Index273
Acknowledgments
TheideaforthisbookgrewoutofmyteachingaboutthepoHtical
economyofhealthcare.MystudentsandIaskedhowthepresent
systemcametobe.Thesearchforanswersledmetohistoriesof
medicine,pubhshedmaterialsinjournalsoftheperiod,andthe
archivalfilesoftheRockefellerandCarnegiephilanthropies.The
archivesprovidedarichrecordofthethoughts,policies,and
actionsofsomeofthemostinfluentialpersonsinthehistoryof
Americanmedicine.
Thesearchculminatedinthisbook.Butthebookwouldnot
havebeenpossiblewithoutthegeneroushelp,enthusiastic
interest,andpersonalsupportofmanypeople.Iamespecially
gratefultoHowardWaitzkin,WilHamKornhauser,Barbara
Ehrenreich,GertBrieger,andMichaelPincus,allofwhomgave
medetailedandthoughtfulcriticismsonmajorportionsofthe
manuscripttogetherwithgreatencouragement. Ialsoreceived
helpfulcriticismandsupportfromAnneJohnson,JonGarfield,
CharleneHarrington,BarbaraWaterman,JamesO'Connor,Dan
Feshbach,IvanlUich,DavidHorowitz,JuneFisher,Kathryn
Johnson,JackLondon,JaneGrant,TomBodenheimer,Sara
Mclntire,JoeSelby,LarrySirott,andMyrnaCozen.Howard
Berlinerhasbeenanexceptionalcolleague,sharingideasand
materialinacooperativeefforttounderstandthesesparselystud-
iedissues.
MarianneParkerBrown,mywife,gavemecontinuing
encouragementandintellectualcriticismandsupport,evenwhen
theburdensoffamilyandhouseholdfelldisproportionately on
hershoulders.Mydaughters,DeliaandAdrienne,wereunder-
xiiIAcknowledgments
standingbeyondtheiryearswhiletheirfatherwas"workingon
hisbook."
ThestaffsoftheRockefellerFoundationArchivesandthe
RockefellerFamilyArchives(nowcombinedintheRockefeller
ArchiveCenter)andtheCarnegieFoundationfortheAdvance-
mentofTeachingwereveryhelpfulinprovidingconvenient
workingfacilitiesandmakingmyresearchinNewYorkexcitingly
productive.ThestaffsoftheHealthSciencesInformationService
andtheLibraryDeliveryServiceattheUniversityofCalifornia
savedmeinnumerablehoursofretrievingbooksandjournals
fromthefar-flunglibrariesontheBerkeleycampus.
EvaScipio,RuthMcKeeter,andSandraGolvinskillfully
typedportionsofthemanuscriptinitsvariousphases.Estelle
Jelinekcarefullyandthoughtfullycopyeditedthefinalmanu-
script.
MuchoftheresearchforthelastchapterwasdonewhileIwas
aconsultanttotheChildhoodandGovernmentProjectatthe
UniversityofCaliforniaLawSchool.TheHealthandMedical
SciencesProgram,alsoatBerkeley,helpeddefraythecostsofmy
researchtriptothearchivesinNewYork.
TheRockefellerArchiveCenterandtheCarnegieFounda-
tionfortheAdvancementofTeachingkindlygavemepermission
topublishexcerptsfromtheirfiles.
Introduction
Thecrisisintoday'shealthcaresystemisdeeplyrootedinthe
interwovenhistoryofmodernmedicineandcorporatecapitalism.
Themajorgroupsandforcesthatshapedthemedicalsystem
sowedtheseedsofthecrisiswenowface.Themedicalprofession
andothermedicalinterestgroupseachtriedtomakemedicine
servetheirownnarroweconomicandsocialinterests.Founda-
tionsandothercorporateclassinstitutionsinsistedthatmedicine
servetheneedsof"their"corporatecapitalistsociety.Thedia-
lecticoftheircommoneffortsandtheirclashes,andtheeconomic
andpoliticalforcessetinmotionbytheiractions,shapedthe
systemasitgrew.Outofthishistoryemergedamedicalsystem
thatpoorlyservessociety'shealthneeds.
Thesystem'smostobviousproblemsarethecost,inflation,
andinaccessibiUtyofmedicalcareintheUnitedStates.Total
healthexpenditures inthiscountrytopped$200billionin1979,
nearly$1,000foreverywoman,man,andchild.Farmoreof
society'sresourcesnowgointomedicalexpendituresthanever
before;twicetheportionoftheGrossNationalProductwas
spentonmedicalcarein1980thanin1950.
Wepayforthesecoststhroughourtaxes,healthinsurance
premiums,anddirectlyoutofourpockets.Publicexpen-
ditures—fouroutofeverytendollarsspentonpersonalhealth
services—comeoutofourtaxes.Privatehealthinsuranceanddi-
rectout-of-pocketpaymentseachaccountforaboutthreeoutof
everytendollars.Nomatterwhatformittakes,theentire$200
billionoriginatesinthelaborofmenandwomeninthesociety.
PresidentCarterestimatedthattheaverageAmericanworker
2/Introduction
worksonemontheachyearjusttopaythecostsofthemedical
system.'
Mostpeoplefeeltheyshouldbegettingalotforthismoney,
butinsteadtheyfindthatitisdifficulteventogetthecarethey
need.Primarycarephysicians—generalpractitioners, pediatri-
cians,internists,andgynecologists—arescarce.Doctorsand
hospitalsareclusteredinthe"better"partsofourcitiesand
largelyabsentfromthepoorersectionsandruralareasofour
country.ForthemillionsofAmericanscoveredbyMedicaid(the
governmentsubsidyprogramforthepublicassistance-linked
poor),thecoveragehasbeenassparseanddegradingasthede-
meaningclinicsitwassupposedtoreplace.Themiddleclassand
thepoorshareatleastlongwaitingperiodsfordoctors,oneofthe
mostcommonconstraintsontheaccessibilityofphysicians.In-
steadofcreatingahumaneandaccessiblemedicalcaresystem,
MedicareandMedicaidhavehelpedfuelinflationinmedicalcosts
bydumpingnewfundsintoaprivatelycontrolledsystemreadyto
absorbeverypennyintoexpansion,technology,highsalaries,
andprofits.
Asecond,somewhatlesswidelydiscussed,problemisthe
relativelysmallimpactmedicalcaremakesonthepopulation's
healthstatus.Despiteaplethoraofnewdiagnosticprocedures,
drugs,andsurgicaltechniques,wearenotashealthyaswe
behevedthesemedicalwonderswouldmakeus.Somecritics,Uke
socialphilosopherIvanIllich,^accusemedicineofmakingus
sicker—physically,politically,andculturally—thanwewouldbe
withoutit.Manyanalystshavedocumentedthemedicalprofes-
sion'ssocialcontrolfunctions,medicaltechnology'sfrequently
adverseeffectsonourhealth,andmedicine'sneglectofimpor-
tantphysicalandsocialenvironmental influencesonourhealth.^
InsteadofmedicineHberatingusfromthesufferinganddepen-
dencyofillness,wefindthatitsoppressiveelementshavegrown
atleastasrapidlyasitstechnicalachievements.
Whyhasmedicalcaregrownsocostlysorapidly?Whyisitso
plentifulandyetsoinaccessible?Howdidmedicinebecome
technicallysosophisticatedbutremainsociallyunconcernedand
evenrepressive?
Apopularbuttoofacileansweristhatsuchproblemsare
characteristicoftechnologyandindustrialized societies.Accord-
ingtothisargument,technologyandindustrializationimpose
Introduction I3
theirownlimitsonformsofsocialorganizationandproduce
similarkindsofproblemsthatcallforthsimilarsolutions.Medical
sociologistDavidMechanicfindsproblemsofcost,organization,
andethicaldilemmasinmedicinewidespreadamongindustri-
alizedcountriesandconcludesthat"thedemandsofmedical
technologyandthegrowthofthesciencebaseofmedicalactivity
producepressurestowardcommonorganizational solutions
despitestrongideologicaldifferences.'"^lUichassertsthat"patho-
genicmedicineistheresultofindustrialoverproduction."^ Inthis
view,technologyhasalifeofitsown,imposingitsimperativeson
individualsandsocialorganization.Byfocusingonwidespread
patternsofindustrialorganizationandtechnologicaldevelop-
ment,theseanalystsconcludethattechnologyandindustrializa-
tionareuniversaldeterminingforces.
Suchtechnologicaldeterminismignorestheparticularhistory
inwhichsocietyandtechnologyinteract.IntheMarxianview,
technologyandeconomicorganizationconstantlyshapeeach
otherinadialecticalprocess.Individualsandgroupswhoownthe
resourcesandcontroltheorganizationofproduction,farfrom
beingatthemercyof"neutral"technology,introduceinnova-
tionsthatservetheirownendsandopposethosethatwouldserve
otherintereststhantheirown.Theseinnovationsmayneglect
broadercommunityneedsandmayhurttheinterestsofothers.
Machinesandfactoriesunderminedtheautonomyandeventhe


 that 1 ate before and now 1 thought that my
life no longer will be right. A friend of mine said to me that I could be normal.
My glucose was of 249 mg, and after beginning with the method of Urine-therapy
of the 14 of July to the 14 of August of 1998, it is now a low 110 mg.
TESTIMONY 62*
D1AB£T£S~ OBESlTY~ ARTHRlTlS~ COLlTlS.
Maria C. of Aguilar { Mexico }
89 I have 5 months taking my Urine. I did three fasts and I cured myself of first
-diabetes with one fast. Also I cured myself of arthritis, colitis, ulcer, spots in the
skin, wrinkles in the hands, bad circulation, obesity and liver spots on my hands.
TESTIMONY 63*
H£MORRHAG£~ OB£S1TV.
Light of the Carmen D. Sierra { Mexico }
attended a conference that a friend invited me to go.
I went to learn to practice the fasts with much love in Christ.
In fifteen days I have alleviated myself of many things.
1 diminished the menopause, 11owered 10 kilos {23 1bs.}, and on the 2nd fast the
pains in my chest and arms disappeared.
My vaginal infections that stained my undergarments disappeared in one month.
After the 4th fast I build my blood and my skin recovered the elasticity in the
ankles like when I was young.
J have always liked to study and to read a lot
Now I feel that I understand more, which makes me feel closer to love God and
myself. The value of knowledge is more to fellowman and to love of fife.
Thanks to God for the form in which it has made me arrive my healing.
TESTIMONY 64*
HVP£RT£NS10N
Alicia De Higareda {Mexico}
I am cured of hypertension in only three months.
I have not taken a single tablet, only Urine.
Doing an fasting of 3 days,
1 feel very we11 and I am already working thanks to God.
TESTIMONY 65*
D1AB£T£S~ FVNGl S1NVS1T1S
Araceli Ramos C. { Mexico }
Blessed it is God,
I have cured myself through the Urine of diabetes, fungi in the feet and sinusitis.
God blesses them follow ahead, thanks.
90 TESTIMONY 66*
D1AB£T£S
Ora. Margarita G. of Guzman { Mexico }
I have 35 years of age.
I am diabetic for 11 years with insulin and 3 years with homeopathic medicine.
At the moment I am on no drugs, only the fasting dose of Urine.
f am controffed totaUy.
TESTIMONY 67*
SLOW' L£ARN1NG
Martha L Lopez { Mexico }
In the second week of my Urine-therapy, my vomiting along with chronic
difficufties disappeared in the morning.
My daughter of 9 years with learning problems, improved her qualifications.
She knows the tables and already she multiplies with ease.
TESTIMONY 68*
D1AB£T£S
Hortensia To Rodriguez {Mexico}
In January 1996 they detected me having diabetes and tested me three times.
I started with the Urine-therapy in March.
After 15 days I went to make an analyses and I realize that I lowered to 145.
Later 11eft it and 1 again initiated it one week ago, because 1 had a relapse; right
now I feel very well
TESTIMONY 69*
C1ST1C£RCOS1S
Irene Or of Hernandez { Mexico }
MY disease is cerebral Cisticerc6sis, I have taken my Urine 4 months and the
tumor in my head went away. They gave chemotherapy to me.
I know that the best thing than God has given me is my health and although I
appear ill in my studies, in my body 1 do not feel anything bad.
Every day I thank God to let me live with my husband and children.
91 TESTIMONY 70*
CANC£ROVS TVMOR
Mrs. Maria R. Sanchez { Mexico }
I was healed of a cancerous tumor that I had. In three months THANKS TO GOD,
I am cured and I feel very well. I ask everyone who believes in God to know that
diseases are a disguised blessing, as Jesus said.
TESTIMONY 71 *
D1All£T£S
Maria of the R. Rivera { Mexico }
I was cured of diabetes taking 3 months my Urine with only 1 fast of three days.
I am also cured of the nerves.
This I did by means a person whom recommended to me that it take my Urine
and thanks to God atreadyl am cured.
TESTIMONY 72*
D1AD£T£S
Irene Alvarez. { Mexico }
I am cured of diabetes taking Urine once in the mornings for one month.
After doing a study of my glucose I find it had lowered.
I also felt better in my heart and this was confirmed by the doctor
after doing an electrocardiogram.
TESTIMONY 73*
£Pll£PSV
Yessica L. Delgadillo {Mexico}
I was ill of epilepsy.
I was with allopathic methods for one year and instead of feeling some
improvement I felt worse. I began to loose my hair and my gums were inflamed.
My disease was very hard for me and for my parents
who worried a lot when my eyes were rolling in my head
and I lost consciousness and had a lot of saliva in my mouth.
I had other diseases in my throat, which were very prevalent every fifteen days.
My Parents took me to the doctor and he prescribed penicillin that ended my
defenses. Later I tried a homeopathic but he was useless.
I did not manage to cure myself until my parents asked
God and he listened to them.
92 My parents went to speak with the father of the temple and he gave us a gift.
U was a book that taught them of Urine-therapy.
In addition the Father commented that another Father had cured himself of the
same problem of epilepsy as I had. My parents told me to do it.
They aJso took it for some sUght diseases that they have.
Thank God we felt very well.
In only two days taking it I have not returned to have any attacks much less to
suffer any colds or flu. I thank God for this medicine that was given to me and for
this faith that always I have had in him. He is the main thing to heal a11 and thanks
to him for this spring of life that returned my health.
TESTIMONY 74*
PROBLEMS lN CARTllAG£S
Lupita S. Castaneda { Mexico }
It had problems of my cartilage.
I am an athlete and I went to tears when I realized I no longer could run any more.
So I began to take Urine for four months and I have felt far better little by little.
Thanks to God I continue running.
TESTIMONY 75 *
HVP£RT£NS10N AND COllTlS
Dr Teresa S. Rivas {Mexico}
I practice different alternative therapies.
Days ago my mother called me by telephone telling me, " Daughter, I am very bad.
I feel that I will die. I have very high pressure and my pupils are very expanded.
My stomach feels very inflamed. 1 feet that 1 am going away to die...
Then I said to her, " Mother, fast for three days and drink your Urine.
Mix the Urine with mud and rub it on the stomach and kidneys ".
I was very surprised when she called me on the following day to say
that she felt like she was 15 years old.
TESTIMONY 76*
VlC£RS GASTR1T1S. COllTlS
Mr. Ramon P. Gonzalez { Mexico }
My sufferings that got better are, ulcers, gastritis
(very acute acidness of my stomach for 45 years), nervous system very altered,
very strong disquiet, insomnia, colitis, and pains of my kidneys.
I am very improved.
93 My problem with my prostate is a burning sensation and hemorrhoids.
They disappeared after taking my Urine from 25th from March of 1995 to date.
I feel better with many energies.
TESTIMONY 77*
D1AB£T£S AND COLlTlS
Ma. Magdalena Bermudez { Mexico }
Without going to a conference,
I began to take my Urine by the desperation from my disease (diabetes).
I listened that they had to make a fast.
1 wanted to prove it's possibilities but my stomach loosened and 1 moved black
particle balls out.
I was scared to make the therapy further.
Later I was told that it was a normal reaction.
I then returned to the


 the same as in Testicle Breathing—feet flat on
the floor, wear loose pants or naked from the waist down. Stimu-
late your penis to erection. Center your attention on your sexual
organs and the expanding energy in the penis and scrotum.
2. Inhale deeply through your nose when near orgasm. Simul-
taneously clench both fists, claw your feet down, make them feel
like vacuum pumps sucking at the floor. At the same time clench
your jaw, tighten the cranial pump at the back of your neck and
press your tongue firmly to the roof of your mouth. Inhale once
more and draw up the entire genital-anus region, concentrating on
the Hui-Yin (perineum), urogenital diaphragm, and especially the
penis. Pull the energy from the penis to the perineum by squeezing
as tightly as possible. Holding your breath, slowly count to 9 with
all muscles fully flexed. When you are out of breath, exhale and
release all muscles in the body. You may feel energy rush up and
down, especially in the sexual region.The Dance Of The Testes 87
After exercising for a week or two, you may actually begin to
feel the muscle contraction pull your penis up and in. The anus will
feel like it's closed super-tight. Unless indicated otherwise, all
breathing is to be done through the nose. Nasal breathing affords
better control of the air inhaled. It filters and warms the air and
supplies life-force of well balanced quality. The whole body must
relax on the exhale. Allow all tension to flow out of you as if you
were in meditation.
Inhale, clench, and pull up repeatedly on your sexual region,
holding the energy at the perineum. The retention at the perineum
is very important. If you release your attention the hot energy will
drop down to the sexual organs or leak out to the penis. If you
release the energy it will drop down and you'll have to start again.
Do this for at least one week.
3. Start with arousing the penis. Clench fists, feet, neck, and jaw,
on the inhale. Draw up the entire genital organs, diaphragm, anus,
and especially the penis, pull the hot energy up the perineum and
continue to draw it up to your coccyx. A little up from the bottom
tip of your spine. Feel it enter the hiatus opening in the sacrum.
Activate your sacral pump by arching your lower back out-
ward in order to straighten the spine. This makes it easier for the
chi to rise. Hold the energy at the sacrum section, keep on inhaling
and pulling, inhaling and pulling in the sexual energy from the
sexual organs until you can feel the erection calm down. Some-
times it may need 3-9 inhalations with increasingly hard contrac-
tion. Squeezing the buttocks more tightly may help you force the
ching into the sacrum. When you're out of breath, exhale. Then
relax and let your sacrum and neck go back to their normal posi-
tions, this will help activate the two pumps.
If you practiced the Testicle Breathing (or already opened
your microcosmic orbit), when you do the Power Lock it will be
much easier to get the hot sexual ching to enter the sacrum. Other-
wise this area is usually a little difficult to work through because
sperm chi energy is denser than other types of chi and has to be
pumped up. That's where the sacral pump comes in. Some people
experience pain, tingling, or "pins and needles" pain. When the
hot sexual energy enters the hiatus, don't be upset if it happens to
you. You can help the ching get past the coccyx if you're having
trouble with it by gently massaging the area with a silk cloth from
time to time.88 Taoist Secrets Of Love
4. If you to go up to through your sacrum, spend the next week
drawing the energy to T-ll on the spine, opposite your solar
plexus. Repeat the same procedure—arousing, clenching, and in-
haling. Pump up the energy up to the perineum, sacrum, then to the
T-ll, where you should retain it until it feels full of energy. It's
really open when you feel the ching itself. Again, because sperm
energy is denser than chi, you have to accommodate to it by bow-
ing your spine outward to straighten it to increase the pumping
action and allow for a freer passage of ching chi upward.
DIAGRAM 20 Energy spirals in the brain
Tuck in chin
The Power Lock Exercise
gradually trains your mind
to pull up sexual energy into
the higher centers without
muscular contractionPai-Hui (Crown)
Jade Pillow
Straighten the
curve in your neck
T-11 (Adrenal mini pump)
Straighten
the spinal
curve slightly
Tilt the sacrum down
PerineumThe Dance Of The Testes 89
5. Your next stopping place is at your jade pillow. This is at the
back of your head, between C-l and the base of the skull. Do it in
the same manner as described—keep drawing up the energy up to
the perineum, sacrum, T-ll, and the base of the skull. The cranial
pump may fill with energy and pound furiously when the energy
first moves through.
6. The next stopping point for the energy is the Pai Hui, at the
crown of your head. Repeat the same process of arousing and
deflating your erection by drawing the energy up. Make sure you
tuck in your chin slightly and squeeze in the skull to further acti-
vate the upper cranial pump and keep the upper spine straight.
Keep on pulling the energy to the top of your head until you get the
erection to subside.
When the energy finally goes up into your head, you'll have
the very distinct feeling of warmth and tingling sensations from the
energy. The usual immediate response is that it feels good and
amazingly refreshing. Some people claim they can think more
clearly and are more creative; it's possible they are at a stage
where they can easily convert the ching chi into expanded con-
sciousness automatically. This sperm energy is later converted into
the original chi, the pure life-force, in the spiritual levels of Taoist
Yoga. When we get older we have used up so much of our brain
energy that the fluids gradually begin to dry up, and leave a cavity
in our head. The Power Lock helps to transport the sexual energy
to fill the cavity; instead of storing it in the scrotum it is stored in
the higher regions of the body/mind that can take immediate benefit
from it. Taoists regard the sexual energy as a creative energy that
can be transformed to any part of our vital organs, glands, or brain.
Practice the Power Lock until you can pull up the sexual
energy from the penis to the head in one pipe. In the beginning you
can just go from one station to another. Later the back channel
(governor channel) will feel more open. Eventually you will be able
to put your mind in the testicles and at the crown of the head and
just bring the sexual energy from the testicles all the way up to the
brain. Take time to really feel the sexual energy when you practice.
Don't rush it, and always keep those pumps going after the exer-
cise as you breath in and out. Gradually use more mind than phys-
ical pull when you do all this. Let the energy feeling be your guide.
7. When you feel the energy has filled the brain, concentrate on the
mid-eyebrow and bring it down through the nose and the palate and90 Taoist Secrets Of Love
down from the tongue to the throat center, heart center, solar
plexus, and then down into the navel. This circulation is aided by
the internal pressures created during the Power Lock. You press
the lower trunk energy into and up the spine. At the same time, you
press the energy in the upper body downward and hold the contrac-
tion as long as you can. When you exhale completely relax the
whole body. The natural direction of the chi is to continue in a
circle up the back of your body and down the front to the navel.
Continue cycling the sexual energy in this way until your
erection subsides. In the beginning, and especially if your very
aroused sexually, it may take 3 to 9 such cycles to accomplish. But
after you've practiced for awhile, one such round is enough.
8. Perform 36 complete contractions in the morning and at night.
Once you've got the hang of it, for the normal man 36 repetitions,
morning and night, should not be unduly strenuous. If you are very
aroused you will do fewer repetitions as each erection will take
longer to subside. With such intensity of training, you will easily
develop the muscle tone needed for effective seminal retention
within a month or two. How quickly you progress is not important;
what is essential is that you progress steadily. Rock bottom mini-
mum should be one round per day just to keep the habit. If you
happen to see a pretty woman or photograph that arouses you
during the day, you


perspective, you’re not threatened by anything, from criminal s to cancer,
from a common cold to a wild beast. When you live in harmony with the
enduring part of yourself, it will contribute to an overall sense of being
indestructible. Declare yourself to be that lucky person who goes through
life unscathed by freeing yourself from trying to control your perception of
looming danger.
Change the way you look at your potential for becoming a lucky
person.
Rather than telling yourself: With my luck, things aren’t going to work out
for me, affirm: I am open to allowing what needs to happen. I trust luck to
guide me. This change in your thinking will serve you by 55th Verse
guiding you to live in the flow with the Tao. Peace will replace stress,
harmony will replace effort, acceptance will replace interference and force,
and good luck will replace fear. You’ll become what you think about, so
even things that you previously  believed were evidence of bad luck will
now be viewed as what helps you move toward greater harmony.
Living by letting go will allow you to appreciate Lin Yutang’ s wry
observation in The Importance of Living: “If you can spend a perfectly
useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner, you have learned how to
live.”
Do the T ao NowDedicate a week to charting incidents of “things working out” without
your having to control or “make” them happen. This will mean consciously
choosing situati ons where you curb your automatic impulse to control the
outcome. Relax when you want to tense up, and trust in as many situations
as you can. At the end of the week, notice how changing the way you think
has changed your life.
OceanofPDF.com56th Verse
Those who know do not talk.
Those who talk do not know.

Block all the passages!
Close your mouth,
cordon off your senses,
blunt your sharpness,
untie your knots,
soften your glar e,
settle your dust.
This is primal union or the secr et embrace.

One who knows this secr et
is not moved by attachment or aversion,
swayed by pr ofit or loss,
nor touched by honor or disgrace.
He is far beyond the car es of men
yet comes to hold the dear est place in their hearts.

This, ther efore, is the highest state of man.
OceanofPDF.comLiving by
Silent Knowing
This is probably  the best-known verse of the Tao Te Ching. In fact, the
opening two lines (“Those who know do not talk. Those who talk do not
know”) are so popular that they’ve almost become a cliché. Nevertheless,
the passage’ s essential message is little understood and rarely practiced.
Lao-tzu is calling you to live in the highest state of silent knowing, that
place deep within you that can’t be communicated to any other.
Consequently, you might want to change your thinking about whom you
consider to be wise or learned. Persuasive speakers with a good command
of the language,  who are forceful in their pronouncements and confident in
their point of view, are gene rally considered to have superior knowledge...
but Lao-tzu suggests that precis ely the opposite is true. Those who talk, he
says, aren’ t living from the place of silent knowing, so they do not know.
As you modify the way you look at this presumption, you’ll see several
differences in the way your world appears. First, you’ll note that those who
are compelled to pontificate and persuade are almost always tied to an
attachment of some kind—perhaps it’s to a point of view, to being right, to
winning, or to profiting in some way. And the more talking they do, the
more they appear to be swayed by such attachments.
The second thing you’ll notice takes place within you: You begin to see
your inclination and desire to persuade and convince others. Then you
begin to listen more attentively, finding yourself in “the secret embrace” of
the “primal union” that Lao-tzu  describes. Your need to be knowledgeable
or dominant is replaced by the deep realization that it’s all irrelevant, and
you lose interest in seeking approval. Living in silent knowing becomes the
process that casts your existence in a different light—you have less of an
edge and feel settled, softer, and more centered.
As you change how you think about what it means to be intelligent and
wise, you’ll come into contact with the irony that sums up this wonderfully
paradoxical section of the Tao Te Ching. Lao-tzu says that the sage wholives by the Tao is “far beyond the cares of men,” yet holds “the dearest
place” in his heart. I’d sum it up this way: Those who care the least about
approval seem to receive it the most.  Since such individuals aren’ t
concerned with how they’re perceived, either honorably or in disgrace, they
don’t seek praise or run from it. While their calm wisdom may make them
appear to be aloof, they actually end up gaining the respect of everyone.
You have this place of silent knowing within you right now. And the
following is what Lao-tzu suggests for adapting the paradoxical language of
this verse of the T ao Te Ching to your world:
Block all the passages!
Get honest with yourself about wanting to win the favor of others. You
don’t have to prove anything to anyone, and you’ll never succeed by
droning on and on. Remember that “those who talk do not know,” or as one
translation of this verse simply states, “Shut your mouth.” Silence is your
evidence of inner knowing. Talking to convince others actually says more
about your need to be right than their need to hear what you have to say! So
rather than trying to persuade others, keep quiet... just enjoy that deeply
satisfying inner awareness.
Use the acr onym BUSS to remember
the four dir ectives of this verse.
—Blunt your sharp ness. Do this by listening to yourself before you let
your judgments attack someone else. A better course of action 56th Verse is
to just listen, and then silently offer loving compassion to both yourself and
the other person.

—Untie your knots. Detach from what keeps you tied to worldly patterns.
Untie the knots that bind you to a life that’s dedicated to showin g profit and
demonstrating victory, and replace them with silently contempla ting the Tao
in “the secret embrace.”
—Soften your glare. Notice when your need to be right is glaringly
obvious, and let the soft underside of your being replace your rigid stance.
Your impulse to glower at external events is alerting you that you’re out of
touch with your inner silent knowing.—Settle your dust. Don’ t kick it up in the first place! Realize your
inclination to stir up dust when you feel a diatribe about to erupt on how
others ought to be behaving. Stop in the middle of pounding the table or
angrily screaming and just observe yourself. Since your emotions are like
waves on the ocean, learn to watch them return to the vast, calm, all-
knowing Source.
Do the T ao Now
Spend an hour, a day, a week, or a month practicing not giving unsolicited
advice. Stop yourself for an instant and call upon your silent know ing. Ask
a questio n, rathe r than giving advice or citing an example from  your life,
and then just listen to yourself and the other person. As Lao-tzu would like
you to know, that’ s “the highest state of man.”
OceanofPDF.com57th Verse
If you want to be a gr eat leader,
you must learn to follow the T ao.
Stop trying to contr ol.
Let go of fixed plans and concepts,
and the world will govern itself.

How do I know this is so?
Because in this world,
the gr eater the r estrictions and pr ohibitions,
the mor e people ar e impoverished;
the mor e advanced the weapons of state,
the darker the nation;
the mor e artful and crafty the plan,
the stranger the outcome;
the mor e laws ar e posted,
the mor e thieves appear.

Therefore the sage says:
I take no action and people ar e reformed.
I enjoy peace and people become honest.
I do nothing and people become rich.
If I keep fr om imposing on people,
they become themselves.
OceanofPDF.comLiving Without
Authoritarianism
In this and some of the followi ng chapters of the Tao Te Ching, Lao-tzu
counsels the rulers of 2,500 years ago on how and why to pursue a high
quality of leadership. His advice is pertinent today, in the 21st century, to all
forms of leadership, including government, business, and, in particular,
parenting.
The essential message in this 57th verse is to allow rather than interfer e.
Now I don’t interpret this to mean letting an infant crawl into traffic or
leaving a child alone near a swimming pool—obviously, you must be
sensible when supervising those who could harm themselve s or others.
What I believe Lao-tzu is conve ying here is that allowing is quite often the
highest form of leadership. He states that “more people are impoverished”
in societies with excessive restrictions and prohibitions; the same can be
true in families with command


. The certainty of the truth of this law must remain despite great disappointment and tragedy even when
you "see the light of life go out and all the world go on as though it were still day." You must not believe
that because your assumption failed to materialize, the truth that assumptions do materialize is a lie. If your
assumptions are not fulfilled, it is because of some error or weakness in your consciousness. However,
these errors and weaknesses can be overcome. Therefore, press on to the attainment of ever higher levels
by feeling that you already are the person you want to be. And remember that the time it takes your
assumption to become reality is proportionate to the naturalness of being it.
Man surrounds himself with the true image of himself. Every spirit builds itself a house and beyond its
house a world, and beyond its world a heaven. Know then that the world exists for you. For you the
phenomenon is perfect. What we are, that only can we see. All that Adam had, all that Caesar could, you
Neville - THE  POWER  OF  AWARENESS.doc                                                          Page 46 of 51have and can do. Adam called his house, heaven and earth. Caesar called his house, Rome; you perhaps
call yours a cobbler's trade; a hundred acres of land, or a scholar's garret. Yet line for line and point for
point, your dominion is as great as theirs, though without fine name. Build therefore your own world. As
fast as you conform your life to the pure idea in your mind, that will unfold its great proportion. - Emerson
Neville - THE  POWER  OF  AWARENESS.doc                                                          Page 47 of 51Chapter Twenty-five
                                    FAITH
A miracle is the name given, by those who have no faith, to the works of faith.
Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.   Heb. 11:1
THE VERY reason for the law of assumption is contained in this quotation. If there were not a deep-seated
awareness  that  that  which  you  hope  for  had  substance  and  was  possible  of  attainment,  it  would  be
impossible to assume the consciousness of being or having it. It is the fact that creation is finished and
everything exists that stirs you to hope and hope, in turn, implies expectation, and without expectation of
success it would be impossible to use consciously the law of assumption. "Evidence" is a sign of actuality.
Thus, this quotation means that faith is the awareness of the reality of that which you assume, [a conviction
of the reality of things which you  do not see, the mental  perception  of the  reality of the invisible].
Consequently, it is obvious that a lack of faith means disbelief in the existence of that which you desire.
Inasmuch as that which you experience is the faithful reproduction of your state of consciousness, lack of
faith will mean perpetual failure in any conscious use of the law of assumption.
In all the ages of history, faith has played a major role. It permeates all the great religions of the world, it is
woven all through mythology, and yet today it is almost universally misunderstood.
Contrary to popular opinion, the efficacy of faith is not due to the work of any outside agency. It is from
first to last an activity of your own consciousness.
The Bible is full of many statements about faith, of the true meaning of which few are aware. Here are
some typical examples:
Unto us was the gospel preached, as well as unto them: but the word preached did not profit them, not
being mixed with faith in them that heard it. Heb. 4:2
In this quotation the "us" and "them" make clear that all of us hear the gospel. "Gospel" means good news.
Very obviously good news for you would be that you had attained your desire. This is always being
"preached" to you by your infinite self. To hear that which you desire does exist and you need only to
accept it in consciousness is good news. Not "mixing with faith" means to deny the reality of that which
you desire. Hence there is no "profit" (attainment) possible.
O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? Matt. 17:17
The meaning of "faithless" has been made clear. "Perverse" means turned the wrong way, in other words,
the consciousness of not being what you want to be. To be faithless, that is, to disbelieve in the reality of
that which you assume, is to be perverse. "How long shall I be with you" means that the fulfilment of your
desire is predicated upon your change to the right state of consciousness. It is just as though that which you
desire  is  telling  you  that  it  will  not  be  yours  until  you  turn  from  being  faithless  and  perverse  to
righteousness. As already \ stated, righteousness is the consciousness of already being what you want to be.
By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king: for he endured, as seeing him who is invisible.
Heb. 11:27
Neville - THE  POWER  OF  AWARENESS.doc                                                          Page 48 of 51"Egypt"  means  darkness, belief  in  many  gods (causes). The  "king"  symbolizes  the  power of outside
conditions or circumstances. "He" is your concept of yourself as already being what you want to be.
"Enduring as seeing him who is invisible" means persisting in the assumption that your desire is already
fulfilled. Thus this quotation means that by persisting in the assumption that you already are the person you
want to be, you rise above all doubt, fear, and belief in the power of outside conditions or circumstances;
and your world inevitably conforms to your assumption.
The dictionary definitions of faith:
                  "the ascent of the mind or understanding to the truth", "unwavering adherence to principle"
are so pertinent that they might well have been written with the law of assumption in mind. Faith does not
question ~ Faith knows.
Neville - THE  POWER  OF  AWARENESS.doc                                                          Page 49 of 51Chapter Twenty-six
                                    DESTINY
YOUR  DESTINY  is  that  which  you  must  inevitably  experience.  Really  it  is  an  infinite  number  of
individual destinies, each of which when attained is the starting place for a new destiny.
Since  life  is  infinite,  the  concept  of  an  ultimate  destiny  is  inconceivable.  When  we  understand  that
consciousness is the only reality, we know that it is the only creator. This means that your consciousness is
the creator of your destiny. The fact is, you are creating your destiny every moment, whether you know it
or not. Much that is good and even wonderful has come into your life without your having any inkling that
you were the creator of it.
However, the understanding of the causes of your experience, and the knowledge that you are the sole
creator of the contents of your life, both good and bad, not only make you a much keener observer of all
phenomena,  but  through  the  awareness  of  the  power  of  your  own  consciousness,  intensify  your
appreciation of the richness and grandeur of life.
Regardless of occasional experiences to the contrary, it is your destiny to rise to higher and higher states of
consciousness, and to bring into manifestation more and more of creation's infinite wonders. Actually, you
are destined to reach the point where you realize that through your own desire you can consciously create
your successive destinies.
The study of this book, with its detailed exposition of consciousness and the operation of the law of
assumption, is the master key to the conscious attainment of your highest destiny.
This very day start your new life. Approach every experience in a new frame of mind with a new state of
consciousness. Assume the noblest and the best for yourself in every respect and continue therein.
Make believe great wonders are possible.
Neville - THE  POWER  OF  AWARENESS.doc                                                          Page 50 of 51Chapter Twenty-seven
                                       REVERENCE
Never wouldst Thou have made anything if Thou hadst not loved it.   Wisdom 11:24
IN ALL creation, in all eternity, in all the realms of your infinite being the most wonderful fact is that
which is stressed in the first chapter of this book. You are God. You are the "I am that I am." You are
consciousness. You are the creator. This is the mystery,  this is the great secret known by the seers,
prophets, and mystics throughout the ages. This is the truth that you can never know intellectually. Who is
this you? That it is you, John Jones or Mary Smith, is absurd. It is the consciousness which knows that you
are John Jones or Mary Smith. It is your greater self, your deeper self, your infinite being. Call it what you
will. The important thing is that it is within you, it is you, it is your world. It is this fact that underlies the
immutable law of assumption. It is upon this fact


 you have taken some major steps to reduce
the chronic stress load in your life. But there may be other problems, both biological and emotional. Therefore, see what more you
can do to improve your adrenal glands.
You may have dead teeth, commonly  with root canal ﬁllings. These tend to become breeding grounds for anaerobic bacteria that may
cause chronic jawbone infections and weaken the immune system. You may also have amalgam ﬁllings that constantly leach mercury
into your system, or two dif ferent metals in the mouth that act like a corrosive battery.
Other chronic stressors are electromagnetic ﬁelds which are especially detrimental in the bedroom. Living or working for extended
periods under ﬂuorescent light is a stress as is looking for long periods into a TV or computer screen. See Healthy Living for
suggestions on minimizing these harmful dental and environmental factors.
Emotional Health
Individuals with weak adrenal glands tend to use stimulants to get more drive for daily living, and easily become addicted to whatever
they regularly use. Others try to get stimulated with loud music or daring activities.
However, what is really needed is the opposite of continuously stimulatin g weak adrenal glands. This includes restful activity in nature
such as gardening and leisurely walking; relaxation and slow breathing exercises, meditation and especially inter-personal activities
that make you feel loved, safe and protected.
For a small child that may mean lots of touching, cuddling and sometimes sleeping in the parents’  bed; older children thrive on praise
and knowing that they can come to their parents with any problem, doing things together as a family, going camping (see Emotional
Security in Children). As adults we need a dependable and caring partner, and still continue to thrive on much touching, cuddling, and
gentle relaxing massages.
By permanently removing the offending environmental or emotional stress, and at the same time supporting the body with high-
quality nutrition and strong emotional support, we slowly begin climbing back. Our adrenal glands leave the exhaustion phase and re-
enter the resistance phase with a period of quiet recovery and ﬁnally move back into the alarm phase with a series of acute healing
crises. At the end of this long healing process we may have re-acquired the adrenal functions and disease-resistance that we had as
a small child before we started getting colds, allergic reactions, digestive upsets and asthma.
My book of the holistic asthma treatment program is available on: www.the-heal-yourself-series.com/Overcoming_Asthma.html
Disclaimer: The aim of this web site is to provide information on using natural healing methods to aid in the treatment of illness and health improvement.
The author cannot accept any legal responsibility for any problem arising from experimenting with these methods. For any serious disease,
or if you are unsure about a particular course of action, seek the help of a competent health professional.
© Copyright W alter Last & Austpac Productions. All Rights Reserved. | W eb Design by Austpac.10/30/24, 3:31 PM Health-Science-Spirit - Truth about Asthma
https://health-science-spirit.com/Diseases/Asthma.html 10/10<|eot_id|><|begin_of_text|>ALSO	BY	LOUISE	L.	HAY
Books
Colors	&	Numbers
Empowering	Women
A	Garden	of	Thoughts:	My	Affirmation	Journal
Heal	Your	Body
Heal	Your	Body	A–Z
Heart	Thoughts
I	Can	Do	It®
Inner	Wisdom
Letters	to	Louise
Life!	Reflections	on	Your	Journey
Love	Your	Body
Love	Yourself,	Heal	Your	Life	Workbook
Meditations	to	Heal	Your	Life
(also	in	a	gift	edition)
The	Power	Is	Within	You
You	Can	Heal	Your	Life	(also	in	a	gift	edition)
You	Can	Heal	Your	Life	Companion	Book
Coloring	Books/Audiocassettes	for	Children
Lulu	and	the	Ant:	A	Message	of	Love
Lulu	and	the	Dark:	Conquering	Fears
Lulu	and	Willy	the	Duck:	Learning	Mirror	Work
Audio/CD	Programs
Anger	Releasing
Cancer
Change	and	Transition
Dissolving	Barriers
Feeling	Fine	Affirmations
Forgiveness/Loving	the	Inner	Child
Heal	Your	Body	(audio	book)
How	to	Love	Yourself
Life!	Reflections	on	Your	Journey	(audio	book)
Loving	Yourself
Meditations	for	Personal	Healing
Meditations	to	Heal	Your	Life	(audio	book)
Morning	and	Evening	Meditations101	Power	Thoughts
Overcoming	Fears
The	Power	Is	Within	You	(audio	book)
The	Power	of	Your	Spoken	Word
Receiving	Prosperity
Self-Esteem	Affirmations	(subliminal)
Self	Healing
Stress-Free	Affirmations	(subliminal)
Totality	of	Possibilities
What	I	Believe/Deep	Relaxation
You	Can	Heal	Your	Life	(audio	book)
You	Can	Heal	Your	Life	Study	Course
Your	Thoughts	Create	Your	Life
DVDs
Dissolving	Barriers
You	Can	Heal	Your	Life,	the	Movie
Card	Decks
Healthy	Body	Cards
I	CAN	DO	IT
®
	Cards	(a	60-card	deck)
I	CAN	DO	IT
®
	Cards	for
Creativity,	Forgiveness,
Health,	Job	Success,	Wealth,	Self-Esteem,	Romance,
a	Stress-Free	Life
	(each	deck	has	12	cards)
Power	Thought	Cards
Power	Thought	Sticky	Cards
Power	Thoughts	for	Teens
Wisdom	Cards
_______________________________
All	of	the	above	are	available	at	your	local
bookstore,	or	may	be	ordered	by	visiting:
Hay	House	USA:
www.hayhouse.com
®
Hay	House	Australia:
www.hayhouse.com.au
Hay	House	UK:
www.hayhouse.co.uk
Hay	House	South	Africa:
www.hayhouse.co.za
Hay	House	India:
www.hayhouse.co.inLouise’s	Website:
www.LouiseHay.com
®Copyright	©	1996	by	The	Hay	Foundation
Published	and	distributed	in	the	United	States	by:
	Hay	House,	Inc.:
www.hayhouse.com
	•
Published	and	distributed	in	Australia	by:
	Hay	House
Australia	Pty.	Ltd.:
www.hayhouse.com.au
	•
Published	and	distributed	in	the
United	Kingdom	by:
	Hay	House	UK,	Ltd.:
www.hayhouse.co.uk
	•
Published
and	distributed	in	the	Republic	of	South	Africa	by:
	Hay	House	SA	(Pty),
Ltd.:
www.hayhouse.co.za
	•
Distributed	in	Canada	by:
	Raincoast:
www.raincoast.com
	•
Published	in	India	by:
	Hay	House	Publishers	India:
www.hayhouse.co.in
Edited	by:
	Jill	Kramer
Designed	by:
	Jenny	Richards
All	rights	reserved.	No	part	of	this	book	may	be	reproduced	by	any
mechanical,	photographic,	or	electronic	process,	or	in	the	form	of	a
phonographic	recording,	nor	may	it	be	stored	in	a	retrieval	system,
transmitted,	or	otherwise	be	copied	for	public	or	private	use—other	than	for
“fair	use”	as	brief	quotations	embodied	in	articles	and	reviews	without	prior
written	permission	of	the	publisher.
Library	of	Congress	Cataloging-in-Publication	Data
Hay,	Louise	L.
Gratitude	:	a	way	of	life	/	by	Louise	L.	Hay	and	friends.
p.	cm.
ISBN	1-56170-309-5
1.	Gratitude.	I.	Title.
BJ1533.G8H38	1996
179’.9—dc20																																																				96-22530
																																																																															CIP
ISBN	13:	978-1-56170-309-8
ISBN	10:	1-56170-309-5
14		13		12		11				21		20		19		18
1st	printing,	October	1996
18th	printing,	January	2011
Printed	in	the	United	States	of	America
To	all	the	contributors	in	this	book
—
I’m	very	grateful	to	you!
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION	BY	LOUISE	L.	HAY
Contributors	to
Gratitude

Louise	L.	Hay:

Thanking	the	Universe

Joan	Z.	Borysenko,	Ph.D.:

Thank	God	for	What	Does


 the most abundant mineral found in
kidney stones and calcium stone-formers generally have
high urinar y calcium. But a low-calcium diet is not
recommended because of bone loss and osteoporosis.
Stone-formers are urged to consume 1,000 mgs. of
calcium, along with a multi mineral suppliment.
Salt (inorganic sodium) in the diet affects the way
your kidneys handle calcium, causing excretion of more
calcium, thus increasing your risk of forming stones.
Alcohol inhibits the ability of the kidneys to excrete uric
acid. It is best to avoid all alcohol!
Kidney stones can be prevented by simply following
The Bragg Healthy Lifestyle and drinking pure distilled
water. Kidney stones really are “what you eat and drink”!
* Excerpted from No More Kidney Stones!  by John S. Rodman,
Cynthia Seidman, and Rory Jones. – available www.amazon.com
Excerpts from the Bragg Book – Build Strong Healthy Feet
Exercises for Healthy Feet
Do these simple exercises daily to help keep feet in
good healthy condition and improve circulation:
1.	Toe exer cise: raise weight of the body up on toes.
2.	Grasp with y our toes, pick up a pencil, etc.
3.	Sitting in chair with legs outstretched, curl toes up and
then stretch toes down and under.
4.	In same position as #3, rotate feet clockwise several
times. Then repeat, rotating feet counter clockwise.
5.	Sit on floor with soles of feet together; pull the heels
and toes alternately apart.
6.	Stand with your feet parallel, 5 to 6 inches apart; bend
the knees and turn them outward while keeping the
feet flat on the floor and bend down slightly.
7.	Walk barefooted on soft grass or sand anytime the
opportunity arises. Y our feet love contact with the
earth, plus the exer cise and the increase in cir culation
all help to build healthy feet.
8.	As soon as you come into the house you should remove
your shoes – remember, barefooted is best!
9.	Give yourself or your partner first a vinegar foot soak
(2 Tbsps ACV in hot water) then a foot massage while
watching TV or listening to music – rotate, work, kneed
and apply pressure to soles and toes for healing delights.
Not only do foot soaks and massages help tired and
aching feet, but elevating the feet by putting them up
on wall, back of couch or by holding them in air for ten
minutes helps reduce congestion and varicose veins.
Resting the feet is as important as resting the body!
83
For more foot and vinegar treatments read the Bragg Book
Apple Cider Vinegar – Miracle Health System. See back pages.
The healing power of massage reduces stress, back and foot pain, and helps fight
depression, fatigue, anxiety and helps save lives. – Patricia Bragg, N.D., Ph.D.
A wise man should consider that health is the greatest of human blessings!
– Hippocrates, Father of Medicine, 400 B.C.
Destiny is not a matter of chance; it is a matter of choice. It is not a thing
to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved. – William Jennings Bryan Head Noises and Ringing in Ears
Many humans are plagued by head noises, ringing
and pounding in the ears. Ever y waking hour is torture
as these head noises wear down their nerve energy. Even
in sleep, they have bad dreams about these noises. These
head noises may torment them 24 hours a day.
The blood vessels – arteries, veins and capillaries – in
the delicate canals of the ears have become hardened
and obstructed by inorganic mineral encrustations from
hard water, as well as uric acid and deposits of toxic acid
crystals from unbalanced diets. This condition pr oduces
the head noises – buzzing sounds, ringing and pounding
in the ears.
In time, the blood vessels of the ears become so
clogged that the person gradually goes deaf. Millions of
people start going deaf every year for this reason alone!
For a time, they can get some relief from a hearing aid,
but many will eventually lose their hearing completely.
84
Inorganic Minerals and T oxins Affect Eyes
Inorganic minerals, toxic poisons and uric acid also
have a degenerative effect upon the eyes. Y our eyes are
among your most important physical possessions. They
are often described as the mirror of the soul, the mind
and the thoughts. It is true that your eyes often reveal Human Ear your innermost feelings. Their lustre changes because
of psychological influences – such as fear, love, hatred –
and because of physical malfunctions. W ithout your
eyes, you would live in total darkness. Many people do!
Sectional V iew of Right Eyeball
Conjunctiva
Canal of Schlemm
Iris
Suspensory
 Ligament
Ciliary MusclesSclera Choroid Retina Optic
Nerve
Optic disc (Blind Spot) Vitreous Humor
Lens
Pupil
Cornea
Aqueous
85
Now let us examine this miracle mechanism – the
eye. The eyeball is an almost spherical body with a mirror
at the back portion, the retina. The body of the eye is
made up of a transparent jelly-like substance. From the
back of the eye runs the optic sensory ner ve. This is a
head ner ve, a major par t of the central ner vous system.
In the front of the eye there is a cr ystalline biconvex
lens, which is more convex behind the cornea. The white
portion of the eye is a fibrous material surrounding the
central, colored part – var ying in shades of brown, blue,
hazel or gray – known as the iris. The iris ser ves as a
photosensitive diaphragm, controlling the amount of
light which enters the pupil, the black spot in the center
of the eye. When the outside light is bright, the muscles
of the iris contract the pupil to a small dot. When the
outside light grows dimmer, the pupil expands
proportionally to admit more light. Natural Foods Help Protect Y our Eyes
As you see, the eye is a delicate mechanism. All the
blood vessels which bring needed nourishment and
oxygen to the eye are ver y tiny capillaries. Y ear after
year, most people drink chemicalized and inor ganically
mineralized water and absorb the toxic uric acids from
their daily food. Just as in the limestone caverns the
stalactites and stalagmites are formed drop by drop, so,
drop by drop, the blood deposits inorganic minerals and
toxic acids into the tiny blood capillaries of the eyes.
Encrustations are eventually formed in these delicate
capillaries. Glasses are prescribed. After a time stronger
glasses are necessar y. Then the vision starts to fail and,
in some instances, a person is left in total darkness.
86
The Human Eye is
Like a Camera. Light
rays enter the eye,
cross in the lens and
focus on the retina.
Many people panic when they start losing their
precious vision. They tr y treatments of all kinds and
descriptions; some have operations, but their sight
gradually fades away. Remember there are these vicious
enemies of healthy eyes: fluoride, chlorine, inorganic
mineral water, toxic poisons fr om acid-forming foods
and uric acid from a diet too heavy in animal proteins.
Build Clean, Healthy Blood
The blood holds the key to our health, vitality and
our youthfulness – and our ver y life! Keep the blood
free from inorganic minerals and toxic acids!
Every 90 days we build a brand new bloodstr eam.
We can live and regain health using a reversal program
being careful of the kind of water we drink and the kind
of foods we eat. Starting today you can discard the
materials which create an unhealthy bloodstream and
start building one with natural foods that promotes a
painless, tireless and ageless body! It’ s all up to you!
Health and cheerfulness mutually beget each other. – Joseph Addison 87
DIAGRAM OF THE CIRCULA TORY SYSTEM
Right Left
Massive
Blood
System
For the sake of clarity most blood vessels are not shown
on the lar ger ar t. We show only some of the arteries and
veins. The smaller ar t shows the entire body blood system.
Using the knowledge offered in this book, you can
start becoming mor e youthful as you live longer. You
must be the absolute master of what goes into your body
in the way of food and drink. Flesh is dumb! Y our body
will accept almost all foods. That is the reason you must
read this book several times and start living The Bragg
Healthy Lifestyle for building clean, healthy blood!
Of course, we all know what blood looks like... a
somewhat thickish red fluid that we see whenever the
skin is even slightly broken. These tiny oozings of blood
come from ver y tiny blood vessels which supply the skin
all over the body. Blood, your ‘River of Life’, is the fluid
which carries


 All rights reserved.
This material may not be reproduced in any medium, print or electronic without prior written permission from the author.Page 6 1Healing the Gerson Way—Defeating Cancer and Other Chronic Diseases
www.thegersonway.comSystemic Lupus Erythematosus
This is also assumed to be an autoimmune disease. Its ‘etiology is unknown,’3 meaning that
its cause is not understood. Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE) is a serious condition, able
to affect every organ. Its symptoms are numerous and severe. One of the early ones is the so-
called “butterfly rash,” resembling the open wings of a butterfly, that appears on either side of the
nose. SLE is described as a chronic inflammatory disease of connective tissue in the skin, joints,
kidneys, mucous membranes, and the nervous system. It is not unusual for the disease to cause
the patient’s death.
Despite its ominous reputation, SLE is eminently curable with the Gerson Therapy. How long
it takes to heal depends on the kind and length of conventional treatment patients have received.
In extremely severe cases, treated by prednisone ( steroid hormone used as an anti-inflammatory
agent)  for a long time, it takes longer to restore the liver, the adrenals and the immune system.
Still, even in such cases healing is possible.
Case History:  A.B.  was born in 1951 in Australia. Married at the age of 20, she developed
soreness and swelling in her knees and joints. During her second pregnancy all her symptoms
disappeared, only to return after the birth of the baby. For some five years her doctors were unable
to discover what was wrong, until in late 1976 a Melbourne specialist diagnosed A.B. as suffering
from Systemic Lupus Erythematosus. His diagnosis was confirmed by the analysis of a specimen
in the U.S.
During 1978 A.B. had periods of total incapacitation. In 1979 her knees would swell up to the
size of footballs; her doctors would drain them and inject cortisone. In spite of taking painkillers,
she spent the nights sobbing. By 1992, the pain was so bad that A.B. required morphine, and her
doctors admitted that there was nothing else they could do to help her. At some stage in 1992
her husband found out about the Gerson Therapy, which seemed to offer some hope, but A.B.
objected to the idea of coffee enemas and refused. Some months later, however, she was so ill that
she agreed to try the Gerson program.
Shortly after starting on the treatment A.B. could urinate normally, which, her husband
reported, she had been unable to do for many months. Her healing reactions were violent, but the
enemas provided relief. A.B. admitted occasionally straying from the diet, but every such trespass
necessitated a trip to the hospital for morphine! By 1994 the patient had improved considerably,
and for the first time in 20 months she enjoyed longer and longer periods without pain. By early
1999 she was drug-free and remains so, able to run their country property—quite an achievement,
since a few years earlier she had been unable to lift a plate from the table. Nor is she suffering
from the frequent infections, which used to plague her.
Copyright © Charlotte Gerson, 2007.  All rights reserved.
This material may not be reproduced in any medium, print or electronic without prior written permission from the author.Page 6 2Healing the Gerson Way—Defeating Cancer and Other Chronic Diseases
www.thegersonway.comRheumatism; Arthritis
There are various forms of rheumatism, mostly referred to as an arthritic condition. In many
cases it manifests simply as a passing inflammation of muscles and joints, which may occasionally
recur, but it does not cause a permanent problem. According to medical information, its cause is
unknown, and there is no specific treatment for it.
Its most widespread form is Osteoarthritis,  normally a disease  of ageing, which causes
chronic changes, most frequently in the weight-bearing joints (knees, hips, vertebrae). It is
characterized by an overgrowth of bone, forming spurs and a lumpy deformity of the joints. Also,
the cartilage (firm connective tissue ensuring that bones in joints don’t touch ) becomes thin and
wasted, so that bone rubs on bone, causing wear and tear and sharp pain. While conventional
medicine can only relieve pain but not halt the progress of the disease, the Gerson Therapy
has obtained good responses, by relieving pain and dissolving some of the bony deformities.
If persevered with, it can halt the advance of the disease and even reverse it to some extent.
However, as in other diseases involving bone lesions, healing is slow, and often patients are not
willing to engage in the long, labor-intensive Gerson treatment. Instead, they are satisfied with as
much pain relief as modern drugs can give them.
The etiology of Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA)  is also unknown, and the condition is essentially
treated with drugs for symptomatic relief. The disease can spread to every joint in the body,
causing swelling and deformities, along with severe pain. It is routinely treated with aspirin,
prednisone and more powerful pain relief drugs. Since RA is also assumed to be an autoimmune
disease, meaning that the body’s immune system attacks its own tissues, it has even been treated
with cancer drugs in order to disable the immune system.
Far from bringing benefits it caused the condition to worsen, so that for those patients healing
on the Gerson Therapy took longer. On the other hand patients not pre-treated with such drugs
respond extremely well and fast to the Gerson program and its restoring of the immune system.
Since RA is aggravated, if not caused, by the excessive consumption of animal protein, the
protein-restricted Gerson Therapy produces an immediate reduction of swelling, the easing or
total elimination of pain, and the start of healing. In time patients recover completely.
Case History : In 1970 D.P. was a high school athlete of great promise. Her trainer suggested
that she drink a lot of milk, to strengthen her muscles and supply calcium. Within a year, before
her twentieth birthday, she developed rheumatoid arthritis, with swollen and inflamed joints,
lumps and calcifications. Orthodox treatment with prednisone and gold proved to be ineffective;
by 1976 D.P. was bedfast, suffering constant pain.
All her joints were stiff: fingers, knuckles, wrists, elbows, knees and ankles. In addition she
suffered from heart palpitations and labored breathing. She was pale, anemic and hypoglycemic,
Copyright © Charlotte Gerson, 2007.  All rights reserved.
This material may not be reproduced in any medium, print or electronic without prior written permission from the author.Page 6 3Healing the Gerson Way—Defeating Cancer and Other Chronic Diseases
www.thegersonway.comcould barely walk or sleep. In May of 1979 D.P.arrived at the Gerson hospital; in six weeks she
was virtually free from pain, most of the lumps in her joints were dissolving and her wrists started
to regain their mobility. By 1981, two years after starting on the Gerson protocol, she was able to
water-ski, got married and started a family.
Scleroderma
This third member of the group of collagen diseases is also described as having an ‘unknown
etiology.’ It causes a chronic hardening and contraction of the skin and connective tissues, which
makes movement such as bending, especially of the fingers, difficult if not impossible. The
disease can eventually spread to internal organs as well.
 Despite its apparent hopelessness, this condition also improves rapidly on the Gerson
program and can lead to complete recovery.
ASSORTED ENEMIES OF HEALTH
In the following we are presenting a variety of very different conditions and complaints that
blight the lives of vast numbers of people in the developed world. They represent only a tiny part
of the grand total of chronic conditions—estimated to number around 1500—that are erroneously
accepted as inevitable and incurable. Despite their surprisingly varied nature, these enemies
of health have one thing in common: they originate in faulty nutrition and therefore respond
positively to the Gerson protocol.
Asthma
This inflammatory disorder of the airways is widespread and growing more frequent all the
time. An estimated 20 1⁄2 million Americans of all age groups suffer from it. In an asthma attack the
muscles surrounding the airways tighten up; at the same time the lining of the air passages swell.
As a result less air can pass in and out, causing wheezing, shortness of breath and/or coughing.
Attacks can last from a few minutes to a whole day or more and can become dangerous, besides
causing anxiety and even feelings of panic to the sufferer.
Asthma has many causes. General pollution in the atmosphere, pollen, dust mites and mulds
indoors are among them, but food allergies and intolerance, and adverse reactions to drugs can
be the main culprits. Asthma also has a strong psychosomatic connection, especially in young
children (in whom it often clears up spontaneously when the emotional roots are eliminated), but
here we are concerned with the physical-nut


 It was difficult for me to start it.
Our collective was skeptical about fasting as a
therapeutic method and they openly called  me
"the hunger doctor". I remember well that when
my first patient went to the canteen, the day of
his exit from the fast, the nurse brought him a
plate of cold porridge of salted millet and told
him: "come on, eat!".  Fortunately, he remem-
bered my advice and decided to wait for me. But
what would have happened if he had eaten it?!
Over time, however, seeing the good results
of therapeutic fasting, our collective began to
have a completely different opinion and some of
them even decided to personally experience a
course of fasting.
Copyright © Vera Giovanna Bani 2019 www.dryfasting.infoThis Ebook was purchased by Gilberto Franchi email: gilbertofranchi@hotmail.frAfter working independently for two years, I
was fortunate enough to go on to specialize in St.
Petersburg, at the fasting department led by Pro-
fessor Alexsey Nikolayevich Kokosov. There, for
the first time I heard about absolute (dry) fasting
and its application in the treatment of diseases.
It happened that some of my patients who
had practiced a water fasting course had seen all
their symptoms disappear during the fast, but at
the end of it part of the symptoms had returned.
Those were unpleasant moments for me. I had
pondered for a long time how to improve the ef-
fectiveness of the method, understanding that,
obviously, the longer the period of fasting, the
better the result would be. But unfortunately
times were changing, people  had to start paying
for the health services and not everyone could
Copyright © Vera Giovanna Bani 2019 www.dryfasting.infoThis Ebook was purchased by Gilberto Franchi email: gilbertofranchi@hotmail.frafford to undergo a long assisted fast. How to
strengthen the curative effect of fasting under
the conditions offered by our sanatorium?
It was my dog who suggested a solution. He
had been  hit by a motorcycle and after the acci-
dent had given up not only eating but also drink-
ing. For seven days, he remained motionless in a
dark corner of the shed and only on the eighth
day he began drinking, and then eating. Then I
thought he had an internal  trauma and probably
an edema. He instinctively felt it and for this rea-
son he gave up drinking, which ended up saving
him.
After a while, as if on purpose, I, too, had an
adventure with the motorbike: after a day of fish-
ing I slipped and sank in the icy water. To get
home, I had to travel twenty miles on a
Copyright © Vera Giovanna Bani 2019 www.dryfasting.infoThis Ebook was purchased by Gilberto Franchi email: gilbertofranchi@hotmail.frmotorbike and the result was that I froze to the
bone. This accident provoked an acute sinusitis
and I had awful pains every time I lowered my
head.
I began to reflect on the situation. I thought:
the pains are mainly caused by an edema. But if
there is no water, there will be no edema. I de-
cided to fast without water until symptoms re-
solved.
On the fifth day of dry fast all the symptoms
of the disease had disappeared and even today
they do not bother me anymore. That was my
first dry fast experiment. I was at Lake Baikal and
it was not difficult to practice the fast, thanks
also to the fact that I had a good experience of
water fasting. In any case, I was most impressed
by the therapeutic effect and the  results obtained
Copyright © Vera Giovanna Bani 2019 www.dryfasting.infoThis Ebook was purchased by Gilberto Franchi email: gilbertofranchi@hotmail.frin such a short period of time. I had assisted pa-
tients with sinusitis, but the results only showed
up after the tenth day of water fasting.
One day a young man suffering from chronic
prostatitis came to see me. I had already assisted
him on a fourteen -day water fast. After the prac-
tice he was better, but he still had periodic aggra-
vations. I reflected that prostatitis is an infec-
tious process. Every infection loves to reproduce
in water, edema is present in any infectious pro-
cess. The boy  was serious about his intent to heal
and my arguments about dry fasting convinced
him. He did a 5 -days dry fast and then a 5 -days
water fast. Exactly one year later he came back to
me and said that he did not want to fast with wa-
ter anymore, that he liked  the effect of dry fast-
ing and that there were no exacerbations that
year. Under my direct supervision he did a 7 -day
Copyright © Vera Giovanna Bani 2019 www.dryfasting.infoThis Ebook was purchased by Gilberto Franchi email: gilbertofranchi@hotmail.frdry fast. Later he called me often to tell me that
he felt very satisfied with the achieved results.
I was afraid to carry out a dry fast longer than
seven days, but in life I have always been fortu-
nate to meet interesting and unique people. For
family reasons, I was forced to go to the Altai re-
gion, where I was offered to work in a medical
center specializing in therapeutic fasting.
At the time, from the city of Ulan -Ude, I re-
ceived an invitation to a conference dedicated to
fasting. The conference attracted the most fa-
mous doctors specializing in therapeutic fasting,
from all over Russia. I went. On this occasion I
had the good fortune to m eet one of the founders
of the dry fasting method, Professor L. A.
Shchennikov, who assisted patients on 11 -day
fasting. After the conference the professor in-
vited me to visit him in Kislovodsk. There, I was
Copyright © Vera Giovanna Bani 2019 www.dryfasting.infoThis Ebook was purchased by Gilberto Franchi email: gilbertofranchi@hotmail.fracquainted with his patients and studied his
method in practice. This is a very effective, but
very difficult approach for an untrained person
When I returned home after being in Kis-
lovodsk I did a 9 -day dry fast, spending my time
at home and a bit in the Altai mountains near
Lake Teletskoe. Then I realized that a serious dry
fast can only happen by staying in nature, possi-
bly in the mountains and near mountain rivers.
After this experience I did a 10 -days dry fast, but
only staying in the Altai mountains: we spent the
whole period on horseback, on e xcursions. Con-
sidering all the advantages and disadvantages of
the various methods of dry fasting and my per-
sonal experience, now I believe that the most ef-
fective approach is the "fractional dry fasting"
that I propose to all my patients.
Copyright © Vera Giovanna Bani 2019 www.dryfasting.infoThis Ebook was purchased by Gilberto Franchi email: gilbertofranchi@hotmail.frI have been work ing with therapeutic fasting
for 30 years. I have personally assisted hundreds
of patients. There have been excellent results but
there have also been cases in which therapeutic
fasting did not help. People often call me, write
to me or simply ask me how to start and how to
get the maximum benefit from this technique.
Nowadays, thanks to the Internet, information
regarding dry fasting is spreading rapidly. To tell
the truth, it is often contradictory information:
some people write that with a 2 -day dry fast  you
can recover from cancer, while others say that in
order to heal, you need a 15 -day dry fasting.
Both are wrong. Dry fasting, according to my
personal experience, is one of the most effective
methods among types of fasts but if you are not
properly pre pared and it is practices correctly it
Copyright © Vera Giovanna Bani 2019 www.dryfasting.infoThis Ebook was purchased by Gilberto Franchi email: gilbertofranchi@hotmail.frcan be very risky, like all other methods of heal-
ing.
Unfortunately, people turn to this method
when it is too late, as a last resort, after having
tried everything and wasted a lot of time. I al-
ways tell my patients that everything needs to be
done on time. This method, like others, has its
indications and contraindications, however its
effectiveness is incomparable in treating the ini-
tial phase of almost all kinds of diseases.
There are real horror stories about the  dam-
age that a dry fast could cause. It is not my inten-
tion to underestimate other techniques of fasting
and treatment, but I firmly believe that it is very
important to provide people with the most
truthful and complete information and the pos-
sibility of choice.
Copyright © Vera Giovanna Bani 2019 www.dryfasting.infoThis Ebook was purchased by Gilberto Franchi email: gilbert


our	tea	over	ice.Mom’s	Cranberry	Tea
(Ready	in	about	35	minutes	|	Servings	12)

Ingredients

1.
1	gallon	water

1.
13	tea	bags

1.
1	(12-ounce)	can	cranberry	juice	concentrate

Directions

1.
Bring	water	to	a	boil	in	a	large-sized	pot.

2.
Now	add	tea	bags	and	let	steep	until	desired	strength	is	reached.	Pour	in
cranberry	juice	and	stir	to	combine.	Sweeten	with	agave	nectar	or	the	other
natural	sweetener	of	choice.

3.
Serve	well-chilled	and	enjoy!Peach	Iced	Tea
(Ready	in	about	1	hour	10	minutes	|	Servings	8)

Ingredients

1.
1	peach,	pitted	and	sliced

1.
1	tangerine,	peeled	and	segmented

1.
1	tablespoon	agave	syrup,	or	to	taste

1.
8	cups	boiling	water

1.
4	Grey	tea	bags

Directions

1.
Place	peach,	tangerine,	and	agave	syrup	in	a	pitcher.

2.
Next,	mash	your	fruit	with	a	wooden	spoon;	add	boiling	water	and	Grey	tea
bags;	stir	to	combine.	Serve	well	chilled.	Enjoy	and	stay	hydrated!Peppermint	Orange	Tea
(Ready	in	about	40	minutes	|	Servings	8)

Ingredients

1.
1	quart	water

1.
1	blood	orange,	peeled	and	segmented

1.
6	tea	bags	of	choice

1.
1	peppermint	tea	bag

1.
1/4	cup	frozen	lemonade	concentrate

Directions

1.
Bring	the	water	to	a	boil	in	a	large	pot	over	high	heat;	add	orange	and	tea
bags.

2.
Then,	allow	it	to	slowly	steep	for	30	minutes	to	1	hour.	After	that,	remove
tea	bag	and	stir	in	the	lemonade	concentrate.	Drink	well	chilled.Lime	Cucumber	Iced	Tea
(Ready	in	about	2	hours	20	minutes	|	Servings	8)

Ingredients

1.
2	quarts	boiling	water

1.
5	tea	bags

1.
1/2	cup	cucumber,	sliced

1.
2	limes,	sliced,	or	as	desired

1.
1/4	cup	wildflower	honey

Directions

1.
Pour	boiling	water	into	a	pitcher.

2.
Add	the	remaining	ingredients.

3.
Refrigerate	it	for	about	2	hours	or	until	flavors	have	infused.	Serve	well
chilled.Mint	Cucumber	Iced	Tea
(Ready	in	about	15	minutes	|	Servings	8)

Ingredients

1.
4	green	tea	bags

1.
3	sprigs	mint	leaves

1.
1	cucumber,	sliced

1.
1/4	cup	honey

Directions

1.
Bring	about	2	cups	of	water	to	a	boil	in	a	medium	pan.	Remove	it	from	the
heat	and	add	the	rest	of	the	ingredients.

2.
Cover	and	let	sit	for	about	15	minutes.

3.
Add	honey	and	stir	until	the	honey	is	dissolved.	Drink	well	chilled.Hibiscus	and	Pomegranate	Tea
(Ready	in	about	2	hours	10	minutes	|	Servings	8)

Ingredients

1.
1/4	cup	loose	hibiscus	tea

1.
4	cups	boiling	water

1.
1	cup	pomegranate	nectar

1.
4	cups	cold	water

1.
Orange	wedges,	for	garnish

Directions

1.
Steep	hibiscus	tea	in	boiling	water	for	about	5	minutes.

2.
Strain	the	tea,	and	pour	it	into	a	pitcher.

3.
Stir	in

pomegranate	nectar	and	cold	water.	Refrigerate	until	chilled.	Serve
over	ice	with	orange	wedges,	if	desired.

4.
Keep	refrigerated	for	up	to	1	week.	Enjoy!Chamomile	and	Orange	Iced	Tea
(Ready	in	about	2	hours	10	minutes	|	Servings	8)

Ingredients

1.
1/4	cup	chamomile	tea

1.
4	cups	boiling	water

1.
3/4	cup	orange	juice

1.
1/2	grapefruit,	cut	into	wedges

Directions

1.
Steep	chamomile	tea	in	boiling	water	approximately	5	minutes.

2.
Strain	the	tea	and	pour	it	into	a	pitcher.	Stir	in	orange	juice;	sweeten	with
honey	or	another	natural	sweetener.

3.
Pour	in	cold	water	and	refrigerate	until	it	is	chilled	or	for	about	2	hours.
Serve	with	grapefruit	wedges	and	enjoy.

4.
This	drink	is	rich	in	antioxidants	called	flavonoids	so	it	may	help	reduce	a
potential	risk	of	Alzheimer's	disease.Vanilla	and	Jasmine	Tea
(Ready	in	about	2	hours	10	minutes	|	Servings	8)

Ingredients

1.
12	green	jasmine	tea	bags

1.
4	cups	simmering	water

1.
1	vanilla	bean,	sliced	lengthwise

1.
1/2	cup	orange	juice

1.
1/3	cup	honey

1.
4	cups	cold	water

Directions

1.
Place	tea	bags	and	vanilla	bean	in	simmering	water	for	2	to	3	minutes.

2.
Remove	tea	bags	and	pour	your	tea	into	a	large	pitcher.

3.
Stir	in	orange	juice	and	honey;	stir	well	or	until	the	honey	is	dissolved.	Add
4	cups	of	cold	water.	Serve	well	chilled	and	enjoy!Mango	Green	Tea
(Ready	in	about	15	minutes	|	Servings	4)

Ingredients

1.
1	cup	strongly	brewed	green	tea

1.
1	sprig	sage

1.
1	cup	mango	nectar

1.
Mango	slivers,	for	garnish

Directions

1.
Combine	tea,	sage	and	mango	nectar	in	a	bottle	or	heat-proof	pitcher.

2.
Serve	over	ice	garnished	with	mango	slivers.

3.
Green	tea	can	improve	our	brain	functions	and	physical	performance.	Then,
it	is	proven	that	green	tea	may	lower	your	risk	of	various	types	of	cancer.
Enjoy!Apple	and	Lemon	Zinger
(Ready	in	about	20	minutes	|	Servings	4)

Ingredients

1.
4	cups	boiling	water

1.
4	lemon	zinger	tea	bags

1.
1	stick	cinnamon

1.
2	cups	apple	juice

Directions

1.
Place	tea	bags	and	boiling	water	in	a	heat-proof	pitcher;	let	steep	for	about
20	minutes.

2.
Remove	the	tea	bags,	add	apple	juice	and	serve	over	ice	cubes.Summer	Orange	Tea
(Ready	in	about	3	hours	30	minutes	|	Servings	4)

Ingredients

1.
1/4	cup	dried	chrysanthemums

1.
3	orange	slices

1.
4	cups	boiling	water

1.
Agave	syrup,	to	taste

Directions

1.
Place	chrysanthemums	and	orange	slices	in	a	ceramic	pot.	Pour	in	boiling
water	and	cover	with	a	lid.	Then,	let	steep	for	5	minutes.	Stir	in	agave
syrup.

2.
Refrigerate	until	cold	and	serve	well	chilled	or	over	ice.M


plumes out of coal plants and rotten fruit. The instructor at a boxing class I
attended used to beseech students to “breathe deep and get all that carbon
dioxide out of your system.” This seemed like good advice. Every other
day, a new headline detailed how Earth was warming because there was too
much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Animals were dying. Carbon
dioxide kills.
Olsson kept ar guing the opposite. He insisted that carbon dioxide could
be beneficial, and he warned me that too much oxygen in my body wouldn’ t
help me but hurt me. “Breathing heavy, breathing quickly and as deeply as
you can—I realized this is the worst advice anyone could give you,” Olsson
told me. Big, heavy breaths were bad for us because they depleted our
bodies of, yes, carbon dioxide.
Several months of this back-and-forth got me intrigued enough, or
confused enough, or both, that I decided to fly to Sweden, spend a few days
with Olsson, and see his operation in an attempt to learn more about one of
the most misunderstood gases in the universe.
•       •       •
I arrived in Stockholm in mid-November and took a train to an industrial
co-working space on the outskirts of town. Through the windows of a
cavernous lobby, the sunlight had a kind of slant to it. Ominous clouds
gathered, and the air was thick with the heavy feeling that precedes a long
winter.
Olsson showed up exactly on time, took a seat across from me, and
placed a glass of water on the table. He wore faded jeans, white tennis
shoes, and a pressed white shirt. He had the kind of calm you see in monks,
Amish, and others who spend a lot of time in their inner worlds. When he
spoke, it was always softly, and with that annoying habit that all
Scandinavians seem to have inherited: flawless English, with no umm s orhuh s or pauses. He’d even gotten his whom s down and inserted the oft-
for gotten “not” when he told me how he could care less.
“I was going to end up exactly like my father,” Olsson said, running a
finger along the condensation of the water glass. He told me how his father
had been chronically stressed, how he breathed too much, and how he’d
gotten severe high blood pressure and lung disease and died at 68 with a
breathing tube in his mouth. “I knew that so many other people were going
to stay sick and die of the same thing,” Olsson explained. He wanted to
educate himself so he’d be prepared if something else happened to him or
his family.
After the long days he spent running a software distribution company,
he’d come home and read medical books. He talked to doctors, sur geons,
instructors, and research scientists. Eventually he sold his business, got rid
of his nice cars and big house, got a divorce, and moved into a
condominium. Then he scaled down to a smaller apartment and spent six
years for going any salary, working almost entirely alone, trying to
understand the mysteries of health, medicine, and most specifically
breathing and the role of carbon dioxide in the body. “There were yogi
books about prana and then there were medical books focusing on
pathologies—blood gases and disease and CP AP,” he said.
In short, Olsson found what I’d found, but years earlier: that there was a
gap in our knowledge about the science of breathing and its role in our
bodies. He discovered that we’d done a good job of examining what causes
breathing problems but done little to explore how they first develop and
how we might prevent them.
Olsson was in good company. Doctors had been complaining about this
for decades. “The field of respiratory physiology is expanding in all
directions, yet so preoccupied have most physiologists been with lung
volumes, ventilation, circulation, gas exchange, the mechanics of breathing,
the metabolic cost of breathing and the control of breathing that few have
paid much attention to the muscles that actually do the breathing,” one
physician wrote in 1958. Another wrote: “ Until the seventeenth century
most of the great physicians and anatomists were interested in the
respiratory muscles and the mechanics of breathing. Since then these
muscles have been increasingly neglected, lying as they do in a no-man’ s
land between anatomy and physiology.”What many of these doctors found, and what Olsson would discover
much later, was that the best way to prevent many chronic health problems,
improve athletic performance, and extend longevity was to focus on how
we breathed, specifically to balance oxygen and carbon dioxide levels in the
body. T o do this, we’d need to learn how to inhale and exhale slowly.
•       •       •
How could inhaling smaller amounts of air and having more carbon dioxide
in our bloodstream increase oxygen in our tissues and or gans? How could
doing less give us more?
T o understand this contrarian concept, you need to consider the body
parts beyond the nose and mouth. Those structures, after all, are simply the
gateways for the long journey of breath. The purpose of the 25,000 inhales
and exhales we take daily lies deeper inside us. And the farther we follow
this air, the more surprising and strange the journey gets.
Y our body, like all human bodies, is essentially a collection of tubes.
There are wide tubes, like the throat and sinuses, and very thin tubes like
capillaries. The tubes that make up the tissues of the lungs are very small,
and we’ve got a lot of them. If you lined up all the tubes in the airways of
your body, they’d reach from New Y ork City to Key W est— more than
1,500 miles.
Each breath you take must first travel down the throat, past a crossroads
called the tracheal carina, which splits it into the right and left lungs. As it
keeps going, that breath gets pushed into smaller tubes called the
bronchioles until it dead-ends at 500 million little bulbs called the alveoli.
What happens next is complicated and confusing. An analogy may help.
Let’ s say you’re about to take a river cruise. Y ou’re in a waiting room at
the dock when a ship approaches. Y ou pass through security, board the ship,
and head of f. This is similar to the path oxygen molecules take once they
reach the alveoli. Each of these little “docking stations” is surrounded by a
river of plasma filled with red blood cells. As these cells pass by, oxygen
molecules will slip through the membranes of the alveoli and lodge
themselves inside one.
The cellular cruise ship is filled with “guest rooms.” In your blood cells,
those rooms are the protein called hemoglobin. Oxygen takes a seat inside ahemoglobin; then the red blood cells journey upstream, deeper into the
body.
As blood passes through tissues and muscles, oxygen will disembark,
providing fuel to hungry cells. As oxygen of floads, other passengers,
namely carbon dioxide—the “waste product” of metabolism—will pile
aboard, and the cruise ship will begin a return journey back to the lungs.
This exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide changes the appearance of
blood. The blood cells in the veins that carry more carbon dioxide will
appear blue; arterial blood, still filled with oxygen, will appear bright red.
It’ s these gases that give veins and arteries their distinctive colors.
Eventually, the cruise ship will make its round through the body and
back to port, back to the lungs, where carbon dioxide will exit the body
through the alveoli, up the throat, and out the mouth and nose in an exhale.
More oxygen boards in the next breath and the process starts again.
Every healthy cell in the body is fueled by oxygen, and this is how it’ s
delivered. The entire cruise takes about a minute, and the overall numbers
are staggering. Inside each of our 25 trillion red blood cells are 270 million
hemoglobin, each of which has room for four oxygen molecules. That’ s a
billion molecules of oxygen  boarding and disembarking within each red
blood cell cruise ship.
There’ s nothing controversial about this process of respiration and the
role of carbon dioxide in gas exchange. It’ s basic biochemistry. What’ s less
acknowledged is the role carbon dioxide plays in weight loss. That carbon
dioxide in every exhale has weight, and we exhale more weight than we
inhale. And the way the body loses weight isn’ t through profusely sweating
or “burning it of f.” W e lose weight through exhaled breath.
For every ten pounds of fat lost in our bodies, eight and a half pounds of
it comes out through the lungs; most of it is carbon dioxide mixed with a bit
of water vapor. The rest is sweated or urinated out. This is a fact that most
doctors, nutritionists, and other medical professionals have historically
gotten wrong. The lungs are the weight-regulating system of the body.
“Everyone always talks about oxygen,” Olsson told me during our
interview in Stockholm. “Whether we breathe thirty times or five times a
minute, a healthy body will always have enough oxygen!”
What our bodies really want, what they require to function properly,
isn’ t faster or deeper breaths. It


 an after effect. It is
to be used in the beginning only, as an aid, and will not have to be used continually. As
soon as the intestines are cleansed from the retained masses of feces and other
obstructions and the mucusless or mucus-lean diet is taken up, you will realize the truth
of the previously stated facts. You will then perceive with both your eyes and with your
nose that I have not exaggerated. And you will become convinced that the state of
obstruction was not only localized in your intestines, but that all passages of your entire
system were obstructed and constipated with mucus, from your head to your toes.   You will then experience the formerly unbelievable fact--that any kind of disease--
even those considered incurable by all doctors--under my treatment soon begin to
improve and are finally cured, if a cure is at all possible, simply because the source of
poisoning of the system--the chronic constipation--is eliminated. Then the new blood,
derived from natural food, circulates "unpoisoned" through the entire system and
dissolves and eliminates every local symptom, even in the most deep-seated cases; and it
removes the impurities of the entire system, which were mainly supplied from the
deposits of poisons and morbid mucus in the intestines, which condition is called
Chronic Constipation.

Conclusion
   "Life is a tragedy of nutrition" is a statement I made many years ago. Everyone knows
we dig our graves with our teeth, but the saddest of all is the present-day superstition of
99 per cent of the people--the most highly educated and the ignorant--the healthy as well
as sick--the rich and the poor--that we must eat more concentrated food when weak or
sick. Concentrated food, high protein and starchy foods are the most constipating which,
as shown in this booklet, accumulate in the form of waste in the alimentary canal. The
so-called "good stool" daily is in reality constipation and you may now see that
constipation is the main source of every disease and that the average person suffering
from constipation can only be healed perfectly by a diet, free from STICKY--GLUEY--
PASTY properties and that is a MUCUSLESS DIET.
   You may improve your elimination temporarily through laxative remedies--special
physical exercises--vibration, massages and various other methods, but you cannot clean
out the old obstructions from the alimentary canal and regenerate and cleanse the whole
system as long as you eat the same mucus and toxic-forming foods which have caused
and continue causing your constipation and all other ailments of the human body.<|eot_id|><|begin_of_text|>
P r e s e r v i n gThe Canning and Fr eezing
Guide for All Seasons
P A T CROCKER
D e d i c a t i o n
IN MEMOR Y OF DARLA MARIE GRAHAM (DUNN) 1953–2010E p i g r a p h
“W inter is an etching, spring a watercolor,
summer an oil painting and autumn
a mosaic of them all.”
ST ANLEY HOROWITZT o the true heroes of the food system, the people who grow the produce, nurture the livestock, feed
and milk the goats, and make the cheese—the people who carry around the very earth at the tips of
their fingers.Contents
Dedication
Epigraph
Introduction
About the Photographs
Preserving Basics
Spring
Apricots
Raspberries
Rhubarb
Strawberries
Artichokes
Asparagus
Spring Herbs
Summer
Blackberries
Blueberries
Cherries
Currants
Gooseberries
Melons
Nectarines
Peaches
Plums
Beans
Carrots
PicklesCucumbers
Eggplant
Fennel
Garlic Scapes
Kohlrabi
Peas
Sweet Husk T omatoes
T omatoes
T urnips
Zucchini
Summer Herbs
Fall
Apples
Cranberries
Pears
Persimmons
Beets
Broccoli
Brussels Sprouts
Cabbage
Cauliflower
Corn
Garlic
Onions
Parsnips
Peppers
Pumpkin
Squash
Fall HerbsW inter
Citrus Fruits
Grapefruit
Lemons
Oranges
Exotics/T ropical Fruits
Mangoes
Pineapples
Pomegranates
Dried Fruits
Dried Apricots
Dried and Fresh Figs
W inter Pears
Mushrooms
W inter Herbs
Sources/Resources
Bibliography
Glossary
Index
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Copyright
About the PublisherI n t r o d u c t i o n
THE “EA T LOCAL, BUY SEASONAL”  f oo d movement is changing the
way we think and act—taking us right back to how our forebe ars thought
and acte d. If locally raised and produced food is the “new or g anic,” then
preserving the harvest is the “new food technique.”
But while we m ay be returning to some of the old ways, there are a few
significant dif ferences between our great-grandparents’ need to survive and
our desi re to eat well and be part of a slow food revolution. First, our
ancestors in this harsh land tilled the soil themselves, whereas we have
access to local p roduce from a w ide array of venues, including community
gardens, CSA co-operatives, urban, country and farm markets, greengrocers
and supermarkets.
Secondly, the preserving pioneers were content to put beans on the table in
January. For us, perhaps that jar of or ganic green and wax beans  we pickled
in Augu st will be the star of a winter Niçoise Salad  with grilled whitefish or
perch. Preserving has moved beyond survival. Our jars of brilliant
Pomegranate Pepper Jelly  and Peaches and Cream Relish  are rem inders th at
we c an t ake bac k an important p art of the food chain and dine a s though we
were at a fine restaurant.
Why another book on pr eserving?
Because along with the why and the how to make the most of local bounty,
today’ s y oung homemakers, parents, working mothers, single co oks or first-
time co oks want to be creativ e when using those precious jewels that
shimmer so brightly on pantry shelves. They want to eat well every day, and
they want to us e their own pr eserves rather than contribute to the food
factory conglomerates. Pr eserving  is dif ferent from almost all other bookson pres erving because it of fers stunningly easy recipes using the
exceptional preserves found in these pages.
It is comforting to know that a p antry full of flavourful food sits ready to be
used. W ith the twist of a lid and the recipes in this book, you can serve
restaurant-style dishes with home-style quality and economy.
Pr eserving  i s a pra ctical book with simple concepts. It follows the season s
and the diverse foods they bring to our market basket and kitchen pantry.
And it of fers great ideas for what to do with the homemade sauces,
chutneys, pickle s, jams and jelli es. This book is the key to the modern-day
preserving puzz le. Our time sp ent preserving is an enjoyable part of our
busy life—a relaxing end in and of itself—but Pr eserving  also saves us time
by prov iding q uick, homema de everyday recipes for using up our
homemade bounty.
Why bother with seasonal foods?
Eating s easonally—that is, buyi ng and cooking food at the peak of ripeness
grown close to where you live—ensures that we pay attention to the natural
rhythms of the e arth. It forces us out into the countryside or th e garden or
the wee kly market to see, literally, “what’ s up”—what plant h as poked a
pale green blade of life through the soil toward our grateful plate.
Local, seasonal foods tend to be more economical because there is a glut of
the sam e plant at the same time. They taste better, store longer and may
even be  healthier because they have not travelled an average 2,400
kilometres to get to your kitch en. Besides being economical, local and
seasonal food habits are healthy for individuals, communities an d the global
environment.
Why all the fuss about local food?
Good fa rmers know their business. They grow varieties of fruits and
vegetables for the right reasons—nutrition and taste and cooking properties
—not because they fit a mechan ical picker or transport well. Th eir varieties
are naturally suited to the soil and weather conditions of their area. They
might b e preserving heritage varieties; they might even be followingor ganic principles; and they know the food they produce, from seed to table.
Moreover, they are certainly in touch with their customers and listen to their
concerns. W e all benefit when good farmers can stay in business.
Of cours e, there are other, meas urable reasons for buying locally produced
food. Th ere are documented facts about the number of kilometres produce
travels, its ripeness, the methods employed to keep it “edible,” barrels of
fossil