Pills,
specialists, HMOs, diets, antibiotics, immunizations, and surgery:
These are the ways that Americans treat their ills. Let’s
not forget however that fundamentally we are animals, and evolution
has not brought us all this way because our bodies need assistance
just to survive.
In the age of capitalism and convenience, the human
animal encounters more toxicity and detrimental environmental conditions
than ever. While you can break the core of survival down to four
areas—food, shelter, heat and clothing—there are many
more catastrophic elements to deal with now than ever. The age of
profit margins has introduced nasty substances into our lifestyle,
such as bovine growth hormones and DDT. Unless you either grow all
your own food or buy it from an organic health food store, you consume
these toxic substances everyday.
I didn’t fully realize the damaging potential
of the disease until it hit close to home. John Hall, 25 year-old
bass player for the band Addison Groove Project, lost his battle
with cancer this Thanksgiving. He had been diagnosed with rectal
cancer just 18 months ago but no one except his family and band-mates
knew how bad it was. And no one at the funeral could understand
how a 25 year-old could die of cancer.
I knew cancer was a problem in the nation, but John
was only 25! This really is serious. John Hall’s story was
the catalyst that drove me to investigate this epidemic. I’m
thankful for the opportunity to share my findings with you, so we
may all do our best to avoid the plague of the 21st century.
During my search for answers, I ran into Brian Haas,
the esteemed piano player in the provocative jazz trio, Jacob Fred
Jazz Odyssey. Our paths crossed at the foot of Butternut Ski Basin
among scorching sun and green grass at the Berkshire Mountain Music
Festival in August of 2003. While most of the inhabitants of the
festival were wrapped up in conversation about the musical lineup,
Brian was deep into in a discussion on life and death.
Recently, Hass’ mom became one of 1.4 million
people each year to be newly diagnosed with cancer in the United
States. Fearing for her life, Mrs. Haas did what nearly everyone
does, and enrolled in a regimen of chemotherapy and radiation treatment
to counter the breast cancer. Her doctors emphasized that this was
the best, most effective means of treatment, even though they gave
her only a five percent chance of surviving the ordeal, with the
“therapy”. A five percent chance of survival with the
most cutting edge advances in western medicine! No wonder subconsciously
she knew the MDs were wrong. “There was a ring of dishonesty
in what the doctors were saying,” explained Brian Haas.
During this treatment, her body underwent high doses
of chemicals and radiation that poisoned the cancer cells—along
with her healthy cells. She became weaker and more emotionally destitute.
There were no signs of regaining the vitality that once flowed through
her body in abundance. Then she turned to Brian. After a few months
of listening to his advice, she was on her way to full recovery.
She had literally found the cure; it took her from deathbed, to
full recovery. And that cure is available for everybody.
How do you treat your
Temple?
Putting good food into your body does not end with physical benefits
through healthy lifestyle. Spiritual health and physical health
go hand in hand. “Like Sting said, ‘We’re just
spirits in the material world,’” explains Haas. “This
is the house of our spirit.” If you think of it in those terms,
it makes sense. The body is the interface between your soul and
the physical world. If that interface is clogged full of toxic residue,
then you won’t be able to realize your full potential—neither
mentally, physically, or spiritually.
Haas explains: “Jesus said your body is a temple.
If you treat your body like a temple, it spreads into the rest of
your life. Every aspect of your life becomes holy; everything you
do is holy.”
“The mind, body and soul are connected,”
Haas continues. “If you don’t allow your body to operate
at its full potential, how do we even know what our minds are capable
of? I’m all about living like a real human and realizing my
full potential. I’m back here [on the earth] for some reason
so I want to be the best human I can be. All of this is so simple.”
After hearing him behind the grand piano that night,
I know why he’s here. But its even larger than spreading his
consciousness expanding jazz. There is a larger purpose: All is
One.
As Hass sat and talked to me before the show, eating
his organic stew, he explained: “The reason we’re here
right now is to help in the healing process of the earth. So, we
have to turn ourselves into superheroes, we have to turn ourselves
into ultra-humans. We have to find our true potential. Jesus said
‘Don’t you understand that you’re all Gods?’
Simple; we’re all Gods, we’re all creators. We create
the world around us. And if we’re toxic, if we’re poisoning
ourselves, we’re going to create an awful world. Look around,
we made this. The way I look at it, if you only feed yourself goodness
and love, you only create goodness and love.”
How diet can affect
your chances
First of all, there is no black-and-white cause to cancer, it is
merely an accumulation of thousands of lifestyle and environmental
factors over a person’s life that contribute to the degradation
of the body’s cells. Of course there are certainly things
that increase your chances such as smoking cigarettes, but regardless
of your lifestyle, malignant cells exist in everyone.
Western medicine currently has about four main (and
expensive) treatments to counter mutating cells spreading throughout
the body. The first step in slowing reproduction of malignant cells,
is to slow the hormone that commands them to replicate, estrogen.
The most common drugs used for this include tamoxifen and raloxifene.
Chemotherapy is the most common cancer treatment.
Chemicals are introduced to the system to kill the cancer cells.
Unfortunately, instead of mimicking a “smart bomb” and
killing only the malignant cells, the chemicals kill thousands of
healthy cells in the process. These chemicals are so harmful to
the body, the New England Journal of Medicine reported that increased
chance of leukemia and ovarian cancer offset the benefits with greater
risks. Chemotherapy also tends to reduce the number of blood platelets
in the patient, called thrombocytopenia. Theoretically it’s
similar to killing Saddam Hussein by nuking all of Iraq.
Speaking of, radiation treatment is also a very
common therapy where the tumor is bombarded with high energy X-rays
or radioactive isotopes in order to disable the replicating mechanism
in the cancer cells, the chromosomes. As most of us know from getting
X-rays at the dentist, radiation is not good for the body.
The final, and most drastic treatment is a radical
mastectomy. The severity of this treatment speaks for itself.
The best way to avoid being in a place where you
need to consider these severe treatments of course is to avoid cancer
all together. Western medicine however, is focused on curing illness
rather than preventing it.
A great place to begin your prevention regimen, is
a vegetarian diet. Fill your body with vibrant vegetables, that
collect vitality straight from the sun. You’ll also remove
the most unhealthy ingredients in your diet and instantly upgrade
your chances of not becoming one of the 42% that gets cancer. “Its
so simple,” Haas emphasizes.
When Brian’s mom finally decided she had enough
of the western method of poison and radiation, she began listening
to what Brian was saying. She began to follow not only his advice,
but also her instincts. She immediately stopped taking the chemotherapy
drugs and going to radiation therapy. She began to pay careful attention
to what she put into her body, but more importantly, what not to
put into her body.
To begin the healing process, the first thing she
did was take the following four items out of her diet completely:
sugar, alcohol, dairy, and factory (non-organically raised) meat.
She replaced these with regular doses of juiced wheat grass, and
her recovery process began. It is as simple as that.
What’s wrong
with my burger?
If there is one reason to consider a vegetarian lifestyle, it is
the chemical buildup found in non-organically raised meats. As a
product of the food chain, the cow that your Big Mac came from consumed
hundreds of meals coated in dangerous pesticides. Unfortunately,
it does not pass through the animal’s digestive tract, but
rather accumulates in the tissues over time. When you consume that
flesh, that lifetime of toxins are passed into your body, and the
struggle of breaking them down is passed to your immune system.
There are four major groups of toxins found in factory
meat that you should be aware of: pesticides, antibiotics, growth
hormones, and saturated fat.
The advent of pesticide use in large-scale farming
was introduced just after World War II to increase productivity
and drive profits. Unfortunately, no long-term studies have been
conducted to determine the ramifications of such use. And unfortunately
we are still using such toxins today.
One such chemical present in our food chain today
is dioxin, the contaminant in Agent Orange, a defoliant in the Vietnam
War that was found to cause birth defects in children of exposed
parents. As far back as 1974, the Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA) testified before congress that dioxin is “...by far
the most toxic chemical known to mankind.” But this has not
stopped its use even today. Just last year the EPA under the Bush
administration, refused to enforce a new limit to the use of dioxin-laced
sludge as a fertilizer on farms, forests, parks, and golf courses.
Dioxin has been shown to cause cancer, birth defects, miscarriages,
and in the worst cases, death.
This has been accumulating in your chicken wings
and its only the beginning.
Antibiotics are used in factory farms, to keep the
animals healthy despite their rancid conditions. The New England
Journal of Medicine pointed out that farmers are using the same
antibiotics that are used to treat human infections. This is a problem
because bacteria are becoming resistant to antibiotics in the medical
arena.
In a 1999 study on the impact of agricultural antibiotics,
analysts linked a rise, from 1 percent to 10 percent, in antibiotic
resistance in bacteria, to the 1995 approval of antibiotics used
in poultry. Researchers at UCS estimate that roughly 24 million
pounds, or 70 percent of the antibiotics in the United States are
fed to healthy livestock and contribute to the antibiotic-resistance
of bacteria in humans.
The next additive to your Thanksgiving turkey is
hormones. One reason why the European Union hasn’t bought
meat produced in the U.S. for over 14 years, is the twenty-fold
increase in estrogen levels. The British Medical Journal reported
harmful effects of growth hormones in meat involve developmental,
neurobiological, genetoxic, and carcinogenic repercussions, and
that even small residues of such hormones increase the risk of cancer.
How do you like your steak, medium or well done?
The final element in meat that increases your risk
of cancer is saturated fat. There are no shortage of scientific
studies that connect animal fat with cancers of the lung, colon,
rectum, breast, endometrium, and prostate. One such study done in
Britain over 12 years found vegetarians to have cancer rates 40
percent lower than non-vegetarians. The study tested 6,000 vegetarians
against a group of meat-eaters similar in body weight, social class,
and smoking patterns.
A vegetarian diet is one way of ensuring only goodness
gets into your body, by minimizing the toxic chemicals entering
body. However, now beyond the industrial revolution, we live a poisonous
lifestyle and no matter how much we try and avoid it, toxins still
wind up in the body through the air we breathe and the water we
drink. Because of this, it is a good idea to consider cleaning house
once and a while to allow your body’s natural processes to
combat enemy free radicals and malignant cells in the body.
One of the best ways to allow your body to clean
house, is by fasting. By abstaining from food for significant periods
of time, your body has a chance to turn its immune attention towards
breaking down toxins in the system that, if left unattended to,
could manifest into any number of cancers.
The Cleansing Fast: Why do it for your health?
One of the best ways to allow your body to cleanse
is by fasting. By abstaining from food for significant periods of
time, your body has a chance to turn its immune attention towards
breaking down toxins in the system that, if left unattended to,
could manifest into any number of cancers.
Traditionally, fasting is viewed as a spiritual experience.
By abstaining from all solid food, you are taking control of the
robot that is your body, by not letting it control you. When this
occurs, you begin to see through the cycles of everyday life and
realize what is truly important in the world. By choosing to let
the spirit guide us, and not the flesh, you break through materialism
and realize the body’s addiction to food and harmful substances
we consume everyday.
In the Essene Gospels, Jesus explains, “the
body is the temple of the spirit, and the spirit is the temple of
God. Purify, therefore, the temple, that the Lord of the temple
may dwell therein and occupy a place that is worthy of him.
As Paul Bragg explains in The Miracle of Fasting,
there is a Vital Force that is used every day of your life to maintain
your body’s processes. In addition to pushing blood through
millions of filters in your kidneys and exchanging oxygen for carbon
dioxide in your lungs, a large percentage of this energy goes towards
digesting food through your 30-foot digestive tract. Once you stop
eating, this Vital Force begins recharging and is freed up tove
move throughout the body breaking down poisonous residues that have
built up. Even after just 24 hours, the body is able to begin rebuilding
Vital Force.
With the aid of lots of water and a herbal laxative,
fasting also allows your body to pass the remaining food that has
accumulated in the colon over years. The average person on a western
diet has up to eight partially digested meals residing in their
digestive tract at any time. Think about that! This undigested food
does exactly the same thing it would if it weren’t in your
body: it rots. If you’re wondering what that would look like,
try taking a bowl of freshly cooked food and instead of eating it,
put it in a moist 98.6 degree environment and check on it in three
days.
Fasting is certainly one option among many, that
allow your natural body to take care of itself. The most important
thing to realize, is that your vessel has remarkable healing capabilities.
Next time your doctor prescribes a pill for a common ailment, consider
that the human race has not made it this far being dependent on
pharmaceuticals. The flip side of the coin however, is that we have
never been bombarded by such a health-caustic environment. Drastic
measures may be required for such drastic environmental conditions—like
pesticides, growth hormones, antibiotics, and saturated fat.
You Choose
Think of it this way: what if every morning, instead of having a
cup of coffee, I banged my head against a brick wall to wake up.
I would quickly begin to experience splitting headaches, scratches
on my head, and soreness in my neck. If I went to my western doctor
for a solution, he would listen to my symptoms, and probably prescribe
Aspirin or a stronger pain killer to deal with the pain. After the
pain did not go away, I would get X-rays, maybe a MRI scan and perhaps
some stitches to deal with the laceration caused by my forehead
smacking against the brick each day. If I went to my eastern medicine
doctor, he would tell me to stop hitting my head on the wall.
This may sound ridiculous, but when you consider
what we, as Americans, put into our body, it may not be that far-fetched.
Consider that each year 1.2 billion pounds of pesticides are sprayed
on American crops, and we feed 24 million pounds of antibiotics
to farm animals to aid in meat production. Where do you think that
goes? We are constantly bombarding our body with unnatural chemicals
that can trigger DNA breakage, cell deterioration, and immune system
suppression.
Luckily, you have a choice. You can begin reading
the labels on your food and eliminating chemical-laden flesh from
your diet. Remember, the choice is yours.
Jon Heinrich
Bibliography:
- Bragg, Paul ND, Ph.D, Patirica Bragg ND, Ph.D. The Miracle
of Fasting. Santa Barbara, CA: Health Science.
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to Stop". (Editorial). The New England Journal of Medicine,
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- Melina, Vesanto M.S., R.D. Physicians Committee for Responsible
Medicine. Healthy Eating for Life: To Prevent and Treat Cancer.
John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2002.
- Nixon, Daniel W. M.D. The Cancer Recovery Eating Plan: The
Right Foods to Help Fuel Your Recovery. Times Books, Random House,
1994.
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as Fertilizer". The Boston Globe, October 18, 2003.
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Tulsa, Oklahoma: Nutrition Times Press, Inc., 1994.
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Vogin, Gary MD. WebMD, December, 2001.
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