Category: Natural Hygiene Basics

Endometriosis, Menstrual Pain, and Heavy Bleeding: A Dietary Disease

The Physiological Cost of the Modern Diet on the Female Body

Understanding Endometriosis and Menstrual Pathology

Endometriosis is commonly defined as the presence of uterine-like tissue outside the uterus, often accompanied by inflammation, scarring, pain, and heavy or prolonged menstrual bleeding. In conventional medicine, it is treated as a mysterious hormonal disorder requiring suppression, surgery, or lifelong management – and accompanying long-term misery for the woman suffering this condition. From the perspective of the science of health, Natural Hygiene, endometriosis is not an isolated disease entity, but rather the advanced outcome of long-standing chronic inflammation, uterine congestion, and progressive tissue degeneration with a known cause:  a backlog of cellular waste created by our unnatural modern living conditions and unnatural diet. By this standard, correction of the conditions that lead to endometriosis results in a corresponding correction of the disease itself.   

Painful menstruation, clotting, excessive bleeding, and the formation of endometrial growths arise from the same underlying condition. They reflect the state of the tissues and circulation within the pelvis, rather than being a necessary reproductive function. To understand endometriosis, one must first understand menstruation itself and distinguish ovulation from bleeding.

This Often Comes as a Shock: Ovulation Is Normal. Bleeding Is Not.

Ovulation is a normal physiological process involving the maturation and release of an ovum from the ovary. Menstrual bleeding is not synonymous with ovulation and is not required for fertility. Numerous physicians, physiologists, and hygienists documented that ovulation can and does occur without hemorrhage.

Herbert M. Shelton wrote:

“Ovulation is a normal process and is not necessarily accompanied with any sanguineous flow. My studies and experiences have led me inevitably to the conclusion that the loss of blood is pathological and that it is in no sense a natural or necessary part of the physiological process of ovulation.”

Women have conceived, carried pregnancies, and given birth without menstrual bleeding. Lower mammals ovulate regularly without hemorrhage. Even among women, the amount of bleeding varies enormously, ranging from none at all to severe, prolonged hemorrhage. These variations correspond directly with health status, not reproductive capability.

Lowenthal concluded that menstrual blood is normal blood and does not contain poisonous substances requiring elimination. Amenorrhea, the absence of menstruation, does not cause disease and should not be treated as pathological when it occurs in otherwise healthy individuals.

At this point, you might be thinking, of course, bleeding during a menstrual period is normal and appropriate – everyone bleeds once a month.  This is what I thought too.  For many years, I suffered through heavy bleeding, debilitating cramps, fatigue, and nausea every single month.   However, when I returned to a natural human diet, all of this ceased; fertility has remained measured and consistent for years. All of this has proven to me that the mainstream medical understanding of women’s monthly issues is far from accurate.   

The Physiology of Menstrual Bleeding and Pain

During the ovulatory cycle, the uterine lining thickens in preparation for possible implantation. In a healthy organism, if conception does not occur, this tissue is reabsorbed and the blood redistributed into the general circulation. In such conditions, the process is bloodless or nearly so.

In the diseased body, however, the uterine capillaries are weakened by chronic congestion, inflammation, and elevated blood pressure. When pelvic blood volume increases during the post-ovulatory phase, these fragile vessels rupture. Blood escapes through the uterine wall, producing menstruation.

Pain arises from the same condition. Inflamed tissues, impaired circulation, nerve irritation, and muscular spasm create cramping, nausea, fatigue, headaches, emotional instability, and weakness. Geddes and Thompson described menstruation as a process that “lies on the borders of pathological change,” noting that pain and systemic disturbance are evidence of abnormality rather than normal function.

Endometriosis represents a further extension of this process. Repeated congestion, hemorrhage, and tissue injury weaken the uterus and surrounding structures over time, allowing displaced tissue, scarring, and chronic inflammatory responses to develop.

Dietary Cause: Protein, Inflammation, and Circulatory Stress

Across clinical observation, animal experimentation, and population data, one factor consistently emerges as the primary driver of menstrual pathology: diet.

Animal proteins, particularly meat, dairy, eggs, fish, and other concentrated protein foods, increase blood pressure, inflammatory byproducts, and circulatory strain. Dr. Alexander Haig documented that animal protein consumption elevates blood uric acid levels, noting that uric acid concentration peaks just before and during menstruation, coinciding with increased bleeding and pain.

Haig wrote:

“The more uric acid there is in the blood, resulting from the increased consumption of meat, the more profuse will be the menstrual hemorrhage.”

Dr. Harry Campbell of England conducted experiments on rats and demonstrated that meat consumption induced inflammatory degeneration of the uterine mucosa. He concluded that unphysiological diets, especially exclusive flesh feeding, caused structural changes in the uterus, leading to sterility.

Campbell stated:

“The use of non-physiological diet, for example exclusive flesh, induces a modification of the uterine mucous membrane associated with sterility.”

Dr. Schreuer, a gynecologist, concluded that menstruation and leucorrhea originate from inflammatory endometrial conditions caused by intestinal toxins derived from high-protein diets. He emphasized that detoxification of the blood and intestinal tract through a low-protein vegetarian diet was necessary for correction.

Evidence From Animals and Civilization

In the wild, animals do not menstruate. They experience estrus cycles that are bloodless and infrequent. However, under domestication, when animals are overfed and given unnatural diets rich in protein and fat, estrus becomes more frequent and eventually hemorrhagic and uncomfortable.

Havelock Ellis observed:

“It is evident that the increasing frequency of menstruation as we rise toward civilized man is based upon increase in nutrition.”

By nutrition, he refers to an overabundance of calorie intake and to nutrient-dense but burdensome foods.  

Marshall, in his Physiology of Reproduction, noted that domesticated cows, fed unnatural high-protein grain heavy diets, develop true hemorrhage where wild animals do not. The same pattern appears in humans and all other animals that humans feed. 

I have personally witnessed this in my rescue dogs.   Unspayed females who spend their lives on kibble bleed heavily and show clear signs of discomfort during their heat. Still, within 1 year of being returned to the natural dog diet, the bleeding ceases entirely, yet the females still go into heat, however, less frequently, typically twice per year instead of 3 or 4 times on kibble.   

Wartime Evidence and Dietary Restriction

During World War I, widespread food restrictions, and specifically restrictions in animal foods, in Germany led to dramatic increases in amenorrhea(lack of bleeding). Rubner reported that, among women receiving rations containing approximately 31 grams of protein daily, menstruation ceased in large numbers. Strickel documented that cases of amenorrhea in Berlin were seven times more frequent during wartime than before.

These changes correlated with a lack of animal foods available to the general public during the war.  Importantly, menstruation returned when food abundance and meat and dairy consumption resumed.

Clinical Observations on Low-Protein Diets

Dr. Arnold Ehret observed that when women adopted a low-protein, fruit-and-vegetable-based diet, menstruation diminished progressively and often disappeared entirely.

Ehret wrote:

“If the female body is made perfectly clean through diet, menstruation ceases.”

Dr. George Starr White similarly reported curing thousands of women of painful and excessive menstruation through dietary reduction and raw food living.  

A return to the natural human diet of fresh fruits, salads, tender vegetables, nuts, and seeds, low in protein and high in carbohydrates, results in an elimination of all menstrual pain and a gradual reduction in bleeding, until the body returns to a complete state of health and bleeding ceases entirely.  Yet, in all cases, fertility remains, and women who follow the natural human diet have successful pregnancies and healthy children free from the disease conditions common in those children born to mothers consuming an unnatural cooked and high-protein diet.  

This has been my own personal experience as well, starting in just the first few months of eating raw fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seeds, I saw a marked reduction in both the pain and length of my menstrual bleeding.  By 18 months, I had only minimal bleeding and zero pain, and by 6 years on fully raw, I saw a complete cessation of bleeding.   Now bleeding will return if I have an excess of fats or cooked meals during the month, but it is only minimal bleeding and no cramping.  

Fertility Without Bleeding

A central misconception is that fertility requires menstrual bleeding. The evidence repeatedly contradicts this belief. Ovulation continues in the absence of bleeding, pregnancy occurs, lactation follows, fertility remains intact without hemorrhaging monthly, and all pain, emotional swings, bloating, and other negative symptoms cease. 

Bleeding is not a sign of reproductive readiness. It is a sign of vascular weakness and inflammatory burden. Heavy bleeding, clotting, and pain indicate deeper systemic stress, not biological necessity.

Why Diet Determines Menstrual Bleeding and Pain

Before examining lived experience, it is necessary to understand why dietary changes profoundly affect menstruation. Menstrual bleeding is not regulated by hormones alone, nor is it an unavoidable feature of female fertility. It is a mechanical and circulatory outcome that reflects the condition of the blood, the integrity of the uterine tissues, and the body’s overall inflammatory burden.

Two dietary factors repeatedly emerge in both historical research and clinical observation as the primary drivers of menstrual hemorrhage and pain: excess fat and excess protein.

How High-Fat Diets Increase Menstrual Bleeding and Pain

High-fat diets disrupt menstruation by impairing circulation, increasing inflammation, and weakening capillary integrity in the uterine lining. This effect occurs regardless of whether the fat comes from animal foods, dairy, oils, or excessive nuts and seeds.

Excess body fat thickens the blood and slows capillary flow. As blood viscosity increases, venous return from the pelvic organs becomes impaired, leading to congestion of the uterus and surrounding tissues. This congestion increases intracapillary pressure within the delicate endometrial capillary network.

At the same time, high-fat intake suppresses lymphatic drainage. The lymphatic system is responsible for clearing cellular waste and excess fluid from tissues. When lymph flow is sluggish, inflammatory byproducts accumulate in the uterine lining, further weakening capillary walls.

As ovulation approaches and pelvic blood supply naturally increases, these compromised capillaries are unable to withstand the pressure. The result is seepage or rupture, which manifests as menstrual bleeding. The higher the fat intake, the greater the congestion and the more pronounced the bleeding.

Pain arises because congested, inflamed tissues are being forced to expand against resistance. Cramping is not a purposeful function. It is a mechanical response to tissue irritation, pressure, and restricted circulation.

This explains why women often observe that menstrual symptoms worsen with high-fat raw diets and improve dramatically when fat intake is reduced, even when all foods are otherwise natural and uncooked.

How High-Protein Diets Increase Menstrual Bleeding and Pain

High-protein diets disrupt menstruation through a different but equally damaging pathway. Excess protein metabolism produces acidic waste products, including urea, uric acid, and ammonia, which irritate tissues and burden the circulatory system.

When protein intake exceeds the body’s structural and repair needs, it ceases to function as nourishment and instead becomes a source of systemic inflammation. The uterine mucosa, composed of delicate glandular tissue and dense capillary networks, is especially vulnerable to this irritation.

Protein metabolism also has a dehydrating effect. Large amounts of water are required to neutralize and eliminate nitrogenous waste. As plasma volume decreases, blood thickens, circulation slows, and pelvic blood pressure rises.

Elevated blood pressure places additional strain on already inflamed uterine capillaries. When combined with cyclical increases in pelvic blood flow following ovulation, this pressure results in capillary leakage or rupture.

High-protein diets also overstimulate the reproductive tract. Excess protein in follicular fluid increases follicular fluid volume and accelerates follicular rupture, leading to frequent ovulation with inadequate recovery time. The uterus is repeatedly congested without sufficient opportunity for tissue repair, creating a state of chronic pelvic hyperemia (increased blood flow into tissues).

Pain, clotting, fatigue, and emotional volatility are not signs of hormonal imbalance. They are indicators of inflammatory overload, circulatory stress, and reduced tissue resilience.

When protein intake is reduced, these stressors diminish. Blood pressure lowers, inflammation subsides, capillary integrity improves, and menstruation becomes lighter, less frequent, or disappears entirely while ovulation and fertility remain intact.

Menstruation, Fertility, and the Myth of Necessary Bleeding

Ovulation and menstruation are distinct processes. Ovulation is essential to reproduction. Hemorrhage is not.

Across species, ovulation typically occurs without bleeding. In both humans and animals, menstruation becomes more frequent and more hemorrhagic under conditions of domestication, overfeeding, and dietary excess. When these conditions are removed, bleeding diminishes without impairing reproductive capacity.

Women who do not menstruate monthly due to improved health, reduced inflammation, and restored circulatory balance remain fully capable of ovulation and conception. The absence of bleeding indicates tissue integrity rather than reproductive failure.

With this physiological context established, we can examine how this process manifests in real human experience.

Personal Experience

After returning to a natural human diet of fruits, salads, vegetables, and small amounts of nuts and seeds, it took approximately six years for bleeding to stop entirely. Before this change, menstruation was debilitating. The first day involved severe cramping, inability to leave bed, and frequent vomiting.

Notable improvement appeared within six months. Pain reduced steadily. Bleeding lessened year by year. Today, bleeding occurs only when cooked foods or excessive fat are consumed. Even then, cramping does not occur. When fully raw and eating naturally low-fat, bleeding ceases entirely while ovulation continues regularly.

Observations in Rescued Animals

The same physiological principles appear in rescued female dogs. When fed kibble-based diets, unspayed females bleed heavily during heat. After transitioning to a natural canine diet of approximately sixty percent fruit and forty percent raw, lean prey meals, bleeding decreases with each heat cycle. It typically stops entirely within eighteen to twenty-four months. Ovulation continues,0 and fertility remains.

Community Testimonials

These outcomes are not isolated.

“Heavy bleeding and painful periods take any two to three years to reverse fully. My period went down to 2.5 days, no pain, usually no clots. When I hydrate well and eat watery fruit, it becomes even lighter.”

“I had stage 4 endometriosis with horrendous pain. After one year on a raw diet, pain went from two days to about five hours. I am looking forward to being completely pain-free.”

“I am 49. Within two to three months on NH, bleeding became minimal, with many fewer days and far less painful. My cycle lengthened naturally to about six weeks.”

“Eliminating dairy was a game-changer. I went from seven days of heavy pain to light, easy cycles lasting three days or less.”

“My cysts cleared, painful periods stopped, and I started ovulating again after adopting Natural Hygiene twenty years ago.”

“My periods vanished entirely. No menopause symptoms, no hormonal rollercoasters.”

Why the Natural Human Diet Heals Endometriosis and Menstrual Pain

Endometriosis, painful menstruation, and excessive bleeding are not isolated reproductive disorders. They are expressions of systemic inflammation, impaired circulation, lymphatic congestion, and chronic irritation of pelvic tissues. When a woman returns to a natural human diet centered on ripe fruits, tender vegetables, salads, and modest amounts of nuts and seeds, the body is no longer burdened by excess protein, fat, acidic waste, or inflammatory byproducts. Blood viscosity decreases, pelvic congestion resolves, lymphatic drainage improves, and the uterine tissues are provided with the conditions required for repair rather than continual inflammation. 

As the endometrial lining regains integrity and capillary strength, hemorrhage ceases to occur under normal cyclical pressure, and pain diminishes because tissues are no longer swollen, congested, or chemically irritated. Endometriosis improves for the same reason. The inflammatory environment that allowed ectopic endometrial tissue to survive and proliferate is removed, and the body gradually reabsorbs and resolves abnormal tissue as circulation and elimination normalize. What remains is ovulation without hemorrhage, cyclic change without suffering, and fertility without the pathological blood loss that modern culture has come to accept as normal.

Menstruation, as it is commonly experienced, is not a biological necessity but a reversible condition. When the causes of disease are removed, the body returns to health.  Health is a state of comfort; disease is a state of discomfort. A body that is heavily uncomfortable for 1 week out of every 4 is not a body in a state of health; it is a body in distress.  

Further Study and Next Steps

Menstrual pain, heavy bleeding, and endometriosis do not exist in isolation. They are part of a larger pattern created by diet, circulation, elimination, and the cumulative effects of unnatural living. For those seeking a deeper understanding of the foundations of this process, the following articles elaborate on the principles discussed here and provide essential context.

To begin with, the dietary framework itself, What Is the Natural Human Diet? explains the species-appropriate foods that support tissue integrity, circulation, and reproductive health. This is further clarified in Our Natural Foods Do Not Create Discomfort or Disturbance to the Body, which examines why pain, runny nose, teary eyes, and digestive distress are signals of incompatibility between certain foods and their irritating properties. 

For a broader understanding of disease formation, Why Do We Get Sick? outlines how chronic symptoms develop over time when the causes of irritation and overload are left in place. This same physiological logic applies to reproductive pain and pelvic disease. It is explored from a different angle in The Unnatural Pain of Childbirth, which addresses why pain has become normalized in processes that were never designed to be traumatic.

Mineral imbalance and tissue hardening also play a central role in gynecological disease. The Slow Petrifaction of the Body from Inorganic Mineral Consumption explains how non-assimilable minerals contribute to congestion, stiffness, and impaired circulation throughout the body, including the uterus and surrounding tissues. Finally, What Is Detox Really? It’s Probably Not What You Think! clarifies the body’s eliminative processes and why symptom reduction follows the removal of dietary and environmental burdens rather than the stimulation or suppression of symptoms.

For those who want individualized guidance, consultations are available to assess diet, symptom patterns, and recovery timelines on a case-by-case basis. Ongoing education, structured guidance, and peer discussion are also available through the Natural Diet Support Group, where these principles are applied in daily life, and long-term healing is tracked.

Understanding physiological processes enables us to identify causes and restore health. The body does not need to be forced, corrected, or overridden. It simply needs the conditions of health provided so it can function how it was designed to function – free from pain, with abundant energy, and a life filled with joy.

Lauren FarrisLeave a comment

Why Salt and Seasonings Trigger Hunger Pains  –  And How to Break the Cycle

Earlier this month we talked about the difference between true hunger and the uncomfortable sensations most people call hunger. Those sharp pangs, hollowness, tightness, or “acidic” feelings are not hunger at all – they are irritation. And one of the fastest ways to eliminate these so-called “hunger pains” is to remove the irritants that trigger them, especially salt and spices.

Salt, seasonings, condiments, and other stimulants are not harmless additions to a meal. They are chemical irritants the body must defend against. According to Natural Hygiene, irritation is an early stage of disease – one of the first signs that the body is being forced to react to something abnormal. When an irritant enters, the body immediately shifts energy away from normal functions and into protective, eliminative actions.

This internal shift is why the discomfort does not appear during eating, but later – often that evening or the following morning. You feel it in the stomach, but it is not an empty-stomach signal. It is the body saying:

“Something irritated me. I am trying to clean it up.”

We misinterpret this healing activity as “hunger” because it goes away when we eat. But digestion requires the body to stop its repair work, redirect nerve energy back to the stomach, and postpone the cleanup. As Tilden, Carrington, and Shelton taught repeatedly, the body cannot run both digestion and repair at the same time. Digestion always takes priority, which gives the illusion that the discomfort was solved by food – when in truth, the body was simply forced to set healing aside.

Over time, this becomes a cycle:
Irritant → discomfort → eating → temporary relief → irritation resumes → more eating.
 It feels like hunger, but it is really an irritation-suppression loop.

Salt as an Irritant, Not a Nutrient

Salt is one of the most common triggers of these false hunger sensations. Salt is not a food; it is an inorganic mineral that the body cannot use. Because it cannot be assimilated, the body must eliminate it. And before it can eliminate it, the body has to dilute, neutralize, and buffer it – work that pulls from your nerve energy and contributes to the cycle of irritation described above.

As Shelton wrote, “Disease is a remedial effort – a struggle of the vital powers to purify the system.” Salt forces the body into these small remedial efforts over and over again. Every irritation requires the body to act defensively. Every defensive action feels like discomfort. And every discomfort gets mislabeled as hunger.

This is why people often say fruit or salads don’t fill them up while salted cooked foods do. The stimulation from salt creates an artificial rise in sensation, followed by a crash and a new wave of irritation. Cooked foods add their own irritants – acids, oils, condiments, damaged proteins – but salt exaggerates the effect dramatically.

When you remove the irritants, the entire cycle calms. True hunger becomes clear, quiet, unmistakable, and completely free of pain.

How Removing Salt Reduces Cravings and Emotional Eating

One of the most surprising changes people experience when moving fully into the natural diet is how quiet the body becomes. Without salt and spices constantly irritating the tissues, the digestive tract stops sending distress signals. The stomach feels soft and neutral between meals.

Cravings drop dramatically because the chemical stimulus is gone. Remember: irritation creates the feeling of emptiness or agitation, which triggers the urge to eat. Remove the cause, and the urge dissolves.

This is why many people become more compliant with the natural diet once they remove salt. Their emotional eating decreases because the physical triggers are gone. They feel stable between meals. They experience for the first time what real hunger actually feels like – gentle, pleasant, arising mainly in the mouth and throat, not the stomach.

Practical Transition Tools for Ending Salt Cravings

Completely dropping salt overnight can be challenging if the taste buds are still conditioned. Salt is stimulating, and like all stimulants, it takes a little time for the senses to return to normal.

Here are a few transitional tools that help break the dependency while staying aligned with the natural diet:

🥬 Use celery
 Celery contains natural sodium in an organic form the body can use. Chopped celery in salads adds a pleasant “salty” lift without irritation.

🍅 Add savory fruits like tomatoes
 Fresh tomatoes, sun-dried tomatoes (unsalted), and tomato juices add depth and savoriness without salt.

🌱 Seaweed
 Dulse or nori flakes provide a briny mineral flavor. Use lightly – these still contain inorganic minerals but are far less irritating than salt and can help bridge the gap.

🥄 Bragg’s Liquid Aminos (as a temporary tool)
 Not ideal long-term because it is a fermented product, but unlike salt it does not contain crystalline inorganic sodium chloride. It can help you transition away from the sharper hit of table salt while taste buds adjust.

🌿 Herbs instead of seasonings
 Fresh basil, cilantro, parsley, dill, mint, and green onions stimulate the senses without irritating the tissues like hot spices do.  These are still minor irritants, but not nearly as strong as the salt, pepper, spicy peppers, ginger, turmeric and other spices.   Dried versions are less irritating as well, as the drying process reduces the potency of the irritants, which are found in the oils.   As the oils break down, the irritation diminishes. 

As taste perception normalizes, you’ll find that fruits and salads taste dramatically sweeter, richer, and more satisfying. What once felt “bland” becomes refreshing and flavorful.  Tasteless lettuce actually has a deep and complex taste profile that we can only appreciate once we have stopped injuring our taste buds with the salt and other irritants. 

What Happens When You Remove the Irritants

When salt and spices leave the diet, several things occur:

• Stomach and intestinal irritation calms quickly
 • “Hunger pains” stop appearing between meals
• Cravings decrease because the stimulant cycle has ended
• Meals become more satisfying with smaller portions
• Energy becomes more stable throughout the day
• The lymphatic system clears more efficiently because fewer irritants are entering the body
• True hunger becomes unmistakable and peaceful

This is one of the simplest yet most profound shifts people can make in their diet. When the irritants stop coming in, the body no longer has to react. The energies previously forced into defense can move into repair, digestion, and daily functions instead.

What Helps You Step Away From Salt?

Salt cravings often surprise people because they are not emotional cravings – they are chemical ones. But once you understand what your body is doing, it becomes easier to make supportive choices.

Do you have tricks or transition foods that helped you break the salt habit?
What made it easier for you to stay consistent?

Share your thoughts and experiences below – your experience might help someone else make that shift.

Lauren FarrisLeave a comment

Why We Get Cancer: A Natural Hygiene Perspective

One of the most damaging things medicine has done around cancer is not just the treatments, but the story it tells.

According to the medical narrative, cancer is a mystery. It strikes at random. It is genetic bad luck, environmental roulette, or an unavoidable ticking time bomb hidden in your DNA. You are told there is no clear cause, no clear prevention, and very limited control. Your role is to comply, endure, and hope.

That story is profoundly disempowering.

When people believe cancer “just happens,” they are robbed of agency. Fear replaces understanding. Treatments are framed as battles against an enemy rather than an opportunity to restore order. And when those treatments fail, people are left feeling betrayed by their own bodies.

Natural Hygiene offers a radically different and far more empowering explanation.

Cancer Is Not Random

From a Natural Hygiene perspective, cancer is not an invader, not bad luck, and not a mystery. It is the final stage of a long biological process that has been unfolding for years, often decades.

The body is designed to heal, cleanse, and repair itself constantly. When waste, toxins, and irritation accumulate faster than the body can eliminate them, the body adapts. First through mild symptoms, then chronic inflammation, then tissue damage. Cancer does not appear suddenly. It is the end result of prolonged burden and impaired elimination.

This understanding is not new. Natural Hygiene pioneers explained that cancer arises after repeated suppression of the body’s earlier healing efforts. When inflammation is drugged away, when eliminative symptoms are silenced, when the causes are never removed, the body eventually resorts to containment rather than elimination. Tumors form as a last-ditch effort to isolate toxic material and damaged tissue from the rest of the system .

Cancer, then, is not the body “turning against itself.” It is the body doing the best it can under impossible conditions.

This Is Empowering, Not False Hope

This perspective does not exist to shame people or place blame. No one chooses to be sick. Most people are doing the best they can with the information they were given.

But responsibility and blame are not the same thing.

Understanding cause is empowering because it means change is possible. If cancer has a cause, it can be addressed. If it develops through a process, that process can be interrupted. If the body created the condition, the body also holds the intelligence to reverse it when given the opportunity.

This is where medicine often fails. It focuses on destroying the tumor while ignoring the conditions that produced it. Killing cells without correcting the conditions that made those cells necessary does not restore health. It only forces the body to adapt again, often in more destructive ways.

Natural Hygiene focuses on removing causes rather than attacking effects.

The Body Is Not Your Enemy

Cancer cells are not foreign invaders. They are altered human cells that have lost their ability to function cooperatively within the body. This loss of organization happens when cells are repeatedly exposed to toxic conditions, poor nutrition, lack of rest, emotional stress, and chemical overload.

When those conditions are corrected, the body often regains control.

This is why Natural Hygiene emphasizes rest, fasting when appropriate, simple natural foods, clean water, fresh air, sunlight, and the removal of all unnecessary burdens. These are not alternative treatments. They are the basic conditions under which the body was designed to repair itself and more importantly, they are the most basic conditions required for health. 

Healing does not come from fighting the body. It comes from cooperating with it.

Hope Rooted in Biology, Not Wishful Thinking

The medical model offers no hope, only long shots, and criticizes and demonizes those who do, by calling it false hope.   The medical model is also based upon disease creation for profit and disease maintenance for profit.  The science of  Natural Hygiene offers hope through understanding the laws of nature and offers us all an opportunity to align ourselves with these unbreakable laws and return to a state of health..

When people realize that cancer is not a curse but a consequence, fear begins to loosen its grip. When they see their body as intelligent rather than broken, trust can be rebuilt. When causes are addressed instead of suppressed, real healing becomes possible.

This does not mean every case can be reversed. Damage can reach a point where full repair is no longer possible. But even then, understanding brings peace, clarity, and often a better quality of life.

Cancer is not proof that the body has failed. It is proof that the body has been trying to survive for a very long time. And that truth is not frightening. It is empowering.

Healing is possible when we are empowered with the correct knowledge to return our body to a state of pristine health. 

If this perspective resonates with you and you want to go deeper, the next step is education. Healing begins with understanding how the body actually works, not fighting it. To continue exploring these principles, you may find it helpful to start with Embracing Our Self Healing Body, a video presentation that walks through how the body cleans, repairs, and restores itself when conditions are corrected. 

From there, The Nature and Purpose of Disease expands on why symptoms exist at all and how disease functions as a body-directed process rather than a failure. 

For practical application, The Natural Human Diet explains what the body is biologically designed to thrive on, while Disease 101 and Why Do We Get Sick break down how illness develops step by step and how it can be interrupted by removing causes. 

Together, these resources form a foundation for understanding health through Natural Hygiene and reclaiming trust in the body’s innate intelligence to heal.

Have more questions? Want to get answers about your specific health issues or concerns? I offer consultations, learn more about them here: 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! Support Group Information and Sign Up Form

Eat fruit and be well my friends.

Lauren FarrisLeave a comment

Cancer Explained Simply: Removing Fear Through Biological Understanding

Understanding cancer without fear – and how to support the body instead of suppressing its healing efforts

A cancer diagnosis is often presented as a terrifying mystery—something that suddenly “attacks” the body without cause, explanation, or hope beyond aggressive intervention. This fear-based narrative leaves people feeling powerless, rushed, and disconnected from their own biology.

This Cancer Mini Guide was created to replace fear with understanding.

From the perspective of Natural Hygiene (Life Science), cancer is not an enemy invading the body, but a meaningful biological response to long-standing internal conditions. When we understand why cancer develops and what the body is attempting to do, the path forward becomes clearer, calmer, and far more empowering. This guide explains cancer in plain language—what leads up to it, the purpose it serves, and how to create the conditions that allow the body’s innate self-cleaning and self-healing processes to function as designed

Cancer Mini Guide – The Raw KeyDownload

This free Cancer Mini Guide explains cancer through the lens of Natural Hygiene, showing that cancer has understandable causes, a biological purpose, and a logical path toward healing. Rather than offering treatments or protocols, this guide focuses on removing the causes of disease and supporting the body’s natural ability to repair itself. Designed to be clear, concise, and non-fear-based, it’s an ideal resource to share with friends or loved ones navigating a cancer diagnosis.

Why Download This Guide?

This guide is for you if you:

  • Feel overwhelmed or frightened by a cancer diagnosis
  • Want a clear, non-medical explanation of why cancer develops
  • Are seeking a perspective that does not rely on fear, urgency, or suppression
  • Want to understand how diet, hydration, stress, and lifestyle affect healing
  • Need a simple resource to share with family or friends who are worried

Unlike conventional approaches that focus on “fighting” the body, this guide helps you understand how to work with the body’s intelligence instead of against it.

What You’ll Learn Inside

  • Why cancer is not random, mysterious, or caused by bad luck
  • How chronic toxicity and uneliminated waste lead to cancer formation
  • The body’s use of tumors as a protective and containment mechanism
  • Why suppressive approaches often worsen long-term outcomes
  • The three foundational steps for supporting healing in any disease state
  • How hydration, fruit-based nutrition, rest, and stress reduction support repair
  • Why removing causes matters more than adding “treatments”

This guide does not diagnose, treat, or cure disease. Instead, it explains how health is restored when the conditions that caused disease are removed.

Who This Guide Was Created For

This mini guide was written in response to years of requests from people asking for a short, clear resource they could give to someone they love—without overwhelming them or frightening them further. It’s designed to be read in one sitting and revisited as understanding deepens.

Recommended Further Reading

If you’d like to continue building a clear, grounded understanding of how the body heals itself, the articles below expand on the principles shared in this presentation. Together, they offer a deeper look at diet, water, elimination, and the healing processes often misunderstood as “disease.”

🔗 What Is the Natural Human Diet?
An exploration of the foods humans are biologically designed to thrive on, and why simplicity, digestibility, and species-appropriate nourishment matter more than dietary trends.
👉 Read the article: https://www.therawkey.com/what-is-the-natural-human-diet/

🔗 The Nineteen Factors of Optimal Health
Health is not created by food alone. This article outlines the full range of conditions—physical, environmental, and emotional—that must be present for the body to heal and sustain vitality.
👉 Read the article: https://www.therawkey.com/the-nineteen-factors-of-optimal-health/

🔗 Why Do Natural Hygienists Drink Distilled Water?
A clear explanation of water’s role in elimination and repair, and why purity matters when the body is dissolving and removing accumulated waste.
👉 Read the article: https://www.therawkey.com/why-do-natural-hygienists-drink-distilled-water/

🔗 Why Do We Get Sick?
A foundational article that brings together toxemia, vitality, and the body’s self-healing intelligence to answer one of the most important questions we can ask about health.
👉 Read the article: https://www.therawkey.com/why-do-we-get-sick/

🔗 What Is Detox Really? It’s Probably Not What You Think!
A reframing of “detox” as a continuous, intelligent biological process—not a product, cleanse, or protocol—and why misunderstandings around detox create unnecessary fear.
👉 Read the article: https://www.therawkey.com/what-is-detox-really-its-probably-not-what-you-think/

🔗 Detox Symptoms
An explanation of common healing symptoms—such as fatigue, rashes, mucus, and inflammation—and why these signs often indicate progress rather than failure.
👉 Read the article: https://www.therawkey.com/detox-symptoms/

True healing begins when we stop fighting the body and start understanding it. Education replaces fear with clarity, and clarity allows the body to do what it was designed to do.

Lauren FarrisLeave a comment

Embracing our Self Healing Body – Video Presentation

Understanding The Seven Stages of Disease and How We Heal

Learn about how your body cleans and heals in today’s presentation: Embracing Our Self-Healing Body, The Nature and Purpose of Disease, and the Seven Stages of Disease. In this video we define disease, discuss why disease is created and what the purpose of disease symptoms are, the progressive nature of disease, the seven stages of disease, the dangers of treatment and the benefits of removal of the cause, and how we lift the burden off the body to allow5 our miraculous self-healing body to remove disease and return to a state of pristine health.

Continue Your Learning: Deepen Your Understanding of Health and Healing

If this presentation resonated with you, the articles below will help you go deeper into how and why the body heals the way it does. These readings expand on the concepts of self-healing, toxemia, and the natural progression of disease discussed in the video.

How do we achieve true health? The Nineteen Factors of Optimal Health

What do we mean by detox? What is detox really? And a follow up on Detox Symptoms

What about viruses? The Viral Theory of Disease Causation. And, Are viruses real?

What is our ideal diet? 1.) The Natural Human Diet. 2.) Humans are herbivores. And 3.) The Carnivore Delusion.

Lauren Farris2 Comments

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 Farris3 Comments

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

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.  

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The Hardest Thing to Do Is “Nothing”

Often, it’s the actions we take that cause the most harm.

Article by Dr Virginia Vetrano

“Poor baby, she’s so sick. And look at her, she can barely lift her head!”

“Yes, it is true, she is sick and has a high fever. But don’t worry, she’s fasting and the fever won’t last too long.”

The first day went by without the in-laws saying too much, so I felt relieved. My husband thought I knew what I was doing and he didn’t bother me too much about how I fed our baby. So I didn’t have too much concern that he would stop me from fasting her.

The second day went by. All the family came to visit the baby. They were a little concerned. But when the third and fourth days had passed and the baby still had a fever, I really had to calm their fears. It was an unheard of thing, to fast a two-year-old baby. Everybody knows when babies have fever they need penicillin to knock it out. To refuse to see a medical doctor when a baby is ill is a crime, they say, and to fast a baby is even worse it is sheer craziness. I’m surprised the family put up with my ways as well as they did. Perhaps I acted like I knew what I was doing or my faith in Natural Hygiene was so strong that it calmed their fears for a while, but on the fifth day of the child’s fast even my husband panicked. He stormed out of the house saying, “If she isn’t better by tomorrow, I’m taking her to a doctor.”

I was just as concerned for my baby as they were, but to let my concern or lack of faith show would have been the end of her Hygienic care. I waited it out patiently, knowing that nature heals. I took her temperature daily, kept her warm, permitted her to rest quietly, and prevented people from smoking in the room, or from waking her up to see if she was alive. I kept the place quiet so she could sleep and do nothing else.

It’s hard to buck the whole world, but it is even harder to sit back and wait for the day when a fever will drop. Every day you watch, listen, and hope. Infants that are fasting and who have fever are very quiet. They sleep a lot and this is also disquieting when you are a neophyte Hygienist and not a doctor. All sorts of fears enter your head.

“Is she okay?” you keep wondering. “Is she breathing?” “Is she still alive?” You are scared to death. You want to shake the child, or awaken it, or do just anything to reassure yourself that everything is fine. But I didn’t do anything rash. I had to have patience and wait upon nature to complete her wonderful healing process. I was very worried, but I had faith in the living organism. Finally, her fever broke about mid-day on the fifth day of her fast, and there were sighs of relief all around. Her father was no longer tense and worried. The baby’s great aunt was no longer hovering over her, wringing her hands. In fact, we all relaxed. That was the only time the baby was sick in her life. Thank goodness! I had weathered the storm. But I know how hard it is to sit and wait, and do absolutely nothing intelligently.

I am pleased I held out. I waited patiently for nature to heal my little baby. But others don’t. Just recently, the parents of a six-month-old baby became frightened by their baby’s symptoms. They called me, but instead of doing what I suggested they took the baby to the physician. They didn’t want to fast the baby. This is when the trouble started. He insisted on all sorts of harmful and painful tests for the baby, including X rays. It takes so long to establish a diagnosis that, had the baby been cared for Hygienically, it would have been well long before the medical diagnosis was complete.

Finally, the physician began the treatment. They went to the physician simply to get a diagnosis. They couldn’t forget about diagnosis and just fast the baby. They had to have a label. They were under the impression that if they just got a diagnosis and knew exactly what was wrong with the baby they wouldn’t be so fearful. They just couldn’t wait and rely on the natural healing powers of the body for their infant’s recovery. They forgot all about the treatment that comes after the diagnosis. When they balked at the treatment, the physician became suspicious. He then insisted on the parents carrying out his orders. He even brought the authorities on the case, and the baby was held in the hospital against the parent’s wishes. They were forced to submit to treatment of the baby. When they finally got the baby back home, they had to put up with the child abuse bureau visiting them twice a week to see that they were carrying out the physician’s instructions regarding the care and feeding of the infant, and they were forced to begin feeding the child meat and cereals against their wishes. It took the infant six months to recover from the medical abuse called “diagnosis and treatments.” All this trouble came about because the parents: had no faith in the living body to heal itself, and because of their inability to sit back and do absolutely nothing. “Doing nothing” intelligently is the hardest of all things to do.

Just the other night I was jolted out of my sleep by a ringing phone. It was a lady with a three-year-old baby. Deep concern, bordering on real fear, was in her voice. “I’m worried,” she said, “my baby is so listless. There’s no life in him at all and he has a fever of 104.5°F. I fasted him seven days and the fever went down. But he was very weak so I didn’t wait the 24 hours necessary after the fever subsided. Now his fever has come back, and I’m really worried. I fed him only two ounces of orange juice three times, but his fever returned. He’s so weak, and he’s still sick.” Her voice cracked, and she was crying.

I began asking her questions to try to discover how the child got sick and what the problem was. The baby had hidden himself on a back porch and had gotten into a dried dog food when the parents were visiting friends.

When he was found, he was happily stuffing himself on the dried dog food, and had probably been doing so for about 15 or 20 minutes.

He developed a fever, a cough after that, and so the child was fasted. The parents were naturally very concerned and when the fever didn’t come down in about three days, they became even more concerned. Many things went through their minds. Would the child survive? He had done this once before, but he had been discovered quickly enough to stop him before he had eaten very much. Under the stress of fear, and impatience, for the fever was still high, the baby was weak and getting weaker, and there was no sign of improvement, the parents decided that since the baby had not had a bowel movement, it would be best to give the child an enema. They reasoned that the dog food was an irritant and still in the colon, causing the temperature to remain high. “We must get rid of the irritant.” So an enema was given. The child, however, was still even more listless and it did not bring the fever down.

The parents couldn’t wait until the body rectified all the wrongs.

As the child had not vomited we know that the dog food was at least digested enough to pass from the stomach to the small intestine. By the time it reached the colon, most of it had been digested. The preservatives, other poisonous chemicals, and decomposition products were absorbed from the small intestine. The time to have done something was when the child had first eaten the dog food. Vomiting could have been induced when the food was still in the child’s stomach. But perhaps they did not realize just how much the child had eaten and the child was not yet sick. But, to give an enema after the food had already passed the absorbing area was useless and wasted the child’s nerve energy. Had the material in the colon been a great enough irritant to cause fever, the body would have forced it out by a diarrhea.

The parent’s reasoning was obfuscated because of the weakness and listlessness of the child. The tendency is to do something to make the child appear lively again. Parents forget that when nerve energy is being expended in one direction, it is withdrawn from another. It is normal when the body is fighting off poisons that all its energies, both nervous and physical, are directed to the area of the body that needs it most. The physical weakness comes because the blood and nerve supply has been withdrawn from the skeletal muscles of the body and directed inward to help rid the body of the poisonous substances. It is natural to be listless and weak under these conditions. However, seeing a listless child is frightening and there is that strong urge to do something, just anything, to see a manifestation of life to do nothing, I repeat, to do nothing, intelligently, at these times takes great courage and faith in the human organism.

Fevers may last for more than three days, when there is a need for it. Fasting, of course, is the quickest means to help the body rid itself of irritants that are occasioning the fever, but it sometimes takes more than three days. We must not panic if the fever does not subside more quickly. Children presently are developing fevers that last longer than in former decades. I have cared for several children recently and have noticed that the fevers seem never to quit. The children of this generation are not as strong as those of the previous generation, for many reasons. We will have to expect more acute illness and less robust, children until we clean up the environment and straighten out our method of growing and processing foods. The race is slowly but surely committing suicide.

Meanwhile, we must work in more harmony with nature than ever before. We must not needlessly cause the expenditure of any vital energy of any sick person, child or, adult. We must learn to conserve energy as we have never before conserved it, simply because there is less vitality and less functioning capacity than ever before.

If child or adult develops a fever, fasting is the best means for permitting the body to rid itself of the cause. The fever will never go as high when fasting as it does when feeding. “But,” you ask, “what about brain damage if the fever should go up to 106°F?” Remember, first of all, that cells can function only at optimum temperatures. The minute the temperature goes up too high, the cells automatically cease functioning and the temperature spontaneously drops. Cellular metabolism contributes greatly to the rise in temperature, and when it is so hot that the cells can no longer function, metabolism slows down and automatically the temperature drops. Actually, it is the suppression of a fever by drugs and other measures causing retention of the poison, or the bacteria or whatever is the occasion for the fever, that damages the brain, never the fever per se. The fever is the necessary biological process to help the phagocytic cells eat up the bacteria or destroy and render nontoxic, the poisonous substance that may have been ingested. The drugs themselves are poisonous and only add to the load that the body has to eliminate. The drugs, plus the bacteria, and bacterial toxins and other poisons in the system are what damages the brain, not the fever which is only the body’s best and speediest means of ridding itself of noxious agents.

No matter how hard it may be to sit and wait until the body heals itself, it is still the wisest thing to do.

Need answers or clarity on your personal health situation? I offer consultations to help you move forward with confidence:
https://www.therawkey.com/consultations

Want a clear plan and support for making diet and lifestyle changes? Join our next 30-Day Terrain Group—starts fresh each month on the 1st:
https://www.therawkey.com/the-natural-diet-support-group

Eat fruit and be well, my friends.

Lauren Farris1 Comment