Fasting and Eating for Health (15 page)

The typical American diet, which is high in protein, especially animal proteins, results in a high level of retained nitrogenous wastes and metabolic toxins that have to be either eliminated or stored for future removal. When we give the body the opportunity, it will attempt to eliminate such toxins. Sometimes corresponding painful symptoms of mental fatigue, jitters, and headaches will occur during this detoxification period.

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Hypoglycemic persons can recover and no longer need to be addicted to high-protein diets to control their symptoms. Individuals with a lower level of retained wastes (especially proteinaceous wastes) in their systems will not suffer from the symptoms generally regarded as hypoglycemic when their blood sugar dips. They will recover because their bodies no longer need to discharge nitrogenous wastes and other retained toxins in between meals.

A Different (and Natural) Solution for Hypoglycemia
So what should you do if you believe you have hypoglycemia?

1. Stop consuming foods that contain refined carbohydrates and simple sugars. These foods will be absorbed into the body rapidly and force an excessive insulin response. On the other hand, high-fiber foods slow the absorption of nutrients and glucose and therefore do not cause an excessive insulin response.

Especially avoid Sweets other than fresh fruit. Fruit not only contains trace elements needed for the adequate metabolism of its contents, but also has its sugars bound in fiber, which causes the sugars to be absorbed into the bloodstream more slowly.

2. Stop consuming high-protein animal foods. Instead, replace them with vegetables, fresh fruits, legumes, and unrefined grain products.

3. Avoid all soft drinks, coffee, tea, artificially flavored or colored foods, and food additives. Avoid alcohol and caffeinated beverages as they exaggerate hypoglycemia and result in withdrawal symptoms exacerbated during the low blood sugar nadir.

4. Consume some food every two or three hours during the first few weeks to minimize symptoms while your body is suffering from "withdrawal" from your previously rich diet.

5. If necessary, eat a small amount of high-protein plant foods such as beans or nuts and seeds with each meal for the first month or so when you eliminate animal proteins from your diet to minimize the initial withdrawal symptoms from an animal-protein-based diet.

After conforming to the above guidelines, people find they can return to a wholesome plant-based diet with no further symptoms of so-called hypoglycemia. With time, more than 95 percent of patients with these complaints never have another symptom. If, after a reasonable amount of time, one still gets uncomfortable symptoms before the next meal, he or she should consider a fast to permanently resolve the condition. Fasting quickly and predictably resolves symptoms of hypoglycemia because it so effectively allows the body to lower the level of retained toxins, which can cause tissue irritation.

Occasionally individuals will have unusually severe symptoms of hypoglycemia. Sometimes they will feel so bad that they arc unable to function 79

or live a normal life. The approach described here has enabled my patients to recover when all other methods had failed them.

Samantha, a woman in her early thirties, had such severe hypoglycemic symptoms that she was forced to quit her job. She had seen multiple physicians and had undergone numerous tests. Her fasting glucose level ranged from the forties to 70. She eventually became so weak that she was admitted to the hospital for further evaluation. During her hospitalization, her doctors could find nothing seriously wrong with her except for unexplained hypoglycemic symptoms. Though still so weak she could barely walk, Samantha was discharged from the hospital with instructions to remain on a.

high-protein diet.

When Samantha first came to see me she was eating eggs, beef, turkey, ham, and cheese every two hours all day and most of the night. She accompanied each meal with a glass of milk. She could not walk for even two blocks. She was physically disabled, forced to quit her nursing job, and too debilitated to seek any other line of work.

At the start, I maintained Samantha's eating schedule of every two hours but substituted plant protein for animal protein. Gradually, over the next eight weeks, we eliminated all animal protein. Instead, Samantha ate tofu, beans, lentils, chick peas, lima beans, and pumpkin and sunflower seeds, and increased her intake of green vegetables. Over the next few months we made gradual dietary adjustments so that her symptoms would not worsen. Her illness was so severe that I thought she would need to undergo a prolonged fast to completely recover. I was wrong. She made steady progress. The severe incapacitating symptoms slowly resolved, and she soon reported that she had a good energy level. She was able to walk 30 blocks without a problem and has had no further symptoms: She is now back to work, living a normal life.

You, too, can forever rid yourself from troublesome symptoms, merely by adopting the best nutritional program, one that is more appropriately designed for your natural genetic tendencies: a plant-centered, natural-food diet.

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The Road Back to a Healthy Heart

—the Natural Way

Cardiovascular Disease and High Blood Pressure Can Be Safely
Reversed Without Medications, Angioplasty, or Bypass Surgery
Cardiovascular disease is our nation's number one killer! The gradual clogging, hardening, and damage done to the interior walls of our blood vessels are the primary cause of heart attacks and strokes. This process of atherosclerosis, or hardening of the arteries, also results in poor circulation to the extremities, the brain, and other organs. Ailments such as senile dementia, leg pain (intermittent claudication), and even erectile impotence have their origin in atherosclerosis.

Yet, by means of appropriate dietary approaches, heart disease, blood vessel blockages, and high blood pressure can all be prevented and
reversed
after they occur. As with other debilitating problems, these diseases are commonly the result of a high-fat, high-protein, highly refined diet that is ill-adapted to the needs of our species. The accumulation of fatty plaque on the inner walls of our blood vessels begins early in childhood and progresses gradually through life due to modern-day dietary practices.

High blood pressure is the result of blood vessels that are relatively inelastic due to deposits of plaque. Fatty plaque causes blood vessels to become stiff and weak. Such stiffened vessels lose their elasticity and are more likely to tear or rupture from high blood pressure, thereby causing a stroke or heart attack.

Taking medication to lower blood pressure does nothing to reverse or remove the atherosclerotic blood vessel disease.

Half of the population over 65 years of age has high blood pressure. It is the leading reason for prescription medication in the country today.1 In numerous countries, however, where the diet is not rich in fats and protein, and is high in fiber and fresh produce, high blood pressure is virtually nonexistent.2,3

Atherosclerotic disease of the blood vessels and heart occurs only in parts of the world where high-fat and high-protein diets are consumed, but heart attacks are virtually unknown in societies that follow natural plant-based diets.4,5

As this chapter will show, fasting, followed by an appropriate diet, gives people a choice that can enable them to discard their hypertension medication and live in good health.

Current Treatments for Cardiovascular Disease Are Ineffective
and Dangerous

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Current treatments for clogged arteries include medication to lower blood pressure and cholesterol levels, bypass surgery, balloon angioplasty, and arthrectomy. Although surgical procedures can relieve the symptoms of chest pain (angina), they result in little or no improvement in how long a patient survives. In addition, these treatments are dangerous. Some patients die during surgery or soon afterwards.

In numerous cases, various drugs are prescribed to lower cholesterol levels and relieve chest pain. These drugs come with their own inherent dangers.

Cholesterol-lowering drugs may slightly reduce the risk of future cardiac events, but, because of other undesirable metabolic effects, they increase the cause of death from other causes. Side effects and costs are considerable as well.

Cholesterol-lowering drugs are well known for their liver toxicity and can also cause life-threatening reactions such as muscle breakdown and acute renal failure.6

Drugs for angina relieve the pain, but they do not reduce the chance of a heart attack or sudden death. All together, medications are minimally effective or ineffective in prolonging life because they do not halt the underlying disease process (atherosclerosis). Furthermore, as the patients are left with the false impression they are now OK, their disease-causing lifestyle is indirectly encouraged, since they rely on medication for symptomatic relief or lowering of blood pressure. This lessens the essential importance of meaningful dietary change. It is interesting to note that the well-known Helsinki heart trial showed no significant difference in the total death rate between the group treated with a cholesterol-lowering drug and the group given a placebo.7

Today, the use of cardiac diagnostic and treatment procedures is growing at an alarming rate. More than 300,000 bypass surgeries costing more than $40,000 each are performed each year. Huge profits are involved, but bypass surgery rarely prolongs life. If the patient manages to get through surgery and its aftermath in the hospital, alive and without complications, the subsequent death rate is about 2 to 4 percent per year thereafter. Of patients who have comparable levels of heart disease, 2 to 4 percent die each year without surgery. The general death rate is the same in both instances, with or without surgical intervention.8

While high-tech methods aim to reduce symptoms, they do not address the underlying
cause
of the disease. People inevitably get sicker and die unnecessary cardiovascular deaths.

Compare this to therapeutic fasting and natural diet, which not only quickly relieve symptoms, but also strip the body of its cardiovascular risks. This natural approach results in the prolongation of life and the avoidance of cardiac death.

If every patient with cardiovascular disease were placed on a fast, followed by a truly low-fat (less than 10 percent of calories consumed), natural plant-82

based diet, millions of lives could be saved. Added benefits would include the savings of billions of dollars in practically worthless medications, unnecessary testing, invasive procedures, and
surgeries.

Bypass surgery is under increasing criticism by the medical community, and most doctors are aware that bypass surgery fails to save lives. Bypass is not only unproven but also has been
disproves.
Even the
Journal of the American
Medical Association
reported that more than 125,000 of these procedures are done for inappropriate reasons each year.9 The Office of Technology Assessment of the U.S. Congress has also criticized the unproven character of bypass surgery.10

Women are more at risk from these procedures than men. It is not generally known that the in-hospital death rate for bypass surgery is 4.45 percent for women and 3.33 percent for men.11 Bypass surgery is also associated with a 13

percent rate of postoperative complications, including heart attacks, strokes, bleeding, kidney failure, and infections.

In almost every heart bypass patient, some brain injury occurs from the time spent on the heart-lung machine.12 It is believed that 15 to 44 percent of those who survive such surgery suffer permanent brain damage, detectable as minor degrees of intellectual impairment, memory loss, sleep disturbance, and personality change.13,14,15

There are some critics who say that bypass surgery has been shown to have a slight survival advantage over medical treatment for those patients with a severe blockage of their left main coronary artery or severe triple vessel disease. Not denying this, we must consider that this situation affects only a small percentage of patients undergoing bypass. More important, this slight survival advantage is observed only if we compare such treated patients to other patients on medication who live on the disease-accelerating American diet. I believe the combination of fasting and a natural, zero-cholesterol diet would offer even patients with advanced cardiac disease a significant survival benefit.

Surgery should and can be avoided. Even if there is some short-term reduction in symptoms, atherosclerosis then accelerates in arteries after they have been subjected to bypass or angioplasty: the plaques grow faster after surgery.16 The arteries treated by both angioplasty, arthrectomy, and bypass often reclog within a short period of time. Approximately one third of arteries dilated by angioplasty clog up again within four to six months.17

Angioplasty has never been tested in a prospective trial against medications only, so doctors are in disagreement about its value despite its widespread use.

Since the native blood vessel has now been interfered with, the new blockage that so often soon reappears is now more difficult to treat with nutritional methods. This restenosis (return of the treated blockage) is not the same as the original atherosclerosis. Restenosis is a new disease created by doctors (called iatrogenic disease), and it is not controlled by the Same processes that contro the disease process in untampered with coronary arteries. Lipid-lowering 83

measures, smoking
cessation,
dietary change, weight loss, and decreasing blood pressure do not prevent restenosis or have a significant effect on its reversal.

Balloon dilatation is a risky crap shoot, 30-40 percent of patients will need to go back again for more invasive interventions. Another problem is that balloon angioplasty is a self-referred procedure in general and incredibly compelling to perform from the cardiologist's perspective. We need to keep in mind that angioplasty has some significant adverse outcomes, including myocardial infarction (heart attack), cerebrovascular accident (stroke), and death.