Lauren Farris, Author at The Raw Key

Do you know what hunger really feels like?

TRUE HUNGER VS HUNGER PAINS

Disclaimer: This article is provided for educational purposes only and reflects a Natural Hygiene (Terrain Model) perspective on health and nutrition. It is not intended to diagnose, treat, or cure any condition, and does not constitute veterinary or medical advice. The views expressed are independent of the conventional medical or veterinary industry, and all decisions regarding animal care or personal health care are the responsibility of the owner/individual.

How do you know when you are hungry? Do you often feel hungry first thing in the morning? Is your hunger more ravenous after a night of eating poorly or drinking alcohol? Most people associate hunger with a feeling of discomfort in the stomach and gut area. You may be surprised to learn that this is not hunger at all. In fact, true hunger is very rare in the Western world. It’s not uncommon for people to go years, decades, or their entire lives without experiencing true hunger.

True hunger is a pleasant feeling that we tend to experience in the throat. True hunger is never uncomfortable or unpleasant. It is experienced as a pleasant knowing that our body desires food.

“The fact that most people mistake irritation and vital symptoms of recovery for hunger does not mean hunger exists. An emptiness in the stomach means that the food has been passed from it. That is not hunger. Hunger is felt in the mouth and throat just as thirst is. It is not unpleasant and it urges us to eat just as thirst urges us to drink.

What we commonly mistake for hunger that drives us to eat are pathological symptoms not unlike the “withdrawal” symptoms of tobacco, coffee, alcohol, condiments and other drug addictions that drive us to go back for another fix. When the body is without its fix for a while, it begins clean-up operations. These usually involve unpleasant symptoms that drive us to get another fix. Another fix engages the body in activities that depress vital functions, especially eliminative functions. Thus we are satisfied for a while, in fact, quite a while in the case of foods that are not of our adaptation.” – T.C. Fry

So what is the pain we experience most mornings before we break our nightly fast?

The pain we feel in our stomach is a result of the body trying to clean and repair. When we eat cooked foods, salt, spices, spicy peppers, drink coffee, tea, alcohol, or otherwise consume irritants, the body repairs the stomach lining each day. This pain or discomfort we feel in our stomach is a result of the expulsion of the less ideal foods and the waste materials from the damaged cells that occur from eating those foods. The rumbling stomach and the growling stomach are not true hunger but actions being taken by the body to repair damage incurred from the previous meal of less-than-ideal foods.

“Although genuine hunger is a mouth and throat sensation and depends upon an actual physiological need for food, muscular contractions of the stomach accompany hunger and are thought by physiologists, to give rise to the hunger sensation.

Carlson, of the Chicago University, found that in a man who had been fasting two weeks, these gastric “hunger” contractions had not decreased, although there was no desire for food. The same has been observed in animals. Indeed these contractions are seen to increase and yet they do not produce the sensation of hunger. I do not consider these so-called “hunger-contractions” as the
cause of hunger. Real hunger is a mouth and throat sensation.

But there is a difference between hunger and what is called appetite. Appetite is a counterfeit hunger, a creature of habit and cultivation, and may be due to any one of a number of things; such as the arrival of the habitual meal time, the sight, taste, or smell of food, condiments and seasonings, or even the thought of food. In some diseased states there is an almost constant and insatiable appetite. None of these things can arouse true hunger; for, this comes only when there is an actual need for food.

One may have an appetite for tobacco, coffee, tea, opium, alcohol, etc., but he can never be hungry for these, since they serve no real physiological need. Appetite is often accompanied by a gnawing or “all gone” sensation in the stomach, or a general sense of weakness; there may even be mental depression. Such symptoms usually belong to the diseased stomach of a glutton and will pass away if their owner will refrain from eating for a few days. They are temporarily relieved by eating and this leads to the idea that it was food that was needed. But such sensations and feelings do not accompany true hunger. In true hunger one is not aware that he has a stomach for this, like thirst, is a mouth and throat sensation. Real hunger arises spontaneously, that is without the agency of some external factor, and is accompanied by a “watering of the mouth” and usually by a conscious desire for some particular food.” – Herbert Shelton

True Hunger is pleasant

True hunger is described by most who experience it as a pleasant feeling in the back of the throat or simply a thought which floats into their mind that it is time to eat. We are accustomed to overfeeding ourselves with constipating and dehydrating foods which destroys this delicate feeling. Instead of a pleasant feeling our overeating and eating of substances that are not our natural foods leads the body to respond to each subsequent meal with pain.

“It was said that nature plainly says: “Eat of my compounds what you like best, and I will signify when you have eaten enough . . . The instant hunger is satisfied is the time to cease eating. If you persist in eating beyond this time, then I will send you another real friend–pain–who will compel you to cease eating before you do yourself irreparable harm. I shall make you suffer so much that you will lack all excuse for eating too much at a later time.” How common is the practice of smothering the disciplining voice of pain and discomfort with a drug after meals!” – Herbert Shelton, Man’s Pristine Way of Life

Weakness is not hunger

Feeling weak or drained is also not hunger but is a result of the body’s need to take energy away from our muscles to utilize in the repair of the stomach. These are warning signs from our body to stop inputting food so it can make repairs, unfortunately, when these processes feel unpleasant we have been conditioned to stop them temporarily by eating another meal. The addition of more food to the stomach temporarily halts the cleaning and repair processes. Sadly, this reinforces our wrong choices leading to ever more burden upon the body rather than a lifting of burden.

We can avoid “hunger” pains entirely.

“By avoiding pungent condiments we also obviate the principal cause of gluttony. It is well known that the admirers of lager-beer do not drink it for the sake of its nutritive properties, but as a medium of stimulation, and I hold that nine out of ten gluttons swallow their peppered ragouts for the same purpose. Only natural appetites have natural limits. Two quarts of water will satisfy the normal thirst of a giant, two pounds of dates, his hunger after a two day’s fast. But the beer-drinker swills till he runs over, and the glutton stuffs himself till the oppression of his chest threatens him with suffocation. Their unnatural appetite has no limits but those of their abdominal capacity. Poison-hunger would be a better word than appetite. What they really want is alcohol and hot spices, and, being unable to swallow them ‘straight,” the one takes a bucketful of swill, the other a potful of grease into the bargain.” – Herbert Shelton

If you take a moment to think about it, you may start to recognize that when your hunger pains were at their worst this coincided with a more harmful food choice the night before. Often when people have a hangover they become ravenously hungry and seek out fatty, slow-digesting, difficult-to-digest foods that shut down the cleaning process and calm the stomach. After eating a spicy meal the night before you might wake up extra hungry the next morning. When we eat salt we feel hungry more often. All of these are examples of when we have consumed something that irritates the stomach and the hunger pain is the consequence of the injury to the body that the prior meal or meals caused.

Next time you feel pain in the stomach try delaying your meal as long as you can and try to think about what you ate last that may be causing this pain. Perhaps sip some water. When we eat our natural diet these painful symptoms no longer exist. As you eliminate those irritants you will find it becomes easier and easier to delay your meals to the ideal window and eat less often because you will not be injuring the digestive tract and will not have the pain as a result.

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 Terrain Model Diet Support and Education Group: New Groups start on the 1st of every month! https://www.therawkey.com/terrain-diet-support-group/

Eat fruit and be well my friends.

May 29, 2023March 19, 2026

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Herbert Shelton’s Death

Question

Would you care to speculate why Shelton lived only to 77 years of age and died with neuromuscular disease?

Answer

Well first, Shelton lived to almost 90 years old, so I’m not sure where you are getting 77 from. He was born October 6, 1895, and died January 1, 1985, making him 89 years and 3 months at the time of death. He continued to run his health school until 1981 (age 86), and started his final book with Jo Willard and Jean Oswald in 1982 at age 87 which was published shortly after his death in 1986.

Shelton outlived any reasonable expectations and was mentally cognizant until his last days. That is more than we can say for most people today. Shelton’s father died at age 78, his mother was 82, and most of his cooked food-eating siblings died in their 60’s and 70’s or younger. Shelton was the firstborn yet outlived all but Juanita, the 13th child, and Sam the 10th child. He truly got the maximum life out of the generational hand he was dealt.

Parkinson’s is a condition brought about by many factors, significantly influenced by inherited weaknesses passed down through the generations (susceptibility), similar to a 2×4 having a lot of knots which makes it susceptible to early failure when stressed.

Shelton was born two months premature, weighing less than 3 pounds, he was frail and weak and barely survived, kept warm in a wooden cigar box near the iron stove. Being born premature means a lack of full, required biological development from the start, in the womb, making a person less vital overall and slighter of build as he also was. He was born into a cooked food meat and dairy-eating family and only discovered raw foods as a teen/young adult. His father had chronic health conditions including Asthma, I am not sure about his mother’s health conditions. The real question is why did Shelton last so long given the weaknesses he inherited from birth?

Parkinson’s is a long-term degeneration of certain parts of the central nervous system, developing slowly, sometimes from a very young age, and involves a loss of brain cells in a particular area of the midbrain called the Substantia Nigra.

One factor associated with Parkinson’s symptoms is brain trauma/injury. In 1945 Shelton was involved in an accident with his horse, he was kicked in the head by his horse, leading to him losing several teeth over the coming years, which can give us some indication of the severity of the jarring his brain underwent at that time.

While the body replaces most cells, brain cells are not replaced when they die. Additionally, brain trauma injury kills a lot of cells in a large area. Once gone, they remain gone, leading to decreased ability for the brain to control itself and the body. This is a factor to consider in the development of degenerative diseases or injury of the brain. Brain and nerve injuries are extremely slow to heal and some will never heal in our lifetime. So when we incur an injury to the brain or nerves these often lead to degeneration which cannot be remedied by the body.

Shelton was a busy, active man, particularly intellectually. He used his brain and his body fully, never letting up his entire life. He wrote prolifically, ran a large, successful fasting clinic for decades, wrote endless books, articles, essays, and newsletters, lectured around the world, raised a family, and faced endless opposition and harassment from the medical industry, including being jailed on multiple occasions, he organized and fathered Natural Hygiene Science and so much more. He worked his body to its maximum, and just from that, it’s easy to see how he may have overworked a certain part of his brain/nervous system, let alone the abnormal stress and lack of proper growth caused by his brain injury and premature birth. When he died, that’s the day he stopped writing and working endlessly, he only rested during sleep.

Shelton faced a brain deterioration issue that nothing was going to stop from happening, no matter how well he ate or behaved, all he could do was limit its progression, which he did incredibly well. He lived almost 90 years (89y 3m), Parkinson sufferers always die an early death, but he did incredibly well and was more active into his 80’s than many people are capable of in their 50s or younger.

We are all coming from a deficit, born to parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents who have been eating far from their natural diet. We are all born to previous generations with chronic disease symptoms. The question is, do we continue to pass down those degenerative habits to the next generation, or do we create the least harm possible to our cells in this generation so the human species can begin to recover its natural lifespan?

For anyone interested in an accurate picture of Shelton’s life the book “Yours for Health: The Life and Times of Herbert M Shelton” by Jean A. Oswald https://amzn.to/3r7MoFs is a great read.

May 10, 2023March 19, 2026

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Desire Health? Return to the Garden of Eden

Our society promotes this false idea that we can do 100 things wrong feeding our body but then fix it all by popping a pill. For many that pill will be a pharma drug (pharmaceutical from the Greek pharmakeia- “poisoning, sorcery, magical arts, often found in connection with idolatry and fostered by it”).

For others it will be an equally harmful vitamin or supplement, pill or powder, they have been told cures this or that ailment, or maybe they just fear they are lacking in their nutritionally devoid diet.

Either way you can never fix a wrong by adding a second wrong. You cannot poison a body back to health. You cannot make up for the plate of chicken and rice by taking a powdered fruit and vegetable supplement because it’s not the missing vitamins and minerals that are creating 99.9% of disease. It’s the dehydration, it’s the lack of fiber, it’s the overworking of the digestive system. It’s the fact that you are eating so far removed from your natural diet of watery, sugar-rich, raw fruits, sweet, tender, water-rich,leafy greens and nutrient dense nuts, seeds and vegetables.

There is no shortcut to health. If you want a healthy body you have to supply the conditions which allow the body to operate under normal parameters. You need to supply the foods which your body was intelligently designed to consume. When we follow God’s word and return to what he gave us for food in the Garden of Eden – Genesis 1:29 – our bodies return to perfect health. When we obey the lesson of Daniel 1:8-20 setting aside the rich and heavy foods and wine for our natural foods and water we thrive.

The natural diet of man is fruits and tender leafy greens, with small amounts of nuts, seeds and vegetables. These are all foods we can eat raw, in their whole natural form without any tools, fire or weapons. When we return to the natural diet God originally given to us in Eden all disease conditions reverse.

When we sin against our bodies, we are made to suffer. But we are provided every answer to stop the pain, should we choose it. The more you open your eyes, the more you see, this world is biblical and you have been given a guide book should you choose to accept it. The medical industry practices pharmakeia, their symbol is the snake ⚕️and the rod. Health never comes from the poisoning arts but they have most of our loved ones under their spell. No cures for any disease ever yet we continue to fund them $100 trillion a year. Open your eyes to see, open your ears to hear, the answers are laid out for you. The battle is good versus evil, health versus disease, if you don’t know which side you are caught up in, if you are blind to the reality of this world, there is nothing anyone can do to return your health to you. If you are caught up in the trappings of this world, only misery awaits.

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/

Eat fruit and be well my friends.

Disturbed Sleep and Hip Pain

Question:

I would say I have a fairly healthy diet as in food . But I do drink a fair amount of alcohol mainly because, its only way I can get any sleep . I would like ideas to change this . I also have excruciating pain in my right hip, for past 15 to 20 years . I work in Pharmacy and spend 9 hrs a day on my feet . Would appreciate any advice please.

Answer:

We cannot have “a fairly healthy diet” we either eat things that provide the conditions of health, or we don’t. If we eat a little bit of cooked foods our body will be in a state of disease. If we eat a lot of cooked foods our body will be in a state of disease with more symptoms. If we have symptoms then we are not eating a healthy diet, the evidence in front of us that we are not in a state of health proves this. Health only exists in the absence of disease. Disease is dis – lack, ease – comfort, a lack of comfort in the body, so any straying from the normal efficient operation of the body is a body in a state of disease. Once we realize this we can achieve health by stopping the injury of our cells.

If you are not able to go to sleep it is because your body is being irritated and stimulated by the food, drugs, and other poisons being put into it. If you remove the cause of the irritation then the body will return to normal function. If you find the substances that are keeping you awake and remove those, they you will not have to try to drug the body with poison to go to sleep.

Alcohol does not help us sleep, it creates tremendous stress upon the body which has long-lasting effects. It actually makes it much harder to sleep because it makes the body so uncomfortable that the body is in a chronic state of irritation which impairs our ability to sleep. Falling asleep using alcohol is not sleep, it is placing the body into a coma because the level of toxicity of the body is so high that the body cannot keep you awake and survive at the same time.

As to the hip issue, there are a number of reasons why we get pain in our joints but ultimately all are correctable by putting the conditions of health into place. The only exception is if the bone of the hip has been remodeled by years of damage then the body may or may not be able to correct that condition. The most common reason for pain is inflammation. Inflammation is the 4th stage of disease and is the point at which the body is trying to make a massive effort to expel waste. When this process is allowed to take place the inflammation will lead to healing. But if we are continuously adding to the cause the body will never be able to complete the cleaning process. It’s like someone putting a sewer hose through your front window and you sitting there trying to sweep the floors clean without first getting the sewer hose out of the window, you will never get a clean house if the cause is still in place.

If we remove the causes of the inflammation the process will complete and healing will be achieved. If we do not remove the causes then eventually the body will move from the 4th stage of disease, into the higher states of disease which are all degenerative conditions. You can learn more about the seven stages of disease here: https://youtu.be/w4PBOuXiqPA The video also discusses in depth how we reverse the conditions and return to a state of health.

If you are eating cooked foods, drinking alcohol, taking stimulants like coffee, tea, soda, chocolate, eating salt, eating wheat, all of these will disrupt your ability to sleep. Stopping these will allow for restful sleep to return.

Anxiety, restless thoughts, the type of thoughts that keep us awake at night are not random, they are created by our diet. They are the body communicating its level of distress. If we remove the reason for the body being in distress then we remove the anxiety and restless thoughts that keep us from resting and being calm, cool and collected at all times.

We have to always remember that we are a collection of countless billions of tiny cells all working together in concert. Anything that injures one cell creates a chain reaction that affects every cell, so what may seem like a minor toxin exposure like eating some cooked foods actually becomes a major issue affecting the functions of every cell. Each small mistake builds upon the last making for less efficient processing of every cell, which in turn adds even more waste, which then makes the cells even less efficient. Every small mistake adds to our suffering.

If you are struggling to return to the natural diet fully we offer a support group for transitioning, with recipes, meal plans, daily articles to help you get through cravings, and lots of inspiration to help you learn how to eat to maintain health. You can find out more at https://www.therawkey.com/terrain-diet-support-group/

April 21, 2023March 19, 2026

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Hair Loss and Using Essential Oils to Stimulate Hair Growth

Question:
I am losing a lot of hair. I’m on fruits until dinner and I’m mostly raw. What does terrain model say about using essential oils such as rosemary to stimulate hair growth? Many people have said that it’s helped them but I think the terrain model would probably not support the use of EO.

Answer:

Essential oils are potent plant toxins, they are harmful both ingested and topically.

Hair loss occurs primarily for 2 reasons. One, the body is pushing acids out through the scalp and this damages the hair follicles leading to hair loss. If we have corrected or improved our diet recently this will self-correct once the body has caught up on its backlog of waste. As long as we are eating sufficiently of leafy greens and other mineral-rich savory fruits we will have healthy hair, but in the short term the body can push the waste out through the skin and sometimes our hair is sacrificed in the short term for the long term gain of true health.

The second common reason for hair loss is excess fat in the diet or in the body. Fat blocks nutrients from being able to get into the cells and also from being able to get to the hair follicles. If the hair follicle doesn’t get the materials they need then the hair can suffer from a lack of materials to build healthy hair. This issue is also corrected simply by eating our natural foods and limiting our intake of fats.

The body can use the hair to expel toxins, so any hair growth that might occur from the essential oils would be more about waste elimination than having healthy hair. It would be a short-term fix with long-term damage. The essential oils touching the skin will cause irritation to the skin as well which can then lead to dandruff and rashes as the body becomes burned by toxins in the oils.

If we want strong healthy hair, strong nails and teeth, and a healthy complexion then we want to eat abundantly of leafy greens and savory fruits like cucumbers and tomatoes which are mineral rich. A large daily salad with cucumbers and tomatoes can not only build strong healthy hair and a beautiful complexion but can also help to sweep out the bowels, get the excess fat out of our system and help to keep the primary elimination channels, clean, clear, and moving efficiently. Our digestive tract is a muscle that requires lots of bulk to push against in order to work properly. Salad provides that bulk which allows for easy elimination and not overworking our cells. The muscles also get their strength and structure from the alkaline minerals found abundantly in leafy greens, so eating abundantly of those salad greens strengthens our elimination channels and further improves digestion and elimination.

April 21, 2023March 19, 2026

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Enemas, Colonics, and Herbs for Constipation

In the natural health community, there are a number of regimens and protocols that are neither natural nor health-promoting and yet are aggressively endorsed by the community at the expense of our health. Many of these are around speeding up the elimination of waste such as laxative herbs, enemas, and colonics. Today I would like to talk a little about these tremendously harmful practices.

Elimination is a subject that can be taboo to talk about and as such, we end up with a lot of harmful ideas about what is needed to eliminate regularly and how often we need to be eliminating waste. Like most other things we want to run before we walk. If we have been dealing with constipation we want it fixed right now and that opens us up to harmful habits and remedies which keep us trapped in the cycle of never healing our digestive system.

“Enemas. juices, roughage, and other substances or practices do not result in a pure (unpolluted) healthy body. Health is the normal state unless toxicosis and disease are caused by anti-vital practices and foods.“ Marti Fry, “Why Herbs are Harmful”

Enemas & Colonics

The only place water is designed to enter the body is through the mouth. Putting water in parts of the body where it doesn’t belong is an interference with normal body processes. When we interfere with normal body processes we are immediately creating disease, because disease is the lack of the ability of any part of the body or any cells to process normally.

Health can only be achieved when the conditions of health are put into place. We cannot undertake a habit that would injure a healthy body and expect that habit to improve a weakened or sick body.

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The tissues of our colon are extremely delicate. They were only designed to handle the end-of-the-line waste. The stomach, as the first line of defense, will expel by vomiting anything that is too harsh to go through the system. Then the bacteria and stomach acid break down the toxins. By the time waste has entered the colon much work has been done to it.

When we flush water up an exit-only orifice we wash out the bacteria, we disturb the mucus put in place to protect the walls of the digestive tract, we bruise and injure the tissues and with all of this damage, the ability of the colon to perform its duties is further decreasing. Rather than the enema or colonic helping to clean it is adding far more waste to the system, it is damaging the tissues making them less able to work normally and perhaps most importantly it is slowing down healing and extending our suffering immeasurably.

Coffee or Herb Enemas

As if the standard water-only enema is not damaging enough, humans have now turned to forcing harsh poisons up their exit-only orifice for even greater stimulation. When a substance is toxic entering through the normal entrance the body at least has defensive mechanisms to protect itself from the enervating substance. When these same poisons are forced into an area that was never designed for a liquid to enter, the body has no inbuilt defensive mechanism to protect it. The damage done is magnified considerably.

A poison entering an exit-only hole is no less a poison, it is an even greater poison. The stimulating effect of the herbs and coffee to force elimination is not an effect of the coffee or the herb as we will discuss below, they are the response created by the body as a life-saving measure to rapidly remove poison in order to keep the organism alive.

Herbs and Laxatives

Herbs are inert. This means they are incapable of taking action. The body takes all action against substances. Therefore, when a reaction occurs after the ingestion of a substance to create a rapid elimination we know that the body is taking that action. When the body initiates a rapid elimination it is because the body has been poisoned. Therefore laxatives and herbs with laxative properties are poisons that injure the body and force the body to rapidly eliminate them in order to survive.

Diarrhea is a life-saving effort, as such, it is a tremendous drain on our nerve energy. If we are already constipated, which is an energy drain, and then we apply poison to the body to expel constipation by inducing diarrhea, then we thoroughly exhaust the body causing enervation.

Enervation

It is enervating to take enemas or colonics, and enervation leads to toxemia and disease. We often mistake the euphoria following enervation as a health benefit.

“The symptoms of enervation that people experience after an enema or colonic are usually mistaken for symptoms of well-being. This is a common error, but one that needs to be corrected if health is to be obtained. An analogy can be made between enemas and drugs. Amphetamines, also know as “uppers,” definitely give a feeling of well-being. Yet, they do not bring health and, in fact, are extremely detrimental to the health. Just because something makes you feel good (at first) does not mean it is good for you. It could be that it’s stimulating and enervating you and setting the stage for disease.”

Enervation is the first step in disease. Nerve energy is generated by our bodies to handle the normal processes of life. When our nerve energy is stimulated by encounters with poisons or health-draining habits our body is not able to eliminate at the rate required to keep toxins from overtaking the body. At this point, the toxins begin to accumulate leading to toxicosis. Enervation is the first stage of disease. Toxicosis is the second stage of disease.

When we employ enervating habits like ingesting toxic herbs to stimulate elimination or using enemas and colonics to clean out our bowels the body becomes impaired. Because of this impairment less nerve energy is generated, and all of the body’s functions become impaired, including the elimination of endogenous metabolic wastes and exogenous poisons, leading to the second stage of disease.

If we are employing habits that enervate the body we keep our body from ever reaching a state of health. We are precluding health from existing within our body through our interventions which we think are cleaning our body. We are immeasurably extending our own suffering.

“We do not advocate the use of enemas because they are enervating and usually result in weakening of the muscle wall of the colon due to stretched and detached musculature.” – TC Fry

As we continue to keep ourselves trapped in this cycle of draining the nerve energy so elimination is slowed, followed by enervation with laxatives, enemas, and colonics, we are draining all energy from our eliminative systems. This problem can only be corrected by stopping all enervating practices and allowing rest. Our digestive tract is muscle contracting. If you ran a marathon today you would need to rest tomorrow. If you are constantly whipping your digestive muscles into work, they will need full rest to heal. They will NEVER heal if you keep using enemas, laxatives, herbs, or colonics because you are never allowing the muscle to rest.

Stimulants are subtly undermining

“So insidious in their action are all stimulants that the unwary are surprised by finding themselves more or less slaves to them when they are not conscious of using them to excess.

“The coffee headache is an example. A time comes when it is not convenient to get the usual breakfast cup. A dullness or languid feeling appears three or four hours after breakfast, that cannot be accounted for until some friend suggests that perhaps it is due to missing the coffee; but the victim is not convinced until he proves it true by trying it out several times. Some develop a headache, and still others are troubled with gaping or yawning and a feeling of oppression, due to the heart innervation brought on from the use of coffee.

“At first stimulus gently remove awareness – remove tire and actaute the mind and body. It should be obvious to reasoning minds that borrowed activity must be paid for sooner or later.“

“Using nerve energy in excess of normal production brings on enervation. Few people waste nerve-energy in one way only. Food is a stimulant. Overeating is overstimulating. Add to this excess one or two other stimulants – coffee or tobacco – excessive venery, overwork and worry, and one subject to the amount of drain of nerve energy will become decidedly enervated. Elimination falls far short of requirements; consequently toxin accumulates in the blood. This adds a pronounced auto-toxin stimulation to that coming from overstimulating habits, and completes a vicious circle. This complex stands for a disease producing Toxemia, which will be permanent except as toxin crises – so-called acute diseases – lower the amount of toxin, again to accumulate and continue until the habits that keep the body enervated are controlled. Perfect health cannot be established until all enervating habits have been eliminated.” John Tilden, Toxemia Explained

The body does its own cleaning of its internal parts.

Human hubris tends to lead us into paths of destruction. We determine that the body requires our intervention and in following that logic we repeatedly injure the body with our attempts to “help” or to “clean” or “to speed up detox”.

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The body’s infinite intelligence knows when to eliminate. You cannot control elimination without creating disease in your body. If the body has slowed elimination it is because the body requires the elimination to be slow. It is not a mistake the body is making. If you have put the conditions of health into place, eliminating all enervating habits then you know the body will return to normal function when enough burden has been eliminated. If you have not eliminated all of the obstructions to health then you cannot expect health to be present. There are no shortcuts, no magic fixes, and no ways to undo the damage of health-deteriorating practices through more health-deteriorating practices.

“On its own, our inner wisdom will establish the necessary priorities, determine how these may best be addressed, lay out the plan, the ways and means, with exact directions and specifications; and then address each in its own manner and at the appropriate time. We are required only to provide the tools, then step aside and watch the magic within unfold.” – T.C Fry, Life Science Course Lesson 89

April 20, 2023March 19, 2026

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Why You Should Spend More Time Thinking About Medical Deaths

Who you get your health information from matters if you care about the end results.

Doctors are not in the business of health, they are in the business of maintaining disease in their patients for profit. As such, their training by the industry does not allow for health practices, only for the application of various legally justified poisons to suppress symptoms of the body’s own healing processes.

If you are looking to get your car fixed would you go to a mechanic that had never fixed a car in their entire history as a mechanic and had a long history of destroying cars beyond repair?

Or would you want to take your car to the person who had fixed their own car?

Getting health advice from an industry that is the 3rd leading cause of death (iatrogenic deaths) when they are doing things exactly as they are designed to be done is like taking your car to the mechanic that never fixed a single car. You can do it, but you aren’t going to like the results.

In the Science of Natural Hygiene or the Terrain Model of Health, the sick person is treated like a healthy person whom we want to keep healthy. Natural Hygiene says the body has been poisoned, let us remove the cause of the poisoning and remove all obstructions to healing.

In the medical model, the already poisoned body, showing signs of illness (aka the body cleaning itself) is subjected to ever-increasing poisons until all signs of the body’s healing processes (the symptoms) have ceased. Allopathy says adding poison to a toxic body will lead to health. Poison + Poison = Health Two wrongs don’t make a right, you cannot poison a poisoned body back to health and so the end result of this idea is iatrogenic death as the 3rd leading cause of death, while mortality rates plummet whenever Doctors go on strike.

In herbal medicine, homeopathy, TCM, Ayurveda, and other similar medical modalities the same underlying principle follows the allopathic model – add a “natural” poison to poison the body back to health. The idea that something is natural and therefore better allows for distraction from the fact that these models still do nothing to remove the cause of the original poisoning, still apply poison to the body, and still focus on working against the body’s own self-healing, self-cleaning principles.

The body can only heal when you understand that the body is self-healing and you stop trying to interfere with the healing symptoms and instead focus your attention on the removal of the cause. Break a bone and the body will heal the bone – this we readily accept, but the same process happens in every other condition and in those cases, we reject the body’s own healing processes.

Remove the poisons from the diet, return to the natural foods your physiology is designed for and the body will have no need to create the symptoms we call disease. Disease must be continuously caused – the body always works back towards a state of health, so to remain in a state of disease requires constant effort.

All cells have specific needs which must be met for them to operate at peak efficiency. Any straying from these needs, especially by way of the foods we put in our mouths 3 meals per day will result in impaired function of the cells and the creation of body-controlled symptoms to facilitate a repair.

If we add additional poisons to the body when the body is creating the solution that is the disease symptoms, we progress the disease conditions further. This is why Iatrogenic medicine is the 3rd leading cause of death, and why 9 out of the top 10 death causes can also be directly attributed to modern medicine. You cannot poison a body back to health, you can only return to health by providing the conditions of health which your cells require. That means returning to the natural diet and only putting food into your body that is suited to your anatomy and physiology.

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/

Eat fruit and be well my friends.

April 12, 2023March 19, 2026

Lauren FarrisLeave a comment

Hernias

Question

HOW DOES TERRAIN THEORY EXPLAIN HERNIA? MY FRIEND’S HUSBAND IS STRUGGLING AND IS WAITING FOR THE SURGERY. IS THERE ANY WAY TO AVOID IT AND TRY TO TREAT IT HOLISTICALLY?

Answer

Hernias occur when the muscle tissues have been weakened by the body being in an acid state for a long period. The strength of our tissues, muscles, veins, teeth, and bones is all a result of the alkaline minerals in them. As the body becomes more and more acidic from eating cooked foods, animal tissues, refined foods, etc. these alkaline minerals are pulled out of the muscles, veins, arteries, teeth, and bones which leads to these tissues becoming weakened. Then the weak areas when subjected to strain will break under the pressure. In this weakened condition a muscle can herniate and a blood vessel can rupture leading to an aneurysm or stroke.

Since the problem was created by a diet that is lacking in the volume of alkaline minerals we all need to maintain health, the solution is to provide those minerals so the body can replenish them. This of course can only be done by supplying fresh, raw, whole fruits and lettuce. It cannot be accomplished by using supplements because supplements are inorganic minerals, unusable and toxic, while the minerals inside plant foods are organic minerals in the correct form for use by our bodies.

Surgery cannot fix the problem because the problem is not the hernia itself but the conditions which created the hernia. Getting surgery on a hernia is like putting a bandaid on a gunshot wound, it might hide the superficial problem but it’s ignoring the serious conditions of disease that led to the rupture. Where there are muscles weak enough to tear there are also veins and arteries that could burst, there are bones that are weakening, and there are organs that are losing their structural integrity, ignoring the underlying cause and leaving the body in an ever-worsening state. Adding the acid burden, the drug burden and the serious injury to tissues caused by the surgery itself only furthers the conditions of disease in the body and pushes the body further along the disease spectrum.

The only way to correct the condition is to remove the cause, correct the diet, return to the natural foods the body is designed to operate with, and let the body heal itself.

If you are struggling to return to the natural diet fully or new to the diet and want to learn how to transition back to your natural foods with ease, we offer a support group for transitioning, with recipes, meal plans, daily articles to help you get through cravings, and lots of inspiration to help you learn how to eat to maintain health. You can find out more at https://www.therawkey.com/terrain-diet-support-group/

March 16, 2023March 19, 2026

Lauren Farris2 Comments

Detox Symptoms

What are some common detox symptoms and why do they happen?

Detoxification is a continuously running process that cannot be stopped, started, sped up, or slowed down. It is the natural cleaning and repair processes that our bodies go through 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year for as long as we are alive. Detox is not something that we do to the body, nor is it something that we can control, speed up or slow down. We cannot take products to detox the body and we cannot stop detox processes. All we can do is add a burden to the body or alleviate the burden. To learn more about the realities of detox visit What is detox?

Today I would like to talk about what symptoms of detoxification we might experience and why, as well as some things we can do to help navigate our way through a healing event or healing crisis with as much comfort as possible.

Detox symptoms can range from mild to severe depending on a wide range of factors. These include the overall toxicity of our body, the total available energy (which is sometimes called vitality or nerve energy), the toxicity of the particular substance the body is trying to eliminate, the speed at which the body can eliminate, the location of the toxicity and its proximity to various channels of elimination.

The most common detoxification symptoms are:

Cold and flu symptoms – sneezing, coughing, runny nose, fever, congestion
Headaches
Stomach pain
Hair loss
Dry skin
Itching
Dry scalp/dandruff
Red or Irritated skin
Anxiety
Joint pain
Muscle pain
Inflammation
Swelling/edema
Weakness
Fatigue
Dizziness
Nausea
Loss of taste or smell
Shortness of breath/Difficulty breathing (that is not a chronic condition)
Diarrhea
Vomiting
UTI
Frequent or urgent urination
Mucus, Pus, or discharge
Ear Wax
Eye “sand” and other discharges from the eyes
Rashes
Ulcers
Red or itchy skin
Dry Skin
Dandruff
Acne
Cracking
Emotional swings
Chills
Weight loss
Bowel irritation including blood or mucus in stools
Anxiety
Depression
Brain fog
Abscesses
White, black, brown, or yellow coating on the tongue
Heart palpitations, racing heart, or irregular heartbeat

More severe detox symptoms can include:

Nerve pain
Twitching, tremors, or seizures
Old injuries reappearing
Ulcers or sores opening
Tumors rise to the surface and then expel outwards
Temporary paralysis
Temporary increase in tumor size
Loss of muscle mass (the body gets rid of muscle built with inferior animal proteins)
Jaundice
Brown urine
Mental confusion
Loose teeth, gum recession
Loss of sight or hearing

What to do when symptoms arise

The most important thing we can do whenever symptoms arise is to not add to the problem. The body requires energy to eliminate waste, toxins, and poisons, the less burden we create on our body the faster the body can eliminate problems and return to normal and ideal function.

Some best practices when entering a healing event include:

Going to bed – Resting allows the body to move energy inward to help the cleaning processes progress and complete faster.
Water Fasting – Digestion is one of our body’s largest energy drains. When we eat we divert energy away from the healing processes causing any symptoms we are experiencing to last longer. When we abstain from eating even for just a short time the body can shift the energy normally drained by digestion directly into the healing processes allowing them to complete more quickly and without complications.
Drinking plenty of water – The solution to pollution is dilution. Get your water intake up to help lubricate the elimination channels and dilute the acids and toxins the body is trying to expel so they cause less pain and symptoms on the way out. Most people feel their best when drinking between 1 and 2 gallons of water per day. Distilled water is the preferred water – learn why distilled is best here: THE SLOW PETRIFACTION OF THE BODY FROM INORGANIC MINERAL CONSUMPTION
Eating watery and fasting digesting fruits – If you cannot fast through a symptom or healing event then your next best option is watery fruits or juices. Fresh-pressed orange juice or eating melons and other fast-digesting fruits provide the body with hydration, alkaline minerals to neutralize acids, and the right sugar to run every cell in the body without requiring conversation.
Avoiding harmful substances – When the body is in a healing crisis the last thing we want to do is add more poison to the body. Avoid all harmful substances like drugs, supplements, salt, spices, caffeine, stimulants, alcohol, cooked foods, animal foods or any other form of poison.

Healing the body is not always a pleasant process. What goes in must come out eventually. When we embark on a healing process we are forced to experience the consequences which we have been putting off for many years on end with our drugging practices. However, the process is worthwhile. We are choosing short-term pain for long-term gain. The gain far outweighs the pain. The only way out of chronic disease is to endure a little bit of short-term discomfort. This process does not need to be a stressful or scary experience. If we are prepared with the right knowledge we can approach healing with confidence, calm, and poise. Having support along the way can be invaluable as well. If you need support, we are here to help you at any step along the way.

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

Eat fruit and be well my friends.

March 9, 2023March 19, 2026

Lauren Farris1 Comment

What is Detox really? It’s probably not what you think!

When people first learn about healing their bodies and the concept of detox, regenerative detoxification, or cleaning their inner terrain, there is often confusion about how the process works. We often think that, if we apply certain substances to the body, then we can detox our bodies.

We get sold on this idea with people marketing detox drinks, liver cleanses, herbs, tonics, and even the idea that various foods detox the body. Unfortunately, this idea is simply not based on reality. In fact, rather than helping the body to heal, these products cause harm to our bodies and rob us of the energy that could be used for healing processes.

There is nothing that can be applied to the body to detox or heal the body. Only the body can detox and heal itself. This concept is important to understand as we learn to put the conditions in place to heal ourselves. The body takes all actions.

Any substance applied to the body is inert – which means dead, and unable to take action. This means that every action is a result of the body taking action and not the substance taking action. All claims that a product detoxifies or assists the body in detoxification are simply false.

Healing is about removing the burden

When it comes to healing the body we cannot use products to start a detox, speed up detox, or influence detox in any way. What we can do instead is put the conditions in place to lift enough burden from the body so that the body is able to initiate the detoxification mechanisms efficiently and effectively. We can also stop putting in the poisons and toxins which require detoxification.

Most importantly we can stop burdening the body with foods that are difficult to digest, assimilate and eliminate and that drain our nerve energy and steal that energy away from the cleaning and healing processes.

In other words, healing is all about subtraction and not addition. Healing requires us to put less in the body, put less burden on the body, do less, and rest more. Healing is not about addition. We don’t add things to assist the body, we take things away to remove the burden from the body.

How do we remove the burden?

This is where returning to the biologically appropriate diet for your species comes in. This is why fruits and tender leafy greens lead to healing. These foods which are natural to our physiology present little to no burden and allow the body to operate as designed. This is not because the fruits and leafy greens are in and of themselves detoxifying the body, but because they are not a burden on the body.

Shifting from eating cooked, processed, dehydrated and denatured foods to fresh, raw, whole fruits, watery, mineral-rich leafy greens, nuts, seeds, and tender vegetables is a shift from foreign and dehydrating substances to the substances of which our cells were designed to operate with. By making this switch we are removing the burden of digesting, assimilating, and eliminating heavy, slow-digesting foods that drain our energy, overwork our cells, and leave a burden of excess that the body must work hard to eliminate.

Fruits are high in water content, allowing the body to hydrate the dried-out lymph fluids that are the result of a cooked food diet and providing water to the cells for their efficient operation. Properly hydrated cells work more efficiently than dehydrated cells, properly hydrated fluids flow freely requiring less work for the body and less energy drain. Fruits leave no additional waste for the body to clean up after. Fruits provide clean essential sugars to fuel every bodily process – every cell in our body runs on sugar, including our brain and fruits provide the right sugar that requires no conversion for use. Fruits create a positive energy balance- giving more energy to the body than they take away in the digestive process.

Healing is all about energy.

Every process the body initiates requires energy, including digestion and detoxification. When we consume fruits and leafy greens, our natural foods the amount of energy supplied to the body is greater than the amount of energy used in their digestion and elimination. When we supply the body with animal tissues and animal secretions (cheese, milk, etc.), cooked foods, processed foods, fermented foods, grains, beans, and other substances which are not suited to our physiology, we are supplying a substance that requires more energy to digest and eliminate than it is supplying. We are also supplying a substance that robs the body of water instead of supplying the body with water.

Digestion is one of the largest energy drains upon the body. The longer the digestive system has to run the more energy the body expends. Energy is either available for digestion or healing and repair. Every time we turn on digestion we burn energy that could be used for healing, when we consume unsuitable and non-ideal foods we utilize significantly more energy than when we consume foods our physiology is designed to consume. That energy could have been used in the healing and repair processes but instead is squandered in the elimination of unsuitable substances.

Water Fasting

Water fasting is a powerful tool we can use in our healing journey due to the conservation of energy. When we water fast, we abstain from all food for an extended period, consuming only water with nothing added. When we undertake this type of healing practice the body is able to shift all energy from digestion to healing. Every ounce of energy that was being put into the body’s massive digestion system is shifted to cleaning and repair. This is why people can heal years of damage done to their health in a few weeks of abstaining from eating and supplying the body with adequate water.

Fasting should only be undertaken once a proper study of the subject has been completed to avoid injuring the body post-fast. There is no danger in fasting, but putting unsuitable foods into the body after a fast can cause serious harm, so it is very important to first correct the diet and establish healthy eating habits before undertaking an extended fast.

Nerve Energy

Each detox process the body initiates drains our nerve energy. Each digestion process also drains our nerve energy. Each toxin we ingest drains our nerve energy. We have a finite amount of energy available in our lifetimes. If we continuously drain this energy by misfeeding ourselves with toxins, difficult to digest high protein foods, foods that deposit a lot of waste, or keeping our bodies in a state of constant stress with stimulant foods and beverages and stressful lifestyle choices, then we run down our energy banks and the body cannot gather enough energy to run a detox process. We also ultimately shorten our lives.

Unfortunately, we have been taught most of our lives to fear the body’s healing processes, calling the symptoms created by the body during its cleaning processes disease symptoms, like colds and flu, rashes, fever, runny nose, diarrhea, or vomiting. Our natural response to these expulsion symptoms which clean and heal is to put a stop to these symptoms as quickly as possible. We have been taught to ingest all manner of poisons and energy-depleting substances to put a stop to the symptoms created by our body’s own cleaning and repair processes.

We typically stop our body’s own healing processes through the use of pharmaceutical drugs, natural remedies, spices, or “medicinal foods” like garlic, honey, ginger, or turmeric. By doing so, we are adding to the body’s burden by poisoning and irritating the body, stimulating and depressing, and causing an excessive drain of nerve energy. These foods and drugs are treated by the body as poisons and as a result, the body’s response to them is to rev up its elimination processes, which rapidly drain our nerve energy reserves. When we use these to stop symptoms we are not helping our health, instead, we are damaging our health. We are adding to the burden on the body and draining our energy tank robbing our body of the ability to keep up with the day-to-day burdens and to clean out the backlog of waste that builds as we eat unnaturally.

If a product is used to stop the pain, stop inflammation, stop a cold or the flu then this product is harming your health, not helping it. Pain, inflammation, colds, flu, rashes, and all expulsion symptoms are all the body ridding itself of waste. Using that precious nerve energy to detoxify your body and repair your cells. When we intake a product that stops these processes, it doesn’t matter if this product is natural and organic or a pharmaceutical drug, or an illicit drug, in every case we are working against the body, stopping the body’s healing processes and harming the body.

Stopping these processes stops the body from ridding the waste it is trying to eliminate, while also adding more waste burden to our bodies and sacrificing the nerve energy that the body worked so hard to store up in the first place to heal the initial conditions that were causing the body distress.

The Healing Equation

Think of each decision you make as an addition or subtraction of your precious finite nerve energy. Each meal you eat, each remedy you take, and each drug you consume is a drain, a subtraction of your healing energy. Some subtractions are unavoidable, we must eat and fuel our body, therefore digestion is required, but we have a choice of fueling ourselves with the natural foods our body was designed to run on or fueling the body unnaturally with burdensome substances.

Since we have little control over the toxic world we live in, we must defend our bodies by being in control of the largest energy drains, the most harmful impacts on our health, and the things we put in our mouths three meals per day. If we conserve our nerve energy by eating only suitable foods, resting when needed, and fasting as needed then our body will have no trouble with the day-to-day detoxification of environmental pollution, stress, and other factors. If we are draining our bodies three meals a day then our bodies will never be able to keep up and disease will be our future.

So choose those foods which help put the conditions into place to allow the body to clean and heal.

Avoid those products which are marketed as detoxing your body, because only your body can detox itself. Take some vacations from digestion from time to time (water fasting). Eat your biologically and physiologically appropriate foods, fruits, leafy greens, nuts, seeds, and tender vegetables. Avoid those foods which take many hours to digest and steal your precious energy stores – processed foods, cooked foods, animal tissues, and secretions.

You are a miraculous, self-healing machine. Learn how to put the conditions into place for your body to heal itself. Then sit back and watch the magic happen.

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

Eat fruit and be well my friends.

March 9, 2023March 19, 2026

Lauren Farris4 Comments