HOME PAGE Catalog of Hygienic Medicine
The illness that cannot be cured
by fasting,
cannot be cured by anything else.
old German proverb.
Autointoxication. [1] the accumulations on the bowel wall
become a breeding ground for unhealthy bacterial life forms. The
heavy mucus coating in the colon thickens and becomes a host for
putrefaction. The blood capillaries to the colon begin to pick
up the toxins, poisons and noxious debris as it seeps through
the bowel wall. All tissues and organs of the body are now taking
on toxic substances. Here is the beginning of true autointoxication
on a physiological level. Bernard Jensen, Tissue
Cleansing Through Bowel Management. [2] All maladies
are due to the lack of certain food principles, such as mineral
salts or vitamins, or to the absence of the normal defenses of
the body, such as the natural protective flora. When this occurs,
toxic bacteria invade the lower alimentary canal, and the poisons
thus generated pollute the bloodstream and gradually deteriorate
and destroy every tissue, gland and organ of the body. Sir
Arbuthnot Lane. [3] The common cause of gastro-intestinal
indigestion is enervation and overeating When food is not digested,
it becomes a poison. Dr. John.H. Tllden, Impaired
Health: Its Cause and Cure, 1921.
Autolysis. The process of enzymatic digestion wherein the
body breaks down its own tissues and converts them to food for
the nourishment of other, more vital tissues.
Beauty. [1] Beauty is but the reflection of wholeness,
of health. It is easy to demonstrate that the forms and proportions
of man and of every animal and plant, which are in their highest
and most perfect state, are also the most beautiful. Herbert
Shelton, Natural Hygiene: Man's Pristine Way of Life.
Constipation. [1] a clogging up of the large
intestine by a building up (on) the bowel wall to such an extent
that feces can hardly pass through. Autointoxication is a direct
result of intestinal constipation. Faulty nutritionis a major
underlying factor in constipation. The frequency or quantity of
fecal elimination is not an indication of the lack of constipation
in the bowel. Bernard Jensen, Tissue Cleansing
Through Bowel Management.
Cure. [1] There is no "cure" for disease;
fasting is not a cure. Fasting facilitates natural healing processes.
Foods do not cure. Until we have discarded our faith in cures,
there can be no intelligent approach to the problems presented
by suffering and no proper use of foods by those who are ill.
Shelton, The Hygienic System, v. 3, Fasting
and Sunbathing. [2] All cure starts from within out
and from the head down and in reverse order as the symptoms have
appeared. Hering's Law of Cure. [3] Life
is made up of crises. The individual establishes a standard of
health peculiarly his own, which must vary from all other standards
as greatly as his personality varies from others. The individual
standard may be such as to favor the development of indigestion,
catarrh, gout, rheumatic and glandular inflammations, tubercular
developments, congestions, sluggish secretions and excretions,
or inhibitions of various functions, both mental and physical,
wherever the environmental or habit strain is greater than usual.
The standard of resistance may be opposed so strenuously by habits
and unusual physical agencies--that the body gives down under
the strain. This is a crisis. Appetite fails, discomfort or pain
forces rest, and, as a result of physiological rest (fasting)
and physical rest (rest from daily work and habits), a readjustment
takes place, and the patient is "cured." This is what
the profession and the people call a cure, and it is for the time
being--until an unusual enervation is brought on from accident
or dissipation; then another crisis. These crises are the ordinary
sickness of all communitiesall catalogued diseases. When
the cold is gone or the hay-fever fully relieved, it does not
mean the patient is cured. Indeed, he is as much diseased as before
he suffered the attackthe crisisand he never will
be cured until the habits of life that keep up toxin poisoning
are corrected . To recover from a crisis is not a cure; the tendency
is back to the individual standard; hence all crises are self-limited,
unless nature by maltreatment is prevented from reacting. All
so-called healing systems ride to glory on the backs of self-limited
crises, and the self-deluded doctors and their credulous clients,
believe, when the crises are past, that a cure has been wrought,
whereas the real truth is that the treatment may have delayed
reaction. This is largely true of anything that has been done
except rest. A cure consists in changing the manner of living
to such a rational standard that full resistance and a balanced
metabolism is established . I suppose it is not quite human to
expect those of a standardized school of healing to give utterance
to discovered truth which, if accepted by the people, would rob
them of the glory of being curers of disease. Indeed, nature,
and nature only, cures; and as for crises, they come and go, whether
or not there is a doctor or healer within a thousand miles. Dr. John.H. Tllden, Impaired Health: Its Cause and
Cure, 1921. [4] rest is the foundation on which all
curative therapeutics must be based. Physiological rest is of
more importance than all other forms of rest. Dr.
John.H. Tllden, Impaired Health: Its Cause and Cure, 1921.
Detoxification. [1] Fasting does permit a marked
increase in the elimination of toxins and waste from the body.
It does permit the organs of elimination to bring their work up
to dateto balance the books as it were. There is no state
of impaired health in which this increased elimination is not
of distinct value. Shelton, The Hygienic System,
v. 3, Fasting and Sunbathing. [2] A good rule to remember
is that the bowel can be cleared of toxins (by physic or enemas)
in twenty- four hours; the blood in three days; the liver in five
days; provided no food is eaten. Henry Bieler,
M.D., Food Is Your Best Medicine.
Diagnosis. [1] The truth of the matter is that nomenclature is rather superfluous; and that is not the worst part of it; unfortunately it is confusing. It has a tendency to make laymen and young physicians really believe that, when a name is given to a disease, the cause is understood. Nothing, however, could be more erroneous than this conclusion; for ordinary diagnosing throws no light on the real cause.Dr. John.H. Tllden, Impaired Health: Its Cause and Cure, 1921.
Diet. [1] In much that has been written concerning the
matter of diet there are so many sweeping statements, so many
conflicting processes of proof, impossible rules, and foolish
conclusions, that no wonder is felt that the whole subject is
usually ignored as too intricate. There are many who try to enforce
personal ideas upon others in this connection; very persistent
people these, to whom the term, "crank," may well be
applied, and a "crank," who has picked up some scientific
jargon and who thinks himself cured of his ailments, works more
harm than good in the world. This class may be extended to include
those who really have been benefited by a diet that happens to
suit personal requirement, and it comprises also the one-food
people who are in continual search of what not to devour, with
the idea of reducing the universe to whole wheat and pecans. These
people at each encounter with their fellow-men discover in the
latter disease symptoms identical with their own, and insist that
the remedy to which they have had recourse shall be applied. It
is absurd for any who are not familiar with the chemistry of foods
to endeavor to talk learnedly of their action in human physiological
economy . . . Linda B. Hazzard, Scientific
Fasting.
Digestion. [1] Food is taken into the stomach
and bowels, where it is dissolved--brought into the liquid state--and
then absorbed into the circulation and distributed throughout
the body . This process is called nutrition. When nutrition is
going on normally, the standard of health is normal--a full dinner
taken into a tired body cannot be digested properly any meal at
all, eaten by one in great mental anguish, over some great trouble,
cannot be digested. Dr. John.H. Tllden, Impaired
Health: Its Cause and Cure, 1921.
Disease. [1] Alcohol is not a disease; it is a distillation
from fermented grain--from starch. Grain, starch, bread, and alcohol
are not diseases. If a man in health (standard health) takes small
portions of alcohol, frequently repeated, he will gradually lose
his power of coordination of mind and body. This gradation from
full bodily control to a helpless lump of protoplasm is not disease;
it represents different states of health. If the drunk man is
diseased, what is the disease? There has been no entity added
or generated. As soon as the alcohol is eliminated, the man returns
to his former state--not suddenly, but gradually as he departed.
If he eats grain, starch, or bread beyond his assimilative capacity,
he develops certain symptoms of poisoning. Is not the man's state
the same as that of his normal being, plus overeating? Surely
nothing has been added--no entity has gained entrance; hence,
if the drunk state, or the food-poisoned state, is a disease,
then what is disease? Certainly not an entity, but a state of
health brought on by any influence that increases, decreases,
or perverts the state of man recognized as health. There is no
such thing as disease per se. "Disease" is a word that
should not carry other meaning than that a sick man is one whose
health standard has been lowered by some external or internal
influence which has disturbed nutrition. John
H. Tilden, M.D., Imparied Health, Vol I. [2] Disease
is remedial effort. Shelton, The Hygienic System,
v. 3, Fasting and Sunbathing. [3] The Hygienic System
is not a system of treating and curing "disease" and
"disorder." It does not recognize the existence of hundreds
or thousands of "diseases," but regards all of these
many so-called "diseases" as varying expressions of
the same thing. Shelton, The Hygienic System,
v. 3, Fasting and Sunbathing.
Doctors. [1] In the matter of disease and healing,
the people have been treated as serfs. The doctor is a dictator
who knows it all, and the people are stupid, dumb, driven cattle,
fit for nothing except to be herded together, bucked and gagged
when necessary to force medical opinion down their throats or
under their skins. I found that professional dignity was more
often pomposity, sordid bigotry and gilded ignorance. The average
physician is a fear-monger, if he is anything. He goes about like
a roaring lion, seeking whom he may scare to death. Dr.
John.H. Tllden, Impaired Health: Its Cause and Cure, Vol.
1, 1921. [2] Today we are not only in the Nuclear Age but
also the Antibiotic Age. Unhappily, too, this is the Dark Age
of Medicine--an age in which many of my colleagues, when confronted
with a patient, consult a volume which rivals the Manhattan telephone
directory in size. This book contains the names of thousands upon
thousands of drugs used to alleviate the distressing symptoms
of a host of diseased states of the body. The doctor then decides
which pink or purple or baby-blue pill to prescribe for the patient.
This is not, in my opinion, the practice of medicine. Far too
many of these new "miracle" drugs are introduced with
fanfare and then reveled as lethal in character, to be silently
discarded for newer and more powerful drugs Henry
Bieler, Food is Your Best Medicine. [3] There is
no form of ignorance that is so difficult to overcome and to instruct
as is of the "scientific" mind. And, when the latter,
as it sometimes does, obtains a conception of its error, it is
extremely loth to admit, first, that it has not always been in
possession of the truth, and, second, that it should render due
credit to the mind responsible for its change of concept or belief.
And, if the position of the individual be such that he may with
authority employ the power of mere assertion, it is usually much
the easier way to announce as one's own discovery that which formerly
one has denied and condemned, perhaps through prejudice, but more
often through sheer ignorance. Linda Burfield
Hazzard, Scientific Fasting. [4] To keep the ranks
as thin as possible, students must be selected, and entrance to
the profession made as impossible as it can be made, so that only
young men of leisure and wealth, or of special favor, may enter.
This bars many men of strong ideals and inventive imagination
and original thought. As the practice of healing requires as much
of art as of science, and as long college training kills the art
faculties, our present plan of making doctors ends in the construction
of a very complicated human machine that has no more independent
mental action than the mechanical jumping-jack. This result, however,
is exactly as the heads of the profession desire. That is, they
think they do; but, being mechanical human machines themselves,
they desire the rubber, the elasticity, the fluidity, the adjustability,
taken out of students; and they have almost accomplished their
desire. The result is that the average medical man is as incapable
of making an independent movement as a mechanical toy. Dr.
John.H. Tllden, Impaired Health: Its Cause and Cure, Vol.
1, 1921.
Drugs. [1] I firmly believe that, if the whole materia
medica could be sunk to the bottom of the sea, it would be all
the better for mankind and all the worse for the fishes. Oliver W. Holmes, M.D. [2] If the body of any
sick man endeavors to eliminate poisons (the effort to do so)
manifested by any kind of symptoms and a new and dangerous poison
is introduced into the circulation, the elimination through the
symptoms is more or less stopped because the body instinctively
sets to work to neutralize these (new) poisons as far as it is
possible. The symptoms return just as soon as the life is saved,
and the same procedure is repeated until the patient dies or--if
intelligent enough--casts medicine aside in time and seeks to
save himself by drugless healing. Prof. Arnold
Ehret, Mucusless Diet Healing System. [3] To live
by medicine is to live horribly. Carl Linnaeus
(1707-1778).
Elimination diet. [1] The principle here (is) that the
diet gives better results as it approaches a fast . Not only is
it true that the less "value" the food possesses, the
more good the patient derives from its use, but it is also true
that the less the patient takes of the food and the more nearly
he fasts, the more rapidly he recovers. Shelton,
The Hygienic System, v. 3, Fasting and Sunbathing.
Emaciate. [1] To make thin, as by starvation
or illness. (Latin emaciare: ex-, completely + maciare, to make
thin. American Heritage Dictionary.
Enervation. [1] In states of enervation, enzymic
secretions run low, and, as a result, so-called bacterial fermentation
take(s) place . 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. Dr. John.H. Tllden, Impaired
Health: Its Cause and Cure, 1921. SEE ALSO: FERMENTATION.
[2] Man's body has sensation and mind, and every tittle of the
body is supplied with nerves that control the mechanism of every
tittle or cell. Whether the work of the cell is done well or poorly
depends entirely on the energy imparted by the nerves. Dr.
John.H. Tllden, Impaired Health: Its Cause and Cure, 1921.
Enzymes. [1] digestive secretions--enzymes--unorganized
ferments--are necessary to dissolve food and prepare it for absorption,
and that bacteria--organized ferments--are necessary to dissolve
food and prepare it for expulsion from the body. Bacteria are
necessary to dissolve food taken in excess of what can be liquefied
and utilized by enzymatic digestion. Dr. John.H.
Tllden, Impaired Health: Its Cause and Cure, 1921.
Fasting. [1] A period of time during which the body
is adequately nourished by autolysis. [2] "Fasting begins
with the omission of the first meal and ends with the return of
natural hunger. Shelton, The Hygienic System,
v. 3, Fasting and Sunbathing. [3] primarily a rest
of the organism. Shelton, The Hygienic System,
v. 3, Fasting and Sunbathing. [4] Fasting does not
do anything. It really stops the doing. In thus stopping certain
activities, it permits, even reinforces, certain tissue changes
and chemical readjustments in the body which result in increased
vigor and improved health. Shelton, The Hygienic
System, v. 3, Fasting and Sunbathing. [5] To sum up,
fasting, by affording the organs of the body a rest, by withholding
raw materials and by stopping the flow of decomposition poisons
from the alvine canal, permits the repair and recuperation of
the organs of the body, the consumption of a burdensome nutritive
excess, the removal of circulating and deposited toxins, the normalization
of blood chemistry, cellular and tissue rejuvenation, the adsorption
of deposits, exudates, effusions and growth, and improves the
body's powers of digestion and assimilation. If there are any
"diseased" conditions in which some or all of these
results are not desirable, I have not seen them. Then, although
fasting cures nothing and is no panacea, it is useful in all "diseased"
conditions. Shelton, The Hygienic System, v.
3, Fasting and Sunbathing. [6] Fasting is but a means
to an end. It is a cleansing process and a physiological rest
which prepares the body for future right living. Shelton,
The Hygienic System, v. 3, Fasting and Sunbathing.
Fermentation. [1] When enzymatic fermentation--digestion--ends,
bacterial fermentation of the remainder of the food begins. And
when food is not digested, it becomes a poison . The bacteria
cause acetic and alcoholic fermentation of the carbohydrate (starchy)
foods; and the same bacteria cause a putrefactive decay in the
nitrogenous or proteid (animal) foods, with the development of
toxin and the giving-off of offensive gasses which are toxic.
In both forms of fermentationthe normal alkalinity of the blood
is reduced, causing such minor systemic derangements as irritability,
despondency, fault-finding, general nervousness, headaches, tired
feelings, backache, gas in the bowels, constipation. This is a
state of malaise that makes its victim easy prey to the palliation
of overstimulation. At first, relief is found in more eating,
because all food is more or less stimulating; but with the increase
in food stimulation come more and more discomfort, more wants
. This is man's state of being where he parts company with normal
comfort and begins to cultivate abnormal, artificial or toxic
comfort. It is here that more food than is needed for health and
well-being is taken . It is from this point that the Caucasian
seeks relief in alcoholics, tobacco, coffee, tea and a few of
the various palliative remedies of the world; while the Chinaman
begin to woo his "white lady"--the extract of the poppy
flower, the East Indian to chew his bhang, the West African his
kola, the Yemen Arab his khat and other peoples resort to some
sort of anesthesia. Since the world began, man has endeavored
in some way to secure relief from his discomforts by resorting
to ecstasy, incantations, drugs, hypnotism, or any unnatural palliation,
rather than earnestly to search for cause and remove it. The drug
system of treating disease appeals to this maudlin sentiment;
hence its great popularity. Dr. John.H. Tllden,
Impaired Health: Its Cause and Cure, 1921.
Food. [1] Life is a tragedy of nutrition . in food
lies 99.99% of the causes of all diseases and imperfect health
of any kind. Prof. Arnold Ehret, Mucusless
Diet Healing System. [2] But elimination will
never heal perfectly just so long as you fail to discontinue the
supply of inside waste caused by eating and "wrong"
eating. You may clean and continue to clean indefinitely, but
never with complete results up to a perfect cleanliness, as long
as the intake of wrong or even too much right foods, is not stopped.
Prof. Arnold Ehret, Mucusless Diet Healing
System. [3] Cooked food favors bacterial, or organized,
ferment preponderance, because cooking kills the unorganized and
organized ferments, and both are needed to carry on the body's
digestion. Raw foods--fruits and vegetables--favor unorganized-ferment
digestion, because these foods carry vitamins, which are unorganized
ferments--enzymes. Dr. John.H. Tllden, Impaired
Health: Its Cause and Cure, 1921. [4] Its not what
kind of food you eat, vegetarian or meat. The Eskimos lived healthy
lives on fish and blubber. What matters is that the foods eaten
carry forward the protoplasm of the microorganisms grown with
a natural balance of the elements. Mans' intestinal tract is a
root turned inside out. The purpose of eating is to recreate a
population of soil organisms in the intestinal tract. Protoplasm
from the microorganisms can then be adsorbed right into the blood.
Private conversation with John Hamaker in Secrets
Of The Soil, Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird.
Functional disease. [1] Functional disease is that
in which the vital organs in general are in condition to do their
work, but certain of them have become unable partially or wholly
to function by reason of congestion and irritation, the result
of food chemically changed into noxious substances . In this state
fermentation and putrefaction occur in the intestinal canal and
elsewhere, and toxins are produced that enter the blood, thusderanging
the vital processes . its ultimate consequence, functionally caused
organic disease . Functionally caused disease is a condition that
always admits of full recovery and cure is a certainty when natural
law is permitted its course. Linda B. Hazzard,
D.O., Scientific Fasting.
Healers. [1] for "afflictions" or
disease cannot be "cured." Nature--our subconscious--has
a full monopoly on the power to heal. Healing is nature's prerogative;
and she could not, even if she would, delegate the task to physician
or to the academies of medical science. Toxemia
Explained, John H. Tilden, M.D.
[2] When all the people shall know that the making and the curing
of disease are in their own hands, then schools for teaching health
will be more popular than drugs, vaccination, and surgical vandalism.
Dr. John.H. Tllden, Impaired Health: Its Cause
and Cure, 1921.
Health. [1] We cannot afford to accept anything but the
highest standard of physiological and biological excellence as
normal. Anything short of the highest excellence and integrity
of structure and the highest vigor and efficiency of function
must be recognized as a state of impaired health . Our word health
is derived from the Saxon word for whole. Heal is derived from
the same word and means to restore to a state of wholeness, soundness
or integrity. Holy comes from the same root and signifies wholeness
and purity of mind in a phrase, it is a sound mind in a sound
body. Herbert Shelton, Natural Hygiene: Man's
Pristine Way of Life.
Hunger. [1] Hunger is at all times to be distinguished
from appetite. Hunger is discriminative and preserves the body.
Appetite is abnormal desire and ultimately destroys. Hunger is
primarily indicated in the mouth, and, if not relieved, it becomes
an organic craving that can be satisfied only by digestible food;
but appetite cannot be so silenced; it continually searches for
this or for that; it is never satisfied. Linda
B. Hazzard, Scientific Fasting.
Inanition. [1] Exhaustion, as from lack of nourishment; the
condition or quality of being empty. American
Heritage Dictionary.
Long life. [1] Not infrequently when the writer is checking
some one up for his bad habits, the victim of the bad habits will
triumphantly point to some one eighty, ninety or a hundred years
old who has practiced the same bad habits all his life without
apparent evil resulting. On investigating, it will be found that
the prodigy of bad habits is a very moderate man; that he is like
an old friend of the writer who once boasted in a twitting manner
with a twinkle in his eyes: "Doctor, it seems to me that
my life is a refutation of your theories; I have indulged a little
in about all the vices all my life, and have had no sickness!"
My answer to him was: "You are fortunately married to a remarkable
woman--an angel without wings. You are very active; you take great
pleasure in your work, and you have as an avocation your garden,
in which you take great pleasure in excelling; and look at your
accumulation of curios; not a junk-shop filled with bad air and
morbid relics--ghostly reminders of a dead past when knight-errantry
was in blossom! You are alive and keeping in touch with the now;
and have wholesome visions of what evolution has in store for
the coming generations of wide-awake, live people. You
leave the dead past to bury the past. Your vices you do not worship
and allow them to usurp your time and attention. Your habits do
not run you. A wholesome optimism pervades your being. Mentally
and physically you are wholesomely blended--no warring elements
find hostelry in you." John Tilden, Constipation, A New Reading On The
Subject, 1924.
Medicine, its practice in general. [1] I was at one time a
great lover of the medical profession. . . . I no longer hold
that opinion. . . . Doctors have almost unhinged us. . . . I regard
the present system as black magic. . . . Hospitals are institutions
for propagating sin. Men take less care of their bodies and immorality
increases. . . . ignoring the soul, the profession puts men at
its mercy and contributes to the diminution of human dignity and
self control. . . . I have endeavoured to show that there is no
real service of humanity in the profession, and that it is injurious
to mankind. . . . I believe that a multiplicity of hospitals is
not test of civilization. It is rather a symptom of decay.Mahatma Ghandi, The Health
Guide, 1965.
Organic disease. [1] Organic disease, whether inherent, or
the result of continued functional disturbance, or of physical
shock, is that in which one or more of the organs of the body
is deformed, undeveloped or other wise structurally disabled so
as to interfere with its work, a state comparable to that of a
machine with a defective cog. While this form of disease is usually
beyond the hope of recovery, its harmful results may be reduced
to a minimum by means of judicious application of the fast at
properly regulated intervals; and a combination of abstinence
from food with corrective dieting will lengthen life of the sufferer
to the degree to which the defective organism will permit vitality
to operate. Linda B. Hazzard, D.O., Scientific
Fasting.
Poison. [1] Drugs essentially are poisons. The
degree they are taken determines the effect. A small amount gives
a stimulant. A greater amount acts as a sedative. A larger amount
acts as a poison and can kill one dead. This is true of any drug. L. Ron Hubbard, HCOB 28 Aug 1968 II.
[2] Everything is a poison that cannot be assimilated by the living
organism and used by it to sustain life. Every substance that
can have no place in normal metabolic processes of the body wastes
the body's energies in resisting and expelling it, thus inevitably
inducing debility and premature death. In other words, poisons
are those substances which the living organism cannot use, but
must resist and expel. Herbert Shelton, Natural
Hygiene: Man's Pristine Way of Life. [3] Eat a pound
of bread--it will not injure a well person. The natural appetite
craves it. The stomach digests it, and it is assimilated and becomes
a part of the living organism. It is a food. Eat a pound of tobacco-it
will kill you. The natural appetite rejects it. It is not digested
by the stomach, nor assimilated, nor changed in the system. It
is a poison. If you drink a pound of alcohol--it will kill you,
or at least seriously injure you. The natural appetite rejects
it. A pound of tea, cooked and eaten as food would kill any person.
Wm. Bailey Potter, M.D., "Health Reform,"
1859.
Protein. [1] When the movement for Naturopathy and
a meatless diet began in the last century, the men of Medical
Science were endeavoring to prove by mathematical figures that
physical and mental efficiency have to be kept up thru daily replacement
of protein with a certain quantity for the average man. In other
words, it became the vogue--it became a mania, to suggest and
to do exactly the opposite of Nature's laws whenever a person
felt weak, tired rapidly, became exhausted or sick in any way
. High protein foods act as stimulation for a certain time, because
they decompose at once in the human body into poison. Prof.
Arnold Ehret, Mucusless Diet Healing System.
Quack. The dictionary defines quack as synonymous
with charlatan. Etymologically and historically, this is not its
true definition. It is a shortening of the German word quacksalber
(quicksilver) and was originally applied to those regular physicians
who poisoned their patients with mercury. As originally employed,
the term was applicable to regular physicians and to no one else.
Herbert Shelton, Natural Hygiene: Man's Pristine
Way of Life.
Reserves. The body has stores of nutrition held in reserve.
Vitamins, minerals, amino acids, carbohydrates: All the essentials
of survival are held in various tissues. Reserve amounts and completeness
vary from body to body. During fasting or starvation, these reserves
are digested by autolysis and nourish the body. Dr.
Isabelle Moser, verbal communication.
Rest. [1] There is no condition of "disease"
in which rest of the vital organs is not of benefit to the whole
organism. Rest gives all of the organs an opportunity to repair
their damaged structures. Rest affords to organs that have been
lashed into impotency by overstimulation, an opportunity to recuperate
their substances and forces. Shelton, The Hygienic
System, v. 3, Fasting and Sunbathing.
Starvation. [1] When nutrition is inadequate
for the maintenance of the body. Starvation can begin during fasting
when the body's reserves run out; it can even occur while apparently
eating adequate volume if the body's reserves are depleted and
the food contains insufficient nutrition. [2] "Starvation
begins with the return of hunger and terminates in death. Fasting
is distinctly beneficial; starvation is distinctly harmful. Shelton, The Hygienic System, v. 3, Fasting and
Sunbathing. [3] In a scientifically conducted fast
death from starvation cannot take place when organic disease is
absent . it requires great skill to fast an individual properly,
but any tyro can starve a man to death. Linda
B. Hazzard, D.O., Scientific Fasting. [4] Dr. E.
H. Dewey said, "The body may be well fed but still be starving
to death." This statement may be made more striking and perhaps
more lucid by saying that in reality it is the overfed body that
is continuously in a starving condition, and this by a process
that is much more distressing in effect than is that by which
death is caused when food is indefinitely denied. And starving
of this sort, starving from overfeeding, is well nigh the universal
manner in which the individual existence of man is terminated,
for every symptom of disease, every disease epidemic, owes its
development to food wrongly combined, and ingested always in excess,
and usually far in excess, of body requirement, with malnutrition
as its consequence. Linda B. Hazzard, D.O., Scientific
Fasting.
Toxemia. [1] "The basic cause of all so-called
diseases. In the process of tissue-building (metabolism), there
is cell-building (anabolism) and cell destruction (catabolism).
The broken-down tissue is toxic. In the healthy body (when nerve
energy is normal), this toxic material is eliminated from the
blood as fast as it is evolved. But when nerve energy is dissipated
from any cause (such as physical or mental excitement or bad habits)
the body becomes weakened or enervated. When the body is enervated,
elimination is checked. This, in turn, results in a retention
of toxins in the blood-- the condition which we speak of as toxemia.
This state produces a crisis which is nothing more than heroic
or extraordinary efforts by the body to eliminate waste or toxin
from the blood. It is this crisis which we term disease. Such
accumulation of toxin when once established, will continue until
nerve energy has been restored to normal by removing the cause.
So-called disease is nature's effort to eliminate toxin from the
blood. All so-called diseases are crises of toxemia." John H. Tilden, M.D., Toxemia Explained.
[2] When fermentative and putrefactive toxins are pouring
in from the digestive tract in excess of the body's ability to
neutralize and eliminate them and the toxic overflow has been
partly stored in the less vital tissues, fasting speedily ends
the intake of decomposition toxins and thus gives the organism
an opportunity to catch up with its work of excretion . Fasting
does not remove the toxins. This is done by the excretory functions
of the body. Fasting only affords them the opportunity to perfect
their work. Shelton, The Hygienic System, v.
3, Fasting and Sunbathing. [3] Toxins are divided into
two groups; namely exogenous, those formed in the alimentary canal
from fermentation and decomposition following imperfect or faulty
digestion . If the fermentation is of vegetables or fruit, the
toxins are irritating, stimulating and enervating, but not so
dangerous or destructive to organic life as putrefaction, which
is a fermentation set up in nitrogenous matter--protein-bearing
foods, but particularly animal foods. Endogenous toxins are autogenerated.
They are the waste products of metabolism. Dr.
John.H. Tllden, Impaired Health: Its Cause and Cure, 1921.
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