First of all, to clarify my position on water, which was discussed in last week’s post…
Hydration is of utmost importance. It’s better to drink water than become dehydrated. There are simply better options in which to hydrate the body without negatively impacting digestion and mineral balance. Choose these liquids when you have the choice. If all you have to hydrate your body with is water, drink it!
Lately I’ve been introduced to a revolutionary new way of viewing infectious illness from ?pathogens? such as bacteria, fungi, parasites, and viruses. For years I’ve felt confident that a strong body with a properly-functioning immune system is completely resilient in the face of infectious disease. Even Louis Pasteur (as in ?pasteurization?), the original discoverer of ?germs,? eventually recoiled his original theory that germs cause disease. Instead he claimed as his opponents had, that disease had more to do with the state of the body than the presence of pathogens.
I’ve looked at building the immune system as a powerful process to undertake since my late teens. After being medicated for most of my youth and many of my symptoms suppressed, I yearned to ?just let my body deal with it on its own. To me the immune system seemed like a powerful tool, and if I could give it some ?exercise? it would become strong. So as an adult for the first time, when I came down with something ? anything, I rested up when possible and let my body practice handling it with no assistance from drugs, supplements, or anything. The long term results of this attitude have been rewarding. I rarely get sick now (and used to have 3-4 sinus infections per year accompanied by rounds of antibiotics + flu), and when I do it’s not severe and the duration is very short.
In my early 20’s I immediately started to think of my immune system as being strong and impenetrable. A trip I took to Nepal was quite humbling though. For five weeks me and a group of fifty others trekked through the Himalayas. We all ate the same thing as we were all served the same meals. Several of the Westerners on the trip never had so much as a tummy rumble. A couple of the locals on the trip developed some coughs when we hit cold temperatures, but none seemed to have any gastrointestinal illness to speak of. I, on the other hand, managed to spray liquid from both ends while having a back-breaking fever for nearly half of the trip. In fact, with the exception of only one other person (not you Roy, although you had diarrhea-a-plenty), I was the sickest person out there.
Another fascinating observation that I made was that some people on the trip were ravaged by leeches, and others made it the entire five weeks without a single bite. It seemed impossible. I couldn’t keep them off of me. We kept tallies. About half of the whities on the trip had no leech bites. Four others had one or two. I took the silver medal with five bites. One girl was a clear victor. She was bitten 15 times! She also had deadly food allergies to all kinds of stuff, was sick a lot on the trip as well, and was extremely weird (she mentioned liking to embroider her skin). These are not coincidences or bad luck. At the time I concluded that these were all results of her being Canadian ? bad karma for having one of them wimpy maple-leaf flags on her backpack so that no one would dare think she was a filthy American. In hindsight, she was a buffet for pathogens as was I.
Although there were some rough times on that trip to Nepal, overall I was happy for the immune-system workout ? happy to have practiced conquering the enemies of human health. But is this really how it works?
Dr. Aajonus Vonderplanitz, nutrition master and part alien (from Planet Vonder perhaps?), has opened my mind to greater possibilities on the topic of ?infectious disease? and ?pathogens. In his first book, We Want to Live, he states that a body free of toxic residues and dead and decaying matter has no ability to feed pathogens and compares it to termites not attacking a healthy tree. If the germ theory (that germs cause illness and disease, end of story) was really so simple, everyone on my trip to Nepal would have had fever, diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, and leech bites. Most had none of the above, they were ?healthy trees,? especially the locals not brought up making ?runs to the border? and what not.
Vonderplanitz actually views pathogens of nearly all kinds as rendering quite a service to the human body ? like a trash service let’s say. If you have a lot of festering trash rotting away inside your body, it’s actually better to have bacteria, fungi, viruses, and parasites around to munch on it. The ideal is not to accumulate trash and thus not need the garbage service. But the next best option is to actually get sick, have pathogens, and rid your body of wastes it is otherwise unable to get out.
This concept ties in beautifully to Pottenger’s cat study. Francis Pottenger, several decades ago, did a study on cats comparing raw food diets to cooked food diets. Ironically (if you’re thinking about things the way modern medicine does), the cats on raw diets had perfect health and NO PARASITES! NONE! The cats on cooked food had rampant illness of all kinds and were thoroughly inundated by parasites. Many parasites and other pathogens were obviously destroyed by cooking, and their exposure to parasites and other pathogens was exceedingly less than the raw comparison group, yet that made no difference. The inner ecosystem of the body is the prime determinant in disease risk.
Furthermore, if the parasitized cats would have been treated to kill off pathogens using harsh chemicals and antibiotics (sound familiar?), the diseased and decaying tissue and waste matter that was feeding them and other microorganisms that we typically consider threatening would have continued to accumulate. The atmosphere for bacterial infection and parasites would be primed even more ? your chances of getting sick become even greater when these supposed villains are prematurely eliminated. That’s why the more you take medication like antibiotics, the more you get sick (and medicines are substances that add to the sum total of toxic waste matter needing removal to boot). And when you allow your body to get sick, you are relieved of crapola that is desperately trying to get out, and once that’s out your chances of illness, and the severity of that illness, are greatly diminished.
What happens if infectious illness is constantly thwarted over the course of a lifetime? Toxins and waste matter continue to accumulate. The body, trying to localize this detrimental garbage, forms tumors that are nearly impossible to dissolve. Benign tumors are more or less permanent fixtures of the body until surgically removed. Malignant tumors take two courses of action ? they spread rapidly or they quickly start to disappear.
So what is Cancer? Cancer is an adaptation by the body, a last-ditched effort, to rid the body of an overaccumulation of toxins and waste matter. Cancer cells are cells surrounding tumors and damaged tissues that the body brilliantly mutates to metabolize localized waste matter. Cancer is not a malfunction, it is the body’s attempt to heal itself when bacteria, parasites, and viruses aren’t allowed to assist.
The latest and most effective, cutting-edge Cancer treatment is injection of bacteria such as E. Coli and Salmonella as well as viruses directly into malignant tumors. The Cancer cells stop forming. Is it effective because it eliminates the ?enemy?, or because it takes over the job of the Cancer cells (feeding upon accumulated waste)? You tell me. It is also well known that many Cancers go into remission when the patient happens to get a nasty infection or virus of some kind.
So to prevent this chain of events from taking place inside you to the point of developing a life-threatening Cancer while simultaneously reducing your proneness to infectious illness you must:
1) Reduce the amount of waste that is accumulating in your body. Wastes come in the form of processed foods (particularly vegetable oils in any form ? they are all rancidized and full of free radicals that destroy cells), cooked, pasteurized, and/or irradiated foods, industrial/agricultural chemicals, medications, processed supplements (like vitamins and minerals), and stimulants which cause an accumulation of hormonal waste byproducts (caffeine, cigarettes, refined sugar, alcohol, other drugs).
2) Eliminate more of these waste products. Raw, unadulterated fats bind with waste matter and flush it out of the system more effectively than any other type of food. Eggs, butter, milk, cream, cheese, coconut, avocado, fish, and meats (all raw ideally), are exceptional detoxifying foods, especially when cultivated properly without pesticides. This is why some fatty acids (CLA, lauric acid, etc.) and fat soluble vitamins like Vitamin D are well-known to be the most potent anti-Cancer nutrients as discussed in ?Save the Tatas. Alkalizing body tissues with raw vegetable juices, raw citrus juices, and some whole raw fruit and vegetable matter is also beneficial for removing waste. Exercise and/or sweating, which stimulates blood flow and lymphatic drainage, also flushes out bodily waste. Finally, don’t live life in a sterile environment. Eat raw and fermented foods, get dirty, and don’t use no antibacterial nuthin?.
3) Let illness take its course. When you feel ill, which you will less often if your body tissues are alkaline and you are eating abundant amounts of raw fats, rest up, nourish your body well, and celebrate the opportunity to be receiving a thorough house cleaning even though it may be extremely unpleasant. Do not try to eliminate or suppress symptoms, reduce fever, etc. unless you really think your life is being threatened by your malady.
Our bodies are designed to interact with the microscopic and parasitical creatures of the earth. Trying to destroy these pathogens by cooking, pasteurization, irradiation (subjecting food to nuclear waste ? No I’m not making this up, and yes you’ve already eaten these foods), and medication; or even trying to avoid them by living in a perfectly hygienic and sterile environment, is a dead end road with consequences. Eliminating the paranoia and archaic fictitious beliefs that modern ‘science? has imposed on us is yet another important step in achieving the vibrant health we seek.
Welcome to Planet Vonder. I hope you have a nice day.
And by the way, since June I’ve consumed about 50 gallons of unfiltered/untreated creek water, 20 pounds of raw beef, 15 pounds of raw butter, 50 gallons of raw whole milk, 5 quarts of raw cream, 10 quarts of fermented cabbage and cucumbers, 10 pounds of raw seafood, 4 dozen raw eggs, 2 pounds of raw beef liver, and two raw chickens without food poisoning, diarrhea, nausea, or even unusual discomfort. I did fart once, but that was it.
Thank you for this great post, I was lead here by a link from Anne Marie at http://ammichaels.livejournal.com.
You have really sythesized in one post everything that I have been searching for these last few months. I have come across some pages by Dr. Aajonus Vonderplanitz and was struck at his experiences, plus the fact that he doesn’t drink much water. Are you influenced very much by his work?? Is it worth reading his book – he seems pretty radical, but his theories are similar to WAP???
Similarly, I am seen as crazy, when I try to let my children’s colds run their own course – knowing that the body shouldn’t be suppressed in any way. I do not stifle fevers, coughs or runny noses, only monitor and make comfortable (in our bed).
Recently I too had pondered the question about bee stings, and how only some people get stung. Perhaps it is true that beekeepers, fed well on royal jelly and bee pollen, do not get stung as their immune systems are very healthy?
I have had many, many gastro-intestinal and liver problems in the past, I too, sometimes felt, why am I the only one getting sick around here? – after extensive travel in China for instance. I healed myself with raw fats – also detoxing on a programme using fats and liquid zeolite.
I look forward to reading the rest of your blog,
thank you for a very special post,
Beatrix.
Thanks for your comment Beatrix. Vonderplanitz is extremely radical in his thinking, and even though many of his recommendations are silly, much of the theory he has developed regarding health and healing is profoundly accurate. The most important aspect of his entire work is perhaps the idea that we should maintain constant exposure to what are considered “pathogenic” organisms. To try to sidestep having a relationship with microorganisms that we co-evolved with has negative consequences. It is disobeying nature, which is something we cannot do without suffering for it in some way. He goes further by saying that infections, colds, flus, parasites, etc. benefit us by ridding our bodies of accumulated trash. In other words, they are purifying.
WAP was a huge influence on Vonderplanitz, but he seems to have extrapolated only the data which suits his raw theory. The eskimo ate mostly raw meat and fish and were really healthy. However, this ignores the people that Price discovered eating mostly cooked meats and fish with cooked grains and starchy vegetables who were equally as healthy and robust.
The bottom line is that healthy people can be healthy eating mostly cooked foods. This was shown to a degree of irrefutability by Price and others. Whatever toxins are in cooked meats and other foods are neutralized, chelated, and excreted from the body. They do not accumulate and do not cause problems unless they are ingested in a massive, unmanageable dose. The bacteria (enterocytes) in our digestive tracts appear to perform this function, and our digestive health is the greatest asset we have against the accumulation of pathogenic levels of toxins. Vonderplanitz offers a healing diet for those whose health, like his own in the beginning, was so severely poor that a normal healthy diet could not be properly utilized. In other words, if I had Cancer or other life-threatening disease I would listen to Vonderplanitz very carefully — this is his area of expertise. He has never eaten a regular healthy diet to even know that it can be equally nourishing to those healthy enough to digest and assimilate it properly.
So yes, his books are very much worth reading because they offer up wisdom and knowledge that can’t be ignored or denied. But odds are you don’t break out in hives when eating cooked meat like he did. Cooked meat was toxic to him because he was too unhealthy to neutralize its undesirable byproducts. HCA’s and mutagens in cooked meats are not threatening to a healthy person. Keep this in mind while visiting Planet Vonder.
I hope this helps. Feel free to track me down for more information, and thanks again for the comment.
Never suppress an illness unless you’re pretty sure you are going to die if you don’t — that’s my stance. Allow your body to overcome it and purge itself of diseased matter like it is trying to do. “It’s a housecleaning.”