Heart disease is the number one killer of Americans. It is reported that well over ten million Americans are afflicted with heart disease. Over 50 percent of all deaths in the United States result from heart disease, which is a much higher percentage than in most other civilized nations. If the term epidemic was not limited to infectious diseases, this would be called the most dreadful epidemic in man’s history!

The most tragic aspect of heart disease is that many Americans suffer and die from it in the prime of their lives. Men and women in their best years, on the pinnacle of their professional success, just when they should be harvesting the fruits of their labors, succumb to premature death in increased numbers. Recent tests have shown that 70 percent of our young people between the ages of 20 and 25 suffer from various degrees of arteriosclerosis, or hardening of the arteries, which often leads to heart failure.

One of the reasons why we lead the world in heart disease is our failure to develop an effective program of preventive medicine in respect to heart disease. Much research money is wasted on trying to find a cure, a drug or a surgical procedure, which will solve the mounting problem of this mass-killer. The plain fact is, however, that the mystery of heart disease was solved long ago. The causes, as well as the means of preventing heart disease, have been known for a long time. Many European countries have used this knowledge launch massive programs directed at preventing heart disease.

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Biological clinics attach great importance to alternating hot and cold showers, particularly for patients with arthritis. These showers are always taken in the morning.

The procedure is as follows: First, a warm shower for about five to ten minutes, to warm up the body. This is followed by a cold shower for half a minute to a minute. The water should be as cold as the patient can stand. Following the shower, the patient receives a vigorous dry brushing with a stiff brush and is rubbed with a coarse towel until he is completely warm.

The importance of the alternating hot and cold shower lies in the fact that it stimulates the adrenal and other endocrine glands and reactivates their functions. Some practitioners call it “a cortisone injection, without cortisone’s undesirable side effects.”

Therapeutic baths

Therapeutic baths play a very important role in the overall biological therapeutic program. In addition to alternating hot and cold showers, mentioned above, the following baths are employed: whirlpool massage, sitzbath, Kuhne-bath, steam bath, sauna, overheating baths, warm sand baths (Bircher-Benner Clinic), Schlenz-bath, etc.

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The human body is the most complex and most perfectly designed construction in creation. Its ingeniously designed system has been perfecting itself for thousands of years. Forced to fight rugged conditions of nature and a hostile environment, the body has developed an effective defensive mechanism to meet the “demands of stress.” It has, among other things, its own healing capacity which is greater than the medical sciences can ever hope to achieve. The human body is equipped with the most intricate defensive, healing and restorative system capable of facing all kinds of infections, health-abusing practices, and physical and mental stresses which may threaten its health or life. A complex glandular system—particularly the lymphatic glands, tonsils and endocrine glands—forms a defensive line against hostile invaders and other factors which pose a threat to the organism. If this Maginot Line is broken, there are other forces on the second line of defense ready for action. Fever is one of these second-line defensive and healing forces.

When the first line of defense is broken and the infection is taking hold, the body initiates a new drastic emergency measure in the form of a raised temperature. The high temperature speeds up metabolism, inhibits the growth of the invading virus or bacteria, and literally burns the enemy with heat. This is not wishful thinking but a scientific fact, proven by Dr. Lwoff in many experiments. Many biological doctors, who use fever as their ally, can testify that fever, indeed, is a “great medicine.”

Fever is an effective protective and healing measure not only against cold and simple infections, but against such serious diseases as polio1 and even cancer.2 In biological clinics in Europe, overheating therapies have been effectively used also in the treatment of rheumatic diseases, skin disorders, insomnia, and muscular pains.

How malaria prevents and cures cancer

About twenty years ago the great Pontine swamps, not far from Rome, Italy, presented a constant source of malarial infections. Then the swamps were dried out and malaria disappeared. But a remarkably strange observation was made recently. While earlier the whole malaria-infected area was free from cancer, now, twenty years later, the population there shows the same incidence of cancer as the rest of Italy. This shows that the frequent fever attacks, common in malaria patients, stimulated the body’s own defenses so that cancer could not develop. This incident was reported by the famous German cancer specialist Medical Professor Werner Zabel.

Too weak to have fever

Those who do not understand the nature and purpose of fever are often puzzled by the fact that some elderly patients do not get fever, even when they are suffering from severe infectious disease. Post-mortem examination may show that they have died of a severe infection, yet their temperature never went up; sometimes it even remained slightly subnormal. The biological doctor, who sees fever as the body’s own healing measure, puts the pieces of the puzzle together easily: The patient was too weak and debilitated, and simply didn’t have the strength to mobilize the body’s defensive forces. He was, in other words, too weak to get fever!

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The high natural carbohydrate—low animal protein diet that is the diet most conducive to optimum health, maximum vitality, and long life.

To be sure, you need good proteins in your diet. Proteins are essential for the proper functioning of all your vital organs and for the rebuilding and repair of your cells. But you must see that your diet does not contain too much animal protein. A high animal protein diet may cause such disturbances as overacidity, intestinal putrefaction, constipation, uric acid accumulation in the blood and tissues, high blood pressure, high blood cholesterol level, obesity, etc.; and it may be a major predisposing factor in the development of such diseases as arthritis and heart disease. Studies have shown that a low protein vegetarian diet can prevent 97 percent of coronary occlusions. Other tests have shown that the amount of the essential amino acids cystine and tyrosine in the diets of vegetarians exceeded twice their minimum requirement and compared favorably to non-vegetarians.

A diet rich in raw fruits and vegetables, whole grains, seeds, nuts, beans, raw unpasteurized milk and milk products such as cheese, yogurt and dry milk powder, and fortified with wheat germ, brewer’s yeast and cold-pressed vegetable oils, will supply you not only with all the essential vitamins, minerals, enzymes, trace elements, and other vital substances, but with all the necessary proteins as well.

High natural carbohydrate—low animal protein diet holds the greatest potential for optimum health, vitality and extended longevity.

This is not a theory, hypothesis or wishful thinking. This is an established scientific fact. The Scientific Council of the International Society for Research on Nutrition and Vital Substances—the most objective, independent and qualified scientific authority on nutrition today—made the following recommendation for a completely balanced diet of optimum nutrition for optimum health: “A human being needs:

for the undisturbed physiological functioning of his organism,

for sufficient vitality and energy to carry out his daily responsibilities,

and for building up of optimum health and prevention of diseases of old age,

a complete diet of whole foods with the following characteristics:

natural foods, free from harmful additives,

an adequate supply of vital substances (vitamins, minerals, enzymes, proteins, fatty acids, trace elements, etc.),

a moderate supply of calories and energy-producing foods such as refined carbohydrates,

a lacto-vegetarian diet of fresh foods (diet of whole grains, vegetables, fruits, seeds, nuts, and milk and milk products).”

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The Waerland system is basically a preventive health system. Waerland lectured and taught his health program to millions of healthy people with the purpose of improving their eating and living habits, preventing disease and achieving over-all better public health. But because of the fact that people generally are not interested in health until it starts to evade them, most people who listened to Waerland and adopted his ideas and his diet were sick people, in most cases incurably sick, given up by conventional medicine as hopeless cases. Thus the Waerland system became more a therapeutic than a prophylactic method, for which it was originally intended. Fortunately, a health system capable of protecting one’s health and preventing disease is also generally capable of correcting disease and restoring health. Waerland’s thereapeutic methods have now been applied in the treatment of many diseases in dozens of clinics and sanatoria in Europe and have proven to be very effective. Many remarkable cures are reported from time to time in various types of health literature from Europe.

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In European clinics and kurorts sitz baths have a specially preferred position. There are three forms of sitz baths: warm, cold, and alternate hot and cold sitz baths.

The hot sitz bath is beneficial for relieving pain and inflammation in the reproductive organs and other organs of the pelvic region. The water should be as hot as Can be borne comfortably and the duration of the bath from 10 to 15 minutes.

The cold sitz bath has a stimulating and invigorating effect on the reproductive organs and the spine. It is popularly called a “youth bath,” because it has a rejuvenating effect as the result of increasing blood circulation to the vital centers. Many men have found that cold sitz baths have banished their “bedroom fatigue” and increased their libido. The temperature of the water should be 50-65 degrees and the duration of the bath from three to five minutes. After the bath rub yourself dry and warm with a coarse bath towel.

The alternate hot and cold sitz bath is best for patients with lowered vitality. This bath requires two tubs: one containing hot and the other cold water. The patient first sits in the hot water for 10 to 15 minutes, then changes to the cold for half a minute. Make three to four changes, always finishing with the cold water.

Here’s how you can take a do-it-yourself sitz bath in your own home without a special tub:

Fill your bathtub with water about eight inches high, or a little less than half-full. Sit in the tub with your knees drawn up so that only the “sitz” and the feet are covered by the water. For patients in a weak condition, it is advisable to place their feet in a small tub or pan filled with warm water.

A sitz bath can be taken two or three times a week.

*37\58\2*

Enzymes are present only in natural, unprocessed foods. Heating, cooking, canning, pasteurization, and processing destroy enzymes. Temperatures over 122° F are lethal to enzymes. This means that when you cook your fruits, vegetables or other foods, all enzymes are permanently destroyed.<íåèTherefore, if you want to benefit from the powerful effect of enzymes on your health, you have to eat your foods in their natural, raw state. You may say that you can’t eat all foods jaw, they would be unpalatable. Unpalatable, yes! I am glad you brought it up! Perhaps this is the only really dependable guiding rule as to which foods were intended by the Creator to be eaten by humans. All fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, honey, etc. are actually more delicious and palatable raw than cooked. And, of course, all raw foods are much easier to digest than cooked foods—provided your digestive system is not totally degenerated and diseased by the prolonged use of cooked and devitalized foods.<íåèIn order to give your digestive system time to rebuild itself and adjust to the new diet, it would be best to make a gradual transition from predominantly cooked and processed foods to raw foods. Start by adding more and more raw foods to your menu, and gradually arrive at the point where at least two-thirds of all your food is in a raw state. This is not difficult to achieve, since all fruits, vegetables, berries, milk and nuts, and most grains and seeds can be eaten raw. <íåèWild animals, who in their wild state eat only raw natural foods, do not become sick. When the same animals are kept in zoos and fed cooked food, they suddenly develop the same diseases which civilized man suffers from: cancer, tuberculosis, rheumatic diseases, etc. Very often the captive animals in zoos become sterile. Zoos today are learning to apply this knowledge by feeding animals raw foods and keeping them healthy.<íåèThere is no doubt that the day man learned how to cook his food he brought upon himself disease and premature death. “Primitive” man lived on raw fruits, nuts, berries, honey, and raw milk. He used ancient methods of preserving by fermentation. The word enzyme comes from the Greek enzymos, which means ferment or leaven. Man used enzymes, or ferments, to make sour milk and cheese. He fermented bread and made it rise with the help of enzymes. He preserved vegetables by the enzymatic process of “pickling” them, or making sauerkraut, sour pickles, etc. All these foods are storehouses of enzymes. Man knew no disease and lived to a great age, as we are told in mythology and in the Bible. Even today, Eskimos and many tribes of Africa and Central America who eat practically all their food raw, do not suffer from the diseases of civilized man, who largely exists on cooked food. Cooking destroys not only enzymes, but also vitamins, and changes proteins and fats to a form more difficult to digest.<íåèNow you can see why the young lady I was telling you about in the beginning of this chapter, who was dying from the inability of her organs to digest food, was saved by the raw food diet. The enzymatic system of this girl was paralyzed and out of order. Her stomach glands were not producing the enzymes necessary for the digestion of food. The foods her doctor was giving her were all well-cooked and totally void of enzymes. Naturally they stayed in her stomach undigested. When she received a dish of raw fruits, raw goat milk, and raw honey, foods containing all the enzymes necessary for their own digestion, these foods were, in fact, capable of digesting themselves! Both honey and raw fruits require virtually no digestion. Honey and fruit juices are absorbed directly to the blood stream “without digestion” due to their predigested form. And goat milk is now known to be a highly concentrated source of enzymes!

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Since not every one can travel to clinics for fasting, I have described earlier in this chapter how you can undertake fasting on your own in your own home. If you like to try a European Grape Cure, by all means feel free and safe to do it.

Here’s how you take a Grape Cure. First, start the treatment with two or three days of fasting, to prepare the system for the change of diet. Then, eat absolutely nothing but grapes for two weeks. The first day, eat only a few for breakfast, a few more for lunch and a couple of ounces for dinner. The second day, eat two or three ounces for each meal. On the third day, increase the portions again. From the fourth and the fifth days on you can eat as many grapes as you desire, within reason, of course, consuming not more than three to four pounds a day. Drink pure water only if and when thirsty.

Here are a few points to remember:

Eat grapes whole, seeds, skins and all.

Eat them very slowly, chew well; chew skins thoroughly.

Seedless varieties are excellent; otherwise chew seeds too. Swallow some, but not all of the seeds.

Grapes must be 100 percent ripe.

When completing a Grape Cure, follow the instructions for breaking a juice fast given earlier in this chapter.

Try to get organically grown grapes from orchards which never use poisonous insecticides or chemical fertilizers. If you use ordinary super-market grapes, wash them carefully to remove traces of insecticides.

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Let me quote from my book, There Is a Cure for Arthritis: The therapeutic value of fasting is based on the following physiological facts:

Autolysis is a known metabolic phenomenon of self-digestion or disintegration of the body’s own tissues.

Therapeutic fasting induces the development of autolysis and directs its physiological effect for constructive healing purposes.

To clarify: when disease takes hold of the body it is usually because of the weakened defensive mechanism and impaired normal functions of the vital organs. Due to continuous neglect in feeding the body properly and failure to observe the other rules of health, the glandular activity and metabolic rate slows down and the eliminative organs lose their efficiency. Many of the toxins and metabolic wastes remain in the body and are deposited in the tissues, causing autointoxication.

Now, we must recognize the fact that the body’s own healing powers are constantly trying to correct any and all defects, disturbances, and damages if given the slightest chance. Such an opportunity for self-regeneration and healing is made possible during the fast.

First, during prolonged fast (after the first three days) the body will burn and digest its own tissues by the process of autolysis, or self-digestion. In its wisdom—and here lies the secret of the extraordinary effectiveness of fasting as curative therapy!—the body will decompose and burn only those substances and tissues which are diseased, damaged, or of lesser importance to the body economy, such as all morbid accumulations, tumors, abscesses, damaged tissues, fat deposits, etc. In fasting, the body metabolizes the most impure or inferior materials. These are consumed and utilized first. The essential tissues of vital organs are spared. Dr. Otto H. F. Buchinger calls fasting a “refuse disposal” or “burning of rubbish.”

Second, the eliminating and cleansing capacity of the eliminative organs—lungs, liver, kidneys, and skin—is increased during fasting, and masses of accumulated metabolic wastes and toxins are quickly expelled. This is evident in the following typical symptoms of fasting: offensive breath, dark urine (concentration of toxins in urine ten times higher than normal [Professor E. G. Schonk]), continuous and generous discharge of feces, skin eruptions, perspiration, catarrhal elimination, etc.

Third, a fast affords a physiological rest to the digestive and protective organs of the body. After fasting, the digestion and utilization of food are greatly improved, which makes the assimilation of all the important nutrients more effective.

Fourth, a fast exerts a normalizing and stabilizing effect on all the physiological, nervous, and mental functions. The nervous system is regenerated; mental powers improved; glandular chemistry and secretions are normalized.

It is easy to see from the above why fasting is such an effective healing measure in the treatment of a great variety of diseases.

Swedish fast marches have certainly proven very dramatically the safety of fasting.

Although fasting is without doubt one of the safest healing agents known to medicine, in the minds of the uninitiated and uninformed it is often associated with the fear of doing harm to the body, or even with the fear of death. Notwithstanding the fact that nobody ever died as a result of a few weeks of intentional fasting, such fears are quite understandable.

The truth is that you can live without food for months! As a matter of fact, you can more easily kill yourself by overeating than by fasting.

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Here are a few examples of how the preventive approach has helped people in Europe to improve their health and prevent sickness.

At a German bathing spa I met a stout-looking executive, Mr. H.B. He is a director of one of the important industries in Hamburg. About ten years ago his doctors discovered that he had hypertension. After an unsuccessful attempt to control his high blood pressure with drugs, they sent Mr. H.B. to this famous watering spa.

“I have been coming here every summer for a week or two ever since,” Mr. H.B. told me. “My pressure usually goes down to normal during this time and I feel like a new man—twenty years younger. After a winter at my work, my blood pressure rises again, so I come back here, and all these baths, relaxation and good food put me back on my feet again.” Instead of endangering his life with powerful drugs, Mr. H.B. was controlling his blood pressure and restoring his health with three ancient—but not forgotten!—methods of preventive medicine: water cure, diet, and relaxation.

In Sweden, I have witnessed an excellent example of the value of preventive medicine in action. Visiting a dentist who had a family of four children, I was amazed at how healthy the children looked and especially at their beautiful white teeth. Dr. L. explained to me that the whole family was living on the so-called Waerland-diet, a lacto-vegetarian program designed by the Swedish nutritionist and health pioneer, Are Waerland. The children were raised on this program from birth. None of the children have had so much as a single cavity, although the eldest boy was already 17 years old. Knowing that this was a dentist’s family, I inquired if they did lots of tooth brushing.

“Never,” was Dr. L.’s answer. “I do not believe in toothbrushing. They rinse their teeth after meals, occasionally use toothpicks, and finish the meal with raw fruits or vegetables.” Needless to say, white sugar, white bread, and candies can never be found in this prevention-conscious family.

Russian and German reconditioning centers have demonstrated that diseases and physical deterioration can be prevented on a large scale by proper preventive means. Millions of people, perhaps as many as eight to ten million people in these two countries alone, visit spas and reconditioning centers each year, where their health is rebuilt and future illnesses prevented by programs of exercise, diet, and mental relaxation. Thousands of potential heart attacks are prevented in these centers. In one of the German cardiac centers I met a group of 60- to 80-year-old men who have been serious heart cases for 10 to 20 years. They visit this center for six weeks each year, and they told me that their condition is improved colossally during the six weeks of Spa treatment. “These mineral waters keep me alive,” an 84-year-old man, who has been coming here for the last 15 years, told me.

In the United States, we are basically cure-minded, and preventive medicine, in the sense described above, is a largely unknown occurrence here. While German industries send their executives to reconditioning health centers regularly, our economic system, with its chronic unemployment, does not favor the preventive approach. An executive who succumbs in his high-pressure job to a heart attack can be easily replaced. The rampant growth of heart diseases in the United States can be at least in part due to our neglect to take advantage of the European experience with the preventive cardiac programs.

We are still a great nation, with unmatched technological competence and a great capacity for scientific advancement. But if our economic, diplomatic, and military strength is not matched and backed up by the physical and moral stamina of our people, we may find the wheels of destiny turning to our disadvantage. Human history shows that decay from within in the form of physical and moral degeneration has brought about the fall of great nations. It is disheartening to witness the catastrophic health degeneration of our nation, when the scientific knowledge of how to build and guard health and prevent sickness is available.

A U.S. senator, concerned with the health of American people, once said that we are spending about $50 billion a year on health. I would like to make an important correction: virtually all of this money is spent on disease, not on health. If the American government would start spending money on health and the prevention of disease, the trend toward the rapid deterioration of the health of this nation would soon be reversed.

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