Health related information and news from around the world.

As far as the medical establishment is concerned, chemotherapy—the use of drugs to fight disease—is an almost holy word. As a group, we doctors love to prescribe drugs. If chemotherapy led to good health it might be worthwhile, but we’ve been fed a bill of goods. Chemotherapy does not keep us healthy. If these drugs are as good as doctors claim, how come so many millions and millions of Americans are still afflicted with disease?

Chemotherapy, with its failed promises and often dangerous side effects, is a harsh reaction to disease that should never have occurred. And chemotherapy encourages us to neglect our health. Why take care of ourselves? All we have to do is run to a doctor and get a shot of the new wonder drug, right? Wrong! It was a wise person who said that if we threw all our medicines into the ocean, we’d be better off, but the fish would be in trouble.

“Dr. Fox, you’re not being fair. Lots of medicines are pretty good,” a patient argued the other day. Yes, some medicines work well. We will always need medicines and surgeries for those who do become ill or injure themselves. In some cases, the risk of side effects is outweighed by the compelling need for immediate relief. Most of us, however, most of the time, would be well advised to leave drugs to the fish.

Instead of relying on chemotherapy to treat disease, let’s adopt a new philsophy: Nutri-Prevention.

Nutri-Prevention relies not on drugs but nutrients, such as vitamins, minerals, complex carbohydrates and amino acids (the building blocks of protein), to keep your immune system in shape. While chemotherapy makes your body the battleground that disease and drugs ravage as they struggle for dominance, Nutri-Prevention helps turn your immune system into a mighty shield against disease.

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Now tighten up the muscles of your mouth. Grimace. Show your teeth, and tighten up the muscles around your mouth and the front of your neck. Tilt your chin up. Now, with your teeth still bared, open your lips as wide as you can. Hold them open, teeth clenched, as you also tighten your cheek and neck muscles. Teeth clenched, cheeks and neck tight, lips pulled open, hold these muscles tight while you count: one thousand … two thousand . .. three thousand . .. four thousand . .. five thousand … six thousand … seven thousand … eight thousand . .. nine thousand … ten thousand. Count slowly. Slowly relax your lips, jaw, cheek and neck muscles. Take in a deep breath through your nose, filling your lungs as you feel your diaphragm pulling down to open your lungs and make room for the air.

Hold the breath for a moment. Now let it go very slowly, taking at least five seconds to let it all out.

Take another breath. Fill your lungs. Feel your diaphragm pulling down to open your lungs wide. In your mind’s eye, see your diaphragm dropping down as your lungs fill.

Now repeat. Tighten the muscles of your mouth, clench your teeth and grimace. Tilt your chin up and tighten the muscles around your mouth and in the front of your neck. Hold that for a moment, then open your lips as wide as you tighten your cheek and neck muscles. Hold those muscles tight while you count, slowly: one thousand . . . two thousand .. . three thousand . . . four thousand .. . five thousand … six thousand … seven thousand . .. eight thousand .. . nine thousand . .. ten thousand. Slowly relax your jaw, lips, cheek and neck muscles. Take a deep breath in through your nose … a nice, deep breath. Feel your diaphragm pulling down to open your lungs wide. See, in your mind’s eye, your diaphragm dropping down as your lungs fill.

Hold the breath for a moment. Now let it out through your mouth very slowly, taking at least five seconds to empty your lungs.

Take another deep breath, filling up your lungs.

Hold it for a moment. Now let it out, very slowly. Take five seconds or more to blow it all out.

The muscles of your mouth and the front of your neck now feel light and relaxed.

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MIXED SPROUTS AND RAISINS

Sprouted beans and peas are tasty, high in vitamin C, and add crunch to your foods. Buy mixed sprouts (or sprout your own), including mung bean sprouts, azuki bean sprouts, lentil sprouts, pea sprouts and radish sprouts.

Fill a small bowl with the mixed sprouts. Add raisins to taste. Sprinkle with sunflower seeds or chopped peanuts or almonds. Eat and enjoy. My son Barry likes to eat mixed sprouts and raisins with a small slice of low-fat mozzarella cheese and a piece of whole-wheat bread.

MIXED BEANS

Mixed beans, with or without lentils, can be eaten by themselves or as part of a meal. My wife Hannah always keeps a big pot of six or seven kinds of cooked beans in the refrigerator, ready to be heated or eaten cold as part of a salad.

How long it takes beans to cook depends on whether, and how long, you presoak them. To presoak beans, rinse them, and then place in a pot with about three times as much water as beans. Let stand for several hours. When my wife cooks beans, she puts them in a pot with three cups of water for every cup of beans. She puts the slower-cooking beans in first, adding the quicker-cooking ones a little later. The water is brought to a boil, the beans are added, covered, and left to simmer over a low heat. She checks the water occasionally, adding more if necessary.

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Nature has packed an amazing variety of nutrients into the appealing packages we call food. When you look at an apple, you don’t think about the carbohydrates, fat, protein, fiber, calcium, iron, phosphorus, vitamin A, niacin, vitamin C and other nutrients it contains. You see and taste an apple.

As soon as you bite into the apple, however, you begin to “unwrap” the package. Chewing continues the process, which is completed by the enzymes in your mouth, stomach and intestines. Soon, the package is completely unwrapped. No longer an apple, it is now a collection of the nutrients that go into the making of an apple. It’s the ingredients, not the apple itself, that are absorbed into your body, and many of these ingredients are a big help to our “doctor within.” Others, however, are a mixed blessing, and some are outright harmful. Let’s look at the helpful ones first.

Vitamins and Minerals

Vitamins and minerals are indispensable tools for your “doctor within,” performing innumerable jobs in every cell of your body. They keep your bones and muscles strong, your skin clear and smooth. They also help fight cellular poisons, prevent unnecessary blood clotting, allow your brain to communicate with the rest of your body, heal wounds, fight bacteria and viruses, promote growth, form red blood cells and dispose of body wastes. You name it, vitamins and minerals are involved.

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Sceptics might suggest that we have deliberately chosen to describe trials that support our ‘case’ – ignoring trials with negative results unless they had some obvious flaw, for example. In fact, the studies described here are not a carefully chosen selection – they represent the major scientific trials of food intolerance carried out in the UK during the 1980s. Although a few studies of this sort have been carried out elsewhere in the world, there is little doubt that the United Kingdom is a major centre for serious, scientific research on food intolerance at the present time.

We believe that the studies which produced no evidence for food intolerance in rheumatoid arthritis and irritable bowel syndrome are both seriously flawed. The doctors earning out these studies are sceptical of the whole idea, and this has led them to disregard some important aspects of food intolerance – that it is vital to exclude all the likely foods at once, that wheat and citrus fruits are common culprits, and that normal-sized portions are usually needed to provoke a reaction during testing. The number of patients studied in these trials was small, and in the case of the IBS trial, they may not have been representative.

No medical trial is ever perfect, and various criticisms can be made of the three trials that showed a good response to an elimination diet. But they are all fairly minor criticisms, and they do not invalidate the overall findings. The doctors who carried out these trials were well aware of the controversial nature of their approach, and all took special care to design their trials very carefully. Moreover, some of the doctors who planned these trials believed that they would not see any response, or that it would be a placebo effect if they did. Their own results changed their minds.

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Yet, today, obedience is more necessary than ever before if a child’s desires are to be curbed and not become too demanding. A child who has learned to be obedient and comply with his parents’ wishes will only have to train himself in the practice of moderation, whereas badly brought up children who always get their own way succumb hopelessly to the gripping power of television. This is much more dangerous than many parents may think, because a growing child who is allowed to absorb anything he likes, without restrictions, is left to the mercy of bad influences. So, if parents do not set a good example in all they do and say, they can hardly expect self-control from their children. Where self-discipline is lacking it would be much better not to have a television at all.

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Only recently I heard from a mother whose child came down with an extremely dangerous form of poisoning after eating sprayed grapes.

Another report came from a woman in her sixties who loves the grapes from the Ticino canton in Switzerland. Although she should have known better, she would eat the grapes that obviously still had traces of pesticide on them and then, without fail, would suffer from digestive upsets accompanied by strong fermentation in the bowels. At first she thought that the problem was caused by eating too much raw sauerkraut, but as soon as the grape season came to an end so did her intestinal trouble, even though she continued to enjoy eating sauerkraut regularly. Moreover, she only consumed sauerkraut obtained from a reliable source, which was prepared in a natural way and not detrimental to health. These facts pointed directly to the sprayed grapes from Ticino as the cause of her upset.

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Which of all the oils and fats provided by nature is the best for our consumption? This question is a difficult one to answer. To start with, the criteria for judging or evaluating an oil or fat must be clear in our mind.

Today, oils and fats are primarily rated according to their content of unsaturated fatty acids. It has been found that these are necessary to guarantee the normal growth of many body cells and also to keep them healthy. Furthermore, we know that premature aging of the vascular walls, above all, the arteries, can be caused by a lack of unsaturated fatty acids. Even a cancerous degeneration of the cells has been attributed to this deficiency. Unsaturated fatty acids are therefore a vital factor, and we cannot remain healthy without them.

But it has not yet been proved that an oil or fat should be judged only by the amount of unsaturated fatty acids in it. It almost goes without saying that when a vital substance is discovered, it is at first highly overrated, such as once was the case with vitamins and the great fuss that was made over them. While this fanfare was going on, it was all but forgotten that minerals, the nutritive salts, are just as vital as vitamins. For example, olive oil has only a modest content of unsaturated fatty acids and therefore tends to be unjustly downgraded.

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Before breakfast, on an empty stomach, take half a glass of raw potato juice diluted with a little warm water. The breakfast itself should consist of whole wheat that has been soaked in water for a day or two. It can be made more palatable with the addition of a good vegetable stock or fresh butter. If the bowels need special attention, add psyllium seed or freshly ground linseed to the wheat. Crispbread with butter and wheat germ will complete your breakfast. If the liver is not functioning properly, drink a glass of raw carrot juice. Chew all the food well and insalivate it thoroughly.

Midday Meal: Eat a good, hearty vegetable soup with a cup of raw cabbage juice, which is added after the soup has been taken off the heat. Then have a dish of natural brown rice, steamed vegetables and a salad. Never use vinegar to make your salad dressing; use lemon juice, or sour milk or whey concentrate (Mol-kosan) if you cannot tolerate lemon. For variety, in place of the brown rice you can use whole wheat, buckwheat or millet. If you feel nervous and tired out, beat a raw egg and mix it in with your food every other day. On no account should the eggs be cooked because this would destroy most of their vitamins and, in addition, produce too much uric acid. Only when eggs are eaten raw do they have a place in a therapeutic diet, if it is at all advisable to include them. Thus, raw eggs can be used, as indicated, in a diet for stomach ulcers, but those who suffer from rheumatism should avoid eggs altogether.

Evening meal: This can be along similar lines to the breakfast. The wholewheat dish can be varied by taking oat flake porridge or, even better, raw, soaked oat grains, put through the mincer.

Keep off fruit on this special diet, only use vegetable juices.

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What I said about the rice grain also applies to the wheat kernel. Its valuable constituents are to be found, not in the inner part, but in the outer one, the bran. Like rice, the wheat grain should be used in its entirety, ground coarsely as wholewheat flour or flakes. Groats, coarse meal, are especially suitable for soups, rissole mixes, bread and biscuits. If you have no rough-grinding mill to make you own wholewheat flour, soak the wheat overnight and then put the soft, swollen kernels through the mincer.

This flaky wheat can be added to your muesli. Of course, you can use Vogel’s Wheat Bran and Germ instead. According to taste, sweeten the muesli with raisins or sultanas, putting these through the mincer together with the soaked wheat. The raisins will give you natural sugar. You see how easy it is to prepare a delicious muesli! Add some honey, perhaps some finely ground almonds or almond puree and a variety of fruit according to what is in season. Berries are an ideal addition. If you tend to suffer from constipation, mix some soaked linseed into the muesli to encourage the bowel function.

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