Pernicious drugs dominate our lives today like restrictive manacles control a southern chain gang. We are prisoners. And it's not evils like cocaine and heroin that are the real enslavers; they control but a pittance of people. The real chains around us are fashioned by the thousands of pharmaceutical drugs that spew forth from Big Pharma's loathsome peddlers, pushing insidious addiction into the veins of our citizens via a naïve medical profession's complicity and paradigmatic falsity.
Today's field of medicine is caught up in a false paradigm because it conceives of disease as "monolithic" when it is really "dualistic." There are two distinct types of disease – infectious and degenerative – and they need two different methodologies of treatment. Modern medical theorists, of course, know that infectious diseases are fundamentally different from degenerative diseases. They realize they are dealing with two different classes of disease. But they don't realize there must be a different form of treatment employed for each of the two classes.
What modern medicine fails to grasp is that drugs are necessary when dealing with the "infectious" class of diseases (typhoid, malaria, pneumonia, tuberculosis, etc.) but are ineffective when applied to the "degenerative" class of diseases (arthritis, diabetes, cancer, coronaries, etc.). When we administer a drug to someone who is suffering from an infectious disease, we kill the germ that is causing the infection and thus cure the patient. But this methodology does not work for the degenerative class.
Degenerative diseases are not caused by germs. When we use drugs to treat problems like arthritis, diabetes, cancer, or coronaries, we are not attacking the causes of these ailments. We are mollifying the symptoms. To alleviate the pain of an arthritis sufferer does not cure his disease. His joints are still deteriorating. Injecting insulin into a diabetic does not cure his disease. His pancreas is still deteriorating in its ability to produce insulin. Chemotherapy applied to a cancerous tumor does not cure the patient of his cancer. It still lurks in his body and usually returns. To maintain that we have cured the cancer sufferer of his disease by destroying the tumor with chemo is to say that the tumor caused itself. This is nonsense. Something deeper caused the tumor to appear and metastasize. Thus until we identify the deeper cause (or causes) of degenerative diseases and eradicate them, we have done no "curing."
This is the monumental problem of modern medicine. It spectacularly eradicated the "infectious" class of diseases with its development of drug therapy as a result of Louis Pasteur's discovery of germs in the latter 19th century. Thus we in the 20th century saw the wiping out of malaria, tuberculosis, typhoid, pneumonia and other deadly infections. Life took a huge leap forward for human beings. But unfortunately, modern medicine remains totally impotent in its battle to truly combat "degenerative" diseases because employment of drugs cannot remove their causes.
And in many cases, the application of powerful drugs does immense harm to the cellular integrity of the body. Chemotherapy is the prime example. The adage that "the cure is worse than the disease" finds legions of cancer patients in agreement after experiencing the ghastly effects of chemo. It is a high price to pay for the tiny number of temporary successes achieved.
Thus by prescribing drugs for degenerative ailments, we are fooling ourselves into believing that we are doing something positive in response to the disease when, in reality, we are not. Yes, in many cases we are easing pain, which is certainly positive. And certain cancer patients' lives can be extended with chemo. But we are not curing! To cure degenerative diseases, we need to eradicate the causes of them. And in order to eradicate the causes we first have to identify those causes. Herein lies the rub. The scientific world refuses to come to grips with what causes degenerative diseases.
The True Source of Degenerative Disease
In the following I will attempt to explain what brings on the "degenerative" ailments that afflict human beings. Unfortunately, this explanation will not be very popular with the overwhelming majority of individuals. When fundamental beliefs that men and women have subscribed to for the entirety of their lives are shown to be wrong, they often react in a negative manner and deny the new way of seeing things, i.e., the new paradigm. In fact they often get very hostile. But for those individuals who seek the truth rather than merely support for their previous convictions, the following explanation will help to better understand the manifold perplexities of health and disease.
The first thing to grasp in this understanding is that almost all degenerative diseases (such as arthritis, diabetes, cancer, coronaries, etc.) are of one origin. They do not have separate causes. They stem from a deeper deleterious condition, which is what we must concentrate on if we are ever to genuinely cure the specific ailment involved. Eradicate this deeper deleterious condition, and its outward manifestation disappears.
Two pioneering medical doctors, Henry G. Bieler and Francis M. Pottenger, Jr., formulated this concept of disease over a 50-year period between 1920 and 1970.
What is this deeper deleterious condition? It is the acidic corruption of the body's physiology due to modern civilization's evolution from a 20 percent acid diet to a 90 percent acid diet over the last 300,000 years.
Everything in the universe is either acid, or alkaline, or neutral. Above 7.0 on the pH scale is alkaline; below it is acid. The human body's chemical structure is strongly alkaline. Our blood must maintain approximately a 7.4 alkaline level to remain healthy. If it goes below 7.3, we get sick. If it goes below 7.2, we die. Yet we throw massive acidity into our bodies via our diet and environment, which leads to a toxic acid corruption of the cellular tissue and blood by the time we are 50 years old.
This toxic acid corruption, when combined with a burnout of the body's endocrine system and thus its immune system (due to the excessive consumption of stimulants such as caffeine, nicotine, alcohol, salt, pharmaceutical drugs, etc.), manifests in one of the chronic ailments that we mistakenly think of as "separate degenerative diseases."
According to the Bieler-Pottenger thesis then, the root cause of all degenerative disease is a toxic acid corruption of the body combined with endocrine gland / immune system burnout due to modern civilization's unwholesome acidic diet comprised of too many stimulants and too few nutrients from the time we are born. The specific disease that strikes is determined by one's genetic predispositions and weaknesses. Some individuals will develop arthritis, some diabetes, some cancer, some heart attacks, etc. A small number of unique individuals endure the toxic acid corruption and physiological burnout for as long as 90-100 years. But the great bulk of humans succumb to modernity's corrupt, denatured dietary regimen usually beginning in their fifties and sixties.
What are acid and alkaline foods? Acid foods are meat, fish, eggs, grains and sugar. Alkaline foods are fruits, vegetables and raw milk. Once milk is pasteurized, it becomes acid. Coffee, tea, alcohol, recreational drugs and pharmaceutical drugs are extremely acid, as are almost all food preservatives and additives.
Thus there are three dietary causes of degenerative disease: 1) excessive consumption of acid food, 2) excessive consumption of chemical stimulants and 3) a lack of needed nutrients. When these three factors are partaken in daily over a period of decades, and combined with constant stress, the body's proper function breaks down.
Toxic acidity builds up, and a pervasive physiological fatigue of the body sets in. This is different from physical fatigue, which can be cured with a night's sleep. Physiological fatigue is the burnout of endocrine gland function (primarily the pituitary, thyroid and adrenals). This burnout develops over years of abuse and cannot be alleviated without rebuilding the body functions involved. This requires high-grade nutrients and the absence of chemical stimulation and stress, i.e., prolonged physiological rest.
When the medical profession uses drugs to treat the degenerative diseases resulting from this "toxic acid buildup and physiological fatigue," it usually takes one of two approaches. It kills the pain, or it hyperstimulates the body's endocrine glands into better function. The problem with this approach is that killing pain does not cure the disease, and hyperstimulating the body's exhausted gland system only works for a limited time resulting in a deeper fatigue in the long run. It's like trying to run an exhausted horse around the track again at top speed when he can barely walk. Whipping the horse will get him to start running again, but what he really needs is to be rested in the pasture and fed green grass for a protracted period of time. Likewise with a degeneratively diseased body; it does not need drugs that act as glandular whips. It needs "physiological" rest and healthful nutrients to restore itself.
Orthodox medicine does not adequately understand these causes and effects. It grasps the stress connection, but not the dietary connection. Toxic acid buildup and pervasive physiological fatigue need a lessening of stress, yes, but they need proper nutrition and elimination of chemical stimulants even more. Drugs are chemical stimulants, and this is a great part of what the body's endocrine gland system is suffering from – too many chemical stimulants. Thus chemical stimulation in the form of drug therapy exacerbates the physiological fatigue and toxic acidity. Whatever improvement it brings about is temporary, at the price of further, more pronounced fatigue later on and premature aging. What is needed is a withdrawal of all chemical stimulation and the adoption of proper alkaline-dominant nutrition.
Orthodox medical authorities respond to this "alternative view of disease" with the claim that degenerative diseases are caused instead by bad genes. In other words, certain humans have genetic predispositions toward arthritis, or diabetes, or cancer, or coronaries, etc. Diet is largely irrelevant. The human body can adjust to bad food and a preponderance of stimulants.
This is false science. Our genetic predispositions are certainly important, but they are only one part of the interwoven cause matrix of degenerative disease. What Bieler and Pottenger show through 50 years of medicine and irrefutable clinical studies is that the great majority of our so-called "genetic predispositions" would never manifest on a high-nutrient, low-acidic diet with an absence of stimulants.
The Significance of Bieler and Pottenger
The Bieler-Pottenger approach works wonders if persisted in. Throughout 60 years of medical practice, Dr. Bieler cured vast numbers of patients (many on death's door) of their degenerative ailments by prescribing raw protein and converting their diet from highly acidic to primarily alkaline. Severely diseased cases required bed rest in addition (sometimes for several months) so their bodies could throw off the toxic acid overload that had built up over decades of corrupted dietary habits.
Dr. Pottenger proved in his famous ten-year clinical study with cats between 1932-1942 that life cannot be sustained disease free on "cooked protein." Protein must be consumed "raw" if one is to remain disease free throughout his life. In his ten-year study, he fed one group of 300 cats raw protein (in the form of raw milk and meat), and they all lived to a ripe old age, never got sick, and died of natural causes. At the same time he fed another group of 300 cats cooked protein (in the form of pasteurized milk and cooked meat). They contracted all the various degenerative diseases known to man – arthritis, diabetes, cancer, coronaries, etc. Everything we get, they got. In addition, they lived considerably shorter lives than the cats on raw protein.
What then does Bieler's and Pottenger's brilliant work tell us? It says that basically we ourselves are responsible for our level of health, that we must abide by the laws of nature if we wish to stay healthy into old age. This doesn't mean that we have to give up the conventional, civilized diet. What it does mean, though, is that we must supplement the modern diet with a large measure of alkalinity and raw protein every day. This will keep us disease free and allow us to be viable and independent to 90 years and beyond.
There are two ways to achieve the needed measure of alkalinity in one's diet. We can consume five huge, raw salads every day, which is not very appealing. Or we can drink a pint of fresh raw carrot-celery juice every day (16 ozs). A pint contains about the same amount of alkalinity as five salads. Doing this daily improves the quality of one's physical and mental wellbeing immensely and neutralizes the heavy acidity of our modern diet. As for raw protein, there are several ways to get the necessary amount into your body every day. The best means is to drink raw milk. A pint and a half (24 ozs) is sufficient. Or you can eat extremely rare beef or lamb (3 ozs). Or you can eat raw nuts, or raw eggs, or raw baby lima beans.
These two dietary habits (raw carrot-celery juice and raw protein), partaken of daily and combined with ample exercise, will keep us free of degenerative disease and allow us to live energetically into our nineties and in some cases past 100. Only those humans possessed of terribly weak physical systems at birth would still be susceptible to degenerative disease. And these cases would be much less catastrophic.
There are numerous examples of men who have subscribed to the Bieler-Pottenger medical philosophy and built their daily dietary regimen upon raw, natural food. Two famous examples are Norman Walker and Frederick Leon.
Norman Walker, nutritional researcher and author of several million-seller books on the benefits of raw food and raw vegetable juice consumption, devoted 75 years to the study of health and the connection that food has to disease and aging. During this time span, Mr. Walker lived on raw protein and raw fruits and vegetables every day. In 1985, he passed away from natural causes, quietly, peacefully and disease-free in his sleep seven months short of his 100th birthday. Up until his death, he was totally independent, active every day, growing his own vegetables and working energetically on his many projects.
Frederick Leon, who owned his own health food warehouse in San Diego, CA was at the age of 103 still working 6 days a week from 9am to 5pm, seldom ever taking a break, as reported in the Los Angeles Times on December 28, 1987. His diet? It consisted of raw protein and raw fruits and vegetables every day. His protein source was raw milk and raw nuts.
This writer met Mr. Leon in 1988 in his San Diego store, and can attest to his vibrant health. He was 103, but carried on like he was 63, lifting boxes, walking sprightly, speaking strongly and ordering everyone around. I have no record of when he died, but the word is that he died peacefully in his sleep at 108. I also spoke with Norman Walker's secretary after his death in 1985; she told me that he was the most amazing man she ever knew, always energetic, positive and never sick a day in his life, working right up until the day he died.
The True Requisites of Health
What are we to conclude from all this? The medical profession is responsible for a tremendous contribution to human wellbeing in its development of drugs for infectious diseases. But, unfortunately, the profession is still living in the Dark Ages of health in its approach to degenerative diseases.
The use of pharmaceutical drugs to treat degenerative disease is a deplorable tragedy because, as we have seen, it does not do any curing. Rather, it lines the pockets of Big Pharma, which is entrenched with the FDA and its coercive propaganda. This corporate-government combine has convinced modern society that degenerative diseases are the result of "just getting old," and our only protection is the drugs that Big Pharma benevolently produces for us. Thus we have come to believe that we cannot exist without thousands of high priced pharmaceuticals to medicate our bodies until we are zombies.
The number of commercials on nightly television for pharmaceutical drugs is growing like California wild fires in the dry season. There are 24,000 drugs officially listed for human consumption on the Internet site, Drugs.com, with ominous names like Acetaminophen, Amoxicillin, Cymbalta, Doxycycline, Hydrochlorothiazide, Lyrica, Metformin, Prednisone, Trazodone, Zoloft, etc.
The lists of side affects and contraindications involved with these 24,000 drugs is overwhelming in their convoluted dangers. Just listen to any TV commercial for Big Pharma's offerings these days and you will be horrified by the endless warnings they are required to inform you of if you decide to consume these pills and potions. Brave New World is upon us, and Soma now comes in infinite, pernicious variations.
This monstrosity of dependency is not the way to a genuinely healthy existence. It is the way to a zonked out oblivion where debility, senility and endless trips to the doctor consume one's elderly years. Health cannot be found with the unscrupulous ideology of Big Pharma. It can only be found by living in agreement with the laws of nature.
Dr. Henry G. Bieler and Dr. Francis M. Pottenger, Jr. showed us the way to true health with their monumental work from 1920 to 1970. Bieler's famous book is Food Is Your Best Medicine (Random House, 1965), and Pottenger's book is Pottenger's Cats: A Study in Nutrition (Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation, 1983).
Big Pharma is one of the most corrupting institutions in the history of mankind. It is saturated with fallacy and greed. Overcoming medicine's false paradigm that is stultifying modernity will take a radical revolution in how we think about health. This means coming to grips with the fact that bad nutrition over 50 years will prematurely age us and cause catastrophic degenerative disease. Most of our doctors today refuse to face this way of thinking, and thus their patients live diseased and deluded lives.
Because pharmaceutical drugs were so successful against infectious diseases (and because they are so easy to administer), they now dominate a negligent medical profession and a badly misinformed public. This negligence and lack of awareness has created hundreds of billions of dollars in extra costs for our lives, as well as shortening and debilitating those lives. Yet we live under the illusion that we have achieved a superior level of health because we now have 24,000 different drugs to consume.
What good is it to live well into our eighties and nineties if we are not viable and have to subsist in old age homes creeping around with walkers and oxygen tanks, or worse in a wheelchair, while on ten different drugs every day? The way to properly extend our life span is the way Norman Walker and Frederick Leon did it. We must abide by the message of Bieler and Pottenger. In this way we do not need drugs except in those rare occurrences when an infectious epidemic strikes, which might be but once or twice in a lifetime.
Ironically, we look back on the physicians of the 19th century as primitives because they put leeches on their patients' skin to bleed them and try to "heal" their diseases. But a hundred years from now, the 22nd century will look back upon us as primitives also because our physicians put drugs into their patients' bodies to try and "heal" their degenerative diseases. Such is the reality of a misguided medical profession and its myriad of patients who seek abundant health without understanding its fundamental requisite: adherence to the Laws of Nature.
