Varicose veins are unsightly and most people’s concerns around varicose veins or spider veins are in wanting to rid themselves of them purely for cosmetic reasons. What most people don’t realize is that these unsightly veins are a warning sign, a giant red flag waving trying to warn you of the great stress the body is under and the damage being done to the structural integrity of the body.
What is a Varicose vein?
Varicose is defined as abnormally swollen or dilated. A varicose vein is a condition in which a vein, most often in the legs, becomes enlarged, swollen, dilated, twisted, and often painful. Modern medicine considers this condition to be permanent because they never seek to remove the cause of the issue or allow the self-healing body to make repairs as it is designed to do.
Traditional medical treatment involves compression stockings and procedures to close or remove the veins. Larger varicose veins are treated with ligation and stripping, laser treatment, or radiofrequency treatment. Smaller varicose veins and spider veins are usually treated with sclerotherapy or laser therapy. In all of the available treatments, there is nothing addressing the cause and therefore nothing that is stopping the progression of degeneration. By treating symptoms without removing the cause, they are shooting the messenger and ignoring the message.
A warning sign
Varicose veins are an indicator symptom or a warning sign. They are a clear red flag that conditions in the body are not allowing for the normal operation of the body and that there is serious degeneration of the tissues underway. The issue they are drawing our attention to is mineral supply and usage. If the body does not have a large enough mineral reserve the body will pull minerals out of the veins, arteries, muscles, bones, teeth, and other tissues to meet its needs.
A chronic lack of organic minerals being supplied via the diet results in a chronic depletion of these minerals from the tissues. When this occurs in the veins the depletion results in varicose or spider veins as a first early warning sign, but this condition can lead to aneurysms, burst blood vessels, and strokes if the conditions are not corrected. This depletion of minerals can also be seen in bone loss and osteoporosis, dental cavities, frequent muscle injuries (sprains and tears), easy bruising, hernias, bowel prolapses, weak hair and nails, sagging skin, and a wide range of other symptoms.
We will talk a bit more about minerals below, but first, let’s look at how a varicose vein develops.
“Venous flow is most efficient during muscular activity when the contracting muscles compress the sinusoids (minute blood vessels) and deep veins, thereby pumping the blood toward the heart; the direction of flow is controlled by the venous valves. Veins function to conduct blood from the peripheral tissue to the heart. Blood pressure in these vessels is extremely low compared to that in the arterial system, and blood must exit at an even lower pressure, creating a need for a special mechanism whereby blood will be kept moving on its return to the heart rather than being allowed to pool and create more resistance to capillary flow. To achieve this, veins possess a unique system of valves. They serve to direct the flow of blood to the heart, particularly in an upward direction, preventing backflow when closed, movement of blood in veins toward the heart is brought about largely by the massaging action of contracting skeletal muscles and by the pressure gradient created by-breathing when, during inspiration, the pressure in the thoracic cavity decreases and the pressure in the abdominal cavity increases. Insufficiency of the valves can cause veins to become varicose, that is, swollen with accumulated blood, knotted, and painful. The veins lose their elasticity as a result of the continuous distention. Varicosity commonly occurs in the superficial veins of the lower extremities, which are subject, to strain when the individual stands for long periods of time. Obesity hastens their development.
Initially, superficial veins are tense and may be palpated but are not visible. Subsequently, they become visibly dilated or painful. Eventually pigmentation (from red blood cells diffusion through the capillaries), eczema, edema, subcutaneous induration and ulceration occur. The ulceration is usually small, superficial, and very painful because of exposure of nerve endings. These ulcerations may start following minor trauma to an area of pigmentation, induration, eczema, or edema, and are usually chronic by the time they are seen.” – T.C. Fry
In short, the weakening tissue is unable to withstand the pressure of the blood flow and becomes distended and misshapen as a result. Minerals are what provide the strength needed by the veins to maintain their shape and elasticity.
Minerals
Minerals, also referred to as cell salts, have a wide range of uses in the body, from neutralizing acids to building bones and teeth, but most people don’t realize that the minerals we consume also form part of the structure of all of our muscles, veins, arteries, organs and all other tissues. Minerals are the strength-giving material that allows our muscles to maintain their integrity and our organs to maintain their shape. Minerals also give strength and structure to the veins and arteries. Like the mortar in a brick wall, if your minerals become depleted (mortar) then your brick wall (organs, veins, tissues) will begin to collapse under any stress.
In a normal healthy body, the body might pull minerals from the vein for immediate use elsewhere but the natural diet being consumed would provide abundant minerals for replenishment of the supply and the body would quickly return the minerals taken from the vein with the incoming supply.
However, with our unnatural cooked foods-centered diet, that humans have shifted to over many generations, we are no longer replenishing our organic minerals at an adequate rate. This means most of the population is suffering from some level of chronic depletion of their mineral supply. Often we are even so depleted that our children are being born into a deficit, leading to crooked teeth, small jaws, narrow breathing passages, and a wide range of birth defects.
Humans are eating a high acid-forming diet of cooked animal tissues and secretions, grains, refined sugars, and starches, which not only lack a supply of usable, organic minerals but also deplete the body of organic minerals as the body attempts to digest and eliminate these substances. Our unnatural cooked foods diet is abundant in inorganic minerals, but severely lacking in organic minerals.
Organic vs Inorganic Minerals
Most people understand our need for minerals but few understand the distinction between an organic mineral and an inorganic mineral, nor the importance of differentiating between the two. When we eat the Standard American Diet we consume minerals in our cooked foods, however, those minerals are largely unusable by our body. Here are some key points we all must understand:
1. Minerals are inorganic as they exist naturally in the soil and water. Rocks are inorganic minerals, we cannot digest and utilize rocks, but plants can.
2. Minerals are organic as they exist in plants and in the animals which eat those plants. Organic minerals are usable by the human body and other animals.
3. Only plants can transform inorganic minerals into organic minerals. Plants and the bacteria in the soil that assists them, break down rocks and bring them up into the plant where they are converted (or organized) into an organic form of the same mineral.
4. Humans must eat plants to obtain their organic minerals.
5. Inorganic minerals are useless and injurious to the human body.
6. Cooking food turns the organic (organized) minerals back into inorganic (disorganized) minerals.
The minerals found in raw plant foods are therefore usable and beneficial to the body while those found in cooked foods are injurious to the body. When we consume a predominantly cooked food diet we are flooding the body with unusable inorganic minerals while limiting our intake of usable organic minerals.
How the Confusion Began
Inorganic minerals and organic minerals are said to have the same chemical compositions, and as such, they were confused by early nutritionists. The mineral identified as iron in the bloodstream is said to have the same chemical composition as the mineral, iron, in a nail. It is therefore easy to see how these early nutritionists and chemists incorrectly assumed that there were no other differences between these two forms of iron. As a result of this assumption, the public was sold iron mineral supplements that consisted of surplus powdered nails to address iron deficiency. An error in reasoning was made by assuming that a chemical similarity in minerals also meant there were identical nutritional characteristics between organic and inorganic minerals and that one could be substituted for the other. While the same minerals are found in man and animals that are found in soil and water, it was wrong to assume that these were interchangeable. Humans are plant eaters, not rock eaters.
“It is necessary that the minerals in the soil be elaborated into organic compounds by the plant before they can be assimilated by the body. The various mineral compounds produced by the chemist differ in their structure and in the relative positions of their component molecules than those produced in the plant.
Over sixty years ago a German scientist named Abderhalden conducted a series of experiments comparing how several species absorbed different forms of iron. He found that animals fed with food poor in iron, plus in addition of inorganic iron, were unable in the long run to produce as much hemoglobin as those, receiving a natural iron-sufficient diet.
While the inorganic iron may be absorbed into the body, it is not utilized in the formation of hemoglobin, but remains unused within the tissues. Abderhalden also concluded that any apparent benefit of the inorganic iron resulted from its stimulating effect.
Chemically, it is true that iron in the bloodstream and iron in nails are the same and that calcium in rocks (known as dolomite) is identical to calcium in the bones.
However, it is a grave error to believe that the body can digest and assimilate and utilize powdered nails and crushed rocks.” – T.C. Fry, Life Science Course Lesson 10
As a result of this confusion the supplement industry was born and today millions of people poison their bodies with inorganic mineral supplements in the hopes of avoiding a return to their natural foods. Sadly this results in greater and greater degeneration of the body as the unusable and injurious inorganic minerals are pushed through the system and exit unused. The only result is a temporary stimulation as the body activates its all hands on deck, red alert response to being poisoned. This stimulation is often confused with a beneficial effect and a temporary shift in the disease symptoms and the person then believes the supplement has helped the body when in fact it has created greater injury and burden.
Blood testing often further reinforces this error because the blood reading will show the inorganic minerals circulating in the blood, as the body attempts to eliminate them. Let’s say you exhibit a symptom, such as varicose veins, and take a blood test that shows you to be low in calcium. A physician recommends you take inorganic calcium supplements, and you acquiesce and agree to have blood tests again two months later. The physician then shows you an increase in calcium in your blood and in spite of the symptoms remaining, or returning shortly after, the deficiency is considered corrected. The contents of the blood do not accurately reflect the contents of the tissues as the blood is material in circulation rather than material in use. Therefore the levels in the blood are a poor indicator of utilization. They cannot distinguish between that which is being put to use and that which is being expelled as useless or toxic material.
Healing Varicose Veins
Once we understand the cause of any issue it becomes easy to determine the correct course of action to correct the issue. Since varicose veins are a result of a chronic lack of adequate minerals being supplied as well as a chronic misuse of minerals in the body due to the intake of a high acid-forming diet, the correction is simple. Correct the diet, rest and fast. Through the correction of diet we stop the deficit by supplying adequate minerals. Through rest we allow the body to make necessary repairs and reallocate resources. Through fasting, we supply a deep physiological rest which allows for the reallocation of resources most efficiently and an elimination of those acidic wastes which are tying up the minerals in the body.
Fasting for repair of Varicose Veins
“Dr. Shelton advocated the fast for all cases of varicose veins. He said, “For more than 40 years I have advocated the employment of the fast in cases, of varicose ulcers. In many such cases that I have cared for, I have not had one to fail of healing.” Also in regard to varicose ulcers and fasting, Dr. Shelton quotes Dr. Harry Clements. He cites an article that appeared in The Lancet, June 15, 1968, entitled “Fasting for Obesity,” the article read, “Perhaps the most unexpected effect was the rapid healing of varicose ulcers. Case 10 had had ulceration continuously for 18 years, following an operation on her varicose veins, but after six weeks starvation the ulcers had completely healed whereas case 12 had ulcers which had remained active for seven years in spite of seven months’ treatment in 1964, yet they healed in three weeks.”
The body will heal when provided with the proper conditions for healing and repair. As with all toxic conditions, rest is the primary condition, and the fast met that requirement.” – T.C. Fry, Life Science Course Lesson 76
Whether we utilize fasting or simply a correction of our diet and physical rest the body will make the repairs necessary as long as we stop creating the injury. We can only live in a healthy body if we put the conditions of health into place. Those conditions require the natural human diet of fresh fruit, sweet lettuce, tender vegetables, and small amounts of nuts and seeds to be provided along with fresh air, sunshine, moderate exercise and other healthful pursuits. The more rapidly we correct our dietary missteps the faster we can return our body to the pristine health which is our birthright.
