Can you keep your disease?

Disease Labels vs Biological RealityUnderstanding Toxemia, Cellular Waste, and the Body’s Healing Response

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

Most people these days believe in the incorrect medical narrative that there are different illnesses, thousands or hundreds of thousands of unique diseases, of which medicine has no cures. What the medical industry is actually referring to are different collections of symptoms, of which they place various disease labels. A disease label is not an entity; it is just a marketing tool. In biological reality, there is only one disease, which is toxemia, which is an over-acid condition of the body, created by impaired removal of cellular wastes, which leads to cellular malfunction.

There are two types of symptoms: expulsion symptoms and malfunction symptoms. Expulsion symptoms are how the body cleanses and heals from the damage caused by the wrong foods and other unhealthy lifestyle choices. These symptoms are how the body actively removes itself from the conditions of disease.

Malfunction symptoms develop when cells are chronically surrounded by their own accumulated waste. When this waste burden becomes excessive, either because eliminative symptoms are repeatedly suppressed with drugs or because we continually add to the load through cooked foods, animal products, processed foods, smoking, alcohol, and other intoxicants, the body can no longer keep up with removal. The retained waste irritates and damages cells, interfering with their normal function. What we call cellular malfunction is not a disease in itself, but a symptom of an underlying toxic state.

Health is the state in which the body operates with ease. Disease is simply the loss of that ease. When we burden the body with waste through cooked foods, animal products, chemical poisons, and other abuses, it cannot function at normal efficiency. If we continue those habits, the body either maintains the same state of dysfunction and produces the same symptoms or it declines further and produces new ones. Symptoms do not appear randomly; they reflect the conditions we create.

The medical industry collects clusters of symptoms, groups them together, and assigns them names. These labels are not explanations; they are classifications. Symptoms themselves are not diseases. They are the body’s response to underlying conditions. When harmful conditions remain in place, the body produces symptoms to manage them. Remove those causes, and the body no longer needs to produce those symptoms.

If we want the body to function normally, we must provide normal conditions. When we introduce inappropriate inputs, the body adapts the only way it can: it responds with symptoms. Many of those symptoms represent the body’s steady effort to eliminate the excess waste created by improper food choices and unhealthy habits. The body does not malfunction without reason. It responds directly to the environment we create. Symptoms are the body giving us usable feedback about the inputs we are providing.

When we restore the conditions required for normal operation, the body returns to normal operation. Once the causes are removed, disease labels lose their foundation. It actually takes considerable effort to maintain the disease. We must overeat, overwork, ingest stimulants and drugs, and continually burden the body with irritants. Health, by contrast, requires far less strain. We eat foods suited to our physiology—simple, ripe, whole foods that digest and assimilate easily. We rest. We breathe clean air. We engage in work and relationships that nourish rather than exhaust us. Health often requires subtraction, not addition.

It is far more laborious to manufacture disease than to support health. Disease demands the preparation of heavy, stimulating meals, constant exposure to toxins, and continuous energy expenditure through difficult digestion and recovery. Health can be as simple as eating a ripe apple. No complex preparation. No chemical stimulation. No aftermath that taxes the system. The body thrives when we stop interfering with it.

You cannot maintain disease—no matter the label—once you remove its causes. It does not matter what name has been assigned. If you stop burdening the body, it stops producing the symptoms required to cope with that burden.

If you would like to understand this process in greater depth, begin with Disease 101 – How We Create Disease on a Cellular Level (and How We Reverse It)

For a broader foundation on the purpose of symptoms and the body’s healing efforts, read The Nature and Purpose of Disease.

And if you are ready to apply these principles practically, start with What Is the Natural Human Diet?

These articles will give you the framework to understand not only how disease develops, but how to reverse the conditions that created it.

Embracing our Self Healing Body – Video Presentation

Understanding The Seven Stages of Disease and How We Heal

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

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.

Septicemia, sepsis, going septic, septic shock

If Germs Don’t Kill, What About Septicemia?

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

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.

The Viral Theory of Disease Causation

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

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.

One Disease – Two Types of Symptoms

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

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.  

The Hardest Thing to Do Is “Nothing”

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

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

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.

WHAT IS NERVE ENERGY? 

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

Nerve energy is a form of electricity measurable in millivolts.  It is the electrical impulse that runs through our nervous system, allowing for the communication of every cell in our system with every other cell in our system.  Nerve energy is central to the cleaning and healing processes of the body and when it runs low our body’s ability to clean up after itself becomes impaired.    

“Demonstrating that nerve energy is electrical is easy. If you mashed your finger, a message would immediately go to the brain and back would come a command to remove the finger from that which applied the pressure. Moreover, the brain would command the entire balance of the body to cooperate in the extraction of the finger from the offending pressure. Only electricity is capable of such speedy transmission. No chemical process or circulatory process is capable of this dispatch. It occurs only through a network of nerves with conductive abilities, and electricity is the only form of energy it can conduct. 

If you take a weak voltage and hook up to it while holding someone else’s hand, the other person gets a shock immediately when you touch the live electrical source. I don’t think anyone can doubt that we do generate electricity, and that is the form of energy we use to conduct our physical and mental activities. Sensations are transformed into electrical stimuli and forwarded to the brain. The brain interprets these and sends out commands based upon the interpretation. Thus, if you put your finger to a hot object, the finger is commanded in a flash to withdraw from it.”  – T.C. Fry, The Life Science Health System

WHY IS NERVE ENERGY IMPORTANT TO OUR HEALTH? 

“All diseases have an element of nerve derangement. Indeed, we must have enervation before any disease can develop and enervation may be brought about by anything–any influence–that uses up nerve energy.” – John Tilden, Impaired Health Vol. II

Diseases can be caused by any improper life practices, but generally are caused most by dietary indiscretions.  The primary mechanism that causes disease and root of all illness is reduced nerve energy.  Reduced nerve energy results in reduced ability of the body to eliminate the normal by-products of cell building and cell destruction.  

“In the process of tissue building— metabolism—there is cell building— anabolism—and cell destruction—catabolism. The broken down tissue is toxic and in health—when nerve energy is normal—it is eliminated from the blood as fast as evolved. When nerve energy is dissipated from any cause—physical or mental excitement or bad habits—the body becomes enervated, when enervated, elimination is checked, causing a retention of toxin in the blood or Toxemia. This accumulation of toxin when once established will continue until nerve energy is restored by removing the causes. So-called disease is nature’s effort at eliminating the toxin from the blood. All so-called diseases are crises of Toxemia.”  – John Tilden, Toxemia Explained

Toxemia/toxicosis may arise from many different sources: diet, water pollution, air pollution, injections, drugs, herbs and other poisons.  The toll toxemia takes and the reason we manifest disease symptoms when we are experiencing toxemia is because of insufficient nerve energy to eliminate the cellular wastes.  

“Obviously, to remain free of burdensome accumulations, both physical and chemical in nature, the body must have full use of its eliminative faculties. If these faculties are impaired by lack of nerve energy, if they have been disabled by toxic materials or if ingestion of toxic matters exceeds ability to cope, then elimination is likewise impaired. Accumulations further vitiate the elimination process until the body must undertake an eliminative crisis (disease) to free itself of its morbid load. – T.C.Fry

As nerve energy lags the body falls further and further behind in its elimination of cellular waste and this in turn further impairs the body’s ability to generate nerve energy.  The more nerve energy we squander the less we are able to generate until we crash. 

“…the body is primarily an organism that works on the amount of electricity it generates and which it has in its reserves. If this supply is depleted or otherwise insufficient to cope with the needs of the body, then body functions become impaired, including the processes of elimination of both endogenous metabolic wastes and exogenous poisons introduced into the body. This impairment begets further impairment including diminishing the body’s ability to restore depleted nerve energy.”  – T.C. Fry

This can be clearly evidenced in the individual who consumes coffee.  They quickly become dependent on having coffee every day, often multiple times per day because each cup of coffee makes their body more exhausted then the previous cup.  They begin to rely on the stimulation in a vicious cycle of fatigue and stimulation which drains their nerve energy and impairs the creation of nerve energy.

As we drain our nerve energy we build a backlog of waste that the body falls behind on eliminating.  Eventually the body must force a healing crisis to eliminate this cellular debris and at this point we experience a cold or flu healing event.  

“Due to unnatural practices or influences, humans frequently accumulate toxic substances in their bodies beyond normal capacity for elimination. When the accumulation becomes intolerable within the context of residual vitality, the body will preempt its nerve energy and redirect it to the task of extraordinary elimination or cleansing”  T.C.Fry

SQUANDERING NERVE ENERGY LEADS TO DISEASE  

The word toxemia means blood poisoning. Toxicosis refers to any disease brought on by poisoning.  In the normal daily processes of life our cells themselves produce toxic byproducts.  In a normal functioning body these toxic substances are rapidly eliminated from the area and the cell’s function is unimpeded.  However, when we squander our nerve energy the body’s ability to eliminate these normal byproducts of cellular metabolism becomes impaired.  The body becomes less able to eliminate, which then impairs the body’s ability to generate nerve energy, which then impairs every other function in the body. 

“Nerve energy is required to digest food; nerve energy is required to keep up secretions and excretions; nerve energy is required to prepare enzymes for digesting our food intake and keeping up a normal resistance to environmental influences as well as those that are autogenerated. 

When this nerve energy is up to the standard, we are poised–or balanced, as it were, with our environments–and we can eat a maximum amount of food, and take care of it. This being true, it should be obvious to those who care to reason that any influence which uses up nerve energy lowers the digestive powers of the body, and that an amount of food which can be utilized when the nerve energy is up to standard must necessarily be too much when the energy is used up in work, play, or sensual indulgence.

It should be obvious to any reasoning mind that a full dinner taken into a tired body cannot be digested properly; that a full meal, or any meal at all, eaten by one in great mental anguish over some great trouble, cannot be digested. And, when food is not digested, it becomes a poison.”  John Tilden, Impaired Health Vol I

“Using nerve-energy in excess of normal production brings on enervation. Few people waste nerve-energy in one way only. Food is a stimulant. Overeating is overstimulating. Add to this excess one or two other stimulants—Coffee or tobacco—excessive venery, overwork and worry, and one subject to that amount of drain of nerve-energy will become decidedly enervated.

Elimination falls far short of requirements; consequently toxin accumulates in the blood. This adds a pronounced auto-toxin stimulation to that coming from overstimulating habits, and completes a vicious circle. This complex stands for a disease-producing Toxemia, which will be permanent except as toxin crises—so-called acute diseases—lower the amount of toxin, again to accumulate and continue until the habits that keep the body enervated are controlled. Perfect health cannot be established until all enervating habits have been eliminated.” – John Tilden, Toxemia Explained

The more nerve energy we waste the less ability our body has to clean out the cellular waste and debris that build leading to disease conditions.   As the body becomes more fatigued the disease conditions build and we move from minor discomfort to major chronic disease. 

HOW IS NERVE ENERGY CREATED? 

Sleep and rest are the only way that we can regenerate nerve energy.  When our sleep is disturbed or we ignore our bodies’ need for more sleep we set off a cycle of degeneration. 

“Enervation can be caused by depletion of nerve energy in any of hundreds of ways. Sleep regenerates nerve energy. Obviously, insufficient sleep will not supply us with our needs. It will not fully recharge our batteries. We need sleep to regenerate nerve energy for the brain and nervous system. Rest and total abstinence from food, liquid and solid, and reforming all enervating habits, will restore nerve-energy; the elimination of toxin through the natural channels will take place, and full health will return.”  – Tilden Toxemia

“Sleep is the condition under which the brain generates nerve energy with which to conduct body activities. The deeper the stage of sleep into which the body enters, the more efficiently can nerve energy be generated. There are five stages of sleep if we include the R.E.M stage, popularly called the dream stage, when there are rapid eye movements. Other stages are named after the brain wave frequency. The threshold stage of sleep is the alpha stage and the deepest stage is delta wave sleep. As nerve energy is the spark of vitality for vigorous activity and high level function generally, adequate sleep is very essential to well-being.”  – T.C. Fry

Closing our eyes and resting on the couch for a few minutes periodically throughout the day can also help to regenerate our nerve energy and allow the body to clean out and improve its efficiency.

“While sleep regenerates a fund of nerve energy, rest enables the body to restock physical stores as well as to “clean house.”” TC. Fry

Sleep is controlled naturally, your body will only sleep when sleep is required.  If you are tired and you force yourself to stay awake and push through you are only impairing your body’s ability to clean and heal.  When your body tells you it needs rest, obey it and it will pay you back in health and comfort.   Disobey and pain and suffering will be the end result. 

“We become sleepy when sleep is needed. If we don’t fight it off by taking pep pills or coffee, we naturally drop off into a state of unconsciousness when our bodies need sleep. And we will remain in this state until our nerve energy is sufficiently recovered— unless our sleep is prematurely put to an end by a jangling alarm clock or other disturbing influence. It is impossible to sleep if we do not need sleep. Sleep cannot be “stored up” for future use. – T.C. Fry

It can be tempting to just push through and use those stimulants to make it through our day, but by doing so we are selling ourselves short.   The rest we take today will pay us back in abundant energy.  The stimulant we take today will pay us back in erratic, nervous energy that makes us less efficient and less effective and will cost our energy for the rest of the day and the rest of the week.   

HOW IS NERVE ENERGY WASTED?

Sadly there are a great many ways in which we are wasting our nerve energy each day.  When we look at the list we must marvel at how well our body maintains some semblance of normal functioning with all of the mistakes in living that we throw at it each day.  Here is a list of just some of the ways that we squander our nerve energy:

  • Cold and heat – “Extremes of temperature require the expenditure of nerve energy to adjust to changes” – TC Fry   “If a person spends all his nerve energy in keeping warm, he has none left for taking care of food. All other influences work the same way. Anything that reduces the nerve energy lowers the digestive function. When any part of the nerve energy is used up in keeping warm, there is just that much less for digesting and assimilating food.” – John Tilden   “Deliberate cooling or heating of the body is exhausting of nerve energy and lowers the body’s functional abilities.”  -TC Fry
  • Seeking pleasure excessively  – “this condition may be brought on by exhausting the nerve energy in seeking pleasure–wearing out the nervous system enjoying, so to speak. Instead of taking a moderate amount of pleasure in going to the theater or picture shows, dancing, etc., the nerve energy is worn out taking these pleasures in excess.” John Tilden, Impaired Health Vol II
  • Excessive eating
  • Imprudent eating – “In processing food for use, we expend two kinds of energy. We expend metabolic energy, which is the chemical and mechanical energies expended, and we expend nerve energy. For instance, we use very little nerve energy in digesting watermelon. But, in processing foods to which we are not biologically adapted, an enormous expenditure of nerve energy is occasioned. Meats may cause nervous exhaustion due to the body’s frenzied activities in dealing with proteins, uric acids and other toxic substances in them. Though we may feel exhilarated while expending nervous energy just as we feel “a pickme- up” when taking coffee (which really drains nerve energy), the stimulation occasioned by eating unsuitable foods such as meat is an indication of the inefficiency with which the body handles it.” T.C. Fry
  • Eating wrong combinations
  • Fermentation
  • Consuming stimulants – Coffee, tea, chocolate and drugs all drain the body of nerve energy
  • Eating foods that are artificially prepared
  • Eating cooked and processed foods 
  • Eating excess proteins – “neutralization and elimination of the toxins of protein degeneration (putrefaction) uses up vast amounts of nerve energy which, though stimulating at the time, exhausts and debilitates the body.” T.C.Fry
  • Eating starches instead of fruits – “A larger amount of the body’s limited supply of nerve energy is used up when starches are used for fuel than when fruits are used because starches are, as you know, polysaccharides and must be broken down (digested) into monosaccharides before the body can use them. Fruits contain a preponderance of monosaccharides, which, as you also know, need no digestion at all. Therefore, fruit eating leaves more of the body’s energies available for other activities. This explains, in part, why people feel so “light” when they eat fruits and so heavy when they eat beans or bread.”T.C.Fry
  • Overwork 
  • Worry and fear 
  • Excessive emotions and outbursts
  • Arguments with loved ones
  • Stress 
  • Lack of discipline 
  • The use of stimulants of all kinds 
  • Carelessness in looking after the functions of the body
  • Any influences that will produce overstimulation, intoxication, enervation, or imperfect elimination
  • Overstimulation – Social media, television, even reading a book can be a source of nerve energy drain if done to excess, or to upset.

As you can see there is a wide range of ways that we can drain our nerve energy.  Some of these are behaviors that are required, like eating or enjoying ourselves, but when taken to a place of excess, like gluttony or lust, they become a negative habit, while in moderation they provide health.  Other habits are purely nerve energy depleting, such as consuming stimulants or watching negative television news or scary movies.  These are ways in which we trap ourselves in draining experiences.   Relationships can also be another form of energy drain, fighting with a spouse or child instead of having a calm and reasonable discussion can run us down leading to impaired function of our body.   Some of these things can be avoided while others we have little control over.  But the more aware we are of the various drains on our energy, the more we can adapt our lifestyle to meet the needs of our body through the healing process. 

“Intoxication occurs when we overload the body with toxic materials from the outside, or we fail to observe our capacities, and overwork, get insufficient sleep, or are subjected to great stress, or when any number of other factors deplete the body of nerve energy or prevent its sufficient regeneration. For instance, stresses, emotional shocks, or traumatic experiences can drain our bodies of nerve energy very quickly.” – T. C. Fry

The more we take charge of our life experiences the better we can mitigate the drain on our nerve energy.   

HOW DO WE CONSERVE NERVE ENERGY AS BEST WE CAN?

“Insufficient nerve energy arises from dissipation, stress, overindulgence, excess or deficiency of the normal essentials of life, or pollution of the body with substances not normal to it. Accordingly,recovery from sickness can be achieved only by discontinuing its causes and supplying conditions favorable to healing.” T.C. Fry

“Find out in what way nerve-energy is wasted, and stop it—stop all nerve-leaks,” etc. I am appalled at my stupidity in saying to a patient to stop enervating himself, and allowing the matter to end by naming one or two gross enervating habits; for example: Stop worry; stop smoking;  stop stimulants; control your temper; stop eating too rapidly; stop allowing yourself to become excited. Stopping one enervating habit benefits; but dependable health brooks no enervating habits at all.” John Tilden, Toxemia Explained

As with all things health the answer is fairly simple but the implementation becomes more complicated.   The goal is to eliminate as much of the stimulation that is draining away our energy to make room for enjoyable activity that we can partake in because of our abundant energy.   The largest drain to our energy every day is digestion.   If you eat far removed from your natural foods the body will struggle in digestion and eat up nerve energy.   Correct the diet and a large improvement will occur.   

Next we must look at our sleep and rest habits.  Improve upon the quality of your sleep by getting to bed earlier and minimizing disruptions to your sleep.   Incorporate a nap into your routine, particularly after a meal or if you cannot nap at least close your eyes and sit quietly for a period.   

Do you want to learn more about how our self-healing and self-cleaning body remedies disease conditions and returns to a state of health when the conditions of health are supplied? Start by reading “Why do we get sick?

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.

What is Fatigue?

Fatigue and the Healing Processes

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

Fatigue is how we heal.

This is one of the hardest concepts that so many people struggle against.

Healing occurs when we are fasting and our legs get so weak that we cannot stand.

Healing occurs when the cold or flu makes us feel the lowest of low.

When I healed the mass in my breast I spent 72 hours in agony, with even the lightest of bed sheets touching my skin being excruciating. Bouncing between being freezing and being so hot that I felt like my skin was on fire. For 3 days I thought I was dying but I trusted that my body was intelligent. I also understood that my body has a biological mandate to survive. The body will never injure itself. The body will never create a symptom too dangerous. The body never needs to be rescued from itself. The body never benefits from interventions. The body is never made stronger by applying poisons.

When Happy, one of my Miniature Schnauzer rescues healed from a grapefruit-sized mass on her spleen, vestibular disease, sight, and hearing loss she slept all day for weeks on end and had several seizures during the healing process. Her body was always in control. Always creating symptoms for the benefit of the body.

When Mr Bean healed from seizures he fasted for 5 days and slept 23.75 hours a day, only getting up to pee once per day and drinking water on some days. He slept so soundly that I had to keep checking to make sure he was breathing.

Sleep is easy for the dogs to embrace. When healing begins they go straight to their dens, curl up, and sleep. The cats too. They don’t have any fear of rest like we humans do. They don’t fear their body’s healing processes. They don’t worry about missed meals. They don’t worry about missed activities. They just feel tired so they stop eating and go rest.

We humans though fight against every effort our body makes to heal us.

Rather than go to sleep and heal, we stimulate and fear the rest, further poisoning ourselves. We fear permitting ourselves to rest. We fear the wobbly legs, we try to eat through the nausea even with our bodies screaming at us to stop eating.

We fear heart palpitations as the body eliminates the poisons. We fear the mucus the body uses to wrap up the poisons and expel them and we try to use medicines or herbs to break up the mucus, as though dead materials can take action. Poisons cannot ever take action. They can never improve our condition. They can only poison.

We reach for drugs or herbs to save us from the very life-saving symptoms that the body is creating to heal us.

We fear the fever that heals but take a poison pill to bring the fever down. Many people succumb to the pill, many children die from the drugging of their body during a body creates fever.

We fear the diarrhea created by the body to expel the toxic materials, take anti-diarrheal medications, and drink salt-laden waters because we have been fed the electrolytes lie.

We fear the swelling of the lymph nodes that indicate the body is actively healing and working as designed and have our body’s sewer system surgically dissected for fear of the greatest healing process the body can create.

Every step of the way we battle against our body until our body has no choice but to give up the fight. And it all starts with fatigue.

Fatigue is the first sign of disease at our earliest juncture. It becomes chronic as we ignore it and disease builds. Yet, we continue to ignore it, stimulating it with salt, coffee, meat, or other irritants.

Fatigue is the result of the available energy turning inward to heal. Every time our legs get weak and wobbly or we feel like we cannot move our arms or lift even our water cup this is the tremendous gift of healing. The body has moved all available nerve energy internally and is cleaning and expelling the waste that has been slowly killing us.

But sadly, every step of the way most people will stimulate their way out of this healing with pharmaceutical drugs, herbs, salt, coffee, or a long list of other poisons until the body is left with no choice but to expire under the poisoning we have put ourselves through.

Fatigue is how we heal. Never forget that and health will be in your future.

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/the-natural-diet-support-group/

Eat fruit and be well my friends.

THE MEDICAL LABEL OF INFECTION

UNDERSTANDING THIS BODY PROCESS IS THE KEY TO HEALING OR REMAINING CHRONICALLY ILL.

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

What medicine calls “infection” is the most common healing process that the body initiates.

All bacteria in the body are created by the body for the benefit of the body and are used for cellular repair, nutrient transportation, and waste removal. These bacteria are always present in all healthy bodies but their population increases after the body has been injured or poisoned and decreases once the toxic material has been eliminated.

The body brings bacteria into an area to break down the waste and damaged tissue for removal.

The body brings in water to flush the waste out creating swelling. This is called inflammation. (Often a separate medical label ending in “itis” is used to describe the inflammation healing process – rhinitis, nephritis, meningitis, arthritis.)

The body brings additional blood flow to the area to provide repair materials causing the redness and heat. The activity of the bacteria breaking down the waste also generates heat.

All of this is the self-healing body doing what it needs to do to heal. Medicine deems all of these actions taken by the body to heal itself as dangerous and claims they need to apply poison to stop them. In the science of natural hygiene, which is what we follow to heal our ourselves, and our companion animals, we deem the healing processes created by the body as helpful rather than harmful. Rather than trying to force these healing processes to stop we aim to support the healing process and remove the cause of disease that led to the creation of the healing symptoms. When you remove the cause, disease conditions disappear.

When the body creates the healing process called “infection” by the disease industry, the only thing we need to do, or can do to assist the body in this process is not poison the body with treatments that impair these processes and most importantly not feed. Fasting allows the body to focus all available energy on the cleaning and repair process to heal quickly. Feeding slows the healing considerably and extends the amount of time the body ends up in pain or discomfort. This is because digestion is the largest energy drain on the body. As long as the digestive processes are working the energy available to heal is diverted and healing must proceed more slowly.

Medicine has never cured a single disease because the foundation of everything they do is based upon a false concept and false understanding of the role of bacteria in the body. For example, MRSA infection is a common issue for patients in hospitals. It is said to be antibiotic-resistant and cause major damage to the body. However, we now know that every human has a population of MRSA in their body at all times. All healthy bodies carry around all forms of bacteria that medicine blames for disease. If the bacteria is present in a healthy body and not causing symptoms then it cannot be a cause of disease in an unhealthy body.

Medicine is founded on the incorrect narrative of germs attacking the body which allows them to sell us poisons (antibiotics, antibacterials) to kill those germs. The only way to justify the sale of these poisons is if the public believes that the germs always present in the healthy body, created by the body and controlled by the body, are the cause of disease and that they require poisons to kill those germs. As a result of this narrative, allopathic medicine has created what they call “superbugs” or antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria. In reality, the body that is not killed by the application of poison is simply more injured and creates more and stronger bacteria to help itself heal.

The person who takes an antibiotic frequently finds that their symptoms return a short time later. The disease business narrative says they have developed antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Following their flawed logic, the disease industry then sells their customer a stronger poison to kill the germs created by the body to heal both the initial injury and the secondary injury created by the first round of poisons. The body will temporarily stop the cleaning process to deal with the incoming poison. However, this is the healing process the body uses to remedy disease conditions, so necessarily, the body will try to create the symptoms again a few days, weeks, or months later. Eventually, the body either runs out of energy to clean and heal temporarily pausing the healing symptoms at which point medicine then claims the drugs worked. Or the body shifts its elimination pathways and creates a different type of expulsion symptom to try to heal, shifts to internally storing the poison or waste material in tumors leading to cancer, or the person or animal dies from the repeated poisoning.

We see this most commonly in dogs with “allergies” or ear “infections”. The body tries to eliminate the waste through the skin or the ears and the owner rushes to the Vet where poison is applied to the ears or skin. The symptom stops temporarily while the body deals with the poison, then the body rests and recovers its energy, and the cleaning symptom returns. And again the owner runs to the vet to stop the cleaning, applying more poisons. This process repeats year after year until the dog or cat gets diagnosed with cancer or organ failure from the repeated poisoning and repeated stopping of the body’s healing processes.

The body never benefits from the application of poisons. You cannot poison a poisoned body back to health. But this is exactly what medicine attempts whenever the body starts the healing processes they call infection and inflammation. Since medicine always works against the body’s ability to heal itself AND it never seeks to remove the cause of the initial injury (cooked, foods, processed foods, meat, dairy, eggs, salt, spices, alcohol, coffee, tea, etc that poison us) the body is just continuously pushed into higher levels of disease.

The “deadly systemic infection” sold to you by the disease for-profit industry is the body-initiated cure for the disease conditions present in the body. This process is never dangerous because it is the cure for disease conditions. The body healing itself can never harm the body. However, if one were to apply poisons to the body when the body is in a vulnerable condition trying to clean out the prior poisons this drugging can result in severe injury, brain damage, or death. It is the drugging itself that causes the injury though, not the body’s healing processes.

The body’s healing processes never cause damage to the heart, liver, kidneys, or other organs. The body has a mandate to survive and will never create any conditions as part of the healing process that are dangerous to the body. However, if we keep putting in the cause and keep stopping the body from cleaning out the waste eventually chronic disease is the result. It is the ever-growing backlog of waste in the body that causes injury to the organs, not the body’s attempts to remove the waste and recover.

Frequently the appeal of following the drugging route to stop the healing process is based on the idea that the person or animal is suffering due to the healing process. After all, no one likes a cold or a flu-healing event. It’s certainly not fun and most humans are happy to swallow whatever any salesperson tells them will stop the cleaning as quickly as possible. So it is natural that we would want to try anything to stop the infection and inflammation and put an end to the short-term pain. In reality, drugging the body and causing more damage to the body’s tissues by suppressing healing processes always increases the suffering of the animal.

They started out with waste from one problem and by applying the various remedies we so exhaust the body that the symptoms of healing that the body created with the infection are temporarily impaired and stop for a short period of time. Drugging makes us feel better in the short term but it’s not better for the animal (or the human) because it causes long-term suffering from chronic disease and degeneration of the body.

The pain of healing on the other hand is short-lived, especially if we are willing to listen to the body and work with the body. First, we must cease the input of unnatural foods so the body can focus fully on healing quickly. and then we correct the diet so the body is not battling a chronic state of disease. The short-term gain of temporarily stopping the healing symptom the body is creating does not lead to long-term health outcomes. However, the short-term pain of allowing the healing process to complete and removing the cause of disease does lead to long-term health.

You can read more about the lie of infection and the science of how the body heals in this Lesson – https://www.facebook.com/groups/germtheory.vs.terraintheory/permalink/4670963286313976

I also recommend reading this series on what disease is and how it is created – https://www.therawkey.com/the-nature-and-purpose-of-disease/

Or you can watch this presentation on the 7 stages of disease which explains what disease is, why it is created, and how it is reversed.

______

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.

Nerve Energy

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

“The proper way to study disease is to study health and every influence favorable or not to its continuance. Disease is perverted health. Any influence that lowers nerve-energy becomes disease-producing. Disease cannot be its own cause; neither can it be its own cure, and certainly not its own prevention.”  Tilden, Toxemia Explained

Understanding our nerve energy and its functions is one of the most important keys to maintaining and recovering our health.   Without nerve energy our bodies cannot function.  Every cell and every elimination and cleaning process relies on nerve energy.  

Nerve energy is commonly squandered in modern life due to our lack of understanding of the importance of conserving our nerve energy.  Modern life promotes the constant misuse of this precious resource resulting in colds and flus and then chronic disease.  If we want to recover our health we have to adapt our habits away from the enervating habits taught to us by society and into habits of conservation.  

What Is Nerve Energy? 

Nerve energy is a form of electricity measurable in millivolts.  It is the electrical impulse that runs through our nervous system, allowing for the communication of every cell in our system with every other cell in our system.  Nerve energy is central to the cleaning and healing processes of the body and when it runs low our body’s ability to clean up after itself becomes impaired.    

“Demonstrating that nerve energy is electrical is easy. If you mashed your finger, a message would immediately go to the brain and back would come a command to remove the finger from that which applied the pressure. Moreover, the brain would command the entire balance of the body to cooperate in the extraction of the finger from the offending pressure. Only electricity is capable of such speedy transmission. No chemical process or circulatory process is capable of this dispatch. It occurs only through a network of nerves with conductive abilities, and electricity is the only form of energy it can conduct. 

If you take a weak voltage and hook up to it while holding someone else’s hand, the other person gets a shock immediately when you touch the live electrical source. I don’t think anyone can doubt that we do generate electricity, and that is the form of energy we use to conduct our physical and mental activities. Sensations are transformed into electrical stimuli and forwarded to the brain. The brain interprets these and sends out commands based upon the interpretation. Thus, if you put your finger to a hot object, the finger is commanded in a flash to withdraw from it.”  – T.C. Fry, The Life Science Health System

Why Is Nerve Energy Important To Our Health? 

“All diseases have an element of nerve derangement. Indeed, we must have enervation before any disease can develop and enervation may be brought about by anything–any influence–that uses up nerve energy.” – John Tilden, Impaired Health Vol. II

Diseases can be caused by any improper life practices, but generally are caused most by dietary indiscretions.  The primary mechanism that causes disease and root of all illness is reduced nerve energy.  Reduced nerve energy results in reduced ability of the body to eliminate the normal by-products of cell building and cell destruction.  

“In the process of tissue building— metabolism—there is cell building— anabolism—and cell destruction—catabolism. The broken down tissue is toxic and in health—when nerve energy is normal—it is eliminated from the blood as fast as evolved. When nerve energy is dissipated from any cause—physical or mental excitement or bad habits—the body becomes enervated, when enervated, elimination is checked, causing a retention of toxin in the blood or Toxemia. This accumulation of toxin when once established will continue until nerve energy is restored by removing the causes. So-called disease is nature’s effort at eliminating the toxin from the blood. All so-called diseases are crises of Toxemia.”  – John Tilden, Toxemia Explained

Toxemia/toxicosis may arise from many different sources: diet, water pollution, air pollution, injections, drugs, herbs and other poisons.  The toll toxemia takes and the reason we manifest disease symptoms when we are experiencing toxemia is because of insufficient nerve energy to eliminate the cellular wastes.  

“Obviously, to remain free of burdensome accumulations, both physical and chemical in nature, the body must have full use of its eliminative faculties. If these faculties are impaired by lack of nerve energy, if they have been disabled by toxic materials or if ingestion of toxic matters exceeds ability to cope, then elimination is likewise impaired. Accumulations further vitiate the elimination process until the body must undertake an eliminative crisis (disease) to free itself of its morbid load. – T.C.Fry

As nerve energy lags the body falls further and further behind in its elimination of cellular waste and this in turn further impairs the body’s ability to generate nerve energy.  The more nerve energy we squander the less we are able to generate until we crash. 

“…the body is primarily an organism that works on the amount of electricity it generates and which it has in its reserves. If this supply is depleted or otherwise insufficient to cope with the needs of the body, then body functions become impaired, including the processes of elimination of both endogenous metabolic wastes and exogenous poisons introduced into the body. This impairment begets further impairment including diminishing the body’s ability to restore depleted nerve energy.”  – T.C. Fry

This can be clearly evidenced in the individual who consumes coffee.  They quickly become dependent on having coffee every day, often multiple times per day because each cup of coffee makes their body more exhausted then the previous cup.  They begin to rely on the stimulation in a vicious cycle of fatigue and stimulation which drains their nerve energy and impairs the creation of nerve energy.

As we drain our nerve energy we build a backlog of waste that the body falls behind on eliminating.  Eventually the body must force a healing crisis to eliminate this cellular debris and at this point we experience a cold or flu healing event.  

“Due to unnatural practices or influences, humans frequently accumulate toxic substances in their bodies beyond normal capacity for elimination. When the accumulation becomes intolerable within the context of residual vitality, the body will preempt its nerve energy and redirect it to the task of extraordinary elimination or cleansing”  T.C.Fry

Squandering Nerve Energy Leads To Disease  

The word toxemia means blood poisoning. Toxicosis refers to any disease brought on by poisoning.  In the normal daily processes of life our cells themselves produce toxic byproducts.  In a normal functioning body these toxic substances are rapidly eliminated from the area and the cell’s function is unimpeded.  However, when we squander our nerve energy the body’s ability to eliminate these normal byproducts of cellular metabolism becomes impaired.  The body becomes less able to eliminate, which then impairs the body’s ability to generate nerve energy, which then impairs every other function in the body. 

“Nerve energy is required to digest food; nerve energy is required to keep up secretions and excretions; nerve energy is required to prepare enzymes for digesting our food intake and keeping up a normal resistance to environmental influences as well as those that are autogenerated. 

When this nerve energy is up to the standard, we are poised–or balanced, as it were, with our environments–and we can eat a maximum amount of food, and take care of it. This being true, it should be obvious to those who care to reason that any influence which uses up nerve energy lowers the digestive powers of the body, and that an amount of food which can be utilized when the nerve energy is up to standard must necessarily be too much when the energy is used up in work, play, or sensual indulgence.

It should be obvious to any reasoning mind that a full dinner taken into a tired body cannot be digested properly; that a full meal, or any meal at all, eaten by one in great mental anguish over some great trouble, cannot be digested. And, when food is not digested, it becomes a poison.”  John Tilden, Impaired Health Vol I

“Using nerve-energy in excess of normal production brings on enervation. Few people waste nerve-energy in one way only. Food is a stimulant. Overeating is overstimulating. Add to this excess one or two other stimulants—Coffee or tobacco—excessive venery, overwork and worry, and one subject to that amount of drain of nerve-energy will become decidedly enervated.

Elimination falls far short of requirements; consequently toxin accumulates in the blood. This adds a pronounced auto-toxin stimulation to that coming from overstimulating habits, and completes a vicious circle. This complex stands for a disease-producing Toxemia, which will be permanent except as toxin crises—so-called acute diseases—lower the amount of toxin, again to accumulate and continue until the habits that keep the body enervated are controlled. Perfect health cannot be established until all enervating habits have been eliminated.” – John Tilden, Toxemia Explained

The more nerve energy we waste the less ability our body has to clean out the cellular waste and debris that build leading to disease conditions.   As the body becomes more fatigued the disease conditions build and we move from minor discomfort to major chronic disease. 

How Is Nerve Energy Created? 

Sleep and rest are the only way that we can regenerate nerve energy.  When our sleep is disturbed or we ignore our bodies’ need for more sleep we set off a cycle of degeneration. 

“Enervation can be caused by depletion of nerve energy in any of hundreds of ways. Sleep regenerates nerve energy. Obviously, insufficient sleep will not supply us with our needs. It will not fully recharge our batteries. We need sleep to regenerate nerve energy for the brain and nervous system. Rest and total abstinence from food, liquid and solid, and reforming all enervating habits, will restore nerve-energy; the elimination of toxin through the natural channels will take place, and full health will return.”  – Tilden Toxemia

“Sleep is the condition under which the brain generates nerve energy with which to conduct body activities. The deeper the stage of sleep into which the body enters, the more efficiently can nerve energy be generated. There are five stages of sleep if we include the R.E.M stage, popularly called the dream stage, when there are rapid eye movements. Other stages are named after the brain wave frequency. The threshold stage of sleep is the alpha stage and the deepest stage is delta wave sleep. As nerve energy is the spark of vitality for vigorous activity and high level function generally, adequate sleep is very essential to well-being.”  – T.C. Fry

Closing our eyes and resting on the couch for a few minutes periodically throughout the day can also help to regenerate our nerve energy and allow the body to clean out and improve its efficiency.

“While sleep regenerates a fund of nerve energy, rest enables the body to restock physical stores as well as to “clean house.”” TC. Fry

Sleep is controlled naturally, your body will only sleep when sleep is required.  If you are tired and you force yourself to stay awake and push through you are only impairing your body’s ability to clean and heal.  When your body tells you it needs rest, obey it and it will pay you back in health and comfort.   Disobey and pain and suffering will be the end result. 

“We become sleepy when sleep is needed. If we don’t fight it off by taking pep pills or coffee, we naturally drop off into a state of unconsciousness when our bodies need sleep. And we will remain in this state until our nerve energy is sufficiently recovered— unless our sleep is prematurely put to an end by a jangling alarm clock or other disturbing influence. It is impossible to sleep if we do not need sleep. Sleep cannot be “stored up” for future use. – T.C. Fry

It can be tempting to just push through and use those stimulants to make it through our day, but by doing so we are selling ourselves short.   The rest we take today will pay us back in abundant energy.  The stimulant we take today will pay us back in erratic, nervous energy that makes us less efficient and less effective and will cost our energy for the rest of the day and the rest of the week.   

How Is Nerve Energy Wasted?

Sadly there are a great many ways in which we are wasting our nerve energy each day.  When we look at the list we must marvel at how well our body maintains some semblance of normal functioning with all of the mistakes in living that we throw at it each day.  Here is a list of just some of the ways that we squander our nerve energy:

  • Cold and heat – “Extremes of temperature require the expenditure of nerve energy to adjust to changes” – TC Fry   “If a person spends all his nerve energy in keeping warm, he has none left for taking care of food. All other influences work the same way. Anything that reduces the nerve energy lowers the digestive function. When any part of the nerve energy is used up in keeping warm, there is just that much less for digesting and assimilating food.” – John Tilden   “Deliberate cooling or heating of the body is exhausting of nerve energy and lowers the body’s functional abilities.”  -TC Fry
  • Seeking pleasure excessively  – “this condition may be brought on by exhausting the nerve energy in seeking pleasure–wearing out the nervous system enjoying, so to speak. Instead of taking a moderate amount of pleasure in going to the theater or picture shows, dancing, etc., the nerve energy is worn out taking these pleasures in excess.” John Tilden, Impaired Health Vol II
  • Excessive eating
  • Imprudent eating – “In processing food for use, we expend two kinds of energy. We expend metabolic energy, which is the chemical and mechanical energies expended, and we expend nerve energy. For instance, we use very little nerve energy in digesting watermelon. But, in processing foods to which we are not biologically adapted, an enormous expenditure of nerve energy is occasioned. Meats may cause nervous exhaustion due to the body’s frenzied activities in dealing with proteins, uric acids and other toxic substances in them. Though we may feel exhilarated while expending nervous energy just as we feel “a pickme- up” when taking coffee (which really drains nerve energy), the stimulation occasioned by eating unsuitable foods such as meat is an indication of the inefficiency with which the body handles it.” T.C. Fry
  • Eating wrong combinations
  • Fermentation
  • Consuming stimulants – Coffee, tea, chocolate and drugs all drain the body of nerve energy
  • Eating foods that are artificially prepared
  • Eating cooked and processed foods 
  • Eating excess proteins – “neutralization and elimination of the toxins of protein degeneration (putrefaction) uses up vast amounts of nerve energy which, though stimulating at the time, exhausts and debilitates the body.” T.C.Fry
  • Eating starches instead of fruits – “A larger amount of the body’s limited supply of nerve energy is used up when starches are used for fuel than when fruits are used because starches are, as you know, polysaccharides and must be broken down (digested) into monosaccharides before the body can use them. Fruits contain a preponderance of monosaccharides, which, as you also know, need no digestion at all. Therefore, fruit eating leaves more of the body’s energies available for other activities. This explains, in part, why people feel so “light” when they eat fruits and so heavy when they eat beans or bread.” T.C.Fry
  • Overwork 
  • Worry and fear 
  • Excessive emotions and outbursts
  • Arguments with loved ones
  • Stress 
  • Lack of discipline 
  • The use of stimulants of all kinds 
  • Carelessness in looking after the functions of the body
  • Any influences that will produce overstimulation, intoxication, enervation, or imperfect elimination
  • Overstimulation – Social media, television, even reading a book can be a source of nerve energy drain if done to excess, or to upset.

As you can see there is a wide range of ways that we can drain our nerve energy.  Some of these are behaviors that are required, like eating or enjoying ourselves, but when taken to a place of excess, like gluttony or lust, they become a negative habit, while in moderation they provide health.  Other habits are purely nerve energy depleting, such as consuming stimulants or watching negative television news or scary movies.  These are ways in which we trap ourselves in draining experiences.   Relationships can also be another form of energy drain, fighting with a spouse or child instead of having a calm and reasonable discussion can run us down leading to impaired function of our body.   Some of these things can be avoided while others we have little control over.  But the more aware we are of the various drains on our energy, the more we can adapt our lifestyle to meet the needs of our body through the healing process. 

“Intoxication occurs when we overload the body with toxic materials from the outside, or we fail to observe our capacities, and overwork, get insufficient sleep, or are subjected to great stress, or when any number of other factors deplete the body of nerve energy or prevent its sufficient regeneration. For instance, stresses, emotional shocks, or traumatic experiences can drain our bodies of nerve energy very quickly.” – T. C. Fry

The more we take charge of our life experiences the better we can mitigate the drain on our nerve energy.   

How do we conserve nerve energy as best we can?

“Insufficient nerve energy arises from dissipation, stress, overindulgence, excess or deficiency of the normal essentials of life, or pollution of the body with substances not normal to it. Accordingly, recovery from sickness can be achieved only by discontinuing its causes and supplying conditions favorable to healing.” T.C. Fry

“Find out in what way nerve-energy is wasted, and stop it—stop all nerve-leaks,” etc. I am appalled at my stupidity in saying to a patient to stop enervating himself, and allowing the matter to end by naming one or two gross enervating habits; for example: Stop worry; stop smoking;  stop stimulants; control your temper; stop eating too rapidly; stop allowing yourself to become excited. Stopping one enervating habit benefits; but dependable health brooks no enervating habits at all.” John Tilden, Toxemia Explained

As with all things health the answer is fairly simple but the implementation becomes more complicated.   The goal is to eliminate as much of the stimulation that is draining away our energy to make room for enjoyable activity that we can partake in because of our abundant energy.   The largest drain to our energy every day is digestion.   If you eat far removed from your natural foods the body will struggle in digestion and eat up nerve energy.   Correct the diet and a large improvement will occur.   

Next we must look at our sleep and rest habits.  Improve upon the quality of your sleep by getting to bed earlier and minimizing disruptions to your sleep.   Incorporate a nap into your routine, particularly after a meal or if you cannot nap at least close your eyes and sit quietly for a period.