Author: Lauren Farris

Do Grapes Kill Dogs? Exposing the Profit-Driven Myth

What We Have Learned Healing Thousands Of Dogs From Cancer, Seizures, Dementia, And Many Other Health Issues.  

Grapes Aren’t The Problem – Treatments Are. Read Before You Panic.

If you live outside the United States or the United Kingdom, chances are you’ve never heard of the danger of feeding grapes to dogs. That’s because the idea that grapes are toxic is not grounded in universal science or clinical evidence.  It’s a uniquely Western myth, born out of fear, industry marketing, and a fundamental misunderstanding of health. In this article, I’m going to explain how this myth started, why it continues to be propagated, and why grapes, like all fruits, are not only safe but incredibly healing when fed appropriately as part of the natural diet.

Grapes in the Natural Diet

I’ve been feeding grapes to my rescues for more than a decade. Not just a few grapes here and there, either, but full meals of them. Over 130 dogs, many of them seniors with cancer, seizures, dementia, heart murmurs, and other so-called “incurable” conditions, have eaten pounds of grapes weekly while under my care. The result? Reversal of dementia, cessation of seizures, healing of cancers, heart disease, skin conditions, and a long list of other chronic health conditions. In short, a return to pristine health.  Our senior dogs run and play like puppies, often running circles around the kibble-fed puppies at the dog park.   In our natural diet support group, we have thousands of members feeding pounds of grapes to their dogs as well. The result: healthy, happy dogs.  

Growing up, long before the grape myth existed, our family dog, Max, loved sharing grapes with me on hot summer days.  He lived to 19 years old, happy and healthy to the end.   My friends in Italy mentioned that grapes are a common ingredient in commercial pet foods there.  So naturally, the claim of grape toxicity sparked my interest.  Grapes are hydrating, filled with essential sugars that every cell in the body requires for energy.  They are easy to digest and are digested quickly, reducing the burden of digestion on the body. In short, they are a perfect food for healing our dogs that are chronically ill. They are also a favorite of dogs.   I can’t count how many times my poorly guarded bowl of grapes has become the snack of one of our dogs.  They run off like they have acquired a prize greater than gold or fine silver.   

And yet, this fruit has been demonized, while kibble filled with synthetic chemicals, denatured proteins, and inflammatory grains is sold as “complete and balanced.” Something just doesn’t add up. 

This pattern isn’t limited to modern rescues either. Wolves, our dogs’ closest wild relatives, have also been documented eating grapes and other fruits. Various studies of wolf scat from the 1970s through the 1990s revealed fruit such as cherries, berries, apples, pears, figs, plums, grapes, and melon in wolves’ diets across southern Europe (Italy, Greece, Spain and Portugal), Eastern Europe (the Czech Republic and Russia), and China. Source: International Wolf Center

Why, if a food is so natural to the canine diet, are those who advertise themselves as the health experts for our furry companions so intent on selling the idea that this fruit is deadly and dangerous?   Below, I will lay out how this myth was born and the profitable results of its proliferation, along with the dangers inherent in continuing to spread this myth.  

Where the Myth Began

The grape hysteria appears to have originated between 1999 and 2002, when a handful of anecdotal reports were submitted to the ASPCA. These reports described dogs experiencing gastrointestinal upset after ingesting grapes, and a few of the dogs later developed kidney failure. Despite no identification of a toxic compound and no clinical evidence linking grapes directly to the cause of death, grapes were quietly added to the ASPCA’s list of toxic foods around 2003.

From that point on, the veterinary industry adopted the narrative and began issuing warnings. But here’s the problem: correlation is not causation. None of these early reports controlled for other variables, especially what treatments were given after the dogs ate grapes, or the commercial foods, known to be disease-causing, that they were ingesting on a daily basis prior to the grape ingestion. And that’s where the real danger lies.

Gastrointestinal upset is a common effect of mixing a fast-digesting fruit with a severely constipating kibble.  Since kibble is dry and difficult to digest, it moves very slowly through the digestive system.  Fruits are easy to digest, full of water and sugar, and they move quickly.   Since fruits contain sugar, they have the ability to ferment if they are not digested in a proper time frame.   Fermentation creates gas, and because fermentation creates alcohol, the body is triggered to create diarrhea to remove the fermenting matter.   So, if a kibble-fed dog is fed fruit, the logical result is digestive upset and diarrhea.  This is not a pathological condition; it is the body functioning appropriately, rushing out the fermenting (rotten) food before it poisons the body.   So the initial claims of gastrointestinal upset after ingesting grapes are a reasonable response of a properly working body.  

The Treatment, Not The Grapes, Leads To Organ Failure And Death

When a dog is brought in for ingesting grapes, the standard veterinary protocol involves induced vomiting, gastric lavage (stomach pumping), anti-diarrheal and anti-nausea drugs, and intravenous saline drips. Each of these interventions, particularly the saline drip, carries serious risks.

Saline is often marketed as benign, but it is a cellular poison when injected into the bloodstream. It’s been directly linked to kidney failure – ironically, the very condition grapes are blamed for. We covered this in detail in: The Dangers of Saline Drips.

In addition to the dangers of saline, let’s look at some of the common drugs used to treat gastrointestinal upset and their known poisoning effects, which the industry calls “side effects”. 

  • Bismuth subsalicylate – Salicylates are associated with GI ulceration and renal failure. Salicylate toxicity damages the kidneys.   Also causes liver toxicity and hepatic necrosis, especially in small dogs or when given repeatedly.
  • Ondansetron – Case reports and retrospective human data link ondansetron to acute interstitial nephritis.  Safety reports for dogs is lacking.  Regular monitoring for liver damage is also noted for dogs put on this drug.
  • Famotidine – Some human reports of acute interstitial nephritis.  Veterinary safety is lacking but Veterinary notes report dose reduction in dogs with renal impairment, indicating they are aware of its damaging effects upon the kidneys.  
  • Sucralfate – Human literature documents aluminum accumulation/toxicity with sucralfate in renal impairment
  • Maropitant (Cerenia) – Reports of liver enzyme elevation listed in the product label and hepatic disease noted post approval. 
  • Metronidazole (Flagyl) – one of the most common drugs used on dogs – associated with liver enzyme elevations and hepatocellular damage. Veterinary toxicology lists it as a possible cause of drug-induced liver injury (DILI).
  • Omeprazole (Prilosec, PPI) – liver injury reports in humans, documented cases of drug-induced hepatitis and cholestasis. Limited data available on dogs, but ACVIM urges cautious use.   

So let’s break it down: a dog eats a few grapes. The owner, panicked by misinformation, rushes the dog to the vet. The vet administers a cocktail of drugs known to cause liver and kidney damage. The unlucky dog dies. And the death is blamed on the fruit.

Profiting From Fear

This isn’t just a mistake-it’s a business model. Emergency treatment for grape ingestion can cost thousands to tens of thousands of dollars. The vet industry, like the pharmaceutical industry it aligns with, is a disease-for-profit system. They do not profit from healthy dogs eating grapes. They profit from fear-driven responses that result in medical intervention. This convenient bit of misinformation is far too profitable for them to admit they were ever wrong, so they continue to push it knowing that most of the public will not bother to push back, or ask any questions.   

The narrative is further fueled by the hero complex: “Your dog almost died, but we saved them.” This is the story told by the vet, echoed in the media, reinforced in Hollywood scripts. But the truth is, the dog was never in danger-until the treatment began.   The medical industry is forever narrating their application of various poisons to the body as heroic efforts that save lives when the person or animal survives their poisoning, and when the person or animal dies from the application of the drugs, the drugs never take the blame.  Instead, we are told that the disease was just too strong; they made every valiant effort, every heroic measure was used, but the body just could not withstand the attack of the powerful disease.   

But biological reality differs from narrative.  Once death is in motion, nothing can stop death.  How could anyone possibly be “pulled back from the brink of death”.  Either you are dead, or you are not dead.  There is no “brink of death”, no pulling back from that brink.  It’s a false concept we accept because it’s been programmed in our heads by movies and TV, but it’s simply not in alignment with reality.   

The “Toxic Ingredient” Argument Falls Flat

Since the goal is to maintain the narrative that grapes are deadly, a great study has been undertaken to determine the poisoning agent present in the grape.   Some claim that tartaric acid is the toxic ingredient in grapes. This is based on a weak study that used cream of tartar, a concentrated, inorganic form of tartaric acid, not whole grapes. Using this logic, we’d have to declare tomatoes, lettuce, and celery dangerous due to their sodium content simply because table salt is toxic and causes death in high doses.

Organic compounds in food behave very differently from isolated, inorganic chemicals. Grapes contain naturally occurring tartaric acid in trace amounts, just as oranges contain citric acid and spinach contains oxalates. These are harmless, even beneficial, in the whole-food matrix.   Learn more about the differences between Organic and Inorganic Minerals.

The same flawed logic applies to grape seeds. While some may claim that toxins “accumulate” over time from grape seeds, this doesn’t hold up scientifically. Most grapes today are seedless, and even when seeds are present, they must be thoroughly ground to release any measurable compounds. Dogs don’t grind seeds with molars. Their teeth and jaw lack the ability for grinding food; their teeth work more like a scissor, tearing flesh and cutting fruits into small enough pieces just to swallow, not grinding their fruit like human frugivores do, or other herbivores.  This claim simply doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.

For a further breakdown of the scientific flaws and historical timeline behind the grape myth, see this article: Grapes Poison Dogs? A Modern Myth.

Why the Myth is So Dangerous

People often say, “Why not just avoid grapes to be safe?” Here’s why that logic is deadly:

  • Grapes are a favorite of dogs. If a dog grabs a grape off the floor and the owner believes it’s toxic, they may rush to the vet and subject their dog to the very interventions that actually kill.
  • Believing in the myth makes you vulnerable to fear-based decisions that lead to poisoning by treatment.
  • The “better safe than sorry” mindset feeds the machine that kills animals, intentionally or unintentionally,  for profit.

If you teach a generation that grapes are toxic, you are not protecting dogs-you are putting them at risk of lethal treatment. And you are discouraging the use of a fruit that could save their life.

Common Sense Over Hysteria

Dogs have lived on vineyards for centuries. Italian kibble brands still include grapes in their formulas. Before the ASPCA’s 2003 decision, no one thought twice about a dog eating fruit. My own childhood dog ate grapes by the pool every summer. He lived a long, healthy life.

So what changed? Not the grape. The marketing.

Common Rebuttals and Why They Don’t Hold Up

In addition to anecdotal stories from grieving pet parents, there are a handful of frequently repeated rebuttals used to support the grape toxicity myth. Here’s a breakdown of the most common claims-and why they simply don’t stand up to logic, science, or observation.

“Only some dogs are sensitive to grapes.”

Claim: Some dogs are fine while others experience kidney failure. Therefore, grapes must contain an unpredictable toxin.

Why it doesn’t hold up:
 A truly toxic substance affects every member of a species consistently. That’s the definition of poison. We don’t say “only some dogs are sensitive” to bleach or chocolate-it’s either toxic or it’s not. If grapes were truly toxic, we would see consistent, repeatable results. The fact that many dogs consume grapes regularly with no symptoms disproves the idea of a hidden universal toxin2.

“We don’t know the mechanism, but we know it’s dangerous.”

Claim: The cause of toxicity is unknown, but kidney failure happens, and therefore, we must assume grapes are dangerous.

Why it doesn’t hold up:
 Science without a mechanism of action is not science – it’s speculation. If no one has been able to isolate a toxin after two decades of investigation, perhaps it’s because there is none.3 This unknown-mechanism argument exists only because the assumption of toxicity came first, and the evidence was expected to follow. But it never has.  This is not science. We don’t just make things up when the findings do not match the assumptions. 

“Tartaric acid is the culprit”

Claim: Tartaric acid found in grapes is toxic to dogs, and the levels vary between varieties, making grapes unpredictable and dangerous.

Why it doesn’t hold up:
 This theory stems from confusion between organic tartaric acid in whole fruit and inorganic tartaric acid (as found in cream of tartar). They are not the same. Just as table salt and sodium in lettuce are chemically distinct, tartaric acid in grapes is metabolized safely within the plant’s organic matrix. There is no evidence that naturally occurring tartaric acid in fruit causes harm.

“There are case reports showing genuine kidney damage.”

Claim: Veterinary reports link grape ingestion to acute renal failure.

Why it doesn’t hold up:
 These are anecdotal correlations. Nearly all case studies involve treatment with nephrotoxic drugs, IV saline, and other interventions. Without controlled trials isolating grapes alone, there is no credible evidence of grapes as a primary cause. What’s observed in these reports is a downstream result of treatment, not of fruit.

“Even a single grape might kill, so it’s not worth the risk.”

Claim: Better safe than sorry. Even if we’re unsure, just avoid grapes entirely.

Why it doesn’t hold up:
 This fear-based mindset is what kills dogs. When a dog ingests a grape and the owner panics, the vet’s treatment protocol often includes vomiting agents, enemas, IV saline, and anti-nausea drugs, all of which have known risks. When you act on a myth, the dog is harmed, not by the fruit, but by the treatment.

“My Vet Said Grapes Killed My Dog (or My Friend’s Dog)”

I hear this a lot, and I understand that people are often sharing these stories from a place of grief. But grief is not evidence, and memories are not science. Here are the key things to consider when someone claims grapes killed a dog:

  • What treatments did the dog receive? IV saline, anti-nausea meds, anti-diarrheal drugs – all known to cause kidney failure and death.
  • What were the side effects of those treatments? Look them up. You’ll often find the symptoms blamed on grapes are direct effects of the veterinary interventions.
  • Why is there no consistent outcome? A truly toxic substance would harm all dogs consistently. But many dogs eat grapes with no issues whatsoever. That alone disproves the “toxin” theory.
  • Why didn’t dogs die from grapes before 2003? The myth only exists in some countries, and only since the ASPCA began promoting it. Dogs in other nations, or before that time, lived just fine eating grapes  If grapes are toxic, then this would have been discovered many decades or even hundreds of years prior, based on dogs living on grape vineyards and even home gardeners growing grapes in their yard.  But it was not until there was a profitable motive that this claim got promoted in the United States alone.

Common stories include:

  • A dog had bloody stool after grapes – this is an elimination symptom, not a deadly one. The body was trying to expel something. Fasting would have resolved it, but vet treatment led to poisoning a poisoned body, which can only lead to decline.
  • A friend’s dog got a muscle tissue disease – unnamed, unlinked, unexplained. Sudden onset without diagnosis and without any evidence. These claims are emotional, not rational. They ignore known causes such as cooked foods, kibble, high-fat commercial raw foods, excess protein intake or excess fat intake. 
  • “Smoking kills some people but not all” – but we know the mechanism, and smoking actually does kill everyone eventually, it’s just that some people have so many bad habits that they die from something else sooner.  Inhaling a poisonous substance always builds disease conditions until eventually the body can no longer survive the poisoning.   But people who smoke also tend toward other unhealthy habits like eating meat, consuming dairy products, consuming alcohol, taking drugs, etc, which also contribute to the poisoning of their body.  So while the person might not die from lung cancer, maybe they die of a heart attack, but that heart attack was still brought on by in the daily inhalation of poison, combined with other forms of poison they are ingesting.   Grapes have no proven toxins and no mechanism of action. Millions of dogs around the world have eaten pounds and pounds of grapes for thousands of years and lived long, healthy lives, passing naturally without disease conditions.  That comparison is flawed.
  • “Tartaric acid levels vary by grape type.” – Even so, the tartaric acid in grapes is organic and plant-based. Toxic effects are only seen with inorganic forms like cream of tartar, in large doses, not from eating whole fruit. This is a false comparison, like saying apples are poisonous because cigarettes are poisonous, because both contain arsenic.

These claims often fall apart under even light scrutiny. No disease acts both instantly and over two months. No known muscle-wasting disorder is linked to grapes. No vet can diagnose “grape poisoning” without evidence. The truth is, these stories are emotional responses, often reinforced by a vet’s guess, not science.

Conclusion: Trust the Body, Not the Industry

In the terrain model of health and Natural Hygiene science, disease is not caused by microbes or mysterious toxins in natural foods. Disease arises from toxemia, obstruction, and enervation. The solution is to stop adding burden to the body, especially pharmaceutical poisons, and start feeding our companions the diet that they are biologically designed to eat.

Fruit is part of that design. Grapes are part of that design.

The myth that grapes are toxic to dogs is not only false-it’s deadly. It kills through fear, through profit-driven medicine, and through our blind trust in an industry that has never healed a single chronic disease.

It’s time to think for ourselves. To observe. To feed nature, not fear.

Feed your dogs grapes, along with a variety of other fruits, and watch them heal.

To learn more about how we feed over 130 rescue dogs naturally-and how you can too get our quick start feeding guide and join our support group on facebook:  The Natural Dog & Cat Diet Support Group.

Footnotes

  1. See also Grapes Poison Dogs? A Modern Myth from The Dog Place.
  2. Wolf scat studies from Europe and Asia regularly show grapes, cherries, plums, and other fruits in the natural diet of wild canines: International Wolf Center.
  3. ASPCA and veterinary sources still list “unknown toxin” as the cause of supposed grape toxicity after 20+ years of research. ↩
  4. See the speculative and flawed logic in vet blogs like Grady Vet’s “Mystery Solved” post, which conflates tartaric acid in cream of tartar with its trace presence in whole grapes.
  5. Case studies such as PMC7517833 present correlations only; no blinded, controlled study has ever isolated grapes as the sole cause.

Standard treatments like saline drips are nephrotoxic and can cause kidney failure themselves: TheRawKey.com – The Dangers of Saline Drip

Lauren FarrisLeave a comment

Fasting is not a magic cure. 

The medical industry and the mainstream media have lately created a fasting fad filled with misinformation about fasting.   The most dangerous aspect of this is pushing people who are eating improperly into fasting.   Many following Keto, Carnivore or other highly dangerous and unsuitable diets, are further damaging their body by attempting to fast.  Putting the body into a back and forth yo-yo of relief and damage, relief and damage. 

Fasting is not a quick fix. Fasting is not your magic potion.


Fasting longer than a few days should not be undertaken until a person is eating their natural diet for at least 6 months to 1 year. 

Entering a fast from a cooked diet should only occur if the body itself is forcing the fast by making you nauseated, or creating vomiting or diarrhea.   

Hydration during and prior to a fast is very important.

We must drink at least 1 gallon of water every single day of the fast.  If you have not worked up to drinking this much, and your body is chronically dehydrated from eating cooked foods, you are concentrating the acidic waste more, and causing more damage to the body, more quickly, rather than helping the body.

Our bowels must be clear when entering the fast


Having bowels that are clogged with meat, dairy, grains, and other inappropriate materials means all of that material will sit in the digestive tract, putrefying or fermenting while you are fasting, causing your body to be poisoned with ammonia and alcohol and other byproducts of putrefaction.  

A high fiber diet should be consumed for at least a few weeks prior to starting a fast, to allow the removal of putrefactive and fermenting matter.



Fasting can NEVER substitute for a proper diet. 

Fasting should not be used as a trade-off for eating improperly.  We cannot fast our way out of our mistakes and then go right back to making the same mistakes again.  We cannot use fasting to make up for an indulgence in junk foods.  We have to get out of this quick-fix mindset if we want to maintain our health.



Fasting removes mucoid plaque



Starting in our toddler days, as our parents force-feed animal products and cooked foods into our digestive tract, our first response is colic – to cry in pain.  This is, of course, normalized by the medical industry, so we are socially conditioned to either just let the baby cry or, worse, to stuff more and more food in each time they cry.   Babies do not cry because they are hungry; they cry because they are in pain.  



As we continue throughout life to put irritating materials in the digestive tract, our body has no choice but to put layers upon layers of mucus into the digestive tract, resulting in a buildup of these mucus plaque that both protect the delicate tissues of the digestive tract and also impair nutrient absorption.   



Once we fast, the body sheds these mucus plaques that have been built up over decades.   Each fast we do, more and more is shed, and our digestive tract begins to heal.



However, they were put in place to protect the digestive tract from the poisons in cooked foods and animal foods in the first place.   If we go back to the cooked foods after the fast, we are doing injury to the digestive tract all over again.  But this time, the injury is not a slow building over decades, but a more rapid injury because we are eating far greater quantities then we did as an infant.     If we injure the tissues right after they have been freshly exposed this can lead to the body creating scar tissue instead.

 

Fasts are a tool that goes along with a proper diet



Fasting is a tool we can use in partnership with eating properly, however, fasts longer than a few days should not be done if the person is not returning to their natural foods.  And fasting should never be thought of as a quick fix, magic cure, or replacement for eating properly.  



Fasting requires rest


The whole purpose of the fast is to give full physiological rest.   If you are taking a break from eating, you should also be taking a break from working, exercise, and other responsibilities.  You should spend the majority of the fast in a state of rest, either in bed or in a comfortable spot where you can read, listen to calming music, or have a quiet, relaxed conversation.

Fasting will create symptoms



Fasting, whether we are starting with symptoms already, or we are symptom free but just want to give our body more opportunity to clean and heal, will always create some symptoms.  The most common symptoms that arise when fasting are fatigue, weakness, “cold” and “flu” detox symptoms, nausea, headaches, dizziness, lightheadedness, heart palpitations, changes in blood pressure, fever, and shortness of breath.   These are just some of the possible symptoms that can arise, not a full accounting.    Symptoms are the body curing itself, cleaning itself, so all cleaning and expulsion symptoms are possible to arise during a fast, since the fast itself is giving the body the energy it needs to clean. 



Maintaining proper hydration during a fast helps to minimize the severity of symptoms



Hydration is so important.  When we get dehydrated, the acids concentrate, damaging our organs and tissues.  So maintaining the body in a proper state of hydration every day of the fast is essential.   This is why dry fasting causes kidney damage, kidney failure and premature death.   Hydration is essential to minimizing the damage as the old waste is pushed out of the system.   Water dilutes the acids, dilutes the poisons.    Aim for a minimum of 1 gallon, but do not be surprised if you need to drink up to 2 gallons a day, as thirst demands.   Rarely will the body even demand a bit more, up to 2.5 gallons or 3 gallons, but it is possible to overdrink on water, so do not maintain over 2 gallons when fasting for more than a day or two.  And only drink that much if your body is demanding that water through thirst.   1.5 gallons to 2 gallons is where most people will have the most comfortable fasting experience. 



Fasting is a wonderful tool that we have that allows us to heal our bodies, but unfortunately, there are many people out there following dangerous fasting practices.   Before starting a fast, always educate and empower yourself.  

Learn more about returning to a state of health by returning to the foods our body is naturally designed for, read What is the Natural Human Diet?

Have more questions? Want to get answers about your specific health issues or concerns? I offer consultations, learn more about them here: https://www.therawkey.com/consultations/

Ready to make changes but not sure how to begin? Need some motivation or accountability? Why not join our 30-Day Natural Human Diet Support and Education Group? New Groups start on the 1st of every month! https://www.therawkey.com/the-natural-diet-support-group/

Eat fruit and be well my friends.

Lauren FarrisLeave a comment

Septicemia, sepsis, going septic, septic shock

If Germs Don’t Kill, What About Septicemia?

People often ask: “If germs don’t cause disease, then what about septicemia (sepsis, going septic, septic shock)?”

From a Natural Hygiene perspective, septicemia is not some rogue bacterial invasion that mysteriously overpowers the body. It is the body’s own healing effort that has been complicated, obstructed, and driven into a life-threatening stage, almost always by well-meaning but harmful interventions.


A wound becomes septic when its natural drainage and cleansing process is interfered with. The body wants to drain toxic waste, dead cells, and debris out through the wound. This discharge is part of the eliminative process, Nature’s way of cleansing the injured area and preventing internal poisoning. When that natural outlet is blocked, the waste is forced to remain inside, reabsorbing into the bloodstream and overwhelming the system.


How this happens in practice:

  • Bandaging wounds – Wounds require airflow and the ability to drain; placing a bandage on the wound impairs the elimination of waste products, reduces airflow, and, if the bandage is too tight, blood flow and lymph flow are also impaired. Blood flow brings repair materials, the lymphatic system eliminates waste products, and constricting the flow of either results in impaired healing.
  • Closing the wound with stitches – Stitches force close a wound, impairing the elimination of the waste the body requires to drain.   While there are times of serious major injury that might require stitching, care must be taken to allow proper drainage.  If drainage is not allowed, septicemia may be induced by the trapping of waste internally.
  • Packing or covering the wound with antiseptic chemicals, antibiotics, salves, herbs or ointments that damage healthy cells and impair the body’s healing.  Bacteria are put in place by the body, for the benefit of the body, at the site of all injuries.  These bacteria are part of the cleaning and repair process.  By applying antibacterial substances, we kill the body’s own repair team, impairing healing, and because these substances are injurious to the body, the body is forced to rapidly close the wound.  Wounds are meant to close slowly so they can drain properly and eliminate poisons.   If they are forced to close rapidly due to more poisons being applied externally, then the cellular waste which is a result of the wound becomes a poison trapped internally.

When we intervene in the healing processes with bandages, stitches, ointments ,or other salves, the toxic material, which includes the body’s own waste, cell debris, and by-products of bacterial breakdown, accumulates faster than the body can remove it. This is classic toxemia, the true cause of all disease.

As Shelton explains, bacteria do not initiate disease; they arrive after the fact, when waste material is present, and assist in breaking it down for elimination.  Bacteria are a symptom of disease and tissue injury, not a cause.  In septicemia, these symbiotic bacteria are present in large numbers because there is an abundance of cellular waste, toxins, or debris for them to work on. But the danger does not come from the bacteria themselves; it comes from the toxic condition of the internal environment caused by the interference in normal healing processes.

Fasting: the emergency measure
 If someone reaches a true septic state, complete physiological rest (fasting) offers the best chance for recovery. Fasting frees up nerve energy, stops the intake of new toxins, and allows the body to concentrate all available resources on neutralizing poisons, breaking down dead tissue, and restoring balance. But more important than knowing how to recover from septicemia is knowing how to avoid it entirely.

Prevention according to Natural Hygiene:

  • Allow wounds to remain open to the air when possible so they can drain naturally. If a wound must be covered to protect it for a time, keep the bandage loose to allow airflow and remove the bandage frequently to avoid excess moisture building around the wound, injuring the tissues surrounding the wound.
  • Support the body’s eliminative effort instead of suppressing it with drugs or antiseptics.  Fast, or eat only very lightly, of foods natural to the human diet – fruits, salads, nuts, and seeds – until the healing has been completed.
  • If the wound must be cleaned of debris, use only pure water, never chemical disinfectants that injure cells and impede healing.
  • Rest the body and avoid overfeeding, especially on protein-heavy or processed foods that create more toxic waste.   Avoiding animal proteins and secretions is most important, as these are the heaviest burdens of an unnatural diet.

When the body’s needs are met, fresh air, pure water, adequate rest, wholesome food, it is fully capable of cleansing itself without complication. Septicemia, like all advanced disease conditions, is not caused by the germ but by the accumulation of poisons (cellular debris, waste, drugs, herbs, etc.) and the obstruction of the body’s natural avenues of elimination. Remove the obstruction, stop adding to the toxic load, and the body will finish the healing work it started.

As Dr. Shelton wrote:

“Disease is a remedial effort, a struggle of the vital powers to purify the system and recover the normal state. This effort should be aided… but never suppressed.”


In the case of septicemia, the tragedy is that it almost always results from preventable suppression/intervention, turning the body’s cleansing process into a closed trap. The real cure lies not in killing bacteria, but in restoring the free, unobstructed flow of Nature’s healing work.

Lauren FarrisLeave a comment

The Viral Theory of Disease Causation

Did you know that the word virus was originally defined as poison? And virulent was defined as malignant or poisonous?  Today, the word virus typically refers to a submicroscopic particle and virulent means contagious. Modern medicine now uses the term virus to mean a particle that can only be seen under a microscope that infects cells and is said to be the cause of an ever-increasing number of diseases.

“In the simpler viruses, the virion consists of a single molecule of nucleic acid surrounded by a protein coat, the capsid; the capsid and its enclosed nucleic acid together constitute the nucleocapsid.” – Fenner, Bachman et al. “Structure and Composition of Viruses”

Allopathic medicine and the media portray the virus as a parasitic life form that attacks all life forms, including human cells, animal cells, plants, bacteria, and even fungi.   

In the vast array of modern viral diseases, viruses are said to take a range of actions, including injecting themselves, incubating, infecting, attacking, conducting sieges, being at war with the body, or commanding our cells.  They are said to be deadly and devastating.  The media warns of the rogue virus leaping from body to body on its ruthless mission to take down mankind, killing the host it is said to require to reproduce.   

The medical theory posits that the virus infects and then inhabits a healthy cell, reproducing until the cell itself explodes from the burden of the virus, at which point the virus is said to move on to infect nearby cells.  Repeating this process over and over again, the virus kills off thousands and thousands of our cells until at some point our immune system decides to take action.    According to medical theory, the single virus attacking the body is too difficult for our immune system to eliminate and so it is allowed to replicate into thousands of viruses.  However, once the virus raises an army of replicated viruses and lays our body low, only then, when we are at our lowest, can the immune system fight back against and destroy the virus.   

The narrative continues that once our immune system has beaten the virus we are now said to have antibodies against this virus and we are immune to the virus.   However, every viral disease is said to be so contagious that even if you get the vaccines to give you immunity you can still become ill over and over again from that same virus.  

So naturally, being immune, we would never get sick again from the virus, right?   Except we do get sick again and again.   We get colds over and over again throughout life, as well as the flu. With each new virus that the disease industry invents, we are told we become susceptible to those as well.  If we eat the standard Western diet of cooked foods, animal foods, and other unhealthy fare we experience colds, flus, and rashes on a regular and consistent basis throughout life.  

The viral theory of disease causation requires the virus to take action, however, virologists admit that although viruses are organic in nature, they have no metabolism, no nucleus, they are smaller than unicellular microorganisms and lack typical cell components, including organelles, cytoplasm, and nuclei.  This means that the virus lacks all of the characteristics of a living being.   Viruses contain nucleic acid and protein but lack enzymes, and they lack the first prerequisites of life, metabolic control mechanisms.  Even bacteria contain these metabolic systems required for life.   In addition, viruses cannot be replicated in a laboratory and have, in fact, never been observed alive.   

You might be asking yourself now, “What about all the live virus vaccines that are marketed by the disease industry?” Well, it turns out that the term live virus in a vaccine merely refers to those viruses that are created in a live culture in a laboratory setting.  It does not refer to a viral entity that has been isolated, purified, and observed alive.   Even though these cultures are considered to be alive there is a massive cell turnover as various toxic substances are applied to these live cultures and it is from the dying cells that the virus particles are isolated.   These entities are always dead and inactive because they have no metabolism and no requisites for life.  So to summarize, live tissue is exposed to poisons that damage the tissues causing a mass die-off of cells, and as a result of this poisoning the material which is called the virus emerges only from the breakdown of the dying cells.   

Virology also acknowledges that viruses have no reproductive system, no locomotion, and cannot be reproduced as live entities in vitro.   

The viral theory of disease requires these microscopic materials to be capable of action, but the virologists who study them admit that these materials are not alive.   Inert, or dead material cannot take action.   Therefore, if the material is not observed alive and has none of the requirements of life then it cannot take any of the actions that have been ascribed to the virus – injecting itself, incubating, infecting, attacking, conducting sieges, being at war with the body or commanding our cells.  If the material is incapable of action or locomotion then it is also incapable of contagious infection as dead material cannot leap from body to body infecting people, animals, or even plants.

If the medical narrative is not an accurate representation of what is scientifically observed to be true of this material, is there another explanation for what this material might be?   

Viruses as cellular debris

Mitochondria are found in the cells of almost all eukaryotic organisms, including humans, plants, and animals. Each cell of our body contains varying organelles (little organs), which are living organisms, among them are the mitochondria which metabolize glucose into ATP molecules. Mitochondria are about the size of bacteria and have their own DNA and their own metabolism. The study of cytology (cell structure) shows us the greatest number of life forms within a cell are the mitochondria.

All of the cells in our body are continuously dying and being recycled into new cells, called daughter cells during the process of mitosis. During this process, the dying cell is disintegrated by lysosomes.  Lysosomes are intracellular enzymes that break up cellular components into ultra-minute particles so that the body can readily recycle them or excrete them as waste. 

Each day it is estimated that we expire between 300 billion and over half a trillion cells, each containing an average of 5,000 to 20,000 mitochondria. When a cell dies the cell’s own lysosomes deconstruct the cell, but the nuclei and the genomes of mitochondria are often not completely decomposed in this process. 

The genomes and nuclei of the cell mitochondria are the blueprints of the cell and, as such, they are similar to the brain and nervous system of our body. They are protected with a double lipid-protein sheath, similar to how our skull and backbone protect our brain and nervous system.

You might recall from above that the virus is composed of nuclei and a protein sheath, just as the decomposed mitochondria leave a remnant of this same cellular debris. Upon cellular death, mitochondria are broken down by the lysosomes but due to the protective protein sheath, this process is not always complete, leaving behind a remnant material that exactly matches that which is described by allopathic medicine as a virus.  It is this remnant cellular debris of the mitochondria that occurs as part of the normal recycling of the cells during mitosis which is the origin of the material called the virus.  

In other words, as our cells become injured, commonly by the ingestion of toxic materials, the cells break apart and are recycled as part of the cleaning and repair processes the body goes through every day.   When this happens, microscopic bits and pieces of the cells circulate and are broken down by the lysosomes.  Some of this material is absorbed into other cells for reuse and some of the material is sent to the lymphatic system, the body’s sewer system, for elimination.    

Since viruses are not alive they cannot act in any of the malevolent ways that modern allopathic medicine has ascribed to them.  They are merely the undigested waste products of the normal recycling of cells.  They are found in higher quantities when the body has been injured, and lower quantities when the body is healthy.   When a person maintains a chronic level of disease conditions in their body by straying far from the requirements of health, the person will have higher quantities of this cell debris chronically until they correct the conditions that are not conducive to health. 

Viruses are always present in the body

The medical authorities claim that viruses are the cause of disease symptoms, however, they also readily admit that these small particles as well as the bacteria which they also love to blame for disease are always found in healthy bodies.   If a material is a natural part of the body, found in all healthy bodies it cannot be the cause of disease.   

“Our bodies are exposed continually to bacteria, viruses, fungi, and parasites, all of which occur normally and to varying degrees in the skin, the mouth, the respiratory passageways, the intestinal tract, the lining membranes of the eyes, and even the urinary tract” – Guyton and Hall Textbook of Medical Physiology

The allopathic model which blames viruses as a cause of disease for a growing number of diseases readily admits that all healthy bodies contain bacteria, viruses, fungi, and parasites.   In fact, the study of the microbiome is continuing to discover daily the many functions of these beneficial bacterial, fungal, and parasitic organisms.   Yet, while allopathy admits that these materials are present in healthy bodies and required for the health of the body, their arsenal for disease battling is filled with poisons designed to kill these beneficial organisms.    Of course, you cannot kill something that is already dead, so their profitable poisons are not capable of killing a virus, a material that is already not alive.   However, this does not stop them from trying to apply as many poisons to the body as they can get their customers to accept.    

At this point, you are probably wondering, if viruses jumping from person to person are not the cause of our symptoms then what is?  After all, we all get cold and flu symptoms at some point in our lives, for many, this occurs every year.   What is the source of these symptoms if it is not the random attack of the malevolent virus as allopathy teaches us?  

The self-healing, self-cleaning body

The human body is self-healing and self-cleaning.  If you scrape your knee your body immediately sets out to repair the damage.  The body breaks down the damaged cells and recycles them into new cells, expelling the waste in the process fully repairing the wounded area.  Your body will of its own accord, with no assistance required, clot the blood, create mucus or discharge to expel any foreign material as well as the dead cell debris, bring in bacteria to assist with the breakdown of damaged cells, build a temporary scab to cover the wound and then slowly knit the skin back together, all without any assistance required.   

If we break a bone we recognize the same truth, that our body is of an intelligent design whereby it is fully capable of repairing the bone, should we provide it with the essentials of health required.  The state of our overall health and our diet at the time of injury impacts the length of time the body takes to heal from these injuries and whether we fast or eat during this time significantly impacts the duration of healing.   Despite whatever handicaps it faces, the body takes intelligent action to repair the injury.   

While we readily accept our body’s healing properties in some ways, we have been taught in other ways to fear our body’s healing actions.    When our diet strays from the natural diet that our physiology was designed for and when our lifestyle habits create a toxic environment for our body, then our body is required to periodically clean and heal from these unhealthful habits.   

Our bodies will create expulsion symptoms to eliminate waste, toxins, poisons, and irritants.    If we inhale some dust, we sneeze to expel that dust.   This is an example of an expulsion symptom.   What we call the diseases of cold and flu that are purported to be caused by the dead and inactive malevolent virus of allopathic reasoning are in fact healing events or healing crises created by the self-healing, self-cleaning body.   

If you look at the common symptoms of the cold or flu such as coughing, sneezing, runny nose, mucus congestion, watery eyes, diarrhea, or vomiting you will see quite clearly that all of these symptoms are the body working to push material out.   The body creates diarrhea by flushing water into the bowels to rapidly eliminate any material in the bowels.  If we eat rotten food, toxic food, or food that is irritating like spicy peppers our body springs into action and flushes the material out and what we experience we call diarrhea. The diarrhea is not a mistake or a dangerous process, but is in fact a defense mechanism protecting the body from injury from the inappropriate substances that have entered the digestive system.

If you get a bit of dust in your eye your body will spring into action and tears will form to flush the material out of the eye.   If you inhale a bit of pet dander, grass, or pollen, your body will respond defensively to expel that irritating bit of material creating a runny nose or sneezing.   If you sit too close to the campfire while camping you may notice mucus congestion or a runny nose the next day because the smoke is an irritant to the lungs and nasal passages.  You might even develop a cough to get this material out of the lungs.  

When our body encounters a toxic material the body initiates a cleaning.   If you walk into a room where disinfectant was sprayed, you may experience a runny nose, cough, or congestion from the inhalation of the poisonous disinfectant.   The body is working defensively to protect its tissues from the irritant.   

Inhaled irritants like perfume, cleaning chemicals, candles, disinfectants, bleach and strong scented laundry detergents, car exhaust, and essential oils are all irritating and injurious to our tissues and result in the body creating an expulsion event to clear them out.   Followed by mucus to eliminate the damaged cell debris that is left over.   

Aside from the day-to-day exposure to inhaled toxins, poisons, and irritants, our body will also launch into a cleaning as often as required by our dietary indiscretions.   The further we eat from our natural foods, which are whole, raw, fruits and vegetables, nuts and seeds, the more injury our body encounters on a daily basis. The more we injure the body with cooked foods and foods that are not suited to our physiology, the more disease conditions build up in the body impairing normal cellular functions.  

As these injuries pile up day after day, the cellular waste within the body builds until it reaches the individual’s level of tolerance.  When the impairment to normal cell function becomes more than the body can withstand it has reached its tolerance level.  When tolerance levels are reached and the body has sufficient energy available the body will launch into a cleaning event.  This is why we frequently see colds arising after holiday celebrations like Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s.  Indulging in large quantities of some of the most unhealthy fat-laden fare pushes our bodies over the edge and forces a cleaning event.   

In addition, we frequently see colds arising when we go on vacation.   This is frequently a result of the increase in available energy our body has available to clean with.   When we are working we frequently are under stress which limits our available energy, but as soon as we take the time to relax, sleep in, or just enjoy a week without the office stress our body recovers enough energy to clean and expel the build-up of waste that is impairing our daily functions.  

The cleaning event

The cleaning event starts with a drop in energy and we begin to feel fatigued. If we stop eating and go to bed and rest at the first signs of fatigue we will avoid the worst symptoms of the cold or flu healing event.  But if we continue to eat then we are adding more burden for the body to clean out.  The cleaning event progresses with growing fatigue and the production and release of mucus.  This mucus carries out cellular debris, toxins, old waste, any foreign matter or bacteria, and anything else that the body needs to eliminate.  The more we eat and the heavier the foods we consume the less energy is available for the cleaning event and the more added burden is acquired.    If we rest and limit our food intake our cold or flu passes quickly with little discomfort.   Unfortunately, most people have been taught all their life to feed a cold with some of the worst foods like chicken soup, crackers, or ginger ale.   

Sadly, not long ago it was common knowledge that “If you feed a cold you will have to starve a fever.”  Somewhere along the way this old adage was corrupted and became “Feed a cold, starve a fever”.   We will never know if this was done purposefully to deceive the public or simply an accident of poor attention to detail but it has had a significant impact on the health of millions.   How many of us dutifully fed our loved ones soup and crackers thinking we were helping them battle the invading virus when in fact the action of feeding when the body is trying to clean and heal extends suffering and can even in some cases result in death if the body is attempting to recover from sufficient burden. 

How the cold progresses into the flu, pneumonia, and other much more serious conditions.

The body has launched into a cleaning event because its normal operating conditions have become impaired.  The cells are drowning in their own cellular waste, toxins, and debris.  Suppose we can recognize this and give our body the break it needs, alleviating some of the causes of disease from our daily habits, getting more rest, drinking more water, etc. In that case, the body can quickly clear out the backlog of waste and get us back to feeling our best.   

However, when the body shows us symptoms of a cold healing event or flu healing event, this is a body in distress.  If the body can move through this cleaning event without being further injured, then the body will be able to return to normal functions. If, instead, we keep stuffing the body with food to “keep up our strength,” then the body becomes exhausted and is unable to complete the eliminations.    

For some people, this means a cold or flu healing event that lasts for weeks or even months on end, with fatigue stretching on for months afterwards.   This is because they are never allowing the body to catch up on the waste backlog.  They are leaving the body in a chronic state of impairment.    

But for others, the state of their body will get progressively worse.  The heavier the food that we feed upon the greater the burden that we created.   Even greater still is the application of drugs to the body.   If you take cold or flu medications, pain medications, antibiotics, antibacterial or anti-inflammatory drugs you are ingesting a poisonous substance that would take a healthy body into a state of sickness.  These drugs might result in the temporary suppression of your symptoms because the body must shift its energy from cleaning out the backlog to dealing with the incoming poisonous material.    Drugs do not have the ability to create health.  The symptoms stop due to the exhausting influences of the drug, not due to any health-giving effects.  You cannot poison a poisoned body back to health.  

If you feed a body that is trying to clean, your cold or flu healing event and the accompanying discomfort can be stretched on for weeks or months. If we drug the body trying to stop the cleaning event at this vulnerable time, pneumonia and other very serious conditions are very likely in our future.   The more we attempt to drug away the symptoms, the more injured the body becomes and the more aggressive the symptoms become.   

Eventually, if we keep taking drugs or even natural remedies to suppress our cold and flu cleaning symptoms, the body runs out of energy to launch these life-saving cleaning events, and instead, we shift into chronic disease, organ damage, and eventually cancer.    Cancer is the end result of fearing and suppressing the body’s healing and repair processes over and over again.    

By teaching the public to fear the virus and fear their own body’s healing and repair processes the for-profit medical industry not only can continue to sell in the trillions each year their antibiotics, injections, and cold and flu drugs and build a steady stream of lifelong customers who will fund the extremely lucrative cancer industry.  The more you fear your own body’s ability to heal itself, the more the disease-for-profit industry is able to enrich itself.  

You will recall that the original definition of the virus was poison.  A virus is a result of poisoning, both the acute poisoning that we encounter on a day-to-day basis as a result of the many toxic substances allowed to exist in our environment as well as the daily poisoning from the ingestion of inappropriate foods.  This means that health is 100% within your control, if you simply learn to supply the needs of health to your body and limit unhealthy habits.   

Learn more about Contagions, Epidemics and how the medical industry has perverted science for their profit at the expense of our health by reading Lesson 66 – Contagions, Epidemics

Learn more about the purpose of disease, how disease is created, why it is created and how we can reverse disease by returning to feeding our body in alignment with our physiology, Read The Nature and Purpose of Disease Series

Learn more about returning to a state of health by returning to the foods our body is naturally designed for, read What is the Natural Human Diet?

Have more questions? Want to get answers about your specific health issues or concerns? I offer consultations, learn more about them here: https://www.therawkey.com/consultations/

Ready to make changes but not sure how to begin? Need some motivation or accountability? Why not join our 30-Day Natural Human Diet Support and Education Group? New Groups start on the 1st of every month! https://www.therawkey.com/the-natural-diet-support-group/

Eat fruit and be well my friends.

Lauren Farris2 Comments

The Great Protein Myth 

Protein Confusion: How Misleading Science Damaged Human Health

The great protein myth has destroyed the lives and health of many people. Overconsumption of protein is possibly the single greatest cause of disease in humans; still to this day, disease industry experts push sick, overweight, and tired humans to consume more and more of what is creating their sickness.

The Dangers of Excess Protein

Proteins break down into acids in the body. Acids burn and damage cells. Any excess protein leads to inflammation, edema, and eventually to tumors and organ failure. Nearly every disease label of the medical industry can find its roots in the overconsumption of protein foods.

The sad truth is the human body cannot even utilize complete proteins. There’s no such thing as a protein deficiency. The body uses amino acids, which are the constituents of protein, to build its own proteins. Your human proteins are not cow proteins, chicken proteins, or fish proteins; they are unique to the needs of your body structure.

How the Body Really Uses Protein

Animal tissues add an additional disease-causing acid burden to the body because the unusable complete proteins must be broken down into amino acids, causing more work to be done by the stomach and digestive tract. The more the cells work, the more acidic cellular waste they create as part of their normal functions. In addition, many of the amino acids found in animal proteins will be damaged or destroyed in the cooking process, so the body must work even harder to expel the excess waste, adding even more burden to the body. All of this burden and all the excess acidic cellular waste and excess acidic protein waste are what lead to symptoms of disease.

How Much Protein Do Humans Really Need?

Lessons from Breast Milk

How much protein do we actually need? And how did we get so far off the mark as to create epidemics of cancer, diabetes, heart disease, Alzheimer’s, strokes, and rampant mental illness, depression, and anxiety?

Humans have the greatest need for amino acids in the time from birth to 18 months when rapid growth requires human protein to be created out of amino acids. Human breast milk contains only 1.1 grams of protein in 100 grams of milk. It contains 3 times that in sugar, (3.5 grams of carbohydrates). The growing infant, which doubles its weight in 180 days, requires only roughly 1-2% protein.

Once fully grown, we recycle up to two-thirds of our protein wastes to meet our needs. The fully grown adult requires far less than the infant, and yet within mainstream circles it’s standard practice to recommend a high-protein diet.

We have confused marketing with science to our great detriment and we still to this day continue the trend. We confuse medicine with science and then mindlessly parrot “trust the science” without even a basic understanding of what true science is.

“In the early 50s nature failed the test of American medicine. It was found that breast milk contains 60% less protein than the infant needs. A “formula” was created with 2 1/2 to 3 times the protein plus added salt. Today we know that it wasn’t nature but science that flunked: The devastating consequences soon appeared: kidney damage, hyperacidity with osteoporosis, dangerously high phenylalanine and tyrosine content in the blood, poor protein metabolism and increased acceleration with consequent stressful disparity of physical and mental growth. An attempt has been made to transfer advertising concepts of growth and weight gain rates to actual human beings—and it fell through. There was a harmful habituation to the wear and tear of a high-protein diet. The frugal use of protein was not learned. From birth on, the child was being burdened with both “stress conditioning factors” (Selye), high protein and salt. Important developmental phases were shortened by accelerated growth and this, according to Portmann, works against the development of the “supertype” (Wellek), that human type which is most needed in our time who is not just able to analyze but also grasp the whole of a phenomenon in its form and essence.”

When we fed infants on a high protein formula the devastating results were obvious, yet 70+ years later we are still stuffing ourselves and our children with protein, destroying their bodies and our own and fueling epidemics of preventable and reversible dietary diseases.

The True Cost of Protein Overload

Uric Acid, Gout, Kidney Stones, Inflammation, Pain, and Accelerated Aging

“It is a matter of experience,” wrote A. Fleisch, president of the Swiss Wartime Nutritional Commission, in his book Nutritional Problems in Times of Shortage (Basel, 1947) “that increased protein consumption also lowers the number of calories taken in.” The stimulating qualities of protein—especially meat protein— lead to over-estimation and over-consumption, which are not justified by nutritional physiology because they lead to “luxuriant combustion”—an inefficient “burning off” of excess. There must be another, especially stimulating, irritative effect of eating meat above and beyond the irritative effects of excess protein (specific-dynamic effect) and the extractive and general products of roasting. This irritative effect, which has since been isolated, is caused by uric acid, a very strong irritant on the sympathetic nerves. And so in meat we have a strongly hypermetabolizing three- to four-fold irritative effect.”

Proteins increase uric acid in the body leading to gout and kidney stones. Additionally, fat blocks the body’s ability to expel uric acid, and many high-protein foods are also high-fat foods. So when we consume the double hamburger with cheese, the cheese pizza, the macaroni, and cheese, or any other SAD diet staple, we double down on the acids. We first burden the body with acids then we make it even harder for the body to expel those acids.

History of protein misinformation

“In the late nineteenth century. Baron von Liebig was the first person to separate foods into proteins (nitrogenous substances) and carbohydrates/fats (non-nitrogenous substances). Since the muscles are composed chiefly of protein. Liebig concluded (incorrectly) that proteins supply muscular energy and the amount of protein consumed must be related to bodily activity. In fact, it is actually the non-nitrogenous foods that supply the best fuel for muscular activity.

Liebig’s Mistaken Assumptions

Liebig was one of the first scientists to make a recommendation for protein intake. He determined the body’s protein requirements by measuring the actual amounts of protein consumed by a group of men engaged in physical activity who ate a heavy diet. He reasoned that by measuring the protein intake of men who ate more than average and worked harder than usual, he could arrive at a safe recommended allowance of protein for all people. This is truly a bizarre method for establishing a standard and is somewhat akin to clocking race car drivers in order to establish a safe speed for school zones.

Based on this experiment Liebig determined that about 120 grams of protein daily would satisfy the needs of a moderately active adult. To obtain 120 grams of protein, a person would need to consume about 17 eggs or a pound and a half of meat or twenty ounces of almonds per day.

Dogs vs. Humans: Why Early Experiments Misled Science

Following Liebig, Voit in 1881 performed a series of experiments on dogs and likewise determined that we should consume between 100 and 125 grams of protein a day. Doubtless, dogs can safely consume 125 grams of protein per day. The protein requirement for a growing puppy is five times as great as that for a growing baby. Voit, it should be noted, did not adjust his results to account for the differences between humans and dogs despite the major differences between our species.

From the very beginning, we can see that protein requirements were artificially determined and excessively high. As early as 1887, experiments in Germany showed that 40 grams of protein was a sufficient daily amount. This comes to about one-third of the previous recommendations. However these old standards of Liebig and Voit were already firmly fixed in the minds of the medical establishment, and the belief persisted that a high-protein diet was conducive to health. So why lower the recommendations?

How Recommendations Stayed Too High

After many more experiments proved that a daily protein intake of 30 to 40 grams was entirely sufficient, the establishment finally revised its recommendations down to 60 or 70 grams. Although only one-half of the early estimates, this figure is still over 50% too high, even by conservative nutritional standards. Today, with the support of the meat, dairy and egg industries, the protein allowances still remain around 70 grams per day. It should also be noted that a typical American meat-eater consumes about 93 grams of protein daily—more than anyone else in the world on the average.”

The Path Back to Health

Give your body a break. Step away from the protein and watch your health return, your weight stabilize, edema and gout disappear, pain and inflammation cease, headaches and migraines disappear and your body will start to look and feel years or even decades younger. Return to the natural human diet and thrive, lose weight effortlessly and maintain your natural lean healthy radiant body with ease.

Learn more about our natural foods in What is the Natural Human Diet?

Learn more about the purpose of disease, how disease is created, why it is created and how we can reverse disease by returning to feeding our body in alignment with our physiology, Read The Nature and Purpose of Disease Series

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Have more questions? Want to get answers about your specific health issues or concerns? I offer consultations, learn more about them here: https://www.therawkey.com/consultations/

Ready to make changes but not sure how to begin? Need some motivation or accountability? Why not join our 30-Day Natural Human Diet Support and Education Group? New Groups start on the 1st of every month! https://www.therawkey.com/the-natural-diet-support-group/

Eat fruit and be well my friends.

Lauren FarrisLeave a comment
Reader Q&A

Healing Lazy Eye, Crossed Eyes and Other Eye Disorders

Healing Strabimus or Lazy eye by returning to the natural human diet. A reader Q&A.

Question:

Can we heal strabismus (crossed eyes) or lazy eye on the natural hygiene lifestyle or natural human diet?

Answer:

Yes, this is a nerve and muscle disorder, both of which are healable. Nerves malfunction when the body is under a heavy acid load and muscles become weak due to the body needing to pull the alkaline minerals from the muscles to neutralize the acids.

When we return to our natural diet and eat abundantly of salad greens in particular, the body is able to replenish those alkaline minerals, resulting in increased strength to the muscle tissues. In addition, the body becomes rehydrated, which corrects deformities of the eye and also leads to weakening of muscle tissues and connective tissues.

Some eye exercises would be beneficial to go along with the correction of diet to help rebuild eye strength. If the person is using eyeglasses, they should work to minimize the time each day they are using their glasses until they are no longer needed. Glasses make the eyes weaker over time.

I would recommend they practice the Bates Method of eye exercises. You can find a copy of the book at the bottom of this article – https://www.therawkey.com/repairing-our-vision/

Learn more about The Natural Human Diet – Like all other species, humans have a specific set of foods which are appropriate to our physiology and when we consume only these foods, our body maintains a state of pristine health. The further we stray from our natural foods, the more disease we create in our body. To heal, we must return fully to our natural foods, all other foods injure and impair the body, leading to disease.

Other articles that you may find helpful:

One Disease – Two Types of Symptoms – The medical industry labels thousands of diseases, but did you know these are all just collections of symptoms, and that there truly is only one disease – cellular malfunction. When we correct our understanding of what disease is, then we can correct the conditions that lead to disease occurring in the first place!

The Nature and Purpose of Disease – Learn why we get disease conditions and how to reverse them. Disease serves a purpose; when we understand what that purpose is, we can correct the conditions that lead to disease and return our body to a state of health.

Lauren FarrisLeave a comment

Why We Don’t Have an Immune System  –  The Truth About the Body’s Real Defense Mechanisms 

How Belief In The Immune Narrative Has Led To Epidemics Of Chronic Disease And Cancer.

In the modern world of medicine, the concept of the immune system has taken a central role in how we view illness and disease. We are told it’s a powerful internal army designed to protect us from outside invaders: bacteria, viruses, fungi. We are taught to fear germs, to fight symptoms, and to see the body as constantly under attack. But what if this premise is completely wrong? What if the very idea of the immune system is built on a false understanding of the body’s biology? 

From a Natural Hygiene perspective, the truth is far simpler and far more empowering.  We do not have an immune system in the way it is described by medicine. Instead, we have a circulatory system and a lymphatic system – both of which perform clearly observable, purposeful, and intelligent functions. We cannot dissect the immune system because all parts of the immune system are already parts of these existing body systems. The immune system was created by taking parts of these other systems and cobbling them together to form a new system, which exists only to explain why we’re not always suffering at the hands of these omnipresent tiny hostile microbial invasions.  In this article, I will explain why there is no need to believe in a mystical army fighting malevolent microbes and why the entire theory of immunity is a myth built on the flawed assumptions of the germ theory of disease.

The Myth of the Immune System

The medical establishment claims that our body defends itself from invading pathogens by generating antibodies and deploying white blood cells to attack foreign organisms. This war metaphor permeates everything from advertisements for cold medications to public health campaigns. But this theory rests on three unsupported premises:

  1. That bacteria and viruses cause disease.
  2. That the body needs to destroy these invaders to remain healthy.
  3. That we can train the body with vaccines to recognize and eliminate these threats.

None of these assumptions holds up under closer scrutiny.

First, bacteria and viruses do not cause disease – they appear during disease. There may be a correlation, but there is no causation.  Bacteria are present in and on our bodies at all times. They are essential to digestion and elimination, and are utilized in body cleaning processes. They exist on our skin, in our throat and nose at all times, and are essential to cell creation, in that they are directly responsible for the breakdown of nutrients, which allows them to enter the bloodstream and feed the cells. When disease occurs, it is because the body is overwhelmed by toxemia – an accumulation of waste products and toxins from poor diet, lifestyle, and environment. The body intelligently redirects its energy to eliminate this waste through symptoms we call “disease”. In other words, the symptoms themselves are the body’s created cure for the persistent disease conditions we are creating with our lifestyle and dietary failures.

What the Body Actually Has: Circulation and Cleansing

Instead of an immune system, the body has:

  • The Circulatory System: This system delivers nutrients, oxygen, and hormones throughout the body and removes cellular waste.
  • The Lymphatic System: Often misunderstood, this system is essential for drainage. It collects waste, including proteins and cellular debris, and moves it toward the elimination channels – primarily the lymph nodes, colon, kidneys, skin, and lungs.

These systems are not soldiers at war – they are custodians. They work tirelessly to maintain homeostasis and eliminate toxicity. The so-called immune response is nothing more than the body redirecting its energy to clean up its internal terrain.

The cells the medical world calls immune cells – lymphocytes, neutrophils, macrophages – are simply scavengers and repairmen. They clean up dead tissue, neutralize irritants, and assist in regeneration. They don’t attack invading invisible entities; rather, they respond to damage that has already occurred, usually from internal toxicity or exposure to poisons.

Viruses: The Most Misunderstood Waste Products

Modern medicine presents viruses as cunning assassins. Yet, viruses have never been observed alive, nor have they ever met the criteria of living organisms. What we call a virus is simply decomposed genetic material – bits of RNA or DNA wrapped in protein from dead or dying cells. They cannot move, metabolize, reproduce, or perform any living function. They are cellular garbage – the debris left behind after toxicity injures or destroys cells.

The body does not defend against viruses. It eliminates them. These so-called viral particles appear after cellular breakdown – not before. They are evidence of internal toxicity, not external invasion. To fear viruses is to fear your own cellular debris. 

Symptoms Are Not Signs of War – They Are Signs of Cleaning

When the body is overwhelmed by toxicity, it initiates constructive elimination symptoms – fever, coughing, sneezing, rashes, diarrhea, and mucus production. These are not illnesses. They are cleansing processes. A cold is the body clearing the airways. A fever is the body increasing its metabolic rate to burn off excess waste. Rashes are the skin pushing out internal toxins. These are not signs of attack; they are signs of intelligent housekeeping.

When we suppress symptoms with drugs, we shut down the body’s healing processes. We force it to stop cleaning. And what happens to a home that never gets cleaned? It decays. This is how acute diseases become chronic and eventually degenerative.

The True Cause of Disease

According to Natural Hygiene, the science of health, there is only one disease, called toxemia, and many varied symptoms that express that state of disease. Disease conditions are progressive; the dirtier our inner terrain becomes, the more symptoms the body exhibits in its attempts to rid itself of the growing disease conditions.   This means a body overwhelmed with waste and unable to eliminate it efficiently due to poor lifestyle habits such as:

  • Consuming unnatural, cooked, or animal-based foods
  • Lack of fresh air and sunshine
  • Lack of adequate sleep
  • Lack of appropriate exercise
  • Lack of adequate hydration
  • Overwork, stress, and emotional imbalance
  • Use of medications, stimulants, or suppressive therapies

These factors deplete nerve energy, the electrical vitality the body uses to perform its cleansing functions. When enervation sets in, the elimination of waste slows, toxicity builds, and the body reaches a point where it must intervene through a healing crisis.

Why the Immune Theory Fails

If germs and viruses truly caused disease, then once they invaded, the body would not recover without destroying them. Yet people recover without drugs. They recover through rest, fasting, and proper care – because the body heals itself.

White blood cells, instead of being warriors, are janitors. Antibodies, instead of being magic bullets, are just proteins – their so-called “immune function” has never been conclusively proven, only theorized. And vaccinations, which aim to trigger these proteins, fail to address the real cause of disease: an unhealthy lifestyle.

So, What Do We Have Instead?

We have:

  • A self-healing, self-cleaning body.
  • A lymphatic and circulatory system, not an immune system.
  • An inner terrain, which is either clean and vibrant or dirty and sluggish.
  • Detoxification, not infection.
  • Symptoms of healing, not symptoms of war.

As Dr. Shelton said, “Disease is a process of purification and repair. It is a remedial action. It is a power struggle to overcome obstruction and to keep the channels of circulation free.”

Conclusion: Clean the Terrain, Don’t Fight the Phantom

There is nothing to be immune to. There is no war. No battle. No evil invader. The idea of the immune system is a distraction from the truth: health is a result of clean living, the appropriate diet, and proper rest, not vaccinations, drugs, or antibiotics.

If you want true immunity, forget the immune system. Focus instead on creating a terrain that does not require cleaning. Eat fruit. Rest well. Move your body. Breathe fresh air. And trust in the body’s perfect, intelligent design.

Because the only thing that can restore health… is the body itself. 

Learn more about the Virus deception, read on:

The Viral Theory of Disease Causation

Lauren FarrisLeave a comment

Rabies – The Manufactured Disease

How superstition, pseudoscience, and profit turned a non-existent condition into one of medicine’s most enduring myths

For more than 150 years, we’ve been told that rabies is one of the deadliest diseases on Earth. The official story goes like this: Rabies is a viral disease that attacks the central nervous system of warm-blooded animals, including humans, and it kills nearly 60,000 people every year, mostly children in poor, rural communities in developing countries, mostly in Asia and Africa. We’re told it exists on every continent except Antarctica, that it’s most often transmitted through a dog bite, and that it can only be stopped by vaccination.

The World Organisation for Animal Health ( WOAH, formerly OIE) and the World Health Organization (WHO) claim the rabies virus sits at the bite site before travelling along the nerves to the brain, causing inflammation of the brain and spinal cord. They describe two forms — one called furious rabies, with hyperactivity and fear of water, and another called paralytic rabies, with progressive paralysis.

We’re told the bite from an infected animal requires immediate vaccination, and rabies is one of the only diseases for which the vaccine can be given after exposure. We’re told that vaccinating 70% of dogs will eradicate rabies.

But this narrative is full of contradictions. If rabies truly exists everywhere, why is it supposedly concentrated among poor rural children? If it’s carried by many different species, including dogs, bats, raccoons, and cats, then why would vaccinating only dogs stop it? And if viruses are inert outside a living cell, how can one travel through the body on its own?

Also, did you know that the father of germ theory, Louis Pasteur himself, is the first person credited with creating a rabies vaccine?

Before Pasteur: Rabies Was Folklore

Before the late 1800s, rabies was not a proven disease; it was a mere superstition. People believed in what they called royal cures – the kiss of a king would cure rabies. It was later discovered that a piece of the king’s garment would be as efficacious. Other cures included magical “mad stones” pressed to the bite, chewing hair from the dog that bit you, or swallowing bizarre concoctions like ground-up jawbone of an ass or dog, colt’s tongue, and green rust from old coins.

These weren’t science. They were cultural rituals built on fear and misunderstanding. Eventually, Louis Pasteur came along to give a scientific veneer to some of these traditions, but contrary to popular belief,  he didn’t replace actual superstition with genuine science.  He simply gave the old fears a new, scientific costume.

Pasteur’s Brutal Quackery

Pasteur had no medical degree. His rabies experiments were nothing more than animal torture. He bored holes into rabbits’ skulls and injected decomposing matter directly into their brains. This method guaranteed brain damage and neurological symptoms, but it had nothing to do with how a real-life dog bite would happen in nature.

He never isolated a rabies virus, never proved transmission from a naturally bitten animal to a human, and never showed that his vaccine could prevent anything. However, the spectacle of his supposed cures won him fame, and his rabies vaccine became one of medicine’s most celebrated and profitable creations.

Contemporaries Who Called It Out

Not everyone bought the story. Many of Pasteur’s own contemporaries accused him of fraud and incompetence:

  • Dr. William A. Bruette — Showed rabies vaccine was a fraud that spread disease, calling its sale “an out-and-out racket.”
  • Dr. Matthew Woods — After 25 years at the Philadelphia dog pound, handling 150,000 dogs with frequent bites, reported zero cases of rabies. Concluded so-called rabies in animals was due to maltreatment or malnutrition.
  • Dr. George Wilson — President of the British Medical Society. Dr. Wilson called Pasteur’s anti-rabies vaccine “a piece of deception.”
  • Dr. Charles W. Dulles — Investigated for 16 years and concluded “there is no such specific malady” as rabies.

The Missing Virus

Even decades after the invention of the electron microscope, no one, not Pasteur, not the Pasteur Institute, not any successor, has ever identified a rabies virus. No isolation means no proof of viral causation. Without that, the entire claim of rabies as a contagious viral disease collapses.

The Negri Body Problem

For years, Negri bodies in brain tissue were called proof of rabies. However, these formations are not specific to rabies as they can be found in healthy animals. Even the Pasteur Institute admitted this. The diagnosis was based on interpretation, not hard evidence.

The Historical Record Tells a Different Story

When you look at actual records, the rabies scare falls apart:

  • London Hospital — 2,668 dog-bite patients, zero rabies without treatment.
  • St. George’s Hospital — 4,000 “mad dog” bites, no rabies.
  • Philadelphia Dog Pound — 150,000 dogs in 25 years, no rabies despite frequent bites.
  • Dr. J.W. Hodge — Documented over 2,500 deaths from Pasteur’s treatment — many in people never bitten.

Fear as a Cause: Lyssophobia

Natural Hygiene teaches us that fear itself is a poison to the body. History is full of cases where the belief in rabies caused symptoms and death:

  • A man lived 15 years after a dog bite but died within weeks after hearing his friend, who had been bitten by the same dog, had died.
  • A woman died after rabies treatment, later found to have been bitten by her boyfriend, not a dog.

This fear-induced condition was once called lyssophobia or “imaginary hydrophobia.”

Animal “Rabies”: What’s Really Going On

Animals labeled “rabid” are usually suffering from:

  • Parasitic infestations due to malnutrition and toxemia (i.e. heartworms)
  • Malnutrition (weakening the nervous system)
  • Poisoning (pesticides, environmental toxins, abuse)

None of these are contagious viruses.

The Vaccine Problem

Pasteur’s rabies vaccine, and all that followed, rests on the same flawed theory. It injects poisons into healthy bodies based on an unproven contagion. The results?

  • In animals: vomiting, fever, lethargy, severe allergic reactions, and death.  All of these are acknowledged by the American Veterinary Medical Association.
  • In humans: pain, dizziness, nausea, breathing difficulty, swelling of the throat, and post-vaccine encephalitis.

Yet the World Organisation for Animal Health(WOAH) still recommends vaccinating 70% of dogs worldwide, while also claiming other species spread rabies. That’s not disease prevention — that’s a business plan.

The Natural Hygiene Perspective

The science of Natural Hygiene has no use for germ theory myths. Scientific rigors must be adhered to, and laws of nature must be observed in all claims.  Rabies, all of the other so-called infectious diseases, are not a single, contagious entity but a label for various states of body breakdown. The real causes are:

  1. Toxic injury — from cooked foods, processed foods, toxins, or vaccines themselves.
  2. Enervation — loss of nerve energy from fear(chronic stress), injury, or chronic poor living habits.
  3. Malnutrition — starving the body of the materials it needs to function.
  4. Suggestion and hysteria — the mind triggering the body into crisis through fear and stress.

When we remove the causes, the symptoms vanish. No vaccine required.

The Bottom Line

Rabies is not a lurking killer waiting in an animal’s bite. It’s a manufactured disease that was born from superstition, dressed in Pasteur’s pseudoscience, and kept alive for over a century by fear and profit.

There has never been proof that rabies exists as a specific contagious disease. There has never been proof that a rabies virus has been isolated. What has been proven, over and over, is that the vaccine harms both humans and animals, and that the symptoms attributed to rabies are fully explained by poisoning, malnutrition, abuse, or fear.

Rabies is a ghost story in a lab coat. The only way to end it is to stop believing in it.

Lauren FarrisLeave a comment

One Disease – Two Types of Symptoms

Did you know that there is only ONE disease?  The medical industry calls various symptoms diseases, but this does not align with biological reality.

Central to the terrain model of health, also called the science of natural hygiene, is the knowledge that there is only ONE disease.  We call this disease toxemia. Toxemia can also be referred to as acidosis or cellular malfunction, although it is more accurate to say that cellular malfunction is a symptom of toxemia and not the disease itself. 

All of the “diseases” of allopathy are actually symptoms of the singular disease of toxemia, which is an over-acid state of the body.   This state of toxemia is caused by a backlog of acidic cellular waste and debris, which results from chronic dehydration of the lymphatic system.  

Acids burn.  Acids trapped in the body exist in the same intercellular fluids that the cells exist in and therefore damage the cells that are exposed to them, eventually leading to cell malfunction.  Disease starts as a backlog of waste, due to the body accumulating more waste than its cleaning systems can clean.   The start of disease comes before the symptoms.   The symptoms begin when the backlog becomes urgent enough to impair function, at which point the body creates an expulsion event, or healing crisis/healing event.   

The body may use many different techniques to prevent the acids from burning.  For example, the body may use cholesterol to buffer acids.  The body may use water to dilute acids, which we notice as swelling and inflammation.  The body may promote bacterial activity to break down the acids, resulting in fever, or heat at the area of injury.  The body may also build tumors to store the waste.  The body may use alkaline minerals (i.e. calcium) to neutralize the acid.  When the body must pull alkaline minerals to neutralize the acids, this leads to osteoporosis, prolapses, sagging skin, and weakened tissues if the body is not receiving enough usable alkaline minerals to replenish what it is using up. 

Acids burn and bases (alkaline) neutralize acids. 

There are two types of symptoms:
1. Cellular malfunction, as a result of the acids damaging the cells responsible for a particular function.
2. Expulsion/repair symptoms. These are symptoms created by the body itself to clean and repair damage. 

Disease, or lack of ease, within the body comes in stages. Through years and decades of wrong foods and exposure to other toxins/poisons through the environment, on our skin, the air we breathe, etc. we build upon our mistakes.

The most impactful are the daily choices you make. The three (or more) meals we eat each day. 

When we ingest only those foods that are biologically and physiologically appropriate, then the natural state of health is maintained throughout life, and no disease is experienced.   

When we stray from the natural foods that are appropriate to our physiology, disease grows by degrees based on how many mistakes we are making.   

A few minor mistakes create only minor, occasional symptoms like fatigue, sneezing, coughing, rashes, and the occasional short fever.   The further we stray from our natural foods, the larger the purge requires, leading to bigger healing events, such as colds or flu detox events, rashes, severe fatigue, and even pneumonia in more advanced states of disease.  

If we attempt to suppress these early cleaning symptoms by the use of drugs, herbs, natural remedies, colloidal silver, ointments, or salves, then the body never finishes cleaning and is forced to retain the toxic material, and the waste load internally grows deeper.   

The longer we suppress and kick the can down the road, the more serious the condition becomes, until we shift from expulsion symptoms, or constructive, useful symptoms of cleaning, to the symptoms of cellular malfunction.  Conversely, if we have already put the body into a state of malfunction, such as heart disease, asthma, or diabetes, then we must experience those cleaning symptoms, such as rashes, colds, flu, fever, or what medicine calls an infection, to heal.   The “infection” and the inflammation are the healing process; the coughing, sneezing, mucus, vomiting, diarrhea, etc, are the way the body expels the materials it must expel to return to a state of health.   

Disease is not an on/off switch.  It is in varying states of dirtiness or cleanliness.  Much like the cleanliness of a floor can be on a scale of dirty to clean, from absolutely filthy to shining spotless, and every stage in between.  

Dis-ease begins with minor warning signs and slowly progresses into major and chronic illness.  For example, body odor, bad breath, acne, liver spots (brown spots on the skin, often on the face), dark circles under the eyes, a crease or creases in the forehead between the eyebrows, temperature sensitivities, sun burns, cavities in the teeth, wounds that are slow to heal, swollen hands, feet or ankles, swollen face/head, allergies, wrinkles as we age, and headaches are all signs of the toxic conditions growing in the body and all signs that our inner terrain is not clean and our cells are operating in a state of distress.    This distress is often felt in the form of anxiety, depression, inability to handle stress, erratic emotions, and in more severe conditions of disease, we will see delusions, hallucinations, or extreme swings from manic to depressive. 

If left unchecked, if the person does not return to their natural, highly alkaline, fruit-centered, plant-based diet, or the animal to their biologically appropriate diet, then the waste continues to grow, little by little, year by year, until the symptoms grow into an unbearable state and chronic disease is the result. 

Luckily for us, our bodies are remarkable, brilliant, intelligently designed organisms that can take a tremendous amount of abuse before getting to such an extreme state of disease, and this means that we can work in reverse to eliminate the disease conditions by eliminating the acids and removing some of the burden on the body.   Often, just small changes in the diet are enough to bring someone back from the brink because our bodies are built to survive. 

Unfortunately for us, this also means our bodies have an extreme tolerance for abuse, which allows us to develop many harmful habits that do not cause immense pain and suffering immediately, but if continued over time, they will cause real harm. Our body warns us with small symptoms first, but we have been largely trained to ignore these symptoms, and so we continue on in our damaging habits until the symptoms become large enough to cause real discomfort.  Only then do we attempt to seek correction. Sadly, most seek help in the hands of the poison salesman, who supplies their various poisons, be they herbal or pharmaceutical.  These substances provide only a temporary relief, if any, and are followed by a further worsening of disease or an alteration in symptoms.   You cannot poison a poisoned body back to health, no matter how much the disease-for-profit industry tries to convince you otherwise. 

This symptom suppression route is why it is so easy to trick people into following unhealthy diets or taking supplements or other harmful substances and then hope for a magic cure, instead of building and maintaining their health over their lifetime.    

The body heals when we remove the causes that led to the disease conditions growing in the first place.  If you shift from a diet with 20 things wrong to a diet with 15 things wrong, the act of removing those 5 things will alleviate some symptoms and allow the body to clean a little bit more waste out.  This is why less-than-ideal diets alleviate some disease symptoms but do not maintain a state of pristine health long term. 

This leads to a temporary reduction in uncomfortable symptoms or a shifting of symptoms to less bothersome symptoms, and so the individual thinks that they are on the right track.  Any reduction in the cause of the disease will lead to some reversal of symptoms. However, for the body to truly function at its peak, there must be no obstructions to healing and no habits that build disease.  This requires a complete return to the natural species-appropriate diet, along with rest, and for some, it may also require periods of therapeutic fasting to allow the backlog to be cleared efficiently.  

Lauren FarrisLeave a comment

How I Heal Dogs with Cancer — What the Pet Industry Doesn’t Want You to Know

What Is Cancer? Why Do Our Companion Animals Get It? — And How I Heal It

Over the last 15 years, I have been deeply involved in dog and cat rescue, and through rescue, I have witnessed firsthand the epidemic of cancer in our companion animals.   To me, this is unacceptable, and so more than a decade ago, I set out to find the reasons our companions are getting cancer and how to heal those dogs and cats that have cancer.  Here is what I have learned along the way, and the exact steps we take with every rescue to take them from terminal cancer back to pristine health, running and playing like puppies!

  1. Cancer is not a random strike of bad luck. Its causes are known and therefore, its causes can be removed.  
  2. Cancer is not an outside invader.   It’s a metabolic process – created by the body, for the benefit of the body, due to toxic conditions being provided to the body.  Correct those conditions, and the body can heal itself.   
  3. Cancer is not a mysterious curse falling on some “unlucky” animals while others are spared.  Cancer is a disease that is built with every meal fed.   What goes into your dog’s food bowl is the primary cause, and most importantly, correcting that input allows the body to heal.

Rewriting what you think you know about Cancer

The medical industry calls Cancer its own disease, but in reality, Cancer is the seventh stage of disease.  This is critical to understanding why medicine fails to heal where nature succeeds.    There is in fact, only ONE disease – toxemia/toxicosis – a toxic condition of the cells whereby the cellular waste is unable to be removed from the body as designed, resulting in ever-growing cellular distress.   In simple terms, the body becomes dirty, the areas around the cells become dirty, and this dirtiness impairs the functions of the cells, resulting in reduced and impaired cellular function.  

You can think of disease like a hoarder’s house.  Each day they bring in just one or two items, but because nothing ever leaves, as time passes, the rooms become filled.  Over time, the mess grows until the person can barely move around their home.  The ability to function becomes impaired.  The more the mess grows, the fewer rooms you can access until finally the house starts to fall down under the weight of all the mess.    

Our body, and our pets’ bodies, are just like that hoarder’s house.   Each meal, each day, more waste is being built up that the body cannot easily remove because the food is not correct for their physiology.  

Cancer is the body’s emergency defense. It is the body’s best attempt to survive under chronic disease conditions — conditions created when the body is overwhelmed with cellular waste, toxins, and poisons faster than it can repair and clean itself.

To understand cancer and to heal cancer, we have to set aside the false, mechanical view of the body put forth by the medical industry. Our pets are not machines where parts can be swapped out, cut off, or replaced. They are living organisms. 

Every cell communicates, and every system is connected.  When the body is sick, the entire body is affected, from head to toe. Cutting a chunk of the body out does not correct the systemic, head-to-toe sickness.   

To solve any problem, we must first remove the cause, not the body parts.

Cancer arises because the body has been burdened beyond its ability to clean itself. Cancer is the symptom, not the cause, of disease. When we try to treat symptoms, we leave the causes in place.    Cutting out a tumor, amputating a limb, burning the body with radiation, or poisoning the body with chemotherapy does nothing to address the reason the body created cancer in the first place.  Adding more poison to an already poisoned body can never lead to a return to health.  

The only true way to heal cancer is to correct the conditions that have forced the body to create these pockets of waste, and “rogue” cells that we call tumors.

Why Do Our Dogs Get Cancer?

Diet is the primary cause of all disease, including cancer, and unfortunately, our beloved companion animals have been the victims of an industry that is more focused on profits than health.   As a result, the average commercial dog food is highly disease-causing, and feeding it to our pets day after day results in the body having no choice but to exist in a state of chronic disease. Those conditions grow more and more destructive the longer the body is subjected to them.  The longer our dogs are eating kibble, canned foods, and other cooked foods, the more the cellular waste builds, and the more malfunctions the body must endure.   

In addition to the disease-causing foods our companion animals are subjected to, they are also born into a toxic inheritance of the generations before them.  Every animal is the sum total of the choices made by its parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents. If your dog’s mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother were all fed kibble or canned foods, they are carrying the toxic load of each generation.   This is also why we see human babies and young children with cancers in modern times, a disease that just 100 years ago was extremely rare.  (Today, we estimate about 1 in 285 children in the U.S. will be diagnosed before age 20; in the early 1900s, it was <1 case per 10,000 children)

If we think of health like a rechargeable battery, some animals are born with 100% capacity, while others are born with only 60% or even 40%, depending on the health of their mother at the time of conception. They inherit not only the physical structures of their parents but also the weaknesses — weaker organs, weaker elimination systems, weaker resistance.

For dogs, this problem is worsened by:

  • Severe inbreeding (purebred dogs come from an extremely narrow genetic pool).
  • Generational misfeeding (most dogs have been raised for decades on dry kibble and cooked foods).

Dry kibble is one of the most damaging products to the canine body.  It is extremely dehydrating, clogging the lymphatic system – the body’s sewer system, which is responsible for carrying away waste, poisons, and damaged cells. 

When the lymphatic system becomes dehydrated, this thick, lipid-based fluid cannot efficiently flow.  The sewer system becomes clogged, and the elimination of toxic materials stagnates. The body, having no way to eliminate the waste externally,  in desperation, walls it off. This is how a tumor is formed – intentionally, by self-healing, self-cleaning, intelligently created body.   The tumor is a walled-off space holding the toxic debris to protect the surrounding cells from damage.     

Cancer is simply a pileup of waste, dead cells, and toxicity that the body has been unable to eliminate fast enough.  It’s like a hoarder’s house slowly filling up with junk, until the structure begins to collapse.   The problem is, if we don’t stop the input of toxic materials from building up by correcting the diet, then eventually the number of cells inside the tumor will be greater than those outside, and the function of the organ in which the tumor resides becomes impaired and eventually fails.   

So while the tumor is created intelligently and is the solution the body has put in place to the disease conditions present, it is a step to minimize the damage of the toxic buildup, not the solution to the toxic buildup.  If the body is not able to remove that material soon, the body will begin to malfunction and eventually fail.  

How I Heal Cancer in My Rescues

Over the past 15 years, it has been my privilege to rescue senior dogs with chronic and terminal disease conditions.  138 dogs and counting have come through my home, all with chronic disease conditions – cancer, seizures, dementia, heart murmurs, kidney disease, obesity, and many other conditions.    For each one, we return them to the natural, biologically appropriate foods, and over time, all of their conditions heal.   Not just heal, but these dogs return to pristine health, the cancer expels itself, the seizures stop, the heart repairs, the dementia fades, and they return to running around like puppies again.   Our 17 to 19-year-old dogs run circles around the puppies at the dog park.   As we correct their diet, we give the body the fuel it requires to make the repairs necessary.    There are healing processes that we must follow along the way.  We must allow time for rest and time for healing.   We must not suppress the healing symptoms, like medicine does.  If we allow the body’s own intelligently designed processes to work as designed, then we see a complete reversal of all disease.  Not only the cancer, but all the little symptoms they had along the way that built up to the cancer.   

Healing cancer is not about attacking the tumor.   The tumor is not the problem; it is the body’s created solution.   Healing cancer is not about fighting the body, but working with the body.    Healing cancer is not about applying various poisons to the tumor to try to shrink the tumor – it’s about removing the burden and giving the body the energy it requires to clean house itself.

Here’s how I do it:

1️ Stop the Poison
 The first and most urgent step is to stop feeding disease.
That means:

  • Throw away all kibble (there is no good kibble — it’s all carcinogenic).
  • Stop all cooked, processed, dehydrated, or unnatural foods.

We cannot heal if we are still pouring poison in.  Fast your dog for a minimum of  24 hours to allow the kibble, canned, or cooked foods time to exit, then move on to step 2.  

2️ Feed the Natural Diet
 For cancer cases, I start dogs on 100% fruit — yes, 100% fruit — for 30 to 90 days.
Why?

  • Fruit naturally makes up around 60% of all wild canids’ diets.  It is severely lacking in our dogs that are fed commercial dog foods.   To maintain health, they need at least 50-60% fruit across their lifespan, so if they have been missing it, now is the time to make up for lost time.    To learn more about how Canid species eat in the wild, see “Evidence that Canids Eat Fruit in the Wild”
  • Fruit is hydrating.  Their body is dehydrated and needs a jumpstart to get the lymphatic system hydrated so the waste can start moving out.
  • Fruit clears out constipation.  Cooked foods, canned foods, and most especially kibble are highly constipating, which means the bowels are backed up with years of old waste.   As we feed fruit, this waste gets rehydrated and sloughs off the walls of the digestive tract, so the body can finally eliminate it, and stop being poisoned by it. 
  • Fruit is easy to digest.  Fruit requires very little energy for digestion, but provides lots of sugar – the fuel source for every single cell in the body.   When the body digests fruit, it uses less energy than it is provided.  This means that there is extra energy left over for healing processes.  
  • Fruit provides clean, easy energy that frees up the body’s resources for healing.  The body has a limited supply of energy each day.  That energy can either go into digestion or it can be used for cleaning and repair.   Right now, we want that extra energy going to healing and repair.  

Once the cancer begins to recede, I shift to a maintenance plan: 5 days of fruit, 1 day of meat, and continue until full recovery.  Typically, we do 60 to 90 days of all fruit and then assess their progress.  If the tumor or accompanying symptoms have not made a big improvement, then we will continue on with the fruit meals or utilize fasting to help the body correct the issues faster.    For more information on the power of fasting to heal, please read Dr Shelton’s book on Fasting, The Hygienic System – Vol. 3 – Fasting and Sunbathing – particularly Chapter 2 on fasting Animals.   You can also find more information about fasting as well as feeding naturally in our Facebook Support Group:  The Natural Dog Diet with TheRawKey.com

3️ Rest and Don’t Interfere 

By far, the hardest part of healing is allowing the body to rest and allowing the healing symptoms to progress uninterrupted.   Medicine has taught us our entire lives that every healing symptom the body creates is a disease that requires poisons, salves, or supplements to suppress.   When we are tired, instead of resting, we stimulate ourselves with coffee, tea, chocolate, soda, or salt.   When we get a cold or a flu, a body cleaning event, we turn to OTC cold medications, herbal remedies, or other toxic substances to stop the cleaning. Medicine tells us we are being attacked by invaders, and we must kill those invaders with some manner of poison in order to recover.  This goes against biological science and falls squarely in the court of marketing.   In reality, these colds and flus are the body’s cleaning and healing processes at work.  They are expulsion symptoms – the body pushing waste out.  The body has intelligently designed processes to push waste out on a regular and consistent basis, as needed, as disease conditions are built.  Rashes, itchy skin, dry skin, eye discharge, runny nose, these are all essential cleaning processes that our body creates when the disease conditions build up.  We can avoid them entirely by not making our bodies dirty in the first place, but if we stray from our natural foods, then the body is forced to create these cleaning events along the way.    Medicine teaches us to fear them and to suppress them because medicine is a for-profit business that only remains in profit if you, or your companion animal, remains chronically ill.

As your dog is healing, they will experience what we call a healing event or healing crisis.  During this period, there will be fatigue, lack of appetite, and a range of detox symptoms, or expulsion symptoms, which are the body’s cleansing itself.  These symptoms must be allowed to proceed uninterrupted because they are the only way the body can rid itself of the mess that led to the tumor being forced to be created in the first place.   It is therefore very important for you, as their caretaker, to learn about the body-created healing processes, so that you are not fearful and do not turn to suppressants when these healing processes begin.   Here are some articles to help you better understand these healing processes:   

What is Fatigue? 

The Medical Label of Infection

The Hardest Thing to Do is Nothing

4 Continuing education
Surgery does not heal cancer, but it does do major and often irreversible damage to the lymphatic system required for the body to maintain health and remove disease.    Chemotherapy is a known carcinogen –  a cancer-causing chemical.  You cannot ever heal a poisoned body by adding carcinogenic poisons.

The healing processes that we follow to heal our animals, not only of cancer, but of all other conditions of disease, are based on the science of health, called Natural Hygiene, or Life Science, and they are based upon the science of the Terrain Model of disease.   Natural hygiene follows several basic truths: 

  1. Violating the laws of life cannot undo the damage of a previous violation. You cannot poison a poisoned body back to health.
  2. The body was intelligently created and follows intelligent processes.  These processes are not mistakes requiring poisons to correct.  They are biological requirements, requiring only that we not interfere and that we heed their warning. 
  3. Acute disease is not an enemy at war with the body. It is not something to be expelled, subdued, opposed, destroyed, conquered, cured, or killed, since it is not a “thing” or “an entity” at all. Rather, acute disease is an action, a process, a remedial effort to be cooperated with.

We do not heal by doing things that would create disease in a healthy animal. We heal only by removing causes and allowing the body to repair itself.

The body eliminates cancer because it no longer needs it – not because we attack it. If we wish to address the cancer, we must remove the conditions that led to disease being created and instead replace them with the requirements of health.   Health is the natural state when we live in line with Nature.

To continue learning about why the body creates disease, what the purpose of disease is, and how it is reversed, please read:    

If you are ready to get started, please get a free copy of our feeding guide   

Join our support group on Facebook:   The Natural Dog Diet with TheRawKey.com 

Or book a consultation with Lauren to discuss your dog’s specific issues and get a plan today! 

Additional Resources: 

Videos:

How to get a dog to eat fruit – https://youtu.be/1G_es9pEF2Q?si=n45eEuLBlXw0LMu-

Video Interview: Lauren discusses healing rescue dogs with Cancer with Belinda of CB Rescue – https://youtu.be/ZvHSInEC7iQ?si=4GwBQv7ms2T8-d71

How To Prepare Meat Meals – https://youtu.be/NxoulehYZwk?si=5waG3iUNEE_kDf5J

Shopping for Meat Meals – https://youtu.be/8oixUTWmDP0?si=sXP6q__X-40i6zb9

Posts in our support group

Bones – https://www.facebook.com/groups/naturaldogdiet/posts/881796616747149/

Food Combining and Fruit list –  https://www.facebook.com/groups/naturaldogdiet/posts/844835857109892

How much to feed – https://www.facebook.com/groups/naturaldogdiet/posts/701400444786768/

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