Reader Q&A

The Flu and Saunas

Question

What is the flu? After being at a sauna spa, I got bad flu symptoms. Would you say it is a detox or a virus I picked up in the spa?

Answer:

Flu symptoms are expulsions symptoms, this is a healing process. The Flu is a detox process in which the body is expelling poisons, toxins, or an overload of cellular waste that was recently encountered or had been building up in the body. Virus particles are simply spent cellular debris – pieces of broken-down cells. They cannot take any action because they are dead, inert, and have no nucleus, a requisite for life.

The body creates colds and flu when the level of toxicity in the body rises above the body’s tolerance limit. This occurs primarily because we are eating foods that are far removed from our natural diet and which are a burden on the body. As we eat cooked and processed foods day in and day out the level of cellular waste builds inside the body and the body is not able to keep up. When the level of toxicity reaches its tipping point the body initiates a healing event, which we call disease but in reality, is the solution to the already existing disease conditions.

Working out, and exposing ourselves to extremes in temperature from saunas or ice baths, or even very hot and very cold weather can trigger a healing event because we are overworking the body creating a large flush of excess waste. Saunas are detrimental to our health because of the strain they place on our cells. Our body works hard to maintain internal temperatures within very narrow ranges. Outside of these ranges, we will die. When we expose ourselves to extremes of heat in a sauna the body has to work exponentially harder to maintain survival temperatures. When our cells work harder they create more waste. It is the cellular waste that the body creates which creates disease conditions. So overworking the body by overheating creates lots of cell waste which then requires the body to initiate an expulsion event to catch up on the backlog of waste.

The more we eat our natural diet the easier it is for the body to maintain its temperature in extreme conditions, but ideally, we do not want to unnecessarily expose ourselves to extremes of temperature.

Drug Addiction 

by Dr. Herbert M. Shelton

Science, as medicine is commonly called, is never-ceasing in its search for cures. In his syndicated column, Albert Edward Wiggam once wrote that science has not discovered a surefire cure for alcoholism, but it has found a drug that helps. He said that, after a drunken man sobers up the drug Equanil quiets his tense nerves and helps reduce the desire for another drink. This is to say, the drug substitutes for alcohol. The drug is sufficiently dangerous that it can be obtained only upon a physician’s prescription.

Drug addiction is frequently an aftermath of the employment of drugs in the treatment of disease. Sedatives, narcotics, and stimulants are employed with which to provide evanescent, but fictional, relief from discomfort and pain. Somatic awareness, no less than psychic awareness, is benumbed by the taking of sedative drugs and the housecleaning that is so urgently needed is not undertaken. Each repetition of the dose tends to build a drug habit. A rebirth of awareness follows the excretion of the drug. It is then that the drug user becomes aware of his actual condition. His physician will call his symptoms withdrawal symptoms. He should realize that they are the outcries of an organism that has been outraged with poisons. Drug addiction grows out of the search for relief from the unease, weakness, discomfort and pain that result from the employment of drugs and is not a genuine demand for a repetition of the drug. There is no craving for a drug, but a subconscious demand for relief.

For fifty years I have insisted that what is called drug addiction arises out of the search for relief from the unease, discomfort, distress and misery caused by prior taking of a drug. The narcotic addict obtains a brief respite from his misery by renarcotizing his nerves. The stimulant addict receives a brief illusion of renewed strength by goading his nerves with the stimulant the prior taking of which is responsible for his weakness. In July of 1971 a former drunkard was interviewed on television here in San Antonio. When asked what made him drink he stated: “I would drink today to get relief from the misery caused by drinking yesterday.” Thus speaking from his personal experience, he confirmed my view.

So persistent and so insistent is the demand for relief from the drug caused misery, the victim of the drug practice finds himself unable to resist the temptation to return again and again to the source of his misery for the temporary “relief” this affords. To provide this “relief” requires a progressive increase both in the size and the frequency of the dose. The standard procedures in such cases continue to revolve around efforts to break the vicious circle by a gradual reduction of the dose, both in size and frequency, and to substitute one addiction for another. Both of these plans have proved very unsatisfactory, for the reason that each of them continues to outrage the nervous system by continuing drugging and the search for relief through drugs. Instead of stopping the drug to which the habitue is addicted, it is continued or an effort is made to substitute another drug—one narcotic for another or one stimulant for another. The addict continues to be smothered in his drug-induced miseries. No effective means of promoting the health of the individual is employed, hence the addict does not recover normal health. In those few cases where apparent recovery from addiction occurs, the tendency to relapse is great.

Diseases and vices, growing out of the same general causes, and being essentially the same, are therefore, to handled on the same general plan. That mode of care that will restore health to the sick man, will just as effectually relieve the vicious man and vice versa. If it fails in one, it will fail in both. When either disease or vice becomes thoroughly matured, it is, to a large extent, beyond control of the will. A proper environment and a Hygienic life provide the best hope in this case. It is idle to suppose that a man who has violated nature’s laws until his sensations are all abnormal, and the mainsprings of his life are all befouled, representing poor diseased conditions and vicious habits, can merely exercise the will to recover, and even recovery would not be at all sufficient unless good habits and a thorough revolution of life follow. To appeal simply to the intellect and moral sense of a tobacco smoker or an opium eater or a drunkard, as a means of inducing him to relinquish his indulgence is generally about as effective as to ask an ague patient to stop shaking. [Ague – Fever with chills]

When Professor Carlson, who was a habitual cigar smoker, underwent a short fast in his studies of hunger, he found that after the second day of abstinence, he did not enjoy smoking. “In fact,” he reports, “smoking tended to produce nausea.” It is not an unusual experience for the fast to compel the smoker to discontinue the practice. Many have been able to continue smoking through a fast, but all who discontinue smoking at the outset of fast find that after two to three days without food, they have no more craving for the weed. The same is true of other forms (chewing, for example) of tobacco addiction. 

A similar experience is seen in other drug addictions. It is a simple matter to give up coffee, tea, marijuana, alcohol, opium, morphine, and similar addictions by fasting at the same time the drug is discontinued. It is best to abandon all addictions at once and abruptly. For example, the average alcoholic also smokes tobacco and drinks coffee. He will find it easier to discontinue the alcohol if he also abandons both the coffee and the tobacco at the same time. This will be easily understood when the true character of addiction is understood.

Most addicts think it will be easier to give up one drug at a time or to give up one drug habit and continue the others. An organization in California has a home where drug addicts are taken in. By a program similar to that employed by Alcoholics Anonymous, they slowly eduate the addict out of his addiction. Frequently two years or more are required to whip the morphine habit. The addicts eat a conventional diet, smoke tobacco and drink freely of coffee. This is the hard way: it is the long way and it probably registers many failures. There cannot be any doubt that their educational program and their cultivation of self-reliance are useful features of the rehabilitation of the addict, but the education program does not go far enough.

Faulty education is the chief, if not the only cause of all drug addiction. It may be and probably is true that individuals with neuropathic tendencies most readily fall prey to so called habit-forming drugs, but the fact remains that the initial use of drugs arises out of false education. Had the whole population not been wrongly educated from infancy up, they would not turn to drugs to “sustain” them when some unusual circumstance puts a heavy tax upon the nervous system. Pain, sleeplessness, profound and lasting emotions, losses, etc., cause the nervously unstable to turn to those sources of palliation they have been, educated to believe will supply the desired, relief. For this false education and all the evils that grow inevitably out of it, we are indebted to the medical profession and to no other.

The legitimate pharmaceutical industry has flooded today’s market place with great quantities of addictive drugs which are being sold, especially to the young, through, both legitimate and illegitimate channels. Most of the drugs now being taken by youth are supplied the drug pushers by duly licensed manufacturers of the drugs. If we assume as is popularly done, that these drugs have valid medical usage, we are still faced with the fearful fact that the drug manufacturers are turning out thousands of times more of these drugs than the medical profession can possibly find valid medical use for. So great is their profit hunger that the manufacturers of drugs are willing to destroy the minds of all of today’s youth in order to increase their dividends. I marvel at the apathy and indifference of the parents of this country that cause them to sit by and watch the destruction of their children, instead of rising in their collective might and putting an eternal end to the drug industry.

Reprinted from Fasting For Renewal Of Life

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

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

Eat fruit and be well my friends.

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

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

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

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

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

Healing is about removing the burden

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

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

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

How do we remove the burden?

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

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

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

Healing is all about energy.

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

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

Water Fasting

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

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

Nerve Energy

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

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

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

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

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

The Healing Equation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Eat fruit and be well my friends.