Category: The People’s Key

In this section you will find all of our articles on the natural human diet, how the body self heals and self cleans, how to transition back to the natural human diet, what to expect as your body heals and answers to many questions about achieving health. Eat fruit and be well my friends!

Raw Vegan Dies of Starvation?

HOW THE MEDIA SPINS CONTENT TO CREATE FEAR

Hi Everyone!   

You may have seen a recent article in the Murdoch-owned NY Post discussing the passing of Zhanna Samsonova, also known as Zhanna D’art on Instagram.  Zhanna was known to eat a diet composed of tropical fruits, sprouts, smoothies, and juices.  Though no official cause of death has been released, it seems the reporting has been very quick to blame her untimely death on veganism and a raw food diet.  Sadly the disease industry has never been shy of using tragic events to mislead the public with their fear-based campaigns and the latest article by the NY Post is no different. 

The pharma-funded news media release these fictionalized or manipulated stories as often as they can in an attempt to dissuade the public from researching how health is acquired.  They pounce on stories of people who are not eating the natural diet but have some type of overly restrictive diet that is unhealthy in order to poison the well and to act as gatekeepers against the exploration of the links between diet and disease. They use many dishonest rhetorical tactics including the use of misleading headlines, bait and switch, false correlations, and editorial conclusions not supported by the evidence to twist the story to fit the prescribed narrative and create clickbait.

Usually, these articles are about vegans killing their babies by starving them on a “vegan diet,” something which arguably does not even exist as veganism is an ethical philosophy predicated on minimizing the suffering of animals, not a diet. The issue has nothing to do with being vegan or eating a natural diet and everything to do with neglect and poor parenting which can happen with any diet.   However, this article provides a slightly different spin.  In this article, they take advantage of the tragic death of someone under medical care who clearly has an eating disorder to continue to wage their war on raw foods and veganism.   The bait and switch here presents veganism and raw foods as the cause of death rather than what the evidence suggests:  Underplayed is anorexia, mental health disorders, and medical interventions, of which they provide no information.  The piece admits we have no formal cause of death, and we are also missing information about the medical treatments received in the days or weeks leading up to her death.  This leaves us with an inaccurate and incomplete accounting of how the events may have transpired.

To me, there are a number of red flags in the article that jump out right away. While they don’t state the cause of death or go into any detail on the medical treatments this woman was put through, they do clearly admit that she was under medical treatment at the time of her death.  Commonly these medical treatments will include rehydration through saline drip, which I have addressed the high risk of death in this common treatment in my article here:  https://www.therawkey.com/the-dangers-of-saline-drips/


Additionally, without an autopsy or any official report of the cause of death, it’s impossible to say with any level of confidence what she died of.  It’s just as likely she died from iatrogenic medicine or a medical error.  However, the news stories won’t discuss that possibility, they have instead elected to pin the death on fruit and veganism.  

Another glaring oversight is that there does appear to be other issues that Zhanna was having that led her to pursue treatment.  Much of this information is not yet publicly available, but there have been friends and acquaintances that have come forward and discussed the issue of an eating disorder. 

She is clearly shockingly and dangerously underweight in most of the photos they include in the article, indicating she may have been suffering from anorexia.  If someone is suffering from anorexia and chronic under-eating, it doesn’t matter what type of food they eat.  They describe her diet as just “fruits, sunflower seed sprouts, fruit smoothies, and juices” and go on to comment that even her fruit intake was restricted to only a handful of different fruits.

It is also somewhat common for people with food issues or eating disorders to want to try diets that may seem more radical or restrictive, but it’s important to remember that an eating disorder is still a problem that can cause serious issues or even be fatal even if it’s the goal of the person to eat totally ideal foods.  It should be noted that the underlying cause of such a predicament is the mental anguish or issue that led to the eating disorder, not the food itself.

We have several reports of the types of foods she was eating, so now let’s discuss the issues here and how what she was eating is not optimal.  She was not eating leafy greens, nuts, seeds, or vegetables, all of which are integral to our health and provide the variety of nutrients required for long-term health.  

Leafy greens are central to the natural diet but here the article clearly admits that she was not including this essential food in her diet.    They cannot be omitted from the diet.  Even omitting them for short periods can lead to symptoms since the alkaline minerals, fiber, protein, and water they provide are essential to every part of our body. They help build our teeth and bones and help maintain the strength and structure of every organ, muscle, and vein. The most common issues that arise from a lack of sufficient lettuce greens in the diet are failure to gain healthy weight or put on muscle, teeth issues, and drawn-out symptoms often attributed to detoxing. 

Juicing and smoothies are also not a part of the natural human diet.  Juicing or blending is a process that damages the food we would eat.  Juicing and blending create nutritionally depleted fractionated food-like substances. Though they may confer some benefits over some other forms of cooked or processed foods, they are not natural and do not necessarily promote health.  They simply fill the body with inferior materials leaving little room for whole foods in their whole natural form.  If a person is chronically drinking juice and smoothies they are filling up on damaged materials and leaving very little room to consume health-building materials.  Excessive juicing can also result in weight loss and will extend healing times since the body has to dedicate so much of its healing energy to eliminating a heavily processed substance.  To learn more about why juicing and smoothies are not a health practice please refer to my article:   https://www.therawkey.com/juicing-is-not-a-health-practice/

In another article from the Daily Mail we find more concerning details.  “The raw food influencer also had previously touted online that her body does not require water.” “There were also periods when the 39-year-old would practice ‘dry fasting’ – where she would refuse to eat or drink anything for days.”   From her Instagram:  “I have not drunk water for the last 6 years. This is a common occurrence in those who are on a fruit diet.”

Dry fasting is an all-too-common practice in the natural health community, however, dry fasting and restricting water intake is not a healthy practice and goes against what we know is necessary to heal.   The conditions of disease in our body are largely due to chronic dehydration from eating cooked and processed foods.  One of the main goals of the natural species-appropriate diet is to rehydrate the body and rehydrate the lymph system so the body can eliminate old waste and toxins.   Dry fasting is not a part of natural hygiene, and is not and should not be considered safe for any length of time.  Remember the key to healing is getting the body rehydrated, not further dehydrated.  To learn more about why dry fasting is not part of natural hygiene and the terrain model please refer to my article: https://www.therawkey.com/dry-fasting/

The natural diet is all about abundance and eating abundantly of the right foods.  It is about filling ourselves up with nutrition, not about restriction or going without. When done correctly it will never lead to persistent or excessive thinness.  If you are currently struggling and see yourself getting this thin, please reach out for help or advice, because this is definitely not normal or healthy and is a sign you are making some mistakes that can probably be easily corrected.   To clarify, it is true that on occasion the body will tear down before it rebuilds, but if you are losing weight excessively and struggling to gain muscle then it can be safely assumed that this is not part of a detox.  If this is the case, feel free to reach out and we will help to troubleshoot your diet. 

The last issue we see is the consumption of sprouts.  In the natural health community sprouts have taken on this reputation as being a “powerhouse of nutrition.”  The reality is that sprouts are baby plants.  They seek to survive, grow and reproduce.  This means nature has put chemicals into the sprout that make it taste bitter or spicy to discourage eating.  These bitter and spicy compounds are toxic to the body and as such our natural inclination is to recoil from such foods as our instinctual senses are built to protect us from ingesting toxins.    While it’s okay to have the occasional sprouts as a topping on a salad or raw wrap, they should not be a regular part of the diet, they should be an occasional addition.  Also, they should not be considered a “superfood” with any magical properties.   This superfood idea is based on the false logic of “more equals better.”  Since they are seeds sprouting they have more protein than other foods per calorie and this is the logic behind calling them a superfood.  But there is no logic in assuming that more protein is a benefit.   Particularly if they have more toxins present.   Food is ideal based on a balance of nutrients, fuel provided, lack of toxicity, water content, and other considerations.   Just being higher in one macronutrient does not make a substance better or healthy.   Our senses tell us that sprouts are spicy and bitter and therefore contain irritants and we should limit them or avoid them all together.   

The loss of this young vibrant woman’s life is a tragedy.   While it seems she likely suffered through multiple social, psychological, and spiritual wounds that we can analyze and learn from, it is this feeding of the disease industry through misinformation and poorly reasoned reporting that seems to ring out loudest after her passing.  We currently see epidemic levels of disease and despair relating to multiple health crises, an ever-increasing cost of medical care, and more pharmaceuticals hitting the market every day.   May we all pray for peace for her family as they grieve this loss and may the vultures who attempt to profit from her tragic death to mislead others receive justice in due time.    Let us hope that her death is not in vain and can teach us all something so we can help reach others who may be traveling down the wrong path.    

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

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

Eat fruit and be well my friends. 

Lauren Farris2 Comments
Reader Q&A

Dry Fasting

Question

Are there benefits to extended dry fasting? It seems really quite dangerous to me, especially since I live in a hot climate and very quickly feel the effects of not drinking sufficient water. I would think it would put unnecessary strain on the kidneys/elimination organs to not be properly hydrated.

Answer

Dry fasting is an all-too-common practice in the natural health community.  Dry fasting and restricting water intake is not a health practice and goes against what we know is necessary to heal.   The conditions of disease in our body are largely due to chronic dehydration from eating cooked and processed foods.  One of the main goals of the natural species-appropriate diet is to rehydrate the body and rehydrate the lymph system so the body can eliminate old waste and toxins.   Dry fasting is not a part of natural hygiene and is not and should not be considered safe for any length of time.

Dry fasting and restricting water intake is not a health practice and goes against what we know is necessary to heal. Share on X

Dry fasting is extremely dangerous and can be damaging to the body. Acid wastes damage tissues and when we dry fast those acids become more and more concentrated. This means the waste will damage the kidneys and bladder on the way out if they are not diluted sufficiently. 

The body uses water to dilute the acids and protect the tissues as the acidic material is carried out of the body. When we dry fast we rob the body of that water that is necessary to facilitate the safe removal of acidic waste and toxins. 

The solution to pollution is dilution. Share on X

This, very sadly, seems to be why we have seen well-known dry-fasting raw food advocates die quite young in the last few years. For all of the positive changes they are making with eating the correct foods they are undermining their health by neglecting their water intake.

If you were fed only the natural human diet from birth the body still would not benefit from the extra work created by dry fasting. Water is the universal solvent. It dilutes acids and keeps our whole system flowing efficiently. Our lymph system is a thick fluid that becomes easily clogged and bogged down when we become dehydrated. But most people are already starting out in a state of chronic dehydration from years of eating cooked and processed foods. We are also living in unnatural environments with forced air heating and cooling that further dehydrates our bodies. Most people have anywhere from 10 to 25 pounds of old dried-out fecal matter impacted to the walls of their digestive tract. All of this requires water to move and expel.

People often confuse more with better and the same is true for dry fasting. People think that because they have more visible sediment after dry fasting that the body cleaned out more debris. The reality is the body didn’t clean more, the sediment is just more concentrated because the body is more dehydrated. There is less urine because there is less water, and the waste matter is more concentrated.  

Disease is predominantly the result of dehydration, so any practice which further dehydrates us pushes us further into disease and leads to a shorter lifespan and more damage to the organs.

Dehydration can also result in mental confusion and delirium which can further impair our ability to heal and maintain healthy habits.

Unfortunately, within the natural foods community, there seems to be some confusion that is driving people to take on dry fasting or to believe it is a healthy practice. In nature, all frugivores drink from streams and ponds on a regular and consistent basis. Our anatomy is not set up to drink heavily, like a dog that can lap water easily, because our natural foods supply us with a lot of water. But we still find all the bonobos, chimps, and other apes drink from streams regularly and consistently. Sadly, many years ago we did not have this data and it was simply assumed that because it had not been witnessed, it did not occur. This is where the idea of frugivorous animals not drinking water came from. It was an erroneous and premature conclusion based on a lack of evidence.  

This then led to some in the natural health community declaring that we humans do not need to drink water. That we can get all of our water from our food.   The problem with this concept is that while watery fruits and salad greens are water-rich, the amount of excess water they provide beyond what is required for proper digestion and elimination is limited.   In order for a food to move unobstructed through the digestive tract it needs to be roughly 80% water.  This is water that must be retained with the food to ensure an easy exit at the other end.   This means fruit needs to be significantly higher than 80% water in order to provide us with excess water which our bodies can use to rehydrate chronic issues.  If we accept the contemporary figure that watermelon is about 92% water, then eating 10 pounds of watermelon only nets us about 1 pound of water, or about 16 ounces.  However, with a little practice, we can easily drink well over a gallon of water, which is just over 8 pounds of water, in a single day. 


We need water to help replenish our sweat, lubricate and move our lymphatic system, move out waste through our kidneys and bowels, digest and assimilate food, and move our blood, muscles, and nerves.  Demand for water within our bodies is high.  On a hot day working in the sun, you could easily sweat out a half gallon or a gallon of water over several hours. It would be impossible to replenish that on just fruits and salads even if you were eating only the highest water-content fruits.   The math simply does not add up.  

Based on my personal experience helping thousands of people heal over the years and healing myself I recommend drinking a minimum of 1 gallon (approximately 4 liters) of water per day if you are eating fully raw and drinking 2-3 gallons of water if you are eating cooked foods.   This is the amount where we see people consistently thriving.   

Water intake should also be adjusted upwards if you are exercising heavily, spending time out in the sun or in the heat, or any other activity that dehydrates the body.   Consuming dried fruits, nuts and seeds should also have us increasing our water intake to balance their low water content as needed.    

If you are not currently drinking enough water you can start increasing gradually by adding one quart of water to your current consumption and repeating this weekly until you reach 1-1.5 gallons.   My personal habit is to fill 4-quart jars each day.  I drink the first jar immediately upon rising, the second jar between 8 am and 10 am, the third right before my first meal which is typically around 12 noon to 2 pm, and then finish my 4th jar before dinner.    Others find it easier to use a gallon-sized water bottle that they carry with them throughout the day or a half-gallon bottle.   Either way, the larger the bottle, glass, or jar you keep in front of you, the more likely you will be to get in adequate water.   While it was initially a struggle to get in 1 gallon per day, I now find that I easily drink closer to 1.5 gallons and feel less optimal if I drink less than 1 gallon.  

One objection we commonly hear is, “I’m not thirsty.”   The issue with this is that when we become chronically dehydrated our thirst impulse can become unreliable and it can be difficult to tell whether we are thirsty or hungry.  Most people confuse thirst with hunger and eat instead of drinking.   Some people are so dehydrated that they can no longer get any real sense of thirst or they no longer recognize what thirst feels like.   In our support group, we consistently find that those who stick with the 1-gallon goal have their thirst impulse return within a few weeks and can easily drink 1-gallon after that point without having to put in much effort.   

Another common objection is that drinking more means urinating more, and while I can certainly understand the inconvenience this may pose in some working conditions we must keep in mind that urinating is one way we eliminate waste.  When we start to supply additional water the body will quickly start moving out excess waste so it is no longer damaging the cells internally.   This short-term inconvenience means long-term health, so while it can be annoying it is a small price to pay to return to better health.

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

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

Eat fruit and be well my friends. 

Lauren FarrisLeave a comment
Reader Q&A

Fat and Brain Development in Children on the Natural Raw Diet

Question

May I ask about fat & brain development in children? Is it true that children need foods labeled in this way to grow? It seems to be the main argument used when people want to refute natural diets for growing children. My son isn’t a fan of avocados so I may need to get this into a smoothie

Answer

The need for isolated fats is greatly overblown by the media and medical marketing due to the unfortunate error of developing a commercial baby “food” that led to poor brain development in children due to it being so far from what the child needs. Originally if a mother could not feed her child due to illness, weakness, deformity, or the death of the mother, a wet nurse was substituted and the child was fed on the breast of another mother. But as industrialization and then feminism took hold and the value of woman/motherhood was repeatedly denigrated and women were pushed into the workforce to become more like men the need for an artificial food to substitute for natural milk was created.

As a result, the drop in available wet nurses forced mother’s into what was referred to as dry feeding, where a concoction of some variety was made for the child, varying by region and economic status. “The Wabanaki and other Native American tribal nations of North America made an infant formula from nuts and cornmeal.” In the same time period, a growing acceptance for using cow, horse, sheep, camel, pig, or goat’s milk was growing while society was beginning to reject the concept of the wet nurse. “In 1865, chemist Justus von Liebig developed, patented, and marketed an infant food, first in a liquid form and then in a powdered form for better preservation. Liebig’s formula—consisting of cow’s milk, wheat and malt flour, and potassium bicarbonate—was considered the perfect infant food.”

Today we know that wheat is highly inflammatory, leading to bowel and brain inflammation, cows milk is not at all adequate containing a completely different nutritional profile than human milk and the processing of both creates chemicals which are known carcinogens.

The progression of commercial baby foods eventually led to chronic development disorders which eventually where blamed on missing DHA and ARA which are essential fatty acids and so began the fear of children missing out on fat. Over the years this fear has spread and grown and now has infected the minds of mothers around the world.

The reality is, what is fed to the child after birth is far less important ( but still very important) than what is fed during pregnancy to the mother. “The time of the greatest growth and development of the brain and nerves is during the prenatal period and the first two years after birth. This is the best time to lay the foundation of a good brain and nervous system. It is asserted that the whole future of an individual is determined by the time he is four years old, just as the whole future of a calf is determined by the time it is six months old. How very important that the mother supply her unborn child with the very best nutrition!” – Dr Shelton

“Human milk, on an average, contains about 7 per cent milk sugar, 3 to 4 per cent fat, 1.50 per cent protein, and 0.20 per cent of salts.” – Dr Shelton While human milk varies from birth to weaning its percentage of fat remains low and its percentage of carbohydrates high.

All fruits and lettuces contain essential fatty acids in the appropriate proportions for our bodies. Nuts and seeds also contain appropriate essential fatty acids in the right formulation for human physiology. Avocados can be fed as well, but they are concentrated fat and should only be fed in small quantities. Children’s senses if fed properly from a young age tend to be very in tune with their needs. If your son rejects avocado then trust in his senses. Most mothers find that overfeeding on avocados, nuts, and seeds leads to irritability in the child. ¼ of a small avocado a few times per week would be the maximum if a mother wanted to include this fatty fruit. Otherwise, a variety of fruits, and then as they age adding in tender vegetables, and greens would provide all that is needed. We do not have to overfeed on fats at any stage.

Keeping in mind that the child must be fed on breastmilk for the first 2- 3 years and fruits should not be introduced until the child has adequate teeth to support the eating of that fruit. The digestive tract does not develop the ability to digest solid foods until the teeth have developed. The solid food starting at 6 months as recommended by the medical business is very poor advice since the child has no ability to digest said food until their teeth have come in, which typically occurs around 18 months. Some fresh pressed juices can be used at younger ages in extreme conditions where the mother’s diet is severely inadequate, but otherwise, the child should remain exclusively on the mother’s milk until the teeth have sufficiently developed to handle each food without tools or processing.

Our brains are initially built in the womb out of cholesterol and require some fatty acids for development, but the brain itself runs on glucose, a sugar. The idea that the brain requires a lot of fat is another one of those bits of misinformation pushed by marketing. Sugar is the predominant need of the brain. It is typically those that wish to defend their addiction to their toxic diet that pushes the fat requirement and will, even though all of these needs are easily met by fruit, demand that the child must be poisoned with putrefying animal tissues or secretions, rather than getting the EFAs directly from the plant source that the animal is getting them from. Nature provides everything we need, even the things which science has not yet isolated. The further we stray from the perfection of God’s creation and into the hubris of men’s minds and alterations the more disease conditions we create.

Lauren FarrisLeave a comment

Juicing is not a Health Practice

It can be very confusing to delve into different natural health communities online and find many different philosophies, protocols and practices.  Sadly a large number of half-baked ideas and unhealthy habits abound in the natural health online communities.  If you have been in these communities for any length of time you will come across people who swear by herbs, supplements, powdered desiccated grass, green smoothies, watermelon island, grape fasts, and many other questionable practices but none seem quite as prevalent or more heavily promoted than the idea of juicing.   

Nothing says “I’m returning to nature” like using a $400 machine to chew your food for you.  

Juice is not a whole food. It is a processed fragment of food. Juicing removes the essential fiber, and drinking juice rapidly floods the body with sugar overworking the cells, and leading to excess waste. 

Juicing is not a Health Practice. Nothing says “I’m returning to nature” like using a $400 machine to chew your food for you.   Share on X

Lost Nutrition

Juice is not a superfood or powerhouse of nutrition. Quite to the contrary, when we juice fruits or greens we are losing valuable nutrition. Juice begins to oxidize instantly which means nutrients and enzymes are dying from the moment the first cut is made to the fruit.  Depending on the type of juicer being used, juicing crushes or eviscerates the fruit entirely, which results in the vast majority of the nutrition being exposed to air by thousands of tiny cuts or by crushing.  Contrary to the marketing we are not getting an added boost of nutrition but instead, we are losing portions of the nutrition of the food when juicing.  

“Juices are fractionated foods subject to oxidative deterioration. Oxidation occurs quickly. For example, orange juice can lose up to 60% of its vitamin C within an hour after juicing. Iron is oxidized very quickly in all foods. This may be observed visually if an apple is broken open and exposed to air. Oxidation creates toxic byproducts. An example of this is cooking, which is a much accelerated process of oxidation as well as heat degeneration.”  – T.C. Fry

Faster Poisoning

Juicing allows us to consume substances in large quantities which we would normally not eat in the natural human diet or would only consume in small quantities due to their bitter taste or difficulty to chew.   

Juicing often means consuming foods that would not normally be eaten in any bulk like carrots, cabbage, kale, or beets, and consuming them in large quantities.

These are not human foods because they don’t taste good in their whole raw form and they are difficult to chew. They are not desirable or enjoyable in their natural state and we would not eat them in large quantities in nature like we would with sweet fruits or tender sweet leafy lettuces.

We might occasionally eat the young sweet tender leaves of a kale plant or a cabbage but the full-grown bitter spicy leaves would offend our senses when our body is clean enough to hear our senses. 

These vegetables contain toxins that give them a bitter taste.  Bitter is your sense of taste warning you against consuming a substance.  Bitter, spicy, excessively salty (burns the tongue), and sour (makes you recoil) are all your senses trying to make you spit out a substance.  

Root vegetables are also full of starches instead of sugar which is far less than ideal and may cause food combining issues.  If we wouldn’t eat them in large quantities we certainly shouldn’t be drinking them in large quantities and yet it’s common practice to juice a pound or more of carrots or an entire head of celery.  

People also often juice irritants like ginger and garlic, sometimes in large quantities.  Most juice bars use ginger as an ingredient and often have ginger or garlic shots.  These are substances that are destructive to the delicate tissues of our digestive tract and garlic in particular kills the bacteria which create B12 in our digestive tract.   These substances should never be consumed and if you tried to eat them raw by themselves by chewing them like a whole food you would be in enough pain to stop and rethink, but when they are hidden in a sweet juice and diluted the burning of the tongue, throat and stomach tissues becomes a stimulant that we mistake for a health benefit.  

Unfortunately, we tend to be addicted to stimulation since we have cooked foods forced upon us as young children and learn to tolerate and even enjoy the pain and discomfort caused by irritants and cooked foods.  We enjoy the euphoria that is the end result of the body launching a red alert, all hands on deck response to an incoming poison.  Whether that poison is cocaine, heroin, alcohol, or something more banal like salt, spices, chilis, or other irritants, the body’s response of increased energy, and release of fight or flight chemicals induces a feeling which can be painful, sedating, or in some cases enjoyable. 

Digestive Rest

One of the most common marketing points for juicing is the idea that juicing provides digestive rest.   Consuming juice is slightly less of a burden than eating cooked foods, but juicing offers no digestive rest as is often the claim.  In fact, it forces the bowels to work even harder. 

Our bowels are a muscle that contracts to move waste through the system. That contraction requires bulk. Fiber provides that bulk. Juicing can lead to constipation because we are putting lots of material in without the fiber it is designed to flow through with. Without that fiber, the body cannot grip and easily move the food through the system, so things get slowed down and backed up.  Without that fiber we can also exhaust the digestive system, which is why we hear so often that people struggle to eliminate after returning to whole foods after a long juice fast.  

They have overworked their digestive tract for weeks or months, often adding irritants to the digestive tract in the juice as well like beets, ginger or garlic.  The result is utter exhaustion of the organ so that when the juicing and irritants stop the body is left depleted and the muscles of the digestive tract need rest.  This results in constipation, which unfortunately many in the community turn to herbal poisons to remedy which then leads to even more exhaustion of the muscles and an ever-worsening constipation. 

Putting any substance that requires digestion and assimilation into the mouth immediately starts the contractions and actions of the entire digestive system from mouth to exit.  Whether we drink juice or eat an apple or eat a hamburger the digestive system in its entirety has to spring into action.  When we fast on water then nothing requires digestion and so all of the energy that is normally utilized by the digestive tract can be redirected towards old waste or healing.

Deficiency

Many promote the idea of treating a deficiency in diet with juices.  This is the same delusion that people believe in that leads to them consuming vitamin pills – the idea that we can make up for destructive food choices by just putting in concentrated vitamins or minerals that have been isolated from food, or more often have been sourced from rocks or algae that were never food to begin with.  

We cannot make up for the hamburger or french fries we ate and the damage they have wrought by supplying more nutrition.  What we can do is stop poisoning the body 

We need juice to make up for the deficient soil that our food is grown in.

 To quote TC Fry :

“The deficient soil/deficient food complex is fostered among health seekers by fractionated food purveyors who are peddling a synthetic manufactured supplement or so-called natural supplements, both of which are far inferior to whole foods. Supplements can in no way make good any partial deficiency that may exist. The synthetic supplements are not usable in any circumstances, and the body treats them as drugs. It is the stimulus of drug effects that we mistake for health effects. We mistake the energy an exhausted horse shows under the whip as beneficient when, in fact, it is pathogenic. Even if part of the supplements are obtained from organic sources (as a fraction of a given supplement, say 5 to 10% only) so they can be represented as natural, they are still worthless. They’re also worthless if extracted entirely from organic sources. The body uses nutrients in context with other nutrients as a team.”

Is it okay to use juices while transitioning? 

 Juicing is a transitional tool because it enervates the body. When we are coming off cooked foods, alcohol, salt, caffeine, etc we are coming down off a lot of stimulant drugs which we have been using to prop up the body. We naturally look for ways to stimulate in other ways until we realize that we simply require rest. Since juice floods the body rapidly with sugar overwhelming the body the cells must overwork to burn off the excess, so a flurry of energy stimulates the body into action, like whipping a tired horse. What we needed was rest, what we did instead was whip ourselves with a jolt of sugar flooded into the system without the fiber to slow it down. We got high and it felt good, so we used it again the next day.

Common objections and questions:

I don’t believe this is true.  There are many books that promote the health benefits of juicing. 

There are many books that promote the healing powers of everything from pharma drugs to herbs to dirt to drinking your own urine, all of which ignore the most basic fact that nothing acts upon the body, the body takes all actions. Just because someone misunderstands why lessening the burden on the body allows their body to clean itself more doesn’t mean their mistake is not a mistake.

People go from SAD diet to keto and see some healing. Put a healthy person on keto and they get sick rapidly.

People go from eating McDonalds to cooking at home and see improvements in their health. 

Feed a healthy raw fruit-fed body a cooked meal and it rapidly shows you the toxicity of the cooked meal.

If we go from making 100 mistakes to making 50 mistakes the burden on the body is less and the body will respond to the extra energy available by cleaning and repairing more. That doesn’t mean it wouldn’t heal faster and work better if we eliminated the other 50 mistakes.

Many people see improvements when juicing because the juice forces out something of a much greater burden.  Had those same people simply eaten whole fruits and whole lettuces they would have healed much faster. 

What is your take on the celery juicing phenomenon? People seem to swear by it helping them. Just wondering. I find juicing for the most part too severe on my digestive system. Agree with having the whole foods.

Celery is a stimulant herb so people who are trading coffee for celery juice feel great because they are still getting their stimulants.

As you mentioned a healthy body responds with digestive symptoms and may have other symptoms like anxiety when consuming large amounts of celery juice.  Celery juice is an adrenal stimulant so it has a similar “wake you up” effect as a cup of coffee but with the similar downsides, minus the acidity.  While celery is full of alkaline minerals, coffee is highly acid-forming and contains caffeine.  Coffee causes more damage, but the same stimulant response is issued by the body as a form of self-protection.  

We can juice a stalk or two, but more than that and we start seeing the negative affects of the mild toxins in the celery, which are stimulating. Most people find that when eating celery whole their body naturally self limits to 2-4 stalks of celery. 

There are many testimonials of people on juice cleanse healing from severe chronic conditions on youtube now, one of them was on a 366 day one. Slow juicing still retain some fibre, which helps to carry the released mucoid plaque out. I did 16 days of water fasting before, but I had to stop because I start to get great pain in the colon, which I suspect is more the kidney itself causing it via the nerve. I had to step down to a gentler method…

All of those people would have healed much faster through water fasting and eating their natural diet. Healing is always about the amount of burden we lift off the body.   People promoting juice fasts are under the false impression that many people fall for which is that food heals.   Food has no ability to heal.  Food is dead – inert – it cannot take action.  Food is either useful to the body or some level of burden on the body.   Processed foods are always a burden on the body but some processed foods like juices are less of a burden then other processed foods like potato chips, candy bars, or fast food hamburgers.   If you go from eating cooked food every day of your life to only putting juice in your body you have lifted a huge amount of burden off the body.  You still aren’t giving the body what it truly needs, but you have lifted burden and that means the body can do more repairing and more eliminating of waste then it was able to previously.   Our bodies are remarkably resilient and can handle a lot of mistakes before they completely break down, but a body that has been properly fed and cared for will feel much worse on juices. 

Anytime we stop putting in the worst poisons the body will have less damage and less work to do. People trade juice for potato chips and hamburgers and then think the juice healed them. That is false. It was the elimination of the potato chips and hamburgers that allowed their bodies to make repairs and heal.

If those same people had also traded the juice for whole foods in their whole natural form and periodic water fasting then they would have healed even faster because they would have been providing whole foods, not fractionated, processed substances.

Juicing does not give digestive rest as your body still has to digest fully the fractionated food. It does not give more nutrition because the nutrients have been oxidized, and rapidly so, because of the surface area exposed to air once the juice is separated from the whole substance. All juice does is flood the body with a subpar unnatural substance which slows cleaning.

Juicing is not a health practice! Do you see any juicers in nature? If it requires a machine it's not natural and is overworking the body. Share on X

Now I can certainly understand why people get confused. Water fasting often brings up pain because the consequence of putting poison into the body is that poison hurts on its way out as much as it damages on the way in. So if you stop the deep cleaning by putting more burden on the body with fractionated food then you will slow healing which will limit the elimination of old wastes and therefore feel more comfortable. But being comfortable is not an indication of healing. Suppressing symptoms is not an indication of healing. If we put bad stuff in then that stuff has to come out for the body to fully heal. Pain in water fasting can also be due to dehydration. If the person is not drinking 1.5-2 gallons per day then they can be dehydrating themselves through the fast which will further concentrate the acids and cause more damage and pain on their way out.   Often when people reach 15-20 days into a water fast they start to struggle to drink water.   T.C. Fry and Shelton advise adding a small amount of lemon juice to the water if the person is truly struggling to get in the required amounts of water during a water fast. 

The Bottom Line

A glass of juice here and there is okay, but regular juice only adds to the body’s burden. Juicing is not a health practice, it is overworking the body and is far less beneficial than eating foods whole. Oranges, Grapefruits, or other fruits which naturally juice are a  better choice to drink regularly, but if it needs to be run through a machine to make juice you are doing far more harm than good. Healing is about lifting burdens, if you go from eating cooked foods to a juice fast you will lift some burden, but you will slow and impair healing compared to the person who goes from cooked foods to raw, whole, unprocessed foods.   

Lauren Farris8 Comments

The Nineteen Factors of Optimal Health

Every factor in human well-being is also an element of nutrition. All needs are really nutritive needs. Deprivation of any single need may mean our demise or impairment of our growth, development or health. A single factor insufficiently or incorrectly supplied can lead to disease and suffering.

Most people are aware of the essentials of life. But they lose sight of these fundamentals as being factors and influences that are necessary to well-being within the context of society. Therefore, they’re likely to violate the very laws of their existence and contribute to their own sickness and suffering.

When in a state of disease, most people do not realize they have brought it upon themselves. They are aided in placing blame outside themselves by a profession that takes the stance that they’ve had an unfortunate bit of bad luck or they have been invaded by some microbial enemy. Though the needs of the ill differ from those of well people only in that their conditions must be made favorable to recuperation, both ill people and the medical professionals undertake a course of treatment that compounds sickness. Both the physician and the sufferer enter into an attempt to poison the ailing body back into health. The fact is that drugging only makes a body worse.

The causes of health are very simple. Our needs do not change substantially when we become ill. Even illness itself won’t occur if the needs of our bodies and minds are properly met.

The nineteen factor elements for optimal well-being are listed as follows:

1. Pure air

2. Pure water

3. Cleanliness—both internal and external

4. Sleep

5. Temperature maintenance

6. Pure wholesome food to which we are biologically adapted

7. Exercise and activity

8. Sunshine upon our bodies

9. Rest and relaxation

10. Play and recreation

11. Emotional poise

12. Security of life and its means

13. Pleasant environment

14. Creative, useful work

15. Self-Mastery

16. Belonging

17. Motivation

18. Expression of the natural instincts

19. Indulgence of aesthetic senses.

Source: Lesson 3.1 of the Life Science Course

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Why do Natural Hygienists Drink Distilled Water?

and how much water should we be drinking?

The distillation process removes chemicals, toxins, and inorganic minerals.   Most people understand that we don’t want to be drinking toxic chemicals but few understand the importance of not overloading the body with inorganic minerals.   Inorganic minerals are minerals that are in rock form, this is contrasted to organic minerals which are found in fruits and vegetables and which are utilized by the body.  Our bodies require organic minerals and are injured by inorganic minerals.   I recently wrote an article on the effects of inorganic minerals on the body and how they lead to a slow petrifaction (turning to stone) of the body. You can read that article here:  https://www.therawkey.com/the-slow-petrifaction-of-the-body-from-inorganic-mineral-consumption/   

“What we as scientists and the public have never realized is that minerals collected in the body from water are all inorganic minerals, which cannot be assimilated (digested) by the body. The only minerals that the body can utilize are the organic minerals (from fruits and vegetables). All other types of minerals are foreign substances to the body and must be disposed of or eliminated.” “Distilled water then is water of the purest kind. It is odorless, colorless and tasteless. The divine purpose of water is to act as a solvent. In nature, water in evaporation is so fine that your eye cannot perceive it as it is drawn up into the clouds. Then it falls as rain, keeping the earth from being parched and burned. As a solvent, it dissolves rocks and soil. It figures in the transport of nutrients into plant life. In the human body, water fills similar functions. …Distilled water acts as a solvent in the body. It dissolves food substances so they can be assimilated and taken into every cell. It dissolves inorganic mineral substances lodged in tissues of the body so that such substances can be eliminated in the process of purifying the body. Distilled water is the greatest solvent on earth —the only one that can be taken into the body without damage to the tissues.” 

The less inorganic minerals we can put into our bodies, the less burden our bodies are under, but there is an added benefit to distilled water that most people don’t think about.  An early proponent of the science of Natural Hygiene, C.W. Delacy Evans explains why distilled water is superior to all other waters for humans as follows: 

“Used as a drink, distilled water is absorbed directly into the blood, the solvent properties of which it increases to such an extent that it will keep in solution salts already existing in the blood, prevent their undue deposit in various organs and structures, favor their elimination by the various excreta, and tend to remove these earthy compounds which have already accumulated in the body… There is no doubt as to the high value of distilled water used freely as a retarder of the ossifying conditions which appear to constitute the conditions of old age.” 

If you have ever put sugar into a glass of water you know that water can only hold so much material before some settle out.   If we keep adding sugar eventually the water becomes saturated and no matter how much we stir there will still be sugar in the bottom of the glass.  Minerals in water take up space in the water and the water reaches a point of saturation.   Distilled water, being free from any minerals is then free to pick up inorganic minerals as it travels through the body.  Since it is not already saturated in minerals it is free to absorb these harmful substances.  It is also not going to be depositing any inorganic minerals in our tissues if it doesn’t contain any to start with.  This means distilled water is the only water clean enough to remove the inorganic harmful minerals which make us age faster and become stiff over time.  

Water is used in every elimination process, from our kidneys and bowels to our skin and lungs.  Chronic dehydration limits the expulsion of waste, slowing down our healing processes and keeping us backed up with waste. 

“It may safely be taught that THE ONLY ABSOLUTELY PURE WATER IS THAT PURIFIED BY DISTILLATION. Instruct the public how distillation can readily and cheaply be done. It furnishes a fruitful yield for the genius that will devise a small distilling apparatus for the use of every family. It would be safe to teach that the GENEROUS USE OF PURE WATER both within and without the body has never yet done any harm; that the functional ailments that affect the great host of mankind, are in a great part due to the fact of the imperfect elimination of waste matter, and that GENEROUS LIBATIONS OF PURE DISTILLED WATER is a most potent agent TO FLUSH THEM FROM THE BODY, through the skin, the lungs, the kidneys and the bowels. The diseases caused by impure water are numerous and fatal.” —Dr. Arthur R. Reynolds, M.D., Health Commissioner of Chicago

 “You should DRINK AT LEAST ONE GALLON of distilled water a day. Most of us drink only at mealtime and when we’re noticeably thirsty. Wrong. You can develop a habit of NOT drinking water and walk around being 66 or 67 percent water, instead of 74 percent, which is what your body needs. When you don’t have the water in you, you won’t ever have the energy you need. The very first thing I do to get people’s energy up is to increase the amount of water in their diet. Immediately, their energy goes up. When someone has dementia, the first thing I do is give them lots of cold water all day, every day. About three weeks later, I start to see their dementia dissipate because they have rehydrated their brains. Unfortunately, your brain actually shrinks as you dehydrate. By DRINKING LOTS OF PURE DISTILLED WATER, you get better neuron activity and better cellular chemistry, and you’re able to detoxify the cells with water. Water has to be pure, free from fluoride, chlorine, and chemicals, which is why I recommend DISTILLED water. To achieve optimum health, I recommend that you DRINK A HALF GALLON TO ONE FULL GALLON PER DAY.” — Dr. Gary Null, Ph.D., from, “Gary Null’s Ultimate Anti-Aging Program,” 

” …it is important that we GIVE TO THE BODY A SUFFICIENT QUANTITY OF DISTILLED WATER in order that the blood may be kept in its normal fluid condition, and the disease-producing effete matter eliminated. THERE IS NO CLEANSING AGENT AS IMPORTANT AS WATER, not only for the exterior of the body, but for the interior from the crown of the head to the soles of the feet. It is a simple matter to drink a glass of water, yet the results of the act are marvelous. A very small portion of it enters the intestines, but by far the larger quantity is absorbed into the blood and enters immediately into the circulation of this life-giving fluid.” “ONE IS ALMOST DRIVEN, if he be particular as to his water supply, TO THE USE OF DISTILLED WATER.” — Bernarr Macfadden, from Macfadden’s Encyclopedia of Physical Culture, 1911. 

Quantity and quality are both of the utmost importance in keeping our bodies young, lean, and flexible and to avoid us slowly turning to stone.  Water in fruits is distilled by the plant.  The plant pulls the inorganic minerals from the soil and converts them into organic minerals in the fruit and leaves.  The only source of minerals we should be consuming is those supplied by the plants we eat.   Cooking plants changes the structure of the minerals again, causing them to be unusable by the body and contributing to the slow turning to stone of our bodies.  

“By using succulent fruits and vegetables in scurvy, or acidosis, MUCH DISTILLED WATER IS FURNISHED THE BODY WITH WHICH TO FLUSH OUT THE ACCUMULATED PUTRESCENCE. Fruit and vegetables contain over ninety percent water.” — Dr. J. H. Tilden, M.D., from IMPAIRED HEALTH, ITS CAUSE AND CURE: A Repudiation of the Conventional Treatment of Disease

As most humans on earth have been assaulting their bodies with salt, an inorganic mineral and many of us have been duped into taking in supplements filled with inorganic minerals and we all eat cooked foods there is no doubt that we all have an abundance of inorganic minerals that our bodies would love to eliminate.   The more distilled water we provide, the more the body can eliminate these and eliminate any calcifications or mineralization of the tissues.  

REVERSE OSMOSIS FILTER OR COUNTERTOP DISTILLER?

Distillation is a process where water is boiled and then condensed leaving the minerals behind in the original container and only clean pure water in the new container. The process mimics nature, the sun evaporates, and clean water condenses in the clouds, and then it rains back down.  Unfortunately, today we have so much debris from air pollution in the air that rain catches all of that on its way down, so rainwater is not clean.   In our homes, this can be accomplished manually by boiling water on the stove and then using something to catch the steam and direct it into a sealable glass container for storage.  The far easier option is to have a countertop distiller (like this https://amzn.to/3JENZO4)  which produces 4 liters of distilled water in a few hours just by flipping a switch.   The important things to look for in a countertop distiller is stainless steel and glass containers to hold the water and the finished water vessel should be sealable to keep out any airborne impurities that can be deposited into the water. 

Reverse osmosis filters get the same end result as a distiller but using a different process.   In reverse osmosis filtration, we are pushing water through multiple filters.  Each progressive filter has a smaller, microscopic mesh that the water alone can push through and the larger minerals get left on the other side of the mesh.   Reverse osmosis systems (like this one: https://amzn.to/3jsm5dh )  can be installed on your kitchen sink as a convenient way to have fresh, clean, distilled water at all times.   

There are a few pros and cons to each system.  With a distiller most only process one gallon at a time.  If you live alone that might be fine, but if you forget to run it you will be waiting for water to drink.  It would be best to have a separate container to store the water in so you can have multiple gallons available.   If you live in a household with multiple people who are striving to stay hydrated at 1-2 gallons per day, the countertop distiller becomes problematic.  The distiller requires regular cleaning and wastes very little water. 

The reverse osmosis systems typically come with a 3-gallon or larger storage tank that continually refills.  If you use all 3 gallons at once it takes a few hours to refill but most people will be taking off a quart or a half gallon at a time and the tank will simply keep topping itself off.   The downside to reverse osmosis is the need to change the filters regularly – most are 3 months and 6 months.  Another downside to the reverse osmosis filter is that they waste water, on average they use 2 gallons to produce one gallon which is much improved over the older models that were 4 or 5 to 1.  There are also low-waste models that are a bit more expensive but that is an option if it is something you are concerned about. 

SIPPING, GULPING, HOW MUCH SHOULD WE DRINK IN AN HOUR?

Our kidneys can process roughly one quart of water per hour.  Drinking more than 1 quart in an hour can put a strain on the kidneys.    

Sipping or gulping?  We should drink to our own comfort.  Sometimes that means just sipping and other times that means gulping.   Often in the mornings when I first arise I will gulp down a full quart of water in a few minutes.   The rest of the day I will tend to drink more slowly.    If you are drinking too much too quickly your body will tell you by creating discomfort in the stomach and nausea.  If you feel nausea simply stop drinking and give your body a few hours to process the water you put in before you drink any more.  

When fasting we can often get an upset stomach or nauseous if we drink too much too quickly, so it’s often best to sip water when fasting or drink more slowly but consistently across the whole day. 

HOW TO GET IN 1 GALLON PER DAY EASILY

If you drink a 1-quart jar as soon as you wake up. Drink a second in the first 2-3 hours in the morning, drink a 3rd just before lunchtime, and a 4th before dinner you will have drank a gallon each day.

URINATION

Most people’s biggest concern with drinking more water is how many times they will have to pee in a day.    When we first start drinking more water there are two reasons that the body will start eliminating more frequently.  The first is that the more water we provide the more waste the body can eliminate.  The body wants to catch up on the backlog so when we first start drinking more the body has a greater urgency to eliminate frequently.  The wastes coming out are acidic and burn the cells of the kidneys and bladder so the body often wants to eliminate them urgently and we may find that we are running to the bathroom rather than walking.  

The second reason is the more dehydrated the body is, the more it rejects water at first.   If you have ever forgotten to water your plants you have seen this evidenced.  If you try to put water into very dry soil the water runs right out the bottom of the pot very quickly.  The soil remains dry and the water just keeps running through.  You have to keep repeatedly watering until it starts to absorb.  The same is true of our bodies.  We need to keep watering until we start to absorb.   

Setting realistic expectations, most people eating the natural diet will urinate more often throughout the day than when eating cooked foods.  This is how the body is supposed to function.  We are supposed to eliminate waste frequently so it is not stuck inside causing damage.   Some eating cooked foods are so chronically dehydrated that they might only urinate once or twice in a 24-hour period.   Normal should be somewhere between 7 and 12 times per day, and while we are detoxing heavily we might be closer to 15 or even 20 times if the body wants to eliminate urgently.   

If you are working a job that limits your access to a bathroom you may need to do a little planning when you first start increasing your water intake.  Drinking first thing in the morning before you start your morning routine will allow the water to be processed in the first hour of the day before you head off to work.  Typically we urinate within the hour of drinking, but each person is different so testing things out on the weekends is a good way to manage the work week.  Also, slowly increasing over several weeks will allow you to better manage when limited potty breaks are available.   

Making changes to our habits can always be tricky and require a bit of discipline or planning but increasing your water intake and drinking distilled water is well worth the trouble. The benefits to our health are innumerable. On that note, I shall leave you with a few more quotes about the benefits of distilled water to inspire you to push through and get rehydrated.

 “DISTILLED WATER IS ’empty’ water – a hungry water, A WATER CAPABLE OF ABSORBING BODY POISONS. You have had the experience of trying to use an old post office blotter on the desk. Everybody has used it and it is so full of ink that it will not suck up any more. So it is with a ‘full’ water, a water full of chlorine, aluminum, etc. Such water does not have the capacity of absorbing body impurities.” —Dr. Charles McFerrin, writing in the July 1955 issue of Nature’s Path 

“The late Dr. Lambe, of London, was so thoroughly convinced of the IMPORTANCE OF THE PUREST WATER in the treatment of Cancers, Scrofula, and Cachexias generally, that HE RESTRICTED HIS PATIENTS TO THE USE OF DISTILLED WATER. And his success was remarkable.” — from Herald of Health, Volume 2, in the article, “The Hygiean Home” by Russell T. Trall, M.D. 

 “The greatest damage done by inorganic minerals (hard)—plus waxy cholesterol and salt—is to the small arteries and other blood vessels of the brain (75% water). Hardening of the arteries and calcification of blood vessels starts on the day you start taking inorganic chemicals (and minerals from tap water) into our bodies.”

“WHEN DISTILLED WATER ENTERS THE BODY, IT LEAVES NO RESIDUE OF ANY KIND. It is free of salts and sodium. It is the most perfect water for the healthy functioning of the kidneys (83% water). It is the perfect liquid for the blood (83% water), the ideal liquid for the efficient functioning of the lungs (86% water), stomach, liver (85% water) and other vital organs. Why? Because it is free of all inorganic minerals. IT IS SO PURE THAT ALL LIQUID DRUG PRESCRIPTIONS ARE FORMULATED WITH DISTILLED WATER.” — Dr. Paul Bragg, N.D. Ph.T., from “The Shocking Truth About Water” 

“A frequent development while fasting is a dislike for water. This is particularly true if the water is “hard”. “HARD WATER” that, while one is eating, tastes pleasant enough, IS REJECTED BY THE SHARPENED SENSE OF TASTE. IN SUCH CASES WE FIND THE USE OF DISTILLED WATER, TO BE SATIFACTORY.” — Dr. Herbert M. Shelton, N.D., from The Science and Fine Art of Fasting, The Hygienic System: Vol. III

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Do you know what hunger really feels like?

TRUE HUNGER VS HUNGER PAINS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

True Hunger is pleasant

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

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

Weakness is not hunger

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

We can avoid “hunger” pains entirely.

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

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

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

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

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

Eat fruit and be well my friends.

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Reader Q&A

Surgery vs Healing Tumors Naturally

Question:

Why do tumors have a better chance of reoccurring after surgery than after healing via a return to the natural human diet?

Answer:

When a tumor is removed via surgery nothing has been done to remove the reason why the body created the tumor in the first place. Since the cause is not addressed the same conditions remain in place, so the natural progression is for the same end result. If you keep making the same mistakes you should expect to keep getting the same results.

When a tumor is removed by the body after a person corrects their diet, the conditions which created the tumor – the wrong foods being eaten – have been removed. There is no longer a need for the body to create a tumor because the conditions of disease no longer exist. The cause has been removed therefore the effect does not occur.

In addition, when we undergo surgery a tremendous amount of additional damage is done to the body requiring even more cleaning and repair work to be done by the body. Tumors are created by the body as a solution to an excess of cellular waste and debris that the body is not able to remove. The body is not able to remove that waste because the across-the-board burden on the body is too high. When we add to that waste burden yet again, the body is still under the same burden it was originally but now it has additional waste to remove but even less energy than it had before the surgery.

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Reader Q&A

Herbert Shelton’s Death

Question

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

Answer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lauren FarrisLeave a comment

Desire Health? Return to the Garden of Eden

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Eat fruit and be well my friends.

Read more about the Natural Human Diet:

The Natural Human Diet

Our Natural Foods Do Not Create Discomfort or Disturbance to the Body

The Slow Petrifaction Of The Body From Inorganic Mineral Consumption

Humans are herbivores, Comparative Anatomy

The Carnivore Delusion

Lauren Farris2 Comments