceed.
“First determine by analysis the precise chemistry of any given soil, then correct the deficiencies by putting down enough of the missing elements to restore its balance. The same care should be used as in prescribing for a sick patient, for proportions are of vital importance.
“In my early experiments I found it extremely difficult to get the variety of minerals needed in the form in which I wanted to use them but advancement in chemistry, and especially our ever-increasing knowledge of colloidal chemistry, has solved that difficulty. It is now possible, by the use of minerals in colloidal form, to prescribe a cheap and effective system of soil correction which meets this vital need and one which fits in admirably with nature’s plans.
“Soils seriously deficient in minerals cannot produce plant life competent to maintain our needs, and with the continuous cropping and shipping away of those concentrates, the condition becomes worse.”
A famous nutrition authority recently said, “One sure way to end the American people’s susceptibility to infection is to supply through food a balanced ration of iron, copper, and other metals. An organism supplied with a diet adequate to, or preferably in excess of, all mineral requirements may so utilize these elements as to produce immunity from infection quite beyond anything we are able to produce artificially by our present method of immunization. You can’t make up the deficiency by using patent medicine.”
He’s absolutely right. Prevention of disease is easier, more practical, and more economical than cure, but not until foods are standardized on a basis of what they contain instead of what they look like can the dietician prescribe them with intelligence and with effect.
There was a time when medical therapy had no standards because the therapeutic elements in drugs had not been definitely determined on a chemical basis.
Pharmaceutical houses have changed all that. Food chemistry, on the other hand, has depended almost entirely upon governmental agencies for its research, and in our real knowledge of values we are about where medicine was a century ago.
Disease preys most surely and most viciously on the undernourished and unfit plants, animals, and human beings alike, and when the importance of these obscure mineral elements is fully realized the chemistry of life will have to be rewritten. No man knows his mental or bodily capacity, how well he can feel or how long he can live, for we are all cripples and weaklings. It is a disgrace to science. Happily, that chemistry is being rewritten and we’re on our way to better health by returning to the soil the things we have stolen from it.
The public can help; it can hasten the change. How? By demanding quality of food. By insisting that our doctors and our health departments establish scientific standards of nutritional value. The growers will quickly respond. They can put back those minerals almost overnight and by doing so they can actually make money through bigger and better crops. It is simpler to cure sick soils than sick people—which shall we choose?”
by Dr David Olarsch | May 21, 2004 | Ask Dr David
Ask Dr. David
by Dr. David Olarsch
Practice of Naturopathic Medicine
Q: How do I tell if I have toxic, heavy metals in my body and what can I do about it?
A: Heavy metals are a huge concern of mine for everyone on this planet. We are becoming toxic time bombs, in human form! That being said, when creating a program for my patients, some of my intention is to clean out heavy metals. However, for those I suspect have a higher than average amount, there are more specific protocols I engage. In my humble experience, the best way to test for heavy metals is hair mineral analysis. I provide this test at the Institute and it can be done at your next visit, or preferably, before your next visit so that we may review the results and make appropriate changes to your program at that visit. You may come in anytime for that—it only takes five minutes—and the cost is minimal. I find this test very useful but do not push it as people get well without it. It is interesting and wonderful to have it done, as one can take the test again a year later and see some outstanding differences. I do my own every year and have many years worth of tests to see progress.
Fiber is a key element in eliminating some of these poisons. Apples are particularly renowned, as they contain a fiber called pectin that pulls certain heavy metals out, and even regulates certain fats such as cholesterol and triglycerides. Fiber from other fruits and vegetables helps eliminate toxins, including heavy metals, as does pure water. There are other nutrients that can be used, call “chelating” factors. Chelate means to attach to something. I use supplements such as alfalfa, chlorophyll, Vitamin C, minerals, and a supplement called Ex-Tox to detoxify my patients of these poisons. It is a slow process, and I make sure to remove the cause of the problem in the first place. We check drinking water, cosmetics, cookware, occupation and host of other factors to find the root of the problem. This has led to some interesting findings over the years. This wisdom is what I share with my patients and is the reasoning behind many of my recommendations.
Q: Should I use suntan lotions and is the sun good for me?
A: Ah, the sunscreen controversy. That I could write a book about—I’ll try to keep it short here! I feel that the sun is very good for us. We should get as much as possible early in the season to build up our pigments and natural protection factors. It appears that certain poisons in our diet, most notably nitrates from cold cuts, may dramatically increase our chances of skin cancer. Burning the skin is never a healthy event, and sun tan lotions are suspect as they may cause more unintended problems. I know how controversial this all is, but the sun is natural and it hasn’t been conclusively proven that exposure to it causes anything except giving us Vitamin D, a very good thing! In addition, the body needs at least twenty minutes of raw light every day to be well. This means no glass in front of the eyes. A wide-brim hat or baseball cap is fine. So, if you have fair skin and burn easily, you may only be safe with the morning and late afternoon sun come summer.
If you use sunscreen at all, make sure you only use Aubrey Organics as they have it right as far as ingredients and which rays to block. I personally do not use lotion—even in Mexico—I practice “safe sunning” and wear a desert type hat from L.L. Bean that also protects my neck from burning. We often forget that sunlight is healthy for us, and yes, that includes nude exposure, except where illegal! Benefits of sun exposure are: vitamin D which is absorbed through the skin and is important to protect us from certain cancers and keep our bones healthy, prevention and treatment of Seasonal Affective Disorder (S.A.D.), helps people with sleep disorders, reduces P.M.S. in some women, and reduces the appearance and discomfort of psoriasis. For scientific references read this article: Is the Sun Good or Bad?
Some studies have shown that skin cancer can be healed by exposure to sunlight! This is yet another example of the controversy surrounding the human body. We are very individual and studies can only take us so far. Now, we know that some nutrients protect us from radiation and I recommend them for those who get a lot of sun. Supplements to consider include lots of Vitamin C, selenium and essential fatty acids such as borage oil, flax seed oil or super omega-3’s. These act as anti-oxidants, protectors that mother nature uses to keep things in balance. With these, the suns rays, naturally occurring pollutants such as radon and ozone, and bad cells (the cancer or other disease types) are kept at bay. Fat in the diet. the good kind, can protect us. That is why good fats such as coconut are used abundantly in the tropics. Butter, coconut oil and fats from nuts & seeds would be my first choice to increase in my diet to keep your skin moist and youthful.
David G. Olarsch, N.D.