Lesson 28 - The Elixir Of Life: An Exploration Of Food Conditions, Body Conditions, And Eating Conditions That Beget Euphoric Health And Long Life

Introduction

To set the correct perspective for this lesson it is wise, at the outset, to point out there really is no elixir of life except by comparing normality with the low standards of life prevailing. There is no such thing as long life—that is, no one can outlive the human potential. There is the human potential and anything short of that potential must properly be called shortened life. This potential is better called the natural or normal human life span and anything less than the realization of the normal human life span is premature death. Mature death is a natural death, a death resulting from the simultaneous cessation of life activities by the body’s major organs. It is painless and free of suffering.

This lesson concerns itself with the touchstones that assure health, the necessary conditions of a normal life span. The lesson also examines the abuses heaped upon the human body that cause loss of health and thus shorten life.

The Idea of an Elixir Vitae

Legends of elixirs come down to us from prehistoric times. Undoubtedly the idea of elixirs was spawned by shamanism. Shamanism was a generalized practice of ministering unto human aspiration and credulity. Shamen were medicine men and theologists rolled into one. Their craft and livelihood depended upon exploiting the human propensity to believe and trust. They thrived by foisting upon those they “served” magic healing potions which find their counterparts today in Pharmaceuticals (magic weeds) and herbalism. They allayed inquiries into human origins and destinies by fabricating new belief systems based upon legends and rituals that commanded homage of the times. This arm of shamanism evolved into the priesthood while the other arm evolved into what is called medicine.

Stories of long-lived peoples circulated for there were, indeed, peoples who lived long, relatively, in certain areas of the world. Shamen, who were really extraordinary confidence men, took advantage of this wish to believe, this hope for long life, by attributing long life to substances which had curative powers. Hence anything that, in reality, drugged the human constitution was credited with curative virtues and could have been a candidate for use as an elixir vitae.

Water with toxic minerals early came to be regarded as an elixir vitae. Drinking of these waters and bathing in them were supposed to furnish the curative powers the body

needed for good health and long life. To this day, many waters are regarded as curative of human ills and possessed with the power of conferring long life.

Many shamen promoted their brews and concoctions as curative and capable of conferring long life. These brews were generally concocted from herbs which the shamen jealously guarded as trade secrets. Somewhere in murky prehistoric times came the idea that rejuvenation could come from eating analogous parts of animals. If sexual powers were to be resuscitated, the eating of animal testicles were thought to restore male, sexual prowess. Eating of brains was thought to restore mental powers, and so on. Today these voodooistic ideas have their counterparts in so-called glandulars.

In early history, alcoholic spirits came to be regarded as elixirs. Anything containing alcohol was a curative agent and also a substance that conferred long life. The idea that alcohol was a curative agent survived well into the 19th century and the belief’s vestiges remain today.

In the middles ages, alchemists, sought philosopher’s stones and new chemicals with which to transform base metals into gold or silver and with which to restore health and perpetual youth.

In the age of exploration, courageous men blazed new pathways in uncharted lands in search of the fountain of youth and fabulous foods with curative powers that would confer long life. Ponce de Leon was such an explorer who discovered Florida in search of a fabled fountain of water in Florida that would cure ailments and confer perpetual life in a youthful state.

Today we have many laboratories searching for an elixir vitae to give humans long life. Many concoctions have been hailed as elixirs. One of the foremost is procaine (same as novocaine), popularly called Gerovital, meaning, literally, long life. That long life can proceed from the employment of any substance while the causes of shortened life are indulged is, of course, impossible. No substance can confer long life in the first place.

The priesthood arose when a certain class of shamen assumed the role of intermediaries (favored or privileged representatives) between the gods and beleaguered humans. Their role was to curry favor with the gods by direct intercession on behalf of ailing clients. At least that is what they had the sufferer or long life seeker believing. They performed rituals and incantations in behalf of those who subscribed to their services. Those who stuck with administrations of “magic weeds,” brews and concoctions were the precursors of today’s medical practitioners.

Simply stated the idea of an elixir of life springs from hopes for long life. The wish is father of the belief.

Examples of “long-lived” peoples

For the past two thousand years the Bible has spoken of very long-lived people, including Adam and Eve. Methuselah is said to have lived 969 years. But these ages become immediately suspect when we learn that women were said to have had their firstborn at ages ranging from 120 to 200 years. In those times, as today, many centenarians lived quiet, frugal lives in certain areas of Eastern Europe and in Western Asia. Travelers brought news of these people and many legends arose about their existence. Just as we have one-track minds today, then, answers were sought for this remarkable longevity in Some food, substance, ritual or other single practice.

Examples of possibilities for “long” life

In most countries of the world there are those who have surpassed a hundred years of age. Their longevity has excited much curiosity and inquiry as to their “secret.” Even to this day an outstanding practice of a centenarian is searched for to account for extraordinary longevity. If the oldster is a wine drinker, the wine is likely to be characterized as

responsible for the longer life. The fact the oldster breathes, sleeps, is active, eats frugally, etc. is likely to be ignored. Why shouldn’t geriatric personnel emphasize as elements of longevity those life factors that everyone possesses? There must be some “secret” factor.

A Correct Perspective on Longevity

That humans have a natural life span potential of 140 years to 160 years is rarely taken into consideration. The yearnings of most for long life are becalmed by the promise of eternal life—not here but in the hereafter. Long life does not become important here if it is but the prelude to eternal bliss in another paradise.

Biologically, humans have inherent faculties that will carry them well past the century mark. The weakest organs of the human body are the kidneys and they have a life potential of 300 years or more according to geriatric specialists. Some long-life specialists feel the human organism is so perfect there’s no reason it should ever die. Of course, the view does not take into account the limits of cell regeneration.

In view of the fact that there are societies in which oldsters reach well past 100 years of age and that authenticated life spans well past 150 years of age exist, there is no denying that humans can live past 100 years of age. Inasmuch as most creatures in nature live five to eight times the age of maturity which is, in humans, about 22 to 25 years of age, and inasmuch as humans have lived longer than 150 years, then it is quite logical and scientific to conclude that humans are normally endowed with a life potential of about 150 years.

Thus it becomes apparent that those who live their life potential are not long-lived but that, on the contrary, those who do not achieve their life potential are short-lived! The inquiry thus takes on a new perspective. The search then comes to embrace not only those factors that assure achievement of life potential but those factors that are destructive and, as a result, shorten life.

Achieving Natural Life Potential

Our study now must turn more to those practices which cause premature death as well as the delineation of those practices normal to our being which assure realization of natural life potential. Your clients will expect your guidance not only in matters of health, but also as an “authority” in related matters, longevity being one of them. This lesson is designed to make you competently conversant with the subject.

Causes of Shortened Life

In a word, life is shortened in humans when deviation from our biological heritage occurs. Just as the engine life of a car will be shortened by wrong fuels, poor maintenance and abusive use, so too will our bodies become clogged and disabled by wrong foods, improper life practices and applications that deplete energies and faculties. Just as the engine is designed to operate under certain conditions, so too has the human organism developed within certain adaptational parameters. Anything that impairs health also shortens life.

Primary abuses of modern humans

Unfortunately, human abuse begins before conception. Degenerated men and women conceive in bodies that are almost invariably wracked by the ravages of unceasing toxicosis. While healthy by the pitiful norms of our society, very few parents-to-be have even a modicum of health.

During the fetal period, mothers are likely to get little if any exercise, eat of fare unfit for man or beast and indulge in many toxic habits that are endemic to our country. Moreover, mothers are likely to be drugged frequently in many ways, especially by their physicians. Births are especially fraught with dangers for both mothers and infants because of the “manipulative” drugs employed for hospital/physician convenience. Every antivital act against mother and infant impairs both, undermines health and shortens life.

As likely as not, the baby will be put on some formula that will fail to yield nutrients—formulas are even worse than the milk of diseased mothers.

After babyhood with indisposing and unwholesome formulas, baby usually undergoes introduction to a plethora of unwholesome foods. Junk foods make an early appearance in baby’s diet. Unnatural animal products, meats, and cereals are likely to be added to baby’s diet at from two to four months. These should never be in anyone’s diet in a whole lifetime but, even if they were normal items of human diet, baby shouldn’t be fed anything other than mother’s milk until the time teeth have erupted. Of course, a mother who cannot lactate must either secure the services of a wet nurse (second best), or feed baby raw goat or cow’s milk (third best with goat milk being the better of the two) along with a diet of freshly expressed fruit juices. Inasmuch as sweet fruits undergo no digestion, their sugars are absorbed as they are by baby. Fruits that are well-prepared may be fed to baby but only as a last resort. Fruits, animal milks and nut milks are superior to commercial formulas.

Almost all youngsters suffer the many “usual childhood diseases” because they have been subjected to many usual childhood abuses. All impairing factors, it bears repeating, undermine health and shorten life.

Early in life, youngsters are introduced to corrosive beverages, fried and cooked foods, condiments, side-stream cigarette smoke and a host of other debilitating influences. As likely as not, youngsters will be corralled via the automatic babysitter known as a television set. Instead of becoming active and participating in life, instead of developing and becoming educated and trained in life’s activities, most children are becoming passive misfits. The tragedy of the situation is highlighted by two research projects conducted by a sample of noted physical fitness expert, Bonnie Prudden. In 1954, she tested a sample of our youngsters and found that a shocking 58.6% could not pass a minimum physical fitness test. In 1978, she again made the tests. This time a shocking 86.2% could not pass the same test! If that does not point out the direction in which we’re travelling, the gravity of the problem and the herculean nature of the task before you and other health-aware people, then it’s not likely that anything else will. The tragedy of our children is a national tragedy—a worldwide tragedy!

Healthful Living as the elixir vitae

That long life can be achieved only by healthy people should be self-evident. That those perpetually encumbered with impairing influences resulting from unhealthful practices cannot survive as long should be equally self-evident. Thus it becomes obvious that humans can realize their life potential by living healthfully and that any deviation will result in suffering and shortened life.

Healthful living involves touching base appropriately with every need of life in all aspects of our being. Our basic requirements are as outlined in the earliest lessons, i.e., pure air, pure water, adequate sleep and rest, sunshine and natural light, foods of our bi-

ological adaptation, vigorous activity, temperature maintenance, pleasant environment, a nondistressing lifestyle, belonging to a group of similar disposition and so on.

Outdoor Life essential to best health

Almost every long-lived person of note has worked out of doors in gardens and orchards. Being a gardener myself, I can assure you that nothing overcomes stress so quickly as a half hour to an hour’s work in the garden. Reestablishing identity with the basic environment and its providence becalms as nothing else can.

Encourage those whom you serve to start gardening, taking walks and hikes in the country or undertake other activities that give them more fresh air, sunshine, exercise and identity with nature. Just as plants that have their roots with earth mostly severed wither and die, so too do humans suffer when they lose touch with those fundamental requisites of life. Just as nonuse of body parts are abuse, so toe is the loss of touch with the outdoors and warm congeniality with peers abuse.

Living in a distress-free environment

Perhaps it is incorrect to say we should live in a stress-free environment inasmuch as our superb human adaptations have been spurred by stress—by the need to cope. However, distress consists of situations and events with which we cannot cope or which impose great difficulty upon the organism. Continuous distress will speedily exhaust the organism and contribute to its early demise.

In our society the greatest distress arises from our peculiarly rapacious economic system that keeps most of us in more or less constant insecurity. Assurance of life and its means exists for relatively few Americans, even for the affluent. In an exploitative society few have situations that are so secure that distress does not occur. Even those who have ideal situations are potentially distressed by the plight of their brethren. Perhaps no people on earth are more insecure than modern day Americans.

Rejuvenating measures and influences

An assessment of life and its possibilities in a somewhat detached objective manner establishes a perspective that makes most of our problems trivial. For example, if you’ve read astronomy and you imagine the vast reaches of space, our personal affairs and problems are small in that light, though, subjectively, the whole world revolves around us and our concerns.

Helping establish a philosophical outlook upon the world and the foibles of humans will enable many to better conduct their lives. When we can view most of our brethren objectively as being weak creatures given to inconsequential and dissipating activities for the most part, that gives us the impetus to tune ourselves in with nature and saner peers—to make ourselves more virtuous and exemplary.

Imbuing our lifestyle with the basic essentials of life heretofore presented will enhance health and life expectancy. Perhaps the most important of the essentials is belonging to a peer group. Humans are gregarious and mutual appreciation among peers establishes the condition upon which all can thrive.

Basically, ailing clients can be turned around by such simple steps as fasting, reorienting their lifestyle to include the requisites of life in their best form, and unburdening them of debilitating practices. But the problem usually always extends to the emotional, social and economic planes as well. Hence a philosophical overview should always be explored with clients.

Get clients physically, socially and emotionally active on constructive courses that establish their basic rapport with nature and a peer group. Get them involved in activities such as gardening, hobbies and crafts, etc. that bring their innate human drive to fruition in creativity and meaningful service.

A study of the world’s healthiest and longest-lived peoples reflect a society of individuals rather secure in the needs of life. Sharing, mutual reinforcement and assurance from a peer group does not create the distress and insecurity as exists in exploitative societies.

America is a highly exploitative society wherein few deep and abiding friendships exist. You will find it difficult to help your clients order their lives in contravention of an aggressive economic system that is by its nature divisive. Most healthy and long-lived peoples are close to the land and nature. They secure their livelihood directly from the soil—from Nature. They live in harmony with their relatives and neighbors—they have a society that does not continually assault them with demands that stress and strain them.

The most constructive steps you can assist clients with are in reorienting their living practices to healthful ones. Secondarily, you can set forth the many influences you note in their lifestyle that tend to distress them and cause problems on every plane of their being. The nineteen essentials of life cited and elaborated upon in Lessons 3 and 4 should be taught to every client so that understanding of their importance is assured. Guidance and suggestions as to how these needs of life may be implemented should be undertaken, tailored as much as possible to the peculiar needs of each client.

The most immediately rejuvenating and healthful changes you can effect in clients’ lives involve guiding them to fasting, vigorous exercise and an all-raw diet consisting preponderantly of luscious fruits with a few vegetables, nuts and seeds.

Always keep in mind that, as a practitioner of Life Science, you must strive to imbue your clients with a knowledge and understanding of their needs in every facet of life that bears upon their welfare.

Advantages of a community of peers

Consciously and unconsciously, in accord with our needs, we all seek the comfort and assurance of life and its means upon reasonable expenditure of physical labor. We seek this amongst those whom we recognize as peers—those with interests and disposition largely paralleling our own.

Establishing identity and standing in a peer group is difficult within the context of a society that places values upon individual economic achievement and standing rather than upon the humanness of merit of every individual. When clients are brought to the realization of the conditions of our society—when they can be imbued with a philosophical overview of their circumstances so that they can better understand and cope with it, than the bases for a less stressful and debilitating existence has been established.

Many individuals of my acquaintance have joined in communities with individuals of similar interests and drive. The experience of facing the world with others rather than facing its imposing awesomeness alone has reawakened their will to live and given them new ambitions and drives. Nothing rejuvenates, enlivens and renews life so effectively as a community of peers who live in cooperation and harmony.

Food And Short Or Long Life

Even though there are many debilitating influences that prove detrimental to our populace and cause our brethren much suffering, nothing looms so large in individual degeneration as dietary practices. In no other area do we flaunt our biological disposition so flagrantly. Therefore it is appropriate that you become steeped, in nutritional science and concern yourself most intimately with the feeding practices of those whom you serve.

Food—Our area of greatest deviation from natural norms

Of all the human deviations from correct biological observation of our needs, no perversion is so deviant and destructive as that which Americans undergo in their dietary practices. Our physiologically correct diet as frugivores is a diet of fruits eaten in the delicious ripe raw state. Many of us are deficiency minded and feel the fruit diet inadequate even though it is not. To qualm such feelings, the addition of a few vegetables, nuts and seeds adds an extraordinary amount of vitamins, minerals, essential fatty acids and proteins to nutrient intake. Not that fruits do not supply all our needs and better, it’s just that a psychological need is met. What do we find our brethren eating? What contributes to their pathology more heavily than anything else?

About45%oftheaverageAmerican’scaloricintakeconsistsoffats.Mostofthesefats have been heated, fried, chemicalized, refined and otherwise rendered harmful, even carcinogenic. Humans are not a species of fat food eaters. In fact, fats are handled rather poorly even in their best natural form as in seeds, nuts and avocados. Untold pathology results from this eating proclivity including obesity.
A substantial amount of the American diet is of animal products including meat, milk and milk products. Most of the American intake of fat is involved with animal products. Humans who eat products derived from animals are indulging in the most pathological of the perversions for, in addition to being biologically wrong in its fresh raw state, it is even more disease-producing in its processed, fried, cooked or fermented states.
The average American partakes of cooked foods. All cooked foods, to the extent they have been cooked, are deranged and fail to supply nutrients to the extent they have been degenerated. As Professor Kouchakoff of Switzerland demonstrated in the late 1930s in over 300 carefully conducted experiments, cooked foods beget pathological symptoms within an hour or two of eating, especially leucocytosis.
TheaverageAmericanhasmanypoisonhabits,amongthembeingapredilectionforsalt, pepper, vinegar, spices, peppers, seasonings, dressings and other toxic and pathological condiments.
Most American adults indulge in one or more drug habits. Prominent among these are coffee, alcoholic beverages, theobromine, theine, beverages containing caffeine and other toxic additives, flavorings, colorings and stimulants, tobacco, etc.
Most Americans eat breads and other grain products to which we are not biologically suited to cope.
BeansandotherlegumesformasignificantpartoftheAmericandiet.Aseaten,legumes (including peanuts) are pathogenic. This is readily evidenced by gassy emissions and indigestion.
Raw fruits and vegetables comprise about ten per cent of the American diet but many eat heavily of fruits and vegetables while many others eat little or none. While fruits and vegetables comprise a much larger percentage than this, most of them have been so deranged by cooking, processing, canning, etc., that they are pathogenic rather than life-enhancing.

Biologically correct foods eaten raw are true elixir

There are no real elixirs. There are no miracles. There is no magic. There is normal and abnormal—right and wrong. Because most Americans are so addicted to wrong

habits of eating, a return to natural and normal eating practices results in such dramatic improvements as to be proclaimed miraculous. Our natural dietary consists of delicious fruits. All else is deviant and either less than ideal or downright pathogenic.

For our purposes, we may regard the fruitarian regime the elixir of life, but only because this is the greatest single improvement that can be made in our lives.

In getting clients on to the fruitarian diet, you can suggest that they try a purification diet. Of course this is merely an semantic entree, for they’ll soon enough learn that fruits do not purify or cleanse the body per their reputation but that, on the contrary, they are handled so efficiently that more body energies can be devoted to cleansing and healing. Fruits do not yield up toxic debris which other foods do. Hence the results of fruitarianism are true rejuvenation. Fruits are the true elixir of life insofar as there may be said to be one.

Cooking among worst treatments of our food

Among the worst curses Americans have visited upon themselves is that of cooking. Not only is it a gross evil in itself but it is often the agency that makes palatable that which should never be in the diet in the first place.

These are two primary evils that cooked foods wreak upon our bodies:

Foods that have been partially, mostly or wholly destroyed and deranged by cooking deny needed nutrients to the body. Heat has altered nutrients so much the body cannot make use of them.
Nutrientsthatwereformerlyusablehavebeentransformedintocoagulated,caramelized and inorganic debris that not only cannot be used, but which are toxic and pathogenic. A host of other evils flow from cooking which in large measure destroy our human potential for health and longevity.

Toxic fare—Condiments

If cooking may be said to ruin our foods, condiments are ruined even if eaten raw. The American proclivity to use stimulants and flavor modifiers is rank, rampant and pathological. Foremost among the condiments that help destroy health are salt, herbs, spices, pepper, vinegar, gravies, dressings, sauces, seasonings, etc. The ingredients which vitiate the human intestinal tract and body are:

Oilsandfats.Allrefinedandextractedoilsandfats,fromwhateversource,whetherraw or cooked, are unwholesome in the human diet. If cooked, their hydrocarbons are carcinogenic.
The “acid kick” sought by most Americans because of their jaded palate is usually realized by adding vinegar to foods or condiment concoctions. Vinegar partially or totally vitiates food digestion. As bad as the food may have been, indigestion is far worse. Little enervates so much as poor digestion. Every case of indigestion worsens health. Even lemon juice combines so poorly with most foods that it ruins digestion.
Herbs added to foods or condiment concoctions (recipes) are toxic in themselves. What we call herbs today are not eaten for their food value but for their excitation of the taste buds. Peppers, spices, basil, onions and garlic, chives, mints, paprika, bay leaves, oregano and a long list of other agents are toxic in themselves and contribute to poor health by themselves no matter how eaten, cooked or raw. Some of the foremost toxic elements of herbs are capsicum and cayenne from peppers, and allicin and mustard oil from garlic, chives, onions and lily family members. All herbs have some poisonous component.
Salt, the foremost condiment, offers not one virtue. It is indigestible. It is absorbed as salt, held in a briny solution as salt (the body then needs extra water to retain this salt), and is excreted as salt. Not only can the body not digest and make use of salt, but this pernicious substance destroys cells and fouls up vital body processes. A tablespoon of salt eaten on an empty stomach is enough to kill most people outright.

Toxic fare recreational drugs

While condiments may be said to be recreational drugs because of the “kick” they give, there are drugs partaken of strictly for their kicks. Among these drugs are tobacco, alcohol, coffee, chocolate, teas, sodas, beverages, marijuana, cocaine, opium, heroin and other so-called hard drugs. Drugs prescribed and nonprescribed are often taken as recreational drugs. Among these are tranquilizers, amphetamines and so on.

Americans often lament why so much misfortune and suffering should befall them. While making their utterances, they are often active in some drug habit that is contributing heavily to their problems.

Toxic fare wrong foods

Anything put into our bodies other than that to which we as frugivores are physiologically equipped to handle is more or less toxic fare. It is either toxic of itself or it is of such a character as to pose difficulties that lead to enervation and toxicosis.

The dietary errors of our times embrace both types of violations—not only is wrong fare usually intrinsically toxic, but also burdens the system so much that enervation results as well.

Foods which we do not digest well tax the system and lead to an enervated state, especially when these foods interfere with or prolong sleep as they often do. Troubled sleep denies us regeneration of normal nerve energy.

Ordinary cow’s milk, for instance, which is touted as such a perfect food, is quite toxic in the average human intestinal tract because we do not have the enzymes rennin or lactase with which to digest it. Thus lactose and casein are toxic themselves and, because of bacterial breakdown, beget toxic by-products.

Most foods of today have been cooked, preserved, processed and prepared in such a manner as to either add and/or create toxicity—not that they wouldn’t have been good foods in their natural state.

Potatoes, for instance, are a third-rate food—still quite high on the scale, with very conservative cooking. But, with the addition of heated oils in cooking, they become rather saturated and indigestible.

Both the oil and the potatoes thus become sources for pathogenic substances.

Haphazard food mixtures generate toxic products

Combining foods indiscriminately often involves meals of incompatible foods. Most Americans eat sweets, proteins, fats and starches at every meal. Statistics show that over half the meals eaten in America result in intestinal discomforts due to indigestion.

When indigestion occurs, bacteria take over and decompose the various food components. The byproducts of bacterial decomposition are quite toxic, these being acetic acid, lactic acid and alcohol in the case of carbohydrates and ammonias, purines, skatols, indoles and other deleterious substances in the case of proteins and yet others in the case of fats.

When the foods eaten in bad combinations should be omitted from the human diet even if eaten alone, the situation is worsened.

The perpetual assault upon human well-being from this source alone is enough to create considerable pathology and shorten life.

Guidelines for more nutrients and less toxicity from eating

The more foods we consume of our biological adaptation, the more nutrients we derive. Foods which we are biologically equipped to efficiently handle are readily digested and their nutrients swiftly absorbed. They offer no toxicity inasmuch as our digestive enzymes breakdown every component that could offer problems. Fruits are the only category of foods that fill this bill ideally.

When we eat ideal foods in an uncomplicated manner, we obtain their goodness and create no problems. This is conducive to health which is a prerequisite to prolonged youth and long life.

Factors That Shorten Life

Dr. Georgi Z. Pitskhelauri is a Russian gerontologist who has been researching those factors responsible for the long life of Abkhasians and others living in and around the Caucacus mountains. His studies show that centenarians:

do not smoke—in fact, only a few smoke at all.
donotdrinkalcoholicbeveragestoanyextent—theirprimarydrinkingisafewsipsof wine prior to mealtime.
do not ordinarily eat before noon.
sleep eight to ten hours daily.
are very active, doing almost all their work out of doors.
sleep out of doors for most of the year.
theirforemostfoodsaregrapesandcitruswithotherfruitsbeingagoodpartoftheirdiet also. Vegetables in salads constitute a substantial part of their fare.
animal products were sparse to nonexistent in their diet. Dr. Pitskhelauri reports this in such a way it is clearly obvious that:
smoking is life shortening.
alcoholic beverages shorten life.
morning meals are not healthy.
inadequate sleep is not conducive to long life!
lack of activity will deteriorate the body.
being cooped up indoors away from fresh air and natural light shortens life.
animal products are not healthful in the diet.

Those factors which shorten life seem to predominate in our society. Thus it behooves you as a practitioner to recognize those influences which destroy health and bring on early death. While these life-sapping factors are multitudinous, they arc easily recognized for their anti-vital character. Let’s explore some of them.

Polluted air

Relatively pure air is our foremost need of life.

It has been said that the world’s air has been contaminated to some extent. Penguins at the South Pole have been found to be contaminated somewhat by particulates generated thousands of miles away in industrial complexes.

Even though pure air may be impossible in today’s world, we are able to breathe much better air overall by taking a few steps to better the air quality in home and workplace. Outdoor work and outdoor sleeping are two measures that will vastly improve the quality of the air we breathe. Further, the light we’ll be using will be from the sun. Natural light is wholesome whereas artificial lighting of all types is less wholesome.

We have had lessons dealing with the subject of air and the multitude of pollutants that beset it in homes and cities. I suggest that you review these.

While our nasal and lung faculties have a certain capacity for purifying air, it is a talent best little employed. Certainly it is debilitating to continually assault this capacity with heavily polluted air until these faculties are destroyed. Pure air is essential to best health and to long life.

Vitiated Social Environment

On the obverse side of a congenial and assured social environment of peers is perhaps the most demoralizing influence of all. In a condition of strife, bickering, lack of mutual appreciation, economic insecurity, aggressive and exploitative individuals and groups, humans wither. This leads, of course, to enervation, disease, suffering and early death. The social and economic situation must be one where the means of life are readily available for reasonable efforts. Where the products of one’s labors are consumed in a community of peers—where relative sufficiency and stability exist within the social group with which one identifies, gregarious, creative and constructive tendencies are met. We feel useful and a part of our environment rather than a consuming/nonproductive member.

Our social situation more than anything else generates positive or negative emotional states. Negative emotions destroy us whereas reinforced and positive feelings are a prerequisite of well-being.

Economic factors that distress the organism

An adverse social setting is perhaps the most demoralizing and debilitating influence, and economic conditions are usually the soil from which social situations develop. Of course this can be good to bad.

Most Americans are perpetually distressed by earning less than will satisfy their wants. An exploitative society strives to create an even greater market for its products. The promotion of products somehow imbues most people with the idea that happiness can be realized if they have I this and this and that. This unceasing quest for more and more mirrors the basic unhappiness of most of American society’s members. The propaganda of commercial promoters drives us to seek happiness in possessions.

Further, the nature of the economic system can be most vitiating. Ours has often been characterized as “a dog eat dog” system. Competitiveness has driven many to play the game viciously. People who are by economic circumstances forced to work in an atmosphere of maximum production and minimal pay feel the injustice. In turn, this gnawing sense of revulsion and resentment is a cancer upon emotional well-being that leads to physical debility.

The longest lived peoples in the world are largely self-sufficient. They live mostly on their own products, yielding little if anything to “bosses,” landlords, owners, stockholders, etc. Their life is generally simple economically. Simplification of lifestyle leads to economic independence which is often a key factor in exuberant well-being and long life.

Environmental hazards to life

In addition to polluted air, vitiated social and economic environments, we may be subjected to life-sapping forces from our working and living environment of which we are little aware. These may be summarized briefly as:

noise or sonic pollution.
drab, depressing and unaesthetic living conditions.
use of chemicals and unnatural substances in workplace and home.
polluted water...fluoridated, chlorinated, contaminants, etc.
pollutedfoodduetoinsecticides,chemicalresidues,otherimpuritiesnotdueto processing, preserving, cooking, etc.
physically hazardous working and living conditions that dispose to injuries, even fatal ones.

Ferreting out the multitude of unwholesome influences that debilitate clients can be an onerous task. Informing your client of the many possible disturbing and dangerous elements in his or her surroundings may enable the individual to remove himself from subjection to them. On the other hand, they may not be able to free themselves from unwholesome influences and a knowledge of them may cause a worrisome preoccupation and unconscious sense of danger that amounts to the reverse placebo effect. The reverse placebo effect is the belief that harm is being done which becomes so depressing as to be harmful. It is the power of negativity that affects us deleteriously. Ideal in the human environment are natural influences that we identify as supplying the needs of life. Trees and plants, especially food-producing ones, are aesthetic and lifeenhancing. An environment that is totally bereft of our natural values as might be found in buildings, streets and alleys have adverse influences upon humans. Deeply inherent in humans is our pristine place in nature and the negation of its salubrious influences destroys the qualities and values needed for healthful living and long life.

Many of us in both home and workplace have chemicals, oils and soaps coming in contact with our hands and other body parts. Needless to say, anything that is not normal to the body can cause derangements that detract from health. Any chemical or toxic material that interferes with vital body activities at any point can cause many pathologies including cancer.

Working and using unsafe equipment often inflicts little cuts, abrasions and bruises upon clients. All such injuries are life-sapping and take their toll upon us.

When dealing with clients, survey their entire lifestyle in the search for factors that contribute to human suffering.

Exercise And Vigorous Purposeful Activity As Life Essentials

Inactivity is characteristic of the nonliving while purposeful activity gives evidence of life. Inactivity other than that needed for rest, relaxation and sleep tends to atrophy our minds and bodies. From infanthood, humans should be involved in numerous activities that develop mental and physical faculties. Unless we experience vigorous activity in our work, hobby or recreation, a vigorous program of contrived exercises is essential to well-being. Constructive activities that daily exercise most or all the body’s parts are most desirable. Gardening, work and pursuits that involve lifting, stretching, shifting, accelerated breath and pulse are, as a rule, health-building.

Even though we may be involved in activities that develop our muscles and mental acumen, it is still desirable to take brisk walks or runs that build and maintain endurance. The many benefits of running alone are innumerable—they’re still being discovered and catalogued. In short, life is activity and you’ll do well to encourage and foster it in the lives, of those whom you are privileged to touch.

Vigorous activity as a rejuvenator and fountain of youth factor.

When we examine the vast literature on exercise, we encounter a wealth of evidence that highlights its enormous benefits. Vigorous activity’s role in fitness and well-being could be ranked among the top three essentials of life though, in reality, it is not as vital as many other life factors. But, unless heavy physical activity is a part of an individual’s life, health will be lost and a much shortened life will result. Thus regular and vigorous activity is absolutely essential to healthful living and long life. Without it, neither will be realized.

Dr. Cureton of the Physical Fitness Laboratory of the University of Illinois made perhaps more experiments with exercisers than anyone else. His findings related to the benefits that exercise bestows read like finding a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. There are many rewards and everyone can share them, even handicapped persons. Among his many noteworthy contributions to the science of physiology is the discovery that, by the age of 25, the average American has lost 25% of his capillary circulation fitness and, by age 35, 60%. This is tragic, of course. Poor circulation results from lack of usage of musculature. The relatively inactive lives we lead account for this.

Energy and health decline with declining circulation. Poorer sleep, posture, digestion, chronic fatigue, increase in ailments, our disposition and a general decline characterize inactivity. It bears repeating over and over that one must either “be fit or be damned.” It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for an inactive person to be healthy and long-lived.

There is a silver lining to this typical American predicament. Through fasting, proper diet and exercise program, and observance of the other essentials of life appropriately, almost everyone can be rejuvenated unless the powers of life are almost totally lacking.

Perhaps a personal observation is in order. When I was in New York, an associate had a son who was only twelve and tipped the scales at about 180 pounds. I was told this obese boy who stood only five feet five inches tall had two interests in life—eating and watching TV. This boy was shipped to summer camp for two months in the Catskills where he was among over fifty other boys. He was given chores to perform. He was put on a mostly vegetarian diet and permitted only three meals a day. He hiked, ran, played volleyball, baseball and other games vigorously. He did this daily for two months. Can you imagine his parents’ surprise and delight? During these two months, their son increased in height two inches and lost weight down to 130 pounds. He had developed both curricular and athletic interests and wanted to become a professional baseball player. From thereon in life he thrived and today, more than twenty years later, he is a successful businessman who is an superb example of physical fitness.

Most of your clients will be of more advanced years than this but the benefits of exercise can be realized in nearly everyone—they’re just slower in coming. You can be instrumental in rescuing many from a kind of hell of their own making and involving them in vigorous activity will be one of your primary tools.

We are fond of pointing out the immense benefits of fasting. Vigorous activity also yields many salutary benefits and, coupled with fasting and other salubrious practices, will rebuild anyone that has the spark of life still remaining.

To illustrate this, there are cases of retirees who have recharged and rejuvenated themselves. A few years back, an 88-year-old woman entered and finished a marathon, beating out women who were in their forties and fifties! She had not even begun to run until after eighty years of age!

Never underestimate the power of exercise to turn a client’s life around. And of this you can be sure: you’ll meet very few who get enough vigorous physical activity.

Exercise alone as a healthful activity insufficient

How many articles have you noted of athletes dying of heart conditions, cancer and other problems? There are many. In recent times I’ve read about an 18-year-old star athlete in Bastrop, Texas, dying of a coronary. I’ve read of a football player only 20 years old at Southwest Texas State in San Marcos having serious cancer. I remember the famous coach, Fairchild, of the University of Oklahoma, dying at age 37 of cardiovascular problems. The same thing happened to a professional football player for the Detroit Lions.

These men were extraordinarily fit because of their exercise arid heavy activity. But they were filled through and through with the ravages of chronic toxicosis. While exercise is a very healthful measure, it is not a cure-all for heavy meat-eating, heavy drinking of alcohol or soft drinks, or the use of other toxic fare.

Thus we get warning after warning from physicians to “take it easy” when obviously exercise is required. They often tell us exercise can kill. The truth is that exercise is rejuvenating, life-restoring and life-extending. Persistence in life-destroying dietary and poison habits is what sabotages and kills the body, not constructive habits. At worst, vigorous exercise can be the agency that puts the body to the test which it fails. Chronic toxicosis is the culprit, not the exercise. Other healthful measures must be taken in conjunction with an exercise program.

Constructive activities that assure long life

Every life essential must be appropriately observed. Some of these life essentials are rather nebulous, especially as they relate to emotional and mental factors.

The basis for healthy emotions and an admirable mental disposition is born of all the other factors of life. The sense of belonging, expression of the creative and procreative urges and security of life are essential to our emotional and mental well-being.

With clients you should search out environmental and social factors that destroy well-being as well as ascertain these that build well-being. Very frequently you’ll find a dearth of influences that build confidence, self-reliance and other attributes of well-being.

You should encourage your clients to develop a hobby. Few pursuits can be as uplifting as organic gardening and orcharding. Not only do they furnish wholesome food, but they also involve the individual in vigorous, creative activity, self-reliance and selfassurance, and they yield a plethora of other benefits.

Encourage your clientele to get deeply involved in some hobby that keeps them physically active, draws upon their creative talents and furnishes them appreciable rewards.

Mental And Emotional Factors In Living A Natural Life Span

We humans have a tendency to be very upset if the world does not go as we want it to without considering how realistic our expectations and wishes are. Pleasant emotions are essential to health, but nothing will undermine overall well-being so quickly as distressing emotions.

Emotional states are our responses to life situations born of our disposition, most of it beneath the level of consciousness. Emotional responses reflect our maturity and bearing.

Self-mastery essential to emotional equilibrium

Unless we have developed a framework of a philosophical overview—one that gives rise to reflection and a deliberately charted course in our affairs, we’re likely to be buffeted by the winds of every emotion that arises. Emotions arise as responses to situations—they are mechanisms for dealing with external affairs, for directing our reactions and actions, attitudes and personal indulgences.

Emotions are powerful influences for dominating our course in life. Emotionally-directed individuals arc all too often enervated and debilitated when their expectations are not met.

Self-mastery means that we are aware of our feelings that tend to push us hither and yon but, more importantly, we ascertain by rational contemplation the elements that tend to drive us, and logically assess and contrive that course which will yield us the most benefits with the least expenditure of resources.

Self-mastery is absolutely essential to well-being and long life in a social/economic environment as exploitative as ours. People who hang their emotional well-being on everything “going their way” will be shattered when adversity occurs as it often does in our society.

The surest way to develop self-mastery is the realization that you are in total control of your affairs relative to all that is outside of you. Once you’ve trained yourself to stop, reflect and chart a course relative to any matter that rears itself, you can then take a philosophical approach to everything that affects you—and you can help your clients develop a similar attitude.

Security of life and its means are essential to health and long life

Most humans are provident. As provident creatures, we like to know where our next meal is coming from, so to speak. We want to know that our immediate and long-term future is provided for. Unless we’re sure, most of us worry and fret, to our great detriment. Worry is an enervating lapse into emotional solutions to our concerns rather than rational ones. Worriers are not only inimical to their welfare but to the well-being of those whom they touch as well.

Long-lived peoples live in a largely unexploited situation where the needs of life are. assured by rather easily expended productive efforts. The simple life does not give rise to the concerns that a complex industrial society engenders.

Unless we have a philosophical attitude that encompasses plenitude and scarcity, one that prepares us to cope with the vicissitudes of our society and economy, we’ll have many emotional crises that tear us apart.

In dealing with your clients, try to ascertain their social and economic disposition. Most people are beset by economic worries that lay them low. I’ve witnessed many a businessman turn grey almost overnight from a business that was going awry due to an adverse marketplace.

Try to inspire and motivate your clients to develop a philosophical approach to social and economic problems and, on the other side, make themselves self-sufficient to the extent they can.

Social and environmental compatibility are essential to well-being

Humans usually adapt to fit in with the social and environmental circumstances that develop them. Thus we see societies all over the world whose members usually have the same outlook and disposition. We go to India, Japan, China, Tibet, Arabia and any

number of other countries and we observe a great diversity of peoples and economies. Though poor by our standards, most Asians do live rather secure lives amongst their peers. The average Thailander or other Asian in a tropical/agricultural economy lives reasonably assured of the needs of life. The relationships of individuals in their societies are rather stable at the community level at least. In America, we have a rather unstable society that drives a substantial part of its members to disposition and escapism as a means of coping with or blotting out the reality of the ugly head of economic and social adversity.

In our society we are more likely to be driven by economic concerns than by human consideration. There are so many individuals in our society who will commit inhuman and inhumane acts in behalf of self-aggrandizement that it agitates and aggravates almost our entire social structure.

Societies and economies oriented to serving everyone and their needs are essential to optimum well-being. At the very least, they must not tend to deny their members the rewards or products of their efforts.

In our society that is so disruptive to individual and family stability, we must make extraordinary efforts to harmonize with the circumstances that befall us.

Community of peers in life pursuits essential to highest well-being

“Man is not an island unto himself” has been sagely observed. This is in accord with our gregarious disposition. Humans, need other humans for their best welfare. Alone we wither. There is little motivation in life where meeting our own needs are concerned. As gregarious creatures we are mutually concerned about the welfare of others on a natural level. Within aggressive societies such as ours, our natural disposition becomes vitiated and perverted.

For our highest well-being we should all seek those of similar interests and disposition. It is especially comforting to live among those of similar intellectual and economic interests. We see religious societies wherein its members are stable and self-assured. We see intellectual circles in which members find mutual reassurance and satiation of drives and interests.

The world’s longest lived peoples live on their own land for the most part and are subsistence gardeners/ farmers/orchardists. Their interests are heavily weighted, to agrarian societies.

We should, for our best well-being, situate ourselves within the context of others of similar interests and pursuits.

Happiness, Enjoyment And Pleasure As Factors In Realizing Life Potential

These terms characterize our disposition. They are not concrete terms but describe a quality of our being.

These life qualities arise from the overall situation of life. Euphoria is produced by “all systems being in harmony,” physical, mental, emotional and otherwise. To achieve these qualities, our life needs must be adequately met in all spheres. We must be free of disturbing factors in all aspects of our being.

A happy disposition is normal and natural to humans. Its absence is an attest to errant disposition or factors that impinge upon it.

The life-sapping effects of depression and despair

Disenchantment with the prospects of life is occasioned by factors that undermine our well-being. Chronic toxicosis causes suffering that destroys our happiness and that of others as well. Chronic body toxicity vitiates the body and creates a negative life disposition. A sick body makes a miserable member of society that depresses not only the individual but those who become involved with or touch that individual. Just as a smile is a most infectious agent, a miserable individual can cast gloom upon those around. Suffering makes individuals miserable and misery loves company, even if it has to create it.

Many of your clients will be suffering from the throes of disease. One of the most salutary services you can perform for them is to persuade them to change environments for one to two months to go through a lengthy fast, rebuild some semblance of health and undergo an attitudinal change that makes happiness and enjoyment virtues after all.

Many people harbor the attitude that virtues of life are strengthened by the adversities we suffer. Many feel that pleasures and joys are inherently sinful or unimportant in the scheme of things. They thus make themselves miserable and attempt to impose their outlook upon others.

You’ll meet a multitude of types in your professional sojourn. Vitiated people travel some rather strange paths. Giving their lives new pathways to trod calls for consummate insight and skill. Our endeavor in these lessons is to teach you about everything that bears upon human well-being.

The life-enhancing influences of happiness

If a smile is the most contagious thing around, then happiness radiates itself like the sun on a clear day. If misery is born of a diseased condition having its basis in toxicosis, happiness is born of a vital body condition having its basis in physiological adequacy.

Thus you’ll endeavor to turn your suffering clients lives around so as to First establish the physiological bases for well-being and then, as much as possible, reach the ideal in life conditions.

The happiness that accrues from a well-rounded life regime

When all is well in all aspects of our being, only euphoria can result. Thus when we systematically change the practices of a client from pathological to healthful, there will be a more or less complete reversal of the client’s feelings and disposition. Of course you’ll find that there are some psychologically and physiologically handicapped individuals beyond total redemption, but even so, you’ll probably find many areas in which improvement is possible, meaning restoring more happiness to a lost life.

Life is meaningful when we enjoy it. As a Life Science professional, you will be instrumental in helping people to make themselves happy.

Questions & Answers

There is no proof that a raw food diet of fruits and certain vegetables, seeds and nuts, in correct combination, without herbs and spices, promotes health and longevity. Show me a group of people over the age of 100 who have been living according to your principles.

In situations like these you can put the onus of the negative on the questioner. You can haul out such statistics as presented in The Myth of Health In America and show that these problems are caused by cooked foods, condiments, wrong foods, etc. Better yet, ask the questioner why this should be so. You can point out

Kouchakoff’s experiments that show cooked foods to be pathological because they cause leukocytosis.

But, of course, you can get books about the Hunza and Abkhasia. These are mostly raw food eating people, especially the Hunzas living where they have no fuel to speak of. Hunzas are a healthy long-lived people with a great percentage of their population over 100 years of age. Their primary fare consists of apricots, apples, mulberries, peaches, grapes and other fruits with some vegetables, pulses and grains. For practical purposes, the Hunzas are fruitarians.

Ask your questioners what cooking does to food. Ask them if it enhances their nutritive qualities or destroys it. If it enhances it, then the more you cook food, the better its quality, of course, and ashes would be best of all.

Quote number one from Bragg is idiotic. “Even our best organically grown foods are deficient in many nutrients. That is why I eat cooked foods and use natural food supplements to get nutrients into my body to withstand all the pressures which all of us must endure in this decaying super-civilization.”

If the best foods are deficient, then cooking them only makes them all the more deficient and adds the dimension of toxicity from whence arises leukocytosis. Food supplements are a dangerous delusion for they do not supplement. They are mostly synthetic and unusable. Even if they were usable, they are useless out of context from the foods in which they’re normally found. Dr. Roger Williams of the University of Texas has pointed out that vitamins do not work in isolation but must all be brought together to work as a team. Fractionated vitamins are impotent and synthetic vitamins are never usable.

Fruits and vegetables, even if lower in nutrients than centuries ago, still have far more vitamins and minerals than humans need.

The question states there is no proof that raw foods without herbs and spices promotes health and longevity. The question is asked from a stance of prevalent cooked food eating and condiment usage as if, a priori, these are the foods of health and longevity but there is plenty of proof that they are the articles of disease and shortened life.

Early man, living in a pristine environment, even if he did eat ONLY raw fruits and vegetables, seeds and nuts, did NOT carry around a food combining chart. Ho w did he get so far?

Living in a pristine environment, humans ate their meals at the source, that is, directly from tree, vine and stalk. Eating their fill of the fruit or fruits that were in season did not involve food combining. Most meals were mono-meals and even the fare for a whole day consisted of all fruits—our ancestors were total fruitarians as scientific evidence has shown.

Food combining is basically unnecessary to those who are eating properly—food combining is for those who mix food, something humans did not do in the beginning. Combining fruits according to their character comes rather naturally. We do not desire to eat bananas and grapefruit together—today, we tend to eat bananas with other sweet fruits despite our unnatural perversions that subvert natural inclinations.

How can you say that your principles are correct when “long-lived peoples” of the world eat a diet in opposition to those principles?

How can you ask such a question and offer in evidence testimony that confirms those very principles? There is practically no food processing, cooking or otherwise in Hunza. The testimony shows that fruits and selected vegetables are eaten raw and fruits constitute the bulk of their diet. Because of their isolated situation they

are not subjected to the junk foods of commerce. The Hunzas, Abkhasians and Vilcabambians of Peru live healthfully in most aspects of their being, food being but one primary facet of healthful living.

Long life and health comes from what people do right, not what they do wrong. To the extent that we indulge in healthful practices, only to that extent do we enjoy health. Disease and ailments are an evidence of error and anyone who suffers colds, headaches, constipation and other problems is an example of the error of living. There is no defense for dietary and other perversions for a person who is suffering because of those very perversions.

Depriving yourself of junk foods and nonfoods is like depriving yourself of hell. What do we seek, hell or heaven? We make our own.

People have been using garlic and onions for thousands of years. They have hastened healing with them. If, when seriously ill, garlic is given and the patient recovers, why then does not the disease return when the patient recovers?

Yes, people have been eating garlic and onions for thousands of years. People have been sick and diseased for thousands of years and continue to be so despite all the garlic and onions eaten. You can demonstrate to yourself that the primary “medicinal” factors of garlic are mustard oil and allicin. These substances are indigestible. They readily permeate tissues and cells. They are excreted through the lungs and kidneys as the same substances that enter the body—as mustard oil and allicin. If they were digested and used, those who eat these obnoxious lily family members would not stink to high heaven. If you crush a clove of garlic in your hand and hold it a few minutes you’ll have garlic breath within ten to fifteen minutes, demonstrating the permeability of cells and tissues by these pernicious substances. Use and control of anything that gets into the body which it cannot digest, is difficult.

We don’t need penicillin or bactericides in our bodies. Killing off our symbiotic bacterial flora is harmful, not helpful. TB is a disease wherein the body dumps its toxic materials into the lungs in the same way that asthmatics have their extraordinary toxicity exuded through the bronchioles or the sinus sufferer excretes toxins through the sinuses. Garlic has no intelligence at all and could not heal TB under any circumstances inasmuch as TB is a body-instituted measure to cope with body toxicity. Garlic will so drug the body as to reduce, its vitality and increase its accommodation to both the garlic and the toxicity. But we’re less healthy for that, not more healthy. It is a fabrication to say the body will be free of disease if its causes are still indulged.

Fasting enables the body to speedily eject its toxic load whereas drugs, including garlic’s allicin and mustard oil, tend to suppress elimination.

Why are dairy products bad when almost everyone who is long-lived uses them?

This is not true, of course. The Hunzas do not use milk except for children and this is from mother’s breasts. The Vilcabambians do not use dairy products. Among the world’s longest-lived peoples, only the Eastern Europeans use dairy products. And to attribute their long life to these products is like attributing their long life to the wine and tobacco many of them also use. The fact is they have long life not because of these things but despite them. It’s what they’re doing right, not what they’re doing wrong, that keeps them alive so long. Undoubtedly they’d live much healthier and longer if they did everything right.

We have humans living to be in excess of 100 years on fruits alone. We have Orangutans living to be 125 to 150 years on fruits alone. Is not this an argument for eating fruits alone?

Regaining health while on goat’s milk means, if we study such cases, that all those dietary practices which contributed to previous pathology were dropped—causes were discontinued. Suckling goats is not as healthy as eating fruits. Shouldn’t we take two groups of individuals as controls, put one on a mono diet of goat’s milk and the Mother on a diet of fruits and see how they fare?

Because most humans lose the ability to secrete lactase, the enzyme that breaks down lactose, and because almost all lose the ability to secrete rennin, the enzyme that breaks down casein, we cannot thrive on milk. Please note that those long-lived peoples did not use fresh milk but fermented milks. Those who take fresh milks, raw or pasteurized, suffer much disease.

Dairy products are not wholesome. America consumes more milk and milk products than all the rest of the world combined. By all standards we should be the healthiest but, on the contrary, we’re the most diseased, as statistics attest.

How can grains, especially breads and cereals, be bad, when almost all the centenarians use them in one way or another?

This is not true. The Vilcabambians eat only corn of all the grains and little of this—their primary foods are fruits and potatoes. The Hunzas eat very little grain because they have little room for growing grain. Fruit trees are the most productive of food and the Hunzas eat a preponderance of fruit.

A characteristic of all centenarians is that they are not gluttonous eaters of anything—they eat abstemiously.

Americans are among the biggest grain and meat eaters in the world. Why aren’t we or the Canadians or Australians or other grain-eating countries noted for longevity? The Chinese and Japanese live heavily on rice but their longevity hardly exceeds ours. What are the supposed virtues of grain? It must be eaten cooked and largely devitalized. It furnishes calories and most of its products are deficient unless eaten with lots of raw greens and vegetables.

The Finns are a vigorous but not a long-lived people. They are heavy fat and grain eaters and have disease conditions rivaling our own country. More Finns die of heart attacks than do Americans. Whoever holds up the Finns as examples of healthy long-lived peoples is awry in the belfry.

What possible reason can you give for advocating water fasts as opposed to juice fasting?

Fasting involves a diet of only water, whereas a better term for juice fasting might be “juice feasting.”

In the water diet, the body shuts down the digestive tract and devotes its energies to bodily rehabilitation. On the juice diet, it must continue to carry on digestive and eliminative functions in the intestinal tract.

Under a complete fast, beneficial results are obtained quicker by a ratio of three to five to one over that of juice dieting. Further, cleansing and healing can be accomplished on the water diet that cannot be accomplished at all on a juice diet.

Juices are fragmented and incomplete foods and fail to furnish many of the needed nutrients that are bountiful in the whole foods. Further, juices exposed to oxygen rapidly oxidize with the result that their nutrients are lost. Moreover, those oxidized nutrients are transformed into toxic products, especially the minerals which are often largely returned to an inorganic state.

The body greatly improves on a simple diet but, I repeat, improvement is much quicker and more profound on a water diet with benefits being realized that may not be realized at all on a juice diet.

A juice diet for 20 to 40 days is of immense benefit but 10 to 12 days on a water diet will yield even greater benefits. The lies about fasting are many and the supposed advantages of juice dieting are nonexistent. Because of their oxidized and deficient nature, the juice dieter may suffer drug effects which are often confused with beneficial effects.

When we modify our diets or fast, we seek maximum benefits and water dieting is superior to everything else. After a few days on the water diet, hunger goes away and we have no urge to eat. On the juice diet, there are periods of intense hunger and periods when hunger is absent. If juices are not taken when hunger is absent and water taken instead, the fast is great. But if foods are taken when hunger disappears, even be it juices, the purposes of the body are thwarted.

How can you say that too much starch and protein is bad when the Irish people use them in large amounts and suffer no ill effects?

The Irish live mostly on potatoes with some fish. They are not gluttons as are Americans and they conservatively cook their foods. They are not noted for their longevity and few centenarians are among them. In fact, their health is hardly better than our own. They are vigorous outdoor people. Most heavy laborers are. But how many athletes are really healthy people in this country? Athletes die young like most other Americans because hey partake of about the same diet as most Americans.

In reading the book you submitted, it would appear almost everyone in the world is healthy but we Americans. The truth is that most of the world is unhealthy except for little pockets of people here and there who enjoy relatively better health.

There are a multitude of factors that contribute to health and food is only one. While food can undermine health no matter how good other practices are, it cannot assure health no matter how perfect if all other practices are bad.

Starch must be cooked to be eaten. We cannot handle raw starch except in small quantities. Cooking dextrinizes starches. All starches must be converted to simple glucose and fructose before it can be absorbed. This is done at great expense to the body. Why not take fruits that are glucose and fructose to begin with? There are no good arguments for starch-eating.

What goes for starches goes three-fold for proteins. While there are proteins in every food, most human protein eaters cook and degenerate the protein content anyway. The proteins are coagulated and the amino acids deaminized. The body is only about 30% efficient in using protein as energy whereas it is about 90 to 95% efficient in converting fruits. And as far as the protein needs of the body go, about 70% can be secured from recycling our own metabolic wastes whereas actual needs are met amply from fruits. Proteins in excess of our needs putrefy in the digestive tract and, if absorbed as amino acids and are excessive, the body must tax itself greatly in decomposing them and ridding itself of the toxic by-products.

Those who insist on their perversions to the point of being hopeless are choosing a life of suffering.

If mineral waters are harmful, the Hunzas would have been dead a long time ago.

This, of course, is the most idiotic of all conclusions. First, inorganic minerals cannot be used by the body. Iodine and many other minerals are absolutely essential

in human nutrition but, in inorganic form, are rank poisons. The body can use them only in organic context.

The Hunzas are not great water drinkers, their diet being mostly water sufficient. Secondly, their water starts out as pure a short distance from their uptake of it and it is full mostly of sediment, not minerals in solution. They settle out the sediment just as any sane person would—who wants to drink sand and minute rock debris? Who wants to drink soil?

During the brief run down the mountains, the water picks up lots of sediment but few minerals in solution. And, to top it off, Hunzans drink very little water anyway. Certainly, raw materials and rock are not healthful.

Human mineral needs are only about 8 grams daily by the doubled and tripled standards of RDAs. Yet a normal diet of raw foods furnish intact about 20 to 25 grams of organic minerals daily which the body can use.

Be it noted that the fabulous waters the Hunzas get from their glacial runoff is available only for a few hours a day during the warm months, being totally unavailable most of the year.

Why are herbs so harmful? If so, how did Li Chung Yun live to be 256 years old?

If Gotu-kola and Ginseng teas were the only vice of this long-lived sage, then we should not marvel at his longevity. Little is said about his diet except that it was vegetarian. Does it not sound reasonable to attribute health and longevity to healthful living instead of to wines, cigarettes, fermented and rotted products, teas, toxic botanicals (both these herbs are listed in books on botanical medicines as possessing toxic substances).

Those who continue to indulge in their vices under the purblind rationalization that long-lived peoples had this or that vice usually end up with heart conditions and/or cancer which do them in at an early age. Rationalizing our vices and perversions will not deliver health.

Why do Bulgarians live so long when they do everything you advise against?

This question embodies a falsehood. They do not do everything I advise against. On the contrary, their lives are far more healthful than that of the average American. Your documentation of what they’re doing wrong indicates they’re doing mostly right. Only about 3 to 4% even partake of meat at all. Most live on fresh fruits and vegetables according to the published material you sent. Especially stressed was their consumption of sunflower seeds. Bulgarians do partake of fermented milks but it is not by any means the predominant part of their diet. Their hard work in the out of doors and their relatively stress-free society are not debilitating but, on the contrary, very healthful.

Beware of people and writers who want to credit health and longevity to the oddball perversions people may have rather than to their preponderance of healthful living practices which are the only basis for health and longevity.

The Elixir Of Life: An Exploration Of Food Conditions, Body Conditions, And Eating Conditions That Beget Euphoric Health And Long Life