Secrets to Achieving Optimal Health through Natural Hygiene

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Secrets to Achieving Optimal Health through Natural Hygiene by Mike Snyder and Dave Klein © 2007 www.TheRawDiet.com Mike:Welcome everyone. I 9m very pleased that you can join us tonight and it's a great pleasure to bring you my special guest, Dave Klein. He 9s a natural health author and a self- healing empowerment coach.

Since 1992 he has guided a multitude of people with disease to a whole new level of vibrant disease-free health. His clients receive empowering education with respect to the whole self: mental, emotional, physical and spiritual. He does diet counseling, self-healing and healthful lifestyle education for many different conditions and he 9s an author of many books including -- He 9s a co-author of cSelf Healing Power d, cYour Natural Diet: Alive Raw Foods d with T.C.

Fry, cThe Fruits of Healing: A Story About Natural Healing of Ulcerative Colitis d, cThe Seven Essentials for Overcoming Illness and Creating Everlasting Wellness d and Living Nutrition Magazine. Today we have Keith Schaffer recording the calls from www.SaveyourSeminars.com Thank you! Dave, could you tell us a little bit about yourself, maybe a little story and share with us some things that have brought you to where you are now?

Dave:Sure Mike, ... more. less.

I 9m curious if I can somehow find out later on how many people actually know my story because it 9s fairly well known in the raw food circles. I grew up in northern New Jersey and eating the cStandard American Diet d. Around age 17 I came down with ulcerative colitis symptoms which were pretty horrendous, going to the toilet all the time, chronic fatigue, and bleeding, and, it was just a ruinous eight years that I went through with that. All through the eight years, the seven gastroenterologists I saw told me that there was no connection between my diet and my health condition. Being sick and miserable and just being offered medicines and exams -- I was just very angry at the whole system and the doctors were always promising me to hang in there until the wonder drug came along and I would be one of the first people to try it. Well, in the seventh year of my illness, I was having ten to fifteen bloody bowl movements a day. I was just a weak sickly shadow of my former self. My mental functions were about 20% of what it seemed like they used to be and I didn 9t have much of a life. And, somehow I made it through engineering school and worked three years in engineering and in the last year I started looking for diet help. I knew that there had to be some kind of an answer out there I 9d have no idea what it would be. But, the only factor I can think of which might have an impact was nutrition, so I went to a nutritionist and he just had a bunch of pills to offer and that didn 9t seem to make any sense to me. And then, a little while later, I was in the phone book and I found a doctor of natural hygiene who did diet counseling. I went to see him and he gave me a diet plan of what looked like rabbit and monkey food. So I thought that that was very strange, and I didn 9t see how by eating that I would not lose the rest of my weight and wither away and die. But he explained about how the way my body can heal itself and he gave me a bunch of information on natural hygiene. He explained how he overcame hypertension and lost a lot of weight. He was the healthiest man I 9ve ever seen in my life and his name is Dr. Lawrence Gallant. So I took the information and thought well maybe this applies to a lot of people, but it doesn 9t apply to me because I was going to the toilet all the time. To make a long story short, a few months later the gastroenterologist in Manhattan said, Dave, the medicines aren 9t working. It 9s time for you to cut out your colon or try a drug which will knock out your immune system. So, I was sick and weak and shivering and pale and frightened and realized that I had to figure this thing out for myself now because the medical people are just going to lead me into a grave and the whole thing just seemed like insanity to me. So, I wasn 9t going to follow any of this advice and so I went home and started looking for answers and trying to think outside of the box for the first time. Then, I got some big clues. I saw one book which said some people never overcome colitis until they stop eating meat. And then I talked to Lawrence and he said, cDave, you can do it! d And then one magical night, twenty-one years ago, I was reading information on fruitarian diet, on the principles of self healing, on natural hygiene. And I read a bunch of amazing empowering testimonials about people who had overcome all kinds of serious diseases by just changing the thinking, letting go of the mentality of treating the body with drugs and other things, and just trusting that the body will heal itself and adopting a diet of mostly raw foods or 100% raw foods. So, I also understood that biologically our closest cousins are the primates and the ones that are energetic eat mostly fruit. But, I also understood that fruits and vegetables have all the nutrients we need, they 9re as nutritious as can be, and not the junky diet that I was eating that was destroying my body and specifically meat was just rotting and making my colon very sick. So, the whole thing made sense to me, intellectually and even on a spiritual level. It was like a big spiritual awakening. I understood that I had to make a big change in my life and start living naturally, as naturally as possible, and totally let go of the medical mentality. So, the next morning I woke up, I threw away the medicines and tore the doctor 9s names out of the phone book and somebody was speaking to me from up above and I just started doing juices and smoothies. I drank smoothies and juices all day long and maybe had some melons with that. On the second day I did the same thing. My gut started feeling soothed for the first time in three years. On the third day, I started coming back to life, seeing vibrant colors, my energy, my spirit was just soaring, I was coming alive, feeling things I hadn 9t felt in years because I 9d become a zombie being so sick and so drugged up. On the fourth day I started doing solid raw food and I started having formed bowl movements and the bleeding went away. I was jumping for joy. It 9s like being let out of jail. And, my overflowing joy, I 9d gone bananas, my family thought I 9d gone bananas and I was just as happy as can be. From that moment, I just wanted to tell the whole world about this. So, back then I needed to detoxify, rebuild my health and start looking healthy. And, I was powerless to help people back then, but my plan was to focus on my own health and build up my health and eventually I changed careers from engineering to health education. I just enjoy helping people get the information to overcome their limitations, which is usually a toxic diet and incorrect beliefs, and live the life which deep down they really are yearning to live -- Free of disease. To me this is just a really wonderful thing that anybody can do, is to help people learn how to eat healthier and live a life with more freedom. So, there 9s a lot I can talk about that I 9m sure we can address questions later on without me telling my whole entire life story in detail. Mike:Thank you. I had a similar story where I was going to medical doctors for a skin condition I had. They would tell me there 9s no relation to your diet and this health challenge you have. So they would put me on medications and it wasn 9t until I discovered your magazine, Living Nutrition that I discovered that the body can heal itself. So I started practicing natural hygiene, and doing some fasting, and the health challenge went away and it was amazing. Dave:That 9s fantastic, Mike. Mike:Yeah, it 9s amazing how the body can heal itself. So you changed your career to Natural Health? Did you go to school for that? Dave:Well, I went to engineering school then worked three years in that. Then after I healed up, I took a year and a half off, got back into engineering and moved out to California from New York state. Natural Hygiene teaches that in order to become healthy, we need to give equal attention to about twenty to thirty different aspects of health and not just become raw food fanatics and think that raw food is all there is to becoming healthy. Mike:Can you describe your current diet and how long have you been on it, eating this way? Dave:Yeah, the first six months I ate steamed veggies, potatoes, and squash for dinner several nights a week. During the day, I 9ve always eaten fruit, especially in the morning. So, all through the twenty-one years I 9ve always eaten about three or four meals of fruit. Not huge meals, just enough to satisfy and I eat them with or without greens, lettuce, celery or cucumbers. And then, it depends on the season, depends on how my body feels, depends on whether I 9m working out or not as to what I 9m gonna have for dinner. It depends on the food availability. I follow my senses. That 9s why this diet started working for me from day one. I don 9t know how I had this talent. Some people are not in touch with their body and their senses and what their body is calling for them to do. So those are the people who have the biggest challenge, it seems, in trying to become a raw fooder. It 9s a talent, it 9s a skill which people can learn by sitting and being present, checking in with their body and learning to pay attention to different signals and let go of paying attention to what the mind is saying. And by responding to our body 9s needs in this way, that 9s how we 9re able to create health and have success in life. So again, your question was -- If you could repeat it? Mike:Outline your current diet, so, I understand it 9s raw and vegan foods with fruits, leafy greens, vegetables, nuts and seeds. Are there some other foods that you include? Dave:Right, so, not really, not at all. I gave up meat and junk food immediately. The first seven years I would have some steam -- Well, after the first six months, I would only have steamed veggies, potato squash, and occasionally some grains, some baked corn chips, just a few times a year. The reason I progressed on to a purer and purer diet is because my digestive strength was weak, I couldn 9t handle starchy mucus forming food. They just gave me fermentation, made me tired and weak, and unable to perform and think clearly. So, my body needed the simplest and purest diet and that was really a great teacher for me. I really learned how the digestive system works especially for sensitive people, what they need to do. So, after the first seven or eight years, all of a sudden I woke up one day feeling absolutely fantastic with no cravings. I noticed that I had no more cravings or attachments to the last cooked foods I used to eat, which was occasionally, baked corned chips, hot air pop corn, and a few cooked grains. Since that happened, about seven or eight years ago, I haven 9t eaten any more cooked food. I basically eat fruits with or without greens, celery or cucumber throughout the day, three or four times. And, I do that because my body is calling for it, also, that gives me enough calories, enough fuel to get through the day. If I don 9t have enough sweet fruits with the sugar calories during the day then late in the afternoon I 9m tired and I 9m looking for a big meal or something to make me feel better. And if I get into that tract I could overeat on nuts or something fatty and that just doesn 9t work for me. I think it 9s really healthy. A good way to keep your body clean is to have sweet fruit with the greens throughout the day and plan on having one heavier meal for dinner, if that 9s what you need, which could be a salad with one kind of fat. I think that gives the body the best chance to digest the food and create energy out of it and build your bones and so forth and it keeps up the cleanest inside. So, for example, a salad with nuts or seeds or avocado or a dressing made from that or coconut and, if you 9re still eating cooked food, I think it 9s good to have a raw salad with every cooked food meal and have your cooked meal be lightly steamed vegetables, potatoes, or squash. If you feel unsatisfied like your not getting enough calories doing this, I think the best approach is to eat bigger portions, and also stay physically fit because when we 9re out of shape then our spine is not strong and we 9re not in good aerobic shape then we would seem to be at the mercy of our emotions and we are not able to have any kind of self discipline when it comes to wrong food choices. So that 9s basically what I eat. Some evenings I won 9t have any greens. I might have some cucumbers I might have a bowl of oranges. Depending on the food combining on how long it 9s been before my previous meal. I may have another kind of fruit meal in the evening. Sometimes I make juices, I like to squeeze oranges to make orange juice almost every day. Mike:Is there a certain percentage or weight of greens and celery that you should be eating every day? Dave:Well, that 9s a good question. My response is that there really is no cshoulds d when it comes to diets, we should all follow our own senses because ultimately we have to learn for ourselves. Some people absolutely swear they can 9t touch vegetables, some raw fooders. Some swear they can 9t touch nuts or seeds. Unless they 9re falling apart and they 9re anemic and looking terrible, I just generally say, that 9s wonderful that you 9re following your senses and your body is telling you what to do and you just sound so happy and feel happy. So I 9ve come across a few people like that. I also have come across a lot of people who, of course, are out of balance and I may suggest during a consultation, that they add more greens or they decrease the fat or they get more calories from fruit during the day. Mike:Do you blend or juice often? Do you like the green smoothies popularized by Victoria Boutenko? Dave:I think it 9s wonderful when people get into making juices and smoothies, especially in the beginning. I really encourage people to explore different ways to create raw food dishes and drinks in the beginning and eventually, most of them settle on a simpler diet and they fuss less in the kitchen with making different things. I never have made a green smoothie or had one in my life. It doesn 9t appeal to me but I think it 9s wonderful that people like it and if they make it flavorful without using overpowering spices, I think that 9s a great way to get your greens and your nutrition. I love to make a glass of orange juice every morning. I squeeze about six oranges, the regular Valencia oranges and one blood orange, if they 9re available and they 9ve been available here for the last four months which is wonderful, it 9s longer than ever. So, one blood orange with the Valencia orange juice make an absolutely delicious drink. So, that 9s the way I start my morning every day when I 9m feeding my few cats around 7:00 a.m. Then a couple of hours later, I 9m gonna have some other kind of sweet fruit. Maybe a couple of bananas or three or four bananas or a melon, I usually eat an entire melon or sometimes two melons, or a bowl of grapes. I may, after eating that, have a handful of dates depending on how my energy is. Then I may have a cucumber or two or a few stalks of the tender inner celery stalks, or ribs I should say, or maybe a handful of lettuce or an entire head of lettuce. So, after having those two meals of fruit in the morning, I 9m pretty much good until about, I don 9t know, twelve or one o 9clock in the afternoon. And, depending on my activity level and how I feel and the season, that just sort of dictates what my next two or three fruit meals are going to be. I like to have choices of say apricots, grapefruits, melons, grapes, dates around the house, because I don 9t like to plan my meal because I don 9t know what I 9m gonna want until the urge hits me. And then my body always tells me what kind of energy it wants, what kind of taste sensation. It 9s like a sensorial kind of thing where my body is just talking to me and telling me what kind of food I want and I 9ve done this so many times, I 9ve had twenty-one years times five meals a day. That 9s a lot of different meals and so I 9m always paying attention to how these foods affect my energy and leave me feeling. How they digest and how my mind and body respond to the food. So I pretty much know what foods are gonna work for me. If I 9m not paying attention to my body and I have the wrong kind of food because I 9m stressed or on the run or whatever, I pay for it with bad digestion. My energy doesn 9t feel good and I just start eating in distorted ways because I 9m trying to correct what I did and I know I got myself into a little bit of a mess. So, the thing to do when we 9re out of sorts and haven 9t eaten properly is to clean out with water and just rest and let the body purify itself and citrus juice and whole citrus fruits are just about the best food if you want to assist your body in doing that while still eating. Mike:I 9ve gotten much more in touch with my body and how it feels after eating certain foods. I noticed there was a big difference in digestion of different foods. Do you like to mono-eat foods or do you like raw gourmet? Dave:Well, complicated combinations definitely don 9t work for me because I have a history of colitis and really bad depleted digestive system. Anybody that 9s had really bad gastrointestinal illness, inflammation for years, going to the toilet non stop for years, definitely is not going to have strong digestion for a few years. And people with a history of what I went through just don 9t digest fats well. So I was forced to learn to eat simply, and naturally I try to think intellectually we really are designed to have one kind of food per meal. So my instincts and my intellect were telling me that yeah, what Dr. Shelton, T.C. Fry, and Doug Graham are saying that a mono meal is really the best way to have good digestion and excellent health, it made sense to me. So in the beginning I used to make fancy salads and it never really did it for me. On a deep level I really knew that this wasn 9t really a satisfying meal. Then later I learned just to eat -- If I wanted lettuce, I would have an entire head of lettuce and that would be a mini meal. If my body was calling for oranges, I would eat three, four, five or six, until I felt satisfied and that was a meal. These foods have all the broad spectrum of nutrients and I learned how to be satisfied and eat things mono style in a way which was just satisfying and really helped me maintain a high level of energy. So, yeah, I 9d like to encourage people to try just having a mono meal once in a while or have a mono meal with say one other food, say lettuce or celery. Just tune into the flavor of the food and just try to imagine how nutritious these foods are, and to me it really challenges or bamboozles my senses when I put two different kinds of foods in my mouth at the same time which have contrasting flavors. Let 9s say tangerine and a grape or say some almonds and an orange. It 9s like my brain is getting two different hits on different foods, flavors and energies, and that is a little unsettling to my mind and body. It wants to enjoy and savor one particular kind of food and within the flavor of each food there 9s all kinds of subtle overtones with of course different textures and coolness or heat to it. There 9s different nuances, there 9s different sensational experiences we get from having one kind of food and I find that to be absolutely wonderful. It doesn 9t make me want to stuff myself with five or ten different kinds of foods in a different meal. It 9s like I want to savor the particular energy and flavors of one particular food. I think a lot of raw fooders, they all revolve in this direction. So, if you 9re new to this, you 9ve only been doing this diet for like less than a year, or one, two, or three, you 9re just a baby at this. We all went through this and I think the deeper you get into this, the more your body is going to give you clear signals to be simplifying your diet and eating less. That 9s another big subject we can touch on if you want, Mike. Like most raw fooders, because they 9ve had a long history of eating a standard diet which is low in nutrients and high in really junk, the body is screaming for good quality food which makes them truly feel good. They tend to get it and when they get into the raw food diet, they tend to overeat on everything, and sometimes that overeating can last for a good three or four years of a one long binge it seems. I 9ve met a lot of people like that and I used to be one of those people. It 9s interesting that once I got satisfied and remineralized and rebuilt my body, that my body is much happier and I haven 9t lost any weight by eating a lot less than I used to. For example, in the past, I 9d eat twelve bananas where now I 9m satisfied with three. I 9ve saved a lot on my food bill and I eat a lot less and a lot less has to come out through my colon which is less strain on that and a lot less energy demand is put on my digestive system. I really never measure my food, but I think I 9m eating about a third to a half less than what I used to eat in the beginning. Mike:When you measure it you sometimes don 9t get adequate calories compared to the cooked fooders, but I 9ve found that you don 9t really need to eat as many calories and we still receive all our nutrients. Dave:Right. That 9s a big point because if you 9ve read Natural Hygiene literature and so forth, you 9ll see that it 9s estimated that 50% or as much as 60% of our daily energy potential, the energy that is available once we wake up, goes towards digesting heavy fatty foods and starchy foods on the Standard American Diet I was talking about and trying to deal with the waste. So, on the Standard American Diet, the body is almost constantly trying to digest food, the immune system and all the other organs of elimination, the liver and kidney and so forth, most of their energy is going to processing and trying to deal with the wastes. The amount of energy that 9s liberated when we do this clean digesting diet which is really high in water content is phenomenal. I mean, it 9s more than 50% of our daily energy is all of a sudden liberated. So the body uses that energy to improve itself which is by detoxifying in the beginning and then rebuilding an entire -- at the same time, rebuilding an entire new body. After a few years of following this regime and eating well and not overeating on fatty foods and going off on tangents with junk foods here and there, we can build a much healthier looking, more beautiful, vibrant, alive body which has much more energy. So for me to overcome chronic fatigue and burnt down adrenal glands and just being so sickly and miserable, to creating dynamic health, and believe me it took -- It didn 9t happen quickly for me, it took about six or seven years because of how depleted I was. That was just absolutely wonderful and it just brings tears to my eyes when I think of what it was like to change from the person who had this sad dreary low-energy persona to become a high-energy person. Who at least when the whether is warm, goes to sleep at 10 or 11 and wakes up at 4 or 5 in the morning totally refreshed and can go, go, go all day long without even needing a nap and be able to do a lot of things to help people and to enjoy life. Mike:So you found your need for sleep has gone down too? Dave:Definitely. If I eat fatty foods, if I have a few ounces of nuts, then I 9m gonna need about eight hours of sleep. If I eat nuts more than once a week, it 9s going to be eight or nine hours of sleep. If I 9m not eating fatty foods for several days, my body is cleaned out and my energy is just out of site then, yeah, maybe five or six hours of sleep might do it sometimes. When I 9ve eaten a really low fat diet over the last few years in the summer, sometimes I 9ve woken up at 2:30 or 3 in the morning, after just about four hours of sleep and just felt absolutely charged up and ready to go. I 9ve learned from experience not to just use all that energy up by doing things. When those times happened, I learned the best thing to do is just relax in bed and just enjoy where I 9m at and not try to get up and do things and I would doze off. As we get older it 9s really a good idea not to overdo it with all this good energy we get. Mike:Should people focus on different ways they use the energy now that they have so much extra? Could some people get burnt out? Dave:Yeah, definitely we want to avoid the trap of overworking and I 9ve learned -- I 9ve been an example of a person who has overworked for several years to get my business established to have a decent life where I have a few dollars left over in the bank account after I get a Living Nutrition Magazine out to people. We can tax our body, but we 9re going to pay for it and we can 9t keep on doing it forever. If we have to go through a stretch of working really hard, we need a lot of relaxation time on the weekends, we need to go to bed earlier, and we need to create a life where relaxation is really the goal, relaxation and health. We obviously can do several different things to bring more relaxation time into our life: shutting off the TV and the computer at 5:00 pm or at least the computer, just doing nurturing things, just getting out in nature, just lying on the grass outside on your lawn, and not getting caught up in the busy world. Of course, being a raw fooder, it 9s all part of getting back to nature. If we 9re hooked on all the modern technological wonders, we hopefully come to the point where we see that all that stuff is totally incongruent with our back-to- nature diet and our true health goals. So I 9ve moved out to the country and I 9m surrounded by an apple orchard and twenty different kinds of fruit trees and vines and bushes. It took years to get to this point so I think it 9s a really important goal for raw fooders to inch along and get closer to nature and get away from the modern hustle and bustle of city life. I think another good point I wanted to make in this talk was -- To have success as a raw fooder and to really create good health, it 9s really important to get in touch with our senses and to do that, it 9s really important to have some quiet time everyday to ourselves. If we live within a house with a partner or children, it 9s really important to just go to a room or go out to a place in nature where you can sit under a tree and just sit and relax. If you 9re not a fan of meditation, it 9s just a matter of learning to relax and get in touch with your body and observing what 9s going on with you, observing your thoughts, your mind and just feeling the earth. Sitting in silence I think for at least 15 minutes a day, maybe twice a day, is really important to get in touch with the body 9s signals so we can respond properly to our body 9s needs and create tranquility and serenity and a degree of self- mastery. I think that 9s a really important practice to bring into our lives: Sitting and being present, be still with our body. In the next Living Nutrition, there 9s a wonderful article by my friend, Dr. Jim Dreaver , its called cThe Power of Silence d. Every spiritual tradition, every spiritual teacher is -- They 9re saying the same thing: Be still, listen to the sounds with them, let the mind relax and disengage from the mind shatter. If we sit still, eventually it will happen. Mike:It 9s a great point. Quiet time and meditation is very important. It 9s a very helpful tool to help get rid of cravings, calm the mind down, and find some peace. A big part of natural hygiene is maintaining health and avoiding disease. What do you feel are the elements or factors of disease? Dave:Well, Dr. Tilden or Dr. Shelton, one of the early 1900 natural hygiene doctors came up with the seven stages of disease and that 9s one model, that 9s one way to look at it and physiologically it 9s correct. So, briefly, I always leave one of the stages out, but I think it goes something like this. The first stage is, and you can correct me Mike if you know or any of the callers can later on, I think the first stage is Enervation which is we deplete our energy. The second stage, I think, is irritation where the toxins are irritating our nerves and our tissues. The third stage is inflammation, then ulceration, then induration, which is, I think, a scarring in a pre-cancerous condition and the next stage is cancer. I 9m pretty sure that 9s not seven, I left one out there, but that 9s their linier approach or model to looking at disease. And, it pretty much holds true. I like to bring in the spiritual and psychological aspects of health. I think a more holistic or balanced way to look at the factors that cause disease are to understand that every illness has a psychological, an emotional, a physiological and a spiritual aspect. In the beginning when I was learning about what caused my disease, all I was reading about, from the natural hygiene writers, was toxemia, toxemia, toxemia. Later, as I started meeting some therapists, health counselors, and spiritual advisors, I came to hear and I totally believe it 9s true that those four factors, including the spiritual factors, must be considered in having a role in every kind of illness. By looking at it that way, it gives us a bigger 360 degree picture of why we got sick and we get out of the trap of just focusing on toxins in our body. And, I can follow up on anymore questions you have about that, Mike. (Note: On pages 24 through 28 below is the article c The Seven Stages of Disease d by Dr. Robert Sniadach) Mike:If disease is present and people need some healing, what do you feel is the best way to awaken their self-healing body? Dave:Well, we need to start with education and education needs to be based on physiology. Physiology is the science of basically how the body works. We need to know the physiology, the workings of the disease process in the body. We need to understand that everything that the body expresses is expressed for an intelligent reason and every disease symptom is created by the body for useful purpose. We have a living body. The body just doesn 9t do crazy things for no good reason. Germs don 9t come in the body and tell the body what to do and start doing things to the body which directs the body 9s actions. The body responds to invaders, to toxins, to threats by enacting all kinds of processes which we call symptoms to restore health. So, we 9ve all been taught in ways which are incorrect as to what the body is doing when it 9s sick. We need to really examine our beliefs and probably pretty much throw all of them away when it comes to health and disease and learn how to think accurately about our body 9s processes. I was scared and lonely and desperate when I was sick. After reading Natural Hygiene one night, it all made sense and believe me, this not rocket science here to understand natural hygiene. You don 9t have to study physiology books and go to advanced schools take advanced courses to understand the disease processes of the body. Once I understood that my body was creating inflammation to purify itself and it was creating the ulcerations which were all over my colon and giving me all the bloody bowl movements -- My body was creating those open sores on my body to get rid of toxins because it was so overloaded and that if I stopped poisoning my body through what I was eating with the medicines and what I was eating that my body would just finish the purification process and I would heal up. It made sense, I applied it, it happened, on the fourth day I was jumping for joy because I knew it was true and it was happening. I healed up within four weeks after being sick for eight years. We need to understand the physiology and let go of a lot of beliefs about treatments and therapies and modalities. We need to understand that our body has all the self-healing power we need. Over 99% of the cases in people, they can heal every single disease they have. Their body has the ability to do it, and actually the symptom 9s their body 9s expressing is the self- healing process, it 9s just a sign of the self-healing process. If we understand what the body 9s doing when we have disease, and are empowered to just let the body do it without worry, without interfering with the body, the body will heal up in the least amount of time. If we want to tinker with the body and try to change the energy and do all kinds of things while we are awake during the day -- We 9re usually just wasting energy which the body would rather use for healing itself. The body 9s self-healing wisdom intelligence is way beyond what we can even imagine. If we imagine the fanciest computer in the world, the wisdom, the intelligence, the activities that go on in one cell in our body just works all that technological stuff which man came up with. Our body knows how to repair a cell which is just a micro universe in there and orchestrate all this incredible healing and all the synthesis of new cells and balancing hormones. It knows how to do all that and it does it best when we lie down and rest and sleep and get out of the way. People tend to think that this sounds preachy and they think they know better, they 9d rather do a colonic or Reiki, have acupuncture needles stuck in them, try different herbs, or whatever. But, I 9m trying to get these points across in a loving way because I 9ve experienced it. Everybody who experiences it in a pure way where you just rest, fast, and let the body take over and do it, they arrive at the condition of health much faster than the people who are messing with the body and doing all kinds of therapies which really never lead to lasting health. It 9s an amazing experience to do a fast or, and I don 9t recommend it, become sick and go through the rebuilding process like I did because you learn really how the body works and you can 9t get that information out of a text book. So, I feel qualified to help people do this because I haven 9t just read it in the books, I 9ve gone through it. I 9ve learned from many, many other people in talking with them, that most of what I experienced is universal. I 9m not just out there to teach what I went through. It 9s like I want to teach healing physiology and also teach people about the psychological, emotional and spiritual factors which also have to be in place in order for the body to heal and become healthy again. It is a big subject. I absolutely love talking about it and basically it 9s just a very simple subject. The body has just awesome wisdom and intelligence and it knows how to repair itself and rebuild itself and it 9s a process that may not be quick, it may take a lot of time and patience. We may need a health coach, I certainly did. I would check in with Dr. Lawrence Gallant, I would call T.C. Fry a couple of times a year and get some encouragement when I was down. Eventually I arrived at a state of really high wellness and just felt so grateful that I could pass this information on to people. Basically, it starts with reading some natural hygiene books. Dr. Herbert Shelton wrote many, many volumes like forty books and of course some really great books like cNatural Hygiene: The Pristine Way of Life d, cSuperior Nutrition d, cFasting to Save Your Life d. I think those are the three basics that everybody should read if they want to learn about health. Natural hygiene is the science of health and it should incorporate all the factors that have to do with health. Some people knock natural hygiene because it doesn 9t talk about emotions and spirituality. It should. Maybe the writers such as Shelton were not into spirituality and didn 9t understand emotions which is --Most people agree is true about Shelton. I 9m not trying to knock the man, just trying to point out that there 9s a lot to learn about health beyond just the physiology. If we can put it all together and relax into it and give it time, then we can create really true health and live a good healthy spiritual life. Mike:I was very lucky when I had health challenges because we had the raw food festival come through town. So I was able to consult with some of the natural hygienists working with Healthful Living International and got to talk to Tim Trader, Doug Graham, and Roz Gruben. They were able to give me advice and coach me through some water fasts which helped me regain my health. It was the most amazing experience. Do you feel it 9s important to have a coach guide you through water fast or is it okay to go through it on your own if you 9ve read all the books? Dave:Well, it 9s definitely important to read one book on fasting. I suggest Dr. Shelton 9s book, cFasting to Save Your Life d. He wrote another great book cFasting for Renewal of Life d or some other title like that, I saw both of those books. We need to learn about fasting . I think most people, almost everyone, can do a water fast on their own for one to three days. I can 9t say enough how important it is to be home and resting and not driving and doing chores and working on the computer and doing all kinds of busy things while we 9re fasting. Dr. Shelton said we should only fast when we need to fast. If we need to fast, we have a serious condition which the body needs to correct. Obviously we should be conserving energy which is what fasting is all about. We should be staying home and lying down and resting. It 9s giving the body a rest to correct itself. Instead of expending all of our energy during the day or most of it for doing chores, we 9re conserving energy and liberate, or allowing the body to fully express its self-healing powers. Ninety percent of our daily energy is going to the body healing itself, restoring itself, rejuvenating, repairing the cells and so forth. If we read the books we become empowered to understand the processies. If the detox gets too bad then we need to understand what 9s going on and not get scared and freak out and start doing something which is just going to make the recovery even longer. If we want to do a fast which is longer than three days, then I really recommend that we do it at a fasting center. My three or four friends who are qualified and experienced fasting doctors, Dr. Tim Trader, Dr. Doug Graham, Dr. Robert Sniadach, and Dr. Virginia Vetrano, who doesn 9t really fast people anymore but she certainly used to assist Dr. Shelton in fasting ten 9s of thousands of people at their health school. They don 9t guide people by phone when it comes to fasting. In some rare cases they have, I should say, but for the most part they just won 9t do it because you can 9t see the client or the patient and the person really needs attention. There 9s a few, really good fasting centers in this country but really not enough. If you go to an experienced fasting center like, or qualified fasting center, like Dr. Alan Goldhamer 9s place here in my county, True North Health Center , you 9ll get really good care. Once you get into the third or fourth day when you start getting really woozy, your heart starts pounding sometimes, and maybe you 9re detoxing and having all kinds of harsh symptoms, that 9s when you really need the doctor there because we really can 9t think clearly. We don 9t know how to respond to those things. Sometimes those symptoms last just for a short while and then we have just a really wonderful time doing a longer fast. Also like Dr. Tim Trader who gave a talk earlier this year here at my home office, he said, cI don 9t care how you do a fast. I 9m more concerned with how you break the fast. d Doug and Tim and Robert, they will guide a fasting patient for two or three weeks to properly reintroduce foods. That 9s a pitfall which almost everybody falls into which is overeating, eating too much food, too much fancy food too soon after fasting. To re-acclimate the food it takes a while and we certainly need to eat very simply the first few days. I want people to get great information on fasting because it may be exactly what we need to save our life. At some point, I think we 9re gonna need to know especially in older age if we want to save our life and avoid going to the doctor or going to the hospital and have them pump us with drugs or start cutting us. We need to learn how to take care of our body and fasting is the most efficient way for the body to heal itself. For that reason I 9ve had Tim up here, and Doug here for a couple of talks on fasting. At Raw Stock we 9re gonna have, like last year, one of our hay bail stations where we have different topics. One of them is going to be devoted to fasting again. Robert and Doug and Tim are going to give talks on fasting. Also, I should mention Dr. Rick Dina, he 9s also a fasting doctor, he will give a talk on fasting, too. Mike:There 9s a group of us here in Portland who are organizing a car pool down to the Raw Stock Festival and I 9m very excited. I haven 9t been to it yet because we 9ve always had the festival come through Portland, but, yeah, it sounds amazing. Can you tell us a little bit about Raw Stock? Dave:Yeah, and I 9m really glad that you guys are car pooling because this site is my friends farm and there 9s not a ton of parking. It 9s real important that people car pool and that way we don 9t clog up the roads because there 9s private residences surrounding the farm. We can 9t afford any complaints so we 9re encouraging everybody to car pool. If you want information, if you want to get in on our car pool list, we have it posted at www.rawstock.us So, you can email me, dave@livingnutrition.com and say, cHey, Dave, I want to be on the car pool list! d, and you give me your name and either phone number or email or both and we 9ll get you on there. Raw Stock is the most lively, amazing thing I 9ve ever imagined. I still can 9t totally fathom that we 9ve made it happen. Last year it was just the most fantastic one we ever put on and everybody was happy and we 9re just totally pleased. I created Raw Passion Seminars about seven or eight years ago because I got into a position of being a really big networker and one of the co-leaders of the Raw Food Movement. My mission was to give people the best education possible by the healthiest, most vivacious raw food leaders and so I created Raw Passion Production. I didn 9t create it for me to get up there and speak. I was pretty new at speaking and pretty shy and nervous about it. I created it so that my best friends like Roe Gallo and Paul Nison to get up on stage and give talks. At our first event, we had Paul and Roe and RC Dini, we had an absolute blast. I didn 9t know Doug Graham that well then, but he said, cDave, I want to be apart of Raw Passion d, I said cYour part of Raw Passion! d. Then we did a few more events. We did them all over the country, about seven or eight of them, and they 9ve gotten better and better. Then I had the idea of doing the summer raw food jamboree at my friend 9s farm, McDonalds Farm in Sebastopol, California, where I was living for a couple of years. It 9s a big apple orchard with a big rectangular flat area where we set up a big 20 x 40 foot tent and we make a stage. Out in the orchard there are hundreds of apple trees and we set up these hay bail circular stations where we give lectures from. We also have a big meadow where we throw down straw, where we have yoga and tai chi and other sports games that Doug loves to lead. We have the most amazing summer fruits and vegetables and the most amazing raw food. We 9re educators and we put on the most high quality, top notch, and congruent holistic health education event that we can imagine. I have many raw food friends and Doug, too. Educator friends who come and they teach, for free, no one gets paid. Doug and I have been doing this for years. We 9re still in the hole by a few thousand dollars. So this is obviously a labor of love and we of course, obviously, Doug and I, who are business partners, we love having a good time, a good healthy time and putting on some really good quality entertainment. Having the best food, all these amazing fresh figs that Victorio Corearo brings down after foraging all over Northern California and Oregon, and giving people the best quality education. So, it got 3 I forget the number 12 or 15 different educators coming from all over the country to give several talks to people. I think this is just a really wonderful way to learn: out in nature just eating whole unprocessed raw foods. A few years ago I started these Raw Passion Jamboree 9s at the farm and one evening someone was giving a talk. Doug and I were sitting down next to each other and he whispered a word in my ear which made my eyes roll back. He whispered to me the word cRawStock d. I never thought of the concept before and, to me, someone who 9s seen footage of the Woodstock movie and listened to those amazing songs and lived through the Woodstock era, it blew my mind. I said to Doug, cDoug, we 9re not ready for Raw Stock. d That is way too big, I was trying to tell him. We are both incredibly passionate about doing the biggest and best finest things we can do. I said, cDoug, this event here wears me out as it is. d I was envisioning two or three thousand people with nonstop bands and all kinds of incredible fun. I said cDoug, no, we 9re not ready for Raw Stock. So, ten days went by and I couldn 9t stop thinking about it. Then, after ten days I emailed Doug wherever he was, somewhere else in the country. I said, cDoug, we 9re gonna do Raw Stock next year. d So the wheels were set in motion and we started planning and this will be our third one. For next year we have to find a bigger site because we can 9t do it at the farm anymore, we 9ve outgrown it. We hope to find a really neat big place out in nature. It hasn 9t manifested itself yet, but I will be looking at one next week in Northern California about an hour north of here. Hopefully -- We definitely feel like we 9ll be doing this every year for a long, long time. It just really -- Our creative juices just really get into it. It just really makes the juices flow and we just feel incredibly happy and satisfied that so many people have gotten really good information and love it. Of course the best part is seeing the people and getting to connect with old friends. I went to the first, I think, three Portland Raw Food Expos and I just totally enjoyed them. Since we all have our own slant on how to teach health, Doug and I really want to do this the natural hygiene way and do it in my own backyard. I was really driven to do it. This year I feel like we really got the best line up and the best musical acts that I could ever imagine. The show this year is going to be just totally out of site and I could just gush for a long, long time about what we 9re going to be doing. Mike:That is wonderful. There 9s nothing better than being at a festival surrounded by like-minded folks. We 9re all into the same way of eating. I 9ll miss Portland Festival this year. I 9m very excited to head down to Raw Stock. Speaker:Hey Mike we have about 15 minutes left on this call. Mike:Okay. We can open up the line for questions now and at the last five minutes it 9ll start beeping. For the last two minutes it will keep on beeping, so we can just talk through that. Dave:Okay. Mike:Caller, you can say your name and where you 9re from. Participant:Mayden, Maryland, Hi. I had a question. I 9ve been hearing you speak and you talk a lot about fruit, but I 9ve been a raw fooder for about two months now and I can 9t do fruit because I have Candida, any suggestions on that? Dave:Yes, are you 100% raw or -- ? Participant:Yes, I kind of went straight forward. I went from total SAD (Standard American Diet) to 100% raw. Dave:When you eat fruit, what happens? Participant:I get really bad headaches and rashes. Dave:Many people have overcome Candida eating a diet of mostly fruit. Participant:Really. Dave:There 9s a few basics I 9m going to give you because our time is short. I don 9t want to sound like I 9m being short with you or snappy. I 9m going to give you the basics and I hope this is really information that makes you happy. You can eat as much fruit as you like provided that you follow good food combining. You don 9t mix it with fats and you don 9t overeat on fatty foods which means no more than about three or four ounces of nuts per day. Eat just one kind of fatty food per day because it 9s the fat which blocks the sugar uptake into your cells and makes all the sugar backup. If you 9re off of starchy foods, if you 9re off of dairy foods and junk foods, and you follow the food combining and you just have one fatty food for dinner, you can have as much fruit as you want. I 9m not saying this lightly, because I 9ve talked to all the other natural hygiene doctors, such as Doug Graham and so forth, and they 9ve all coached people and helped them overcome Candida. Yes, the fruit has sugar in it, but remember fruit is about 80% to 95% water. It 9s not like eating solid sugar, it 9s not like eating dried fruits. I 9m talking about eating juicy fruits, and you can have all you like. You 9ll clean out, the junk will come out of your skin after a few weeks, your skin will clear up, the symptoms will be gone. So, you just have to understand that your body needs to clean out and you will not have these Candida symptoms. The Candida will wash out the internal environment. The pH will become the proper pH so that Candida can 9t live in there anymore. It 9ll wash out, your body will detoxify and the Candida is not going to come back if you 9re a 100% raw fooder unless you 9re eating& Participant:And that 9s just by eating fruit? Dave:Absolutely, it 9s happened so many times that it is true. I know many people who eat mostly fruit and it seems especially women have come into this diet with Candida and it washes away. So, you have to remember that fruit did not cause the Candida. It 9s really not logical to think that it is what 9s going to perpetuate your Candida. Participant:And how long do think it will take to fully restore the pH balance? Dave:I would read my article on detoxification . It 9s on my http://www.selfhealingempowerment.com website. Participant:Okay, and I have all of that. Dave:Or it 9s been in my magazine or in a couple of my books. If you 9re doing the diet properly, if you 9re not stressed from, say, a hectic job, if your adrenals are not burnt out, then most people will clean out the grossest stuff in their body within about a month. I 9ve known people, their skin breaks out and they have some diarrhea, headaches the first month. Then, everything becomes clear and they are doing 100 times better after those first four to six weeks. You need a lot of rest when the body is detoxing because we become tired. We can 9t get down and conclude that cOh, this diet doesn 9t work, the Candida is going to get worse and worse and worse d. Like I said before, if we understand the physiology and let the body just clean out and if you have some mentors, if you 9ve seen some other raw fooders who have gone through it, then you 9ll feel good about it and say cOkay, I 9m just going through this phase which will only take a few weeks and I 9m gonna stick with it, and I 9m gonna keep on going, and I 9m gonna look as good as some really healthy looking raw fooders who eat a lot of fruit and have a really enjoyable life d. Participant:Okay, great, thank you. Mike:Are there any other questions? Participant:This is Christine from Montana. I have a daughter who 9s 13, she 9s been eating raw. I 9ve been eating raw for a year and my daughter 9s been eating raw since Christmas and she still hasn 9t lost any weight and she eats a lot of fruit, watches her food combining. It seems like her colon is still impacted and I 9m wondering if it 9s just a matter of more time or do you ever use herbs to help breakup impaction in the colon? Dave:What 9s her height and weight? Participant:She 9s 5 94 d about one hundred and -- 5 93 d one hundred twenty. She doesn 9t need to lose much but she 9s -- It 9s enough that she feels uncomfortable. Dave:Does she tend to be constipated and not have a bowl movement everyday? Participant:Yes, she gets constipated very easily. Dave:Does she exercise? Participant:Yes, she plays soccer. Dave:Okay. Well, this is pretty typical especially in women. Their bowels tend to be constipated and sometimes even eating the juiciest diet, I have a former girlfriend who was this way and she 9s not overweight, but she used to sometimes live on watermelon in the summer and she would still complain that her bowls wouldn 9t move. Like I said before, you have to look at all the aspects of health. In her case, I think, emotions were the biggest factor. She was tense and living in anxiety all the time. Our gut is obviously deeply connected to our emotions. I guess we can 9t get into it too much but, you can take a look at the mental and emotional makeup of your daughter and see if she has any fears or stress going on which is making her gut become tense. When our gut is not relaxed or we don 9t feel comfortable or well, if we 9re under pressure, peer pressure or whatever, our gut becomes tight and we don 9t eliminate well and that 9s a big reason why I came down with colitis symptoms. I was uptight, my gut became -- I had all these emotional contractions in my gut and that 9s how I was responding to stress. It will also help your daughter if she does a lot of stretching and yoga for her lower back and pelvis. I don 9t think because she 9s young and she 9s not overweight that she has much impaction going on. It 9s definitely going to help her to eat a high water content diet and not eat dry hard foods everyday and certainly just really minimize them. Eventually as she becomes healthy emotionally and is not stressing her bowel with hard foods, then her bowel will relax and if she 9s getting enough sleep her body will have enough nerve energy to have the bowel movements. Basically, when people are not having bowel movements, they could be impacted especially if they 9re really overweight and eating meat and all kinds of starchy foods. But, your daughter is not doing that, so I would just say that she just needs time and she now needs a lot of extra rest. Nerve energy is what powers the peristalsis and we don 9t have enough nerve energy if we 9re stressed and not getting enough rest during the day and not getting enough sleep. Nerve energy only comes from one place, from sleep. Getting extra sleep is like recharging our batteries to a higher level than before and when we have enough nerve energy flowing through our organs, through our bowel, then peristalsis is easy. Participant:Okay, thank you. Dave:Sure, any more questions? Participant:This is Tina. I have a question about hunger. A true sign of hunger, when your stomach is growling, I 9ve heard it 9s not really a sign of hunger, is that true? Because I know when my stomach is growling I need to eat. Dave:That 9s a great question. It takes about five or ten minutes to explain it. I just want to mention that -- Boy my mind is -- I got so much information. I can 9t remember if it 9s in the current issue of Living Nutrition or the upcoming issue. There 9s an article on cWhat Is Hunger? d There 9s actually two articles one by Dr. Vetrano and there 9s also another one by Dr. Vetrano with Victoria Bidwell. So, Shelton and Dr. Vetrano write that true hunger is experienced as a sensation in the back of the throat. I know from experience and studies that grumbling of the stomach really isn 9t even hunger. It takes years of cleaning out and eating properly and getting beyond emotional attachments or getting beyond emotional eating patterns to understand that when our belly is empty and gurgling that usually that 9s got nothing to do with hunger, it 9s not hunger. When our belly becomes empty and it 9s gurgling, it just means just that. Most people don 9t even experience true hunger because they 9re eating really a lot of food through out the day because it 9s available for us modern humans. It takes -- I would read those two articles -- you can email me dave@livingnutrition.com and I 9ll email them right back to you tomorrow morning. You 9ll learn a lot from them. Also, I 9ve written an article on somatic inquiry, inquiring into the gut to find out what these feelings are. Participant:Hi Dave, this is Renee from Atlanta. I wanted to ask you a quick question about -- Do I have time for another question? Dave:Okay, fire away. Participant:What are your suggestions for getting younger kids like teenagers and younger to get started on a raw diet? What kind of ideas do you have that will make it appealing to them? Dave:Take them to a Raw Food Seminar, one where they can maybe participate in making the food and seeing other children. Like a seminar that maybe Victoria Boutenko, or Jackie and Gideon Graff put on seminars. Their site is http://www.sproutrawfood.com and their yahoo group is http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/sproutrawfood/ So you 9re in Georgia? Participant:Right, yes. Dave:Yeah, I would try to go to some potlucks with them and also I would get them the book titled c "Eating Without Heating" by the Boutenko Kid's . Participant:Are you in Seattle? My oldest lives in New York, he 9s a vegetarian now but my youngest daughter lives in Seattle now with her dad. So, I wanted to know if you know anything in Washington, Seattle area? Dave:My friend, Dr. Doug Graham, knows a lot of raw food activities up there so, email me and I 9ll connect you with Doug. Actually, the raw family wrote a book called cThe Raw Family d and cRaw Kids d . Participant:I have that, right. I just bought those two to see if that 9ll help. Dave:You can read those books, you can get a bunch of food and just like have a creative, playful day. cPrimal Mothering in a Modern World d by Hygeia Halfmoon. it's about fruitarian mothering. It gives great ideas about making fruit pops and sharing food together. Mike:Thank you everyone, I 9m so glad you could join us on this call and thank you Dave it 9s a great pleasure to have you on the call. Dave:Well, thanks for doing this, Mike and that was fun I could go another hour, but next time if you want another speaker, if you want me to do it again I 9ll be glad to do it. Participants:Oh that'll be great, thanks. Thank you. Dave:You 9re welcome, bye, Mike. Mike:Bye Dave, see you at Raw Stock have a good night. cTo come upon the gift that is enlightenment, it is vital to take frequent time for inner silence, and the best place to find that silence 4until you have awakened to it within you 4is to go out into nature. Being in nature connects you, literally, with your own inner, essential nature. The experience of being in nature is invariably transforming, healing, renewing. d 3 Dr. Jim Dreaver The Seven Stages of Disease by Dr. Robert Sniadach rwsniadach@transformationinstitute.org http://www.transformationinstitute.org/ There are seven stages of disease. The underlying cause of disease in all stages is enervation and subsequent toxicosis. 1. Enervation This first stage is called enervation. Most people call it nervous exhaustion, or just plain ctired and run down. d Enervation is a state in which the body is either not generating sufficient vital energy for the tasks the body must perform, or the tasks the body must perform may be greater than the normal vital energy supply can cope with. In any event, the body becomes impaired, and an impaired body generates less vital energy if the conditions of overwork or non- regeneration persist. The great revitalizer is sleep, for sleep regenerates vital energy. Insufficient sleep and rest are the primary causes of enervation. Once enervation exists, all body functions are debilitated and diminished. This can quickly lead to: 2. Toxicosis When toxic substances from whatever source saturate the blood and tissues, the lymph system and interstitial fluids, then the condition of toxicosis exists. Living cells are surrounded by waste products - garbage. Tissue and blood saturation with toxic materials can be caused by both internally generated wastes and pollutants taken in from the outside which the body has not been able to eject from its domain. Intoxication occurs when we overload the body with toxic materials from the outside, or we fail to observe our capacities, and overwork, get insufficient sleep, or are subjected to great stress, or when any number of other factors deplete the body of vital energy or prevent its sufficient regeneration. For instance, stresses, emotional shocks, or traumatic experiences can drain our bodies of vital energy very quickly. Often toxicosis creates feelings of unease, vague discomfort and subtle negative emotional states. At some level of intoxication we begin to experience the next stage of disease which is called: 3. Irritation Irritation results from toxic materials being sensed by our nervous system. Any toxic material, be it salt, caffeine, condiments or external chemicals will irritate or stimulate. This is a condition wherein the body sets in force its defensive mechanisms and accelerates its internal activities. This might well be likened to an alarm aboard ship where all hands are summoned. A frenzy of activity results in a bout with enemy forces. Unfortunately, this often temporarily makes us feel good or hyperactive or even euphoric. It is distressing to see a euphoric condition arise out of a situation that is damaging to the organism. If the causes of enervation/intoxication/irritation remain in force and the body can 9t cope with it the body initiates a responsive crisis called: 4. Inflammation This is usually the stage in which physicians recognize pathology. It is the stage where sufferers are keenly aware of a problem, for it involves pain. As well, it involves bodily redirection of vital energies. The intestinal tract is closed down. Energy that would normally be available for digestive activity is preempted and redirected to the massive effort to cope with a severe condition of intoxication. Energy is also redirected from use by the muscles. There is little or no desire to be active; all sensibilities demand that you sleep and rest. Lest the integrity of the organism be dealt a mortal blow or become crippled, the body musters its all to the emergency. In inflammation, the toxicants have usually been concentrated in an organ or area for a massive expulsive effort. The area becomes inflamed due to the constant irritation of the toxic materials. When inflammation exists we are said to have an citis, d appendicitis, tonsillitis, sinusitis, hepatitis, or nephritis for example. The names of citises d are usually after the organ or tissue area that is inflamed. Thus if we have a cold we have rhinitis. If we have in

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