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For generations, we’ve been urged to eat soy-based foods. We’ve been told that soy foods are great for our own health and the health of our families. In fact, in the late 90s, soy became every aggressive marketer’s dream. The ignorant FDA informed the entire world that “Diets low in saturated fat and cholesterol which include 25 grams of soy protein may reduce the risk of heart disease.” This was another of their potentially dangerous pronouncements. As if from nowhere, soy food sales skyrocketed, rising from $300 million a year to an astounding $4 billion by 2006. Thanks to massive advertising campaigns, the whole world started swallowing soy foods, drinks, powdered sports supplements and oils, as well as a thousand other soy products which every one of us would have been better off without. Of course, Monsanto loved it and started growing GMO soy everywhere they could get away with it. Did you realize that as much as 95% of all soybeans in the world are now genetically modified? The last thing you want to do is feed yourself or your children on GMO anything. Not only this, but soy foods are incompatible with your body for all sorts of other reasons too. Most soy grown nowadays contains dangerous quantities of glyphosate—the main ingredient in the weed killer Roundup. Soy is also full of potentially destructive levels of manganese and aluminum—both known to reduce brain function. Even non-GMO soy carries many anti-nutrient inhibitors, known to interfere with the proper functioning of the enzymes needed for good digestion—l.ike hemagglutinin, which causes red blood cells to clump together and inhibits your body’s ability to take up oxygen. It also contains goitrogens, which interfere with thyroid functions and phytates, which depress the body’s ability to absorb important minerals such as zinc, iron, magnesium and calcium. Nevertheless, you will still find soy in one form or another in a majority of the convenience foods and drinks which line our supermarket shelves, including many foods which have nothing to do with soy like ice creams, sausages, breads and sauces. For me, the saddest news is that a huge percentage of babies continue to be fed on soy formula all over the world. When it comes to infant formulas, soy is something you want to avoid at all costs. It is dangerous to your child. The very best care you can give to both yourself and your baby is to breastfeed. If possible, let your child decide when he or she is ready to give up nursing. Your baby will get life-long health gains from breastfeeding. Not to mention that the closeness which develops between the two of you is a lifelong blessing. Here are some of the health benefits that breastfeeding confers upon a child: Decreased risk of obesity Decreased risk of eczema and other skin problems Fewer middle ear infections Better respiration Added protection against diabetes, asthma, allergies and heart disease Improved immune function Better brain function. We’ve long been told that soy must be good for us since Asians consume huge amounts of it. The truth is, the Chinese and Japanese eat surprisingly little soy—on average, only about 10 grams—about to two teaspoons per person—per day. And they eat soy only as a condiment, never as a replacement for animal proteins. The eating of soy foods began during the late Chou dynasty in Japan and China (1134-246 BC). This was only after the Chinese had mastered the art of naturally fermenting soy beans. They began to make foods like tempeh, natto, and tamari, all of which were made from traditionally—read: organically grown— soy beans. These fermented soy products are indeed healthy for you, since fermenting neutralizes the toxins in soybeans. By contrast, eating unfermented soy not only denatures the small quantities of protein soybeans contain, it actually increases the levels of carcinogens present. If you are vegetarian, you’ve probably been told that soy foods provide your body with complete proteins. This is untrue. So is the notion that eating soy foods will supply Vitamin B12 to vegetarian diets. If you wish to eat soy, eat only fermented foods made from organic soybeans: natto, tempeh and tamari. Stay away from all soy milk products which are not fermented and not organic. Vegetarian or not, it’s time to let go of the belief that any soy product will give you all the protein you need to live at a high level of health and resistance to early aging. They won’t. Want to learn more? Check it out online at the Weston A. Price Foundation. There you can discover and learn which naturally fermented soy products are available. http://www.westonaprice.org/soy-alert/

Very occasionally when someone goes on an active program of detoxification such as an apple fast for a few days, they have the experience of a severe headache at some time within a day or two, or of feeling moody, or having an upset stomach, a film on their tongue or teeth, even loose bowels. This is a sign that your body is throwing off wastes at such a pace that you are experiencing what is known in natural medicine as a cleansing crisis. In reality, it happens to very few people. If you are one of them, be glad, even though it may be a bit of a nuisance for a few hours; it is actually a good sign. Your body is taking the opportunity you have afforded it through what you are eating (and what you are not eating) of throwing off a lot of debris which you need to get rid of if you are to live at a higher level of health and vitality. If a cleansing crisis does happen, take the time to relax, lie down in a darkened room if possible, and be kind to yourself. Have a cup of peppermint tea - it is very soothing when you have a headache. If you can’t sleep, try a cup of chamomile tea, or eat a banana which is rich in the amino acid tryptophan, a superb natural sedative. Congratulations – it can be quite a feat to be ridding your body of so much old debris all at once. It will pass quickly, leaving you better than ever. caffeine trouble The people most likely to get a headache as part of a cleansing crisis are those who have been drinking several cups of coffee or tea a day. This kind of reaction is triggered by your tissues dumping a lot of stored caffeine into your bloodstream all at once in order to eliminate it from your body. The first time this happened to me I had been in Vienna for six days, where everyone drinks coffee – and very strong coffee too – all day long. Though not much of a coffee-drinker myself, I decided while there to go along with the custom. The day I left the city I got on to an airplane to return to London and my usual way of eating, and was struck down by the most appalling headache which lasted about four or five hours. It was no fun, believe me. But when it passed I was left with the most wonderful feeling of freshness and lightness – the way you feel on a beautiful summer’s morning when there is a light breeze blowing. This sense of lightness is a common one for people who for the first time begin to clear their system of stored wastes. It more than makes up for the headache or upset stomach which can herald its coming. clever compress Something I learnt many years ago from another doctor who uses natural methods for healing, is that if you are experiencing any kind of cleansing crisis, you can help your body enormously by putting a simple cool compress around your middle and leaving it there as you lie down for half an hour. This can also be done when you go to bed in the evening if you prefer. A cool compress stimulates the flow of blood to the area of the liver – another prime mover when it comes to detoxification – so speeding up the release of wastes from the body, and easing any unpleasant symptoms that come with them. Using a compress is also enormously relaxing. Tear a piece of cotton fabric (an old sheet is ideal) into a rectangular piece which is about fifteen inches wide and long enough to go comfortably around the middle of your body (between your armpits and hips). Wet this compress in cold water and wring out completely so it is only damp. Now, using a dry towel (or a piece of wool or thick natural fabric) which is also big enough to go around your middle and to overlap so you can pin it comfortably with a few safety-pins, spread the compress out on the outstretched towel. Now lay your naked midriff on this strip and wrap first the compress around you and then the towel on top, pinning it securely. Pull your clothes or nightclothes down over the lot, and pop into a warm bed for at least half an hour. Such a compress can be helpful not only for sailing through a cleansing crisis, but also if ever you find it difficult to sleep because of worry or stress. kidney power If you find yourself experiencing some uncomfortable symptoms during your apple fast, increase the quantity of spring water you are drinking. When the body’s water level gets too low, your kidneys don’t work efficiently and the liver has to take on too much of the cleansing work on its own. If you tend to retain water, this is often because you don’t drink enough, so your body tries its best to hold on to the water there is in order to dilute any toxicity in your tissues. Believe it or not, you breathe out about 2 big glasses worth of water a day. The kidneys and intestines eliminate roughly another 6 glasses, and 2 are released through the skin. So keep drinking – during a detox and after. We all tend to need more water than we drink for optimum health. It’s a good idea to keep a bottle or two of mineral water on your desk, or somewhere where you will see it often, to remind you to take in enough water each day. Here is a simple formula for working out the ideal quantity of water to drink each day for maximum energy and good looks. Divide your current weight in kilos by 8. (e.g. 58 kilos divided by 8 = 7.25). Round the figure up (to eight) and that is the number of glasses of water you need a day. This is just a base calculation of course. Drinking enough water is one of the most important things you can do day-in-day-out to keep your body eliminating wastes efficiently. Remember that you will probably need to take in more water than your base calculation when you are exercising or if it is a hot day. psychic detox Some people can get a temporary feeling of letdown on a detox. This is usually because the heart, having been stimulated by caffeine and other irritants, begins to beat more slowly, and the false exhilaration you used to get from stimulants temporarily turns into a feeling of being down. It doesn’t last long, and in most people it doesn’t happen at all. Sometimes, however, during a detox it can seem that all sorts of psychic junk suddenly gets released along with the physical toxins you have been carrying around. Feelings of anxiety, worry or guilt may surface with seemingly no reason. They will most likely just be flushed away with all the other junk your body is getting rid of. In the meantime, try putting a few drops of lavender or vanilla essential oil in an oil burner and enjoy their relaxing and soothing properties. Or put one or two drops of either essential oil in your bath and breathe in the fragrance. One of the nice things about this sort of detox is that you often find you think much more clearly after it. Stress does many unpleasant things to the body, one of which is that it can make your whole system acidic. An apple fast alkalizes your system, so bringing it back into balance, and throwing off the byproducts of stress in the process. When you are mentally stressed, your body becomes physically stressed through having to deal with all this toxic waste. Removing these toxic wastes can often mean that your ability to deal with more stress is greatly improved. You begin to see things in a much more positive light and can put what once seemed difficult problems into their proper perspective. relax and revive During a detox it is important to make sure you get enough rest. Think how good you feel after a holiday. It’s usually the one time when we actually allow ourselves to rest - something we don’t do enough of during the rest of the year. Rest is so essential because it is while you are resting that your tissues restore themselves. Without it, your body cannot properly restore damaged tissues. During a detox, your body is working pretty hard in eliminating all the rubbish you have allowed to be released into your system. Give it a break and make time for yourself to relax – and don’t feel guilty about it. Watch your favorite videos, read that book you’ve been promising yourself you’ll find time for, listen to all your old records, or just do nothing. This is a precious time; a time to devote to yourself and your body’s needs. Don’t waste it. During the day, whenever you can, lie down even for ten minutes and just let go. Or practice a simple relaxation/mediation exercise like this one: Close your eyes and watch your breath coming in and out of your body. With each out breath count silently. So it goes like this: ‘In breath… out breath… one… in breath… out breath… two…’ and so on up to ten. If you lose track or find that your mind is distracted, it doesn’t matter at all. Just go back to ‘one’ and start again. Carry this out for ten to fifteen minutes whenever you can find a few spare minutes to yourself. It helps to rebalance your body’s nervous system and can be useful if you have to deal with any negative emotions that surface during your detox.

There are a lot of things you can do for your hair and with your hair to make it more attractive, and more manageable, but it is important to realize from the beginning that you have to work with what you've got. There is no way to change your genetic inheritance, and it is fruitless to worry about it. No woman is ever satisfied with her hair. When it is straight, she wants it curly, and when it is wavy, she wants it straight. The color is either too light, too dark, or too drab, and she either has too much or too little of it. what type are you? Straight hair is often strong and beautiful hair. It can be lank, in which case you should work it with a `stripping' shampoo which will enlarge the shaft of each hair and make it look fuller. If it is lackluster, go for a conditioner to make the scales of the cuticle lie flat and enable hair shafts to reflect light better. Straight hair is often good blunt cut and worn not too long, or tied up in a twist, a braid, or a chignon. Curly hair needs to be carefully cut, for this can make all the difference between its looking fantastic and frizzy. It is best not to impose a particular style on your hair, but rather to go with the natural swing of things. If your hair tends to be wiry, you can correct this by using a softening conditioner. Thin hair must never be allowed to get greasy, for excess of oil on it will only make it look limp and lank. It is usually best to have it cut in a short style, and it is useful to shampoo it often using a shampoo that contains no conditioners, and then use a volumizer - a spray or gel containing polymers which you apply to wet hair before blow-drying. The heat from the dryer swells the polymers that cover the hair shaft, making it look thicker. This will give it bounce and fullness. Blowing it dry helps increase the fullness too. Fine hair is delicate hair, but it is usually beautiful hair, too, like a baby's. Unlike thin hair, which is caused by a paucity of hair shafts, fine hair is made up of hair shafts of small diameter. You have to be particularly careful about what you do to it, because fine hair is the easiest of all hair types to damage from chemical treatments such as coloring or by using shampoos that are too alkaline, or by exposing it to heat or even the sun. Fine hair does well on protein shampoos and needs to be cut superbly and worn short unless you have a great deal of it. Volumizers are useful here, too. Thick hair is a blessing, although few women who have it realize this - particularly if their hair is curly. In this case, you should probably not wear it too short, or it can be unmanageable. Thick hair is the easiest to handle and the toughest. It will withstand chemical treatments and coloring far better than any of the other hair types and may not even need a conditioner at all when it is washed. If it is straight and you decide to have it chemically curled then you should expect the waving process to take at least a third as long again as it usually does, because the hair shaft is big and tough to break down. But the effects can last you as much as a year, where anyone else's will have to be renewed in a few months. hair loss Each day, you can expect to lose between 100 and 200 hairs. So you shouldn't be discouraged when you look down at the pillow in the morning to see a few lying there. This only means that new hairs will quickly be growing. That is, provided your hair is not coming out by the handful. Sometimes, as a result of sudden shock, hormonal change, or illness, large numbers of hairs are lost all at once. Even this is nothing to worry about unduly, so long as whatever triggered the loss is either past (as in the case of childbirth) or being corrected with a relaxation technique and dietary supplements for undue stress or illness. the cut is the thing A good cut is more important than any other single factor when it comes to the way a head of hair looks. Everyone is an individual, and hairstyling that doesn't take this into account is worse than second-rate. Changing your cut or style every year or two keeps you from getting stuck in a time warp and can lift spirits like nothing else short of falling in love. hair cosmetics perms There are two types of perms: acid-based which are soft and used to give a subtle lift at the roots to create an illusion of fullness; and the conventional alkaline perms. Acid or `body' perms don't last as long as the rest and need to be redone every three or four months. They are more natural and soft-looking, adding fullness and swing to hair without heavy curls. caring for processed hair Provided your hair is healthy and you look after it well after a perm, there is no reason to worry about its condition being spoiled by the waving. A perm will add a lot of body to lank hair and can often improve an over-oily condition as well. Once your hair is waved, it is more vulnerable to damage than ever before, so there are a few special precautions you need to take in order to preserve its health and sheen. For instance only use acid-balanced shampoos when you wash your hair, and always apply an acid rinse such as lemon juice in water. Protein treatments are particularly good for permed and colored hair. Also, instead of brushing 50 strokes a day, cut it down to 20. If your hair has been bleached or tinted, it is a good idea only to have an acid wave especially designed for bleached or damaged hair. They don't last so long, but they do ensure that the hair remains in good condition. straightening hair Aside from chemical straightening, there are also some short-term but simple ways to straighten hair. It can be done by blow-drying with a brush to smooth it out or by washing your hair and then wrapping it wet around your head in a circle, like a cap, fastening it with clips and letting it dry. Then, when it is dry, you simply comb it out straighter. You can use hair straighteners, and you could always use the old-fashioned and very efficient method for long, curly hair -  simply ironing it with an electric iron. Spread the hair out on a board, keep the iron on the lowest setting, and go over it gently from roots to ends. But the same applies as for blow drying and using heated rollers - be careful not to put too much heat on your hair. Burnt hair is irretrievably lost. a change of color One of the simplest and most effective ways of changing your appearance is to change the color of your hair. As we get older, the color of hair tends to fade so that a once shimmery golden mane or deep mahogany tresses can become lackluster and dull. Hair coloring these days is effective and reasonably priced and can look even better than most natural hair - provided, of course, it is done correctly. There are two categories of hair colorants: permanent colorants, which cannot be washed out, and the temporary and semipermanent, which can be used to highlight and intensify your own hair color. temporary colorants These are the easiest to use. They coat the cuticle of the hair with color that washes away with the next shampoo. You can get temporary highlighting shampoos and color rinses in a great variety of colors and most of them have a shine-promoting pH, too. But what you can do with them is limited, for while they will darken the hair - say from blonde to red or to black - they are really designed for minor color changes only. If you try to go too many shades away from your natural color, they tend to streak and give uneven coverage and also they cannot make your hair lighter. semipermanents Like the temporaries, they, too, coat the outside of the hair shaft and so are not good for drastically changing hair color. Nor will they lighten. Some of the semi-permanents are `color baths' which penetrate the hair so that they last up to a dozen shampoos. What they are good for is touching up hair that has just started to go gray, highlighting your own natural coloring, and making gray hair look shinier and more attractive without really changing its shade. If you use one, be sure to use a pH-balanced shampoo and a lemon and water rinse afterwards. permanents There are three kinds of permanent hair colorants: vegetable dyes such as henna, metallic dyes such as those used to gradually cover gray hair, and the aniline dyes or oxidation tints, which include most of the colorants used professionally in salons. vegetable dyes Henna will give brunette and black hair a lovely reddish glow.  The darker your hair the more chestnut is the effect. Lighter hair goes Titian. Henna does not do well on mousy hair, as the resulting tone is usually an unattractive orange. It should never be used over a tint, is no good on gray hair, and can be very drying to any hair, so it is better to avoid it if your hair is already dry. The only color of henna you should use is red which in its natural, powder form, is a pale green. The standard way of using henna is to add hot water to make a creamy paste and then put this on the hair and leave it for up to one hour. Daniel Galvin, Britain's top colorist, who is an expert in the use of herbal hair colorings, uses a different method and gets beautiful results. He adds hot black coffee to the powder, mixes it into a paste, and then adds the juice of a fresh lemon and the yolk of an egg. The coffee brings out the depth and richness of the hair color, the acid in the lemon accelerates the reddening, and the egg yolk keeps the mixture moist and easy to maneuver through the hair. Sometimes he also adds some 10 per cent peroxide to lighten the whole effect. Chamomile, another herbal colorant, has a gentle lightening effect on hair and is wonderful for `sun-streaking' blonde and light brown hair. But you must be patient, for it takes several applications and plenty of time to work. It is not useful for brown hair or dark hair, but it will gently lighten red and works beautifully on all shades of natural blonde. The herb also adds shine to the hair. You can make a chamomile rinse to use after each shampoo (as the last rinse) by taking 2 tablespoons of dried chamomile flowers and tossing them into a pint of boiling water. Simmer for fifteen minutes, strain, cool and use as a final rinse (you can make enough for several rinses and refrigerate it for up to ten days). You leave the rinse in your hair and towel it dry. metallic dyes These are often called color restorers. They deposit metallic dyes and salts of various metals such as manganese, cobalt, silver, and copper on your hair shaft, which gradually darken the hair. But hair dyed this way does not perm well, nor is its condition very good, as this kind of dye tends to make the hair look a dull, flat color. Metallic dyes have to be removed completely, with the use of a special preparation, several days before waving or tinting with a permanent colorant. Because of their many disadvantages, I think they are best avoided. THE ANILINE OR OXIDATION COLORANTS The most permanent (and the most successful), these dyes are included in a number of products for coloring hair such as tinting shampoos, highlighting shampoos, and the single-step and double-step permanent colorants you can buy in packages at the chemist. They are permanent dyes, because the artificial pigment is made to penetrate into the cortex of the hair shaft. There it stays. How this happens is most interesting. Tiny molecules of colorless dye are mixed with a "developer" such as hydrogen peroxide and then put on the hair. The hydrogen peroxide opens up the imbrications of the cuticle, and the molecules enter through them into the cortex. Once inside, they react with the oxygen from the peroxide (a very unstable substance), which spurs the molecules of the dye to oxidize and combine, forming larger molecules. In the process, these new and larger molecules develop the desired color, but they have now become so large that they can no longer pass through the cuticle, so they get stuck on the inside. There are more than 50,000 aniline dyes, each different in shade, thanks to slight changes in arrangements of their molecules. They are potent and effective. They are also potential allergens, since about one woman in ten cannot tolerate an aniline dye without reacting adversely to it. This is why it is important, whenever using a permanent colorant on your hair either at home or at the hairdresser, that a patch test be done first. The anilines can even cause blindness, so they should never be used to tint eyelashes or eyebrows. If you have your hair dyed with an aniline dye, you must wait at least a week before having it permanent-waved or straightened, and you must use a pH-balanced shampoo and conditioner every time you wash it. One of the advantages of the anilines is that tinting limp, straight hair can often make it more manageable, since the peroxide in the dye disturbs the cuticle just enough to give the hair some body and eliminate its lankness. In this category of hair colorant you will find shampoo tints and highlight shampoos, which can be used at home to cover gray if there is too much of it, to lighten hair a couple of shades, to add depth, or to highlight hair that is drab and dull. You put the products on as you would an ordinary shampoo and then leave them in the hair for a few minutes while the peroxide and dye does its work, and then rinse off. They are simple to use. The single and double-step tints also fall into this category. They are the dyes most frequently used by hairdressers. If you want to change the color of your hair dramatically, you should have it done professionally. There is quite an art to color mixing and application (I know women who literally fly 5,000 miles to have their color done by someone who is a real master at it). Although there are some excellent products available for home use, if it were my hair, I would still shun them and head for a salon that specializes in color. The single-step tints are a mixture of aniline dyes, peroxide, and ammonia in an oil base. They are applied carefully to sectioned hair, starting an inch or so away from the roots to the end. The hair is left to sit for a few minutes and then the root area is done. The hair is rested for another half hour or so. These dyes can change the color of your hair to almost any other color, but they are not successful in changing very dark shades to blonde. For that, you need a two-step tint, which bleaches out the existing pigment in the hair shafts in the first step and then adds dye separately in the second. All aniline dyes and bleaching procedures have to be touched up often as the roots grow out, particularly if you change the color drastically from your normal hair shade. They also cause considerable damage to the hair shaft. If you have your hair tinted with them; you must look after it using a pH-balanced shampoo and conditioner and having a protein treatment every couple of weeks. HIGHLIGHTS One of the best and most easily manageable ways of changing your hair color is to have it highlighted or lowlighted. This involves the same procedures as the single-and double-step tinting, but instead of being done all over your head, they are done only on some strands or areas. Highlighting and lowlighting are particularly useful for older hair that has darkened or faded. Highlights can bring new life to a head of hair by lightening some of the strands, but they create no harsh lines between the tinted and natural hair at the scalp, as total dyeing does. Lowlights add a color slightly darker to some strands. They are done just as highlights are by wrapping strands of hair in foil-covered bunches, letting the color develop and then being washed out. Both highlights and lowlights look natural and as they leave no hard-edged margins at the roots so they only need to be redone three or four times a year. This means that you don't need touchups more frequently than every two or three months. There are an enormous number of techniques used in highlighting. Some of the most interesting involve three or more colors put into the hair to give a remarkably natural look. SPECIAL CARE FOR BLEACHED OR TINTED HAIR The golden rule for processed hair is to stay out of the sun. The sun does harm in two ways: It dries out the hair, and it alters the color. Keratin needs water to stay soft and flexible. When too much water is lost as a result of sun or of using heated rollers or of blow-drying too often, then its fibres crack and split and the hair becomes so dry and brittle that it breaks off. It also loses its shine. Sunlight does strange things to hair color by oxidising it. It can turn it greenish or very brassy, or simply make the tint go flat and gray. If you are going into the sun and your hair is bleached or tinted, wear a hat or a towel wrapped around it. Even virgin - that is, untreated - hair needs protection from sunlight. You can use one of the sunscreen products especially made for hair or simply rub in some of the high-protection suntan lotion you use on your body shampooing it out at the end of the day. WHAT ABOUT CANCER RISKS? There is some indication that about 1 percent of the chemical hair dyes used on hair will penetrate through the skin and be absorbed into the bloodstream. The question is, what damage will they do? Professor Bruce Ames, at the University of California, has tested 169 hair dyes on bacterial cells to find out if they cause mutations to the cells. Of these, 89 percent were found to be mutagenic. Although all carcinogens (cancer-causing substances) are mutagenic, not all mutagens are carcinogens, nor do we know if the same results will occur on human cells. The people most at risk from exposure to hair tints are those hair colorists in salons who use them daily without wearing gloves (something you should never do). It is unlikely that cancer risks are very great for the average woman who has her hair tinted. If you are uneasy about it, use one of the semipermanents or herbal dyes instead.

For ten years I was a vegetarian—a way of eating for which I have the highest respect. My vegetarian diet, at times even vegan, helped my body heal damage that had been done to it when I was a kid. I had been raised on junk food before junk food as we know it today even existed: I was never breastfed. I survived on pasteurized cow’s milk mixed with corn syrup, then as soon as I could wield a spoon, Rice Krispies smothered in sugar. Then I feasted on greasy eggs and white toast in truck driver cafés, usually at 5am. For my father was a jazz musician. I traveled with him from one gig to the next from the time I was 4 or 5 years old, not attending school, often covering 200 or 300 miles a day to get to the next job. As a result I was never well. So, in my early twenties, while living in Paris with my three children, I went looking for health help. And I found it. FUNDAMENTAL RESEARCH I researched the work of gifted British doctor Sir Robert McCarrison, who initiated the first epidemiological investigations into the relationship between diet and the development of disease. I investigated the theories and practices of Max Bircher-Benner MD, creator of the world famous Bircher-Benner clinic in Zürich. There, for almost a century, people suffering from chronic degenerative conditions went to have their lives transformed by changing the way they lived and ate. Bircher-Benner’s work had changed the eating habits of hundreds of thousands by the end of the 19th century, by teaching people to eliminate white bread and meat, and to eat a balanced diet of raw vegetables, fruits and nuts. I was fortunate enough several times to visit the clinic which, for 40 years after his death in 1939, was run by his niece—the charismatic Dagmar Liechti-von Brasch MD. She and I became good friends. At the clinic I learned the principles of good vegetarian eating from Bircher-Benner’s son, Ralph, whose job it was to look after the publications that flowed forth from the clinic and were printed in many languages throughout the world. I learned about the powers of natural healing, then put them into practice, changing my own life and improving the lives of my children as they grew up. DIGGING DEEP Meanwhile, I read many books and papers, listened to dozens of lectures from physicians and scientists, and interviewed scores of doctors personally who were involved in the new exciting field of lifestyle medicine. I was impressed by their work and by the work of many others including Dean Ornish MD, director of the Preventative Medicine Research Institute in Sausalito, California. Ornish and his colleagues went so far as to measure the effect of comprehensive lifestyle changes on patients with coronary artery disease. These patients were introduced to a meat, fish and poultry-free, ultra-low-fat vegetarian diet of fruits, vegetables, grains, and legumes, coupled with stress management sessions and regular exercise. By the end of a year, over 80% of the patients had experienced regression of their arterial fatty deposits without the use of drugs. During the same year, the control groups of patients, who had no lifestyle intervention, experienced a substantial progression of their illness. Change a person's way of eating and alter their lifestyle, and you can not only largely prevent degenerative conditions, of which overweight is a major one: you can even reverse degeneration after it has occurred. Certainly, a well-designed vegetarian way of eating can play a major role in the process. HERE’S THE RUB Given the surprising benefits that many people—including myself—have experienced from a properly constituted vegetarian way of eating coupled with lifestyle change, why, then, do so many devout vegetarians eventually become ill, obese and disillusioned with this way of eating? The answer to this is likely to surprise you, since so little has been written about it. I have written a lot about Paleolithic man’s way of eating, our genetic inheritance from him and how important it is that, in choosing the foods we eat, we respect this genetic inheritance for the sake of our health, our mental strength and emotional wellbeing. As you know, until the agricultural revolution took place, Paleolithic man was primarily a hunter. He killed his food—be it animal, insect or fish—then gathered whatever plants, nuts, fruits and vegetables were available to him. He ate mostly fat and protein. He would go for long periods between kills, living off his own fat stores. His body handled the processing of the foods he ate primarily in a ketogenic manner—relying on fats, not glucose, to supply him with energy. ENTER THE GATHERERS At the same time, and after the agricultural revolution began, a large number of people became primarily gatherers. The gatherers got most of their nourishment from what grew out of the ground in the form of fruits and vegetables, herbs, nuts and seeds, most of which they ate fresh and raw. Unlike the hunters, who derived their energy from fats, gatherers relied on glucose from their foods to supply their energy. The early gatherers were vegans. Only when man began to domesticate animals and birds so that eggs and milk were available did some of these vegans become vegetarians. To this day, both vegan and vegetarian diets are practiced in certain cultures throughout the world. Some contemporary vegans and vegetarians stay healthy. But it is common knowledge that more and more these days develop deficiency diseases, experience rapid aging and end up with serious chronic diseases. Why? DANGEROUS CONVENIENCE Because the foods most vegetarians and vegans eat now are a far cry from those that our original gatherers collected and consumed. Like more than 90% of today’s omnivores, the majority of vegetarians and vegans have now come to live on denatured, processed convenience foods. Such foods are just as dangerous to vegans and vegetarians as they are to the rest of humanity. Yet the majority of vegetarians and vegans remain completely ignorant of this. They still think that, by not eating animal products, they are protected from all the chronic illnesses that now plague humanity. What’s worse, for a few of these people, vegetarianism has become a religion—a source of self-righteous congratulation which they ignorantly assume sets them above the rest of us human beings. Here’s the secret and bottom line: If you want to thrive as a vegan or vegetarian, you will need to fashion your way of eating as close as humanly possible to the way our gatherer ancestors did. This means saying no to convenience foods. It also means becoming savvy about how to get enough of the nutrients that are low in vegetarian and vegan diets, and making sure you supplement your diet with them. FOLLOW THE GATHERERS When it comes to spring-cleaning the body, following a vegan or vegetarian diet for a period of time can be a great help. This is how Bircher-Benner and the other great physicians who worked with high-raw diets were able to work their healing wonders. BUT... If you decide to follow a vegan or vegetarian way of eating long-term, you must eat as your gatherer ancestors did. I see serious health problems in some vegetarians and vegans I mentor on our Cura Romana programs—yeast overgrowth, cancers, hypothyroidism, diabetes, leaky gut syndrome, anemia, food cravings, and chronic fatigue to mention only a few. Some people cannot manage a vegetarian diet because of enzyme deficiencies. Others have food sensitivities to grains and cereals or milk products, but do not know it because, like almost 99% of non-vegetarians, they are eating masses of convenience foods which none of our bodies can handle. HOW TO BE A HEALTHY VEGETARIAN Stop eating manufactured foods and processed foods, be they cookies, cakes, crackers, soft drinks, packaged salad dressings and other ready-in-a-minute packaged foods. Replace sugar in all its forms with good quality, pure stevia for sweetening. Avoid all chemical sweeteners. Stay away from anything containing high-fructose corn syrup. Read labels carefully. Never drink sodas or diet sodas. Forsake all “white foods” such as white flour, all products made from it, and white rice. Eat only free range and organic eggs. Buy or grow organic vegetables and fruits. Eat your fruits and vegetables in their fresh raw state as often as possible. Use no food additives such as MSG, hydrolyzed vegetable protein or aspartame. They are full of neurotoxins. Avoid all processed vegetable oils made from corn, soy, canola, cottonseed or safflower. Choose only natural oils such as coconut, extra virgin olive oil and butter from grass fed cows. Never drink fluoridated water. Avoid rancid nuts and grains which you find in granolas and elsewhere, as they block mineral absorption and impair good digestion. Never eat sprayed, waxed, irradiated fruits and vegetables or GMO foods—particularly GMO or non-organic soy. Take only food-state supplements, never chemically-made vitamins. Make sure you supplement any vegan or vegetarian way of eating with extra zinc, vitamin B3, iodine, omega-3 oils and vitamin B12. TO LEARN MORE: Crane, Milton G., Sample, Clyde J., Regression of Diabetic Neuropathy with Total Vegetarian Diet, Monograph, Weimar Institute, Weimar, California, USA. Crane, Milton G., Shavlik, Gerald., ‘Newstart’ Lifestyle Program. A Survey of the Results. Monograph, Weimar Institute, Weimar, California, USA. Fraser, G.E. Vegetarian Diets: What do we know of their effects on common chronic diseases? Am. J. Clin. Nur, 2009: 89: 1607S-12S. Lustig, Robert, Fat Chance. The Bitter Truth About Sugar. Fourth Estate/Harper Collins, London, 2013. Ornish, Dean, Reversing Heart Disease, Random House/Century, London, 1991. `Unusual Heart Therapy Wins Coverage From Large Insurer' New York Times, July 28th, 1993.

Allow an hour for the whole process of taking a delicious treat of a bath from beginning to end. Make sure you have everything you need - towel, loofa or hemp glove, and another towel to use as a headrest. Add essential oils to the water as the bath is filling, using about ten to fifteen drops total of either a single essence or of a mixture for a large bath. Each essence has a different effect on the mind and body (see below).  When you get into the bath, gently scrub yourself all over with a hemp glove or a loofa. Then just relax and soak for a few minutes, letting the heat penetrate your muscles.  Keep a cool cloth nearby to smooth over your face when needed. Let the essential oils work their wonders while you carry out a relaxing and waste-eliminating self-massage.  Water is the perfect medium for self-massage. The heat (remember not to have your bath too hot and stimulating) of the water works silent wonders, and it supports your body so that you have easy access to feet, legs, arms and torso while still remaining relaxed. When your bath is finished, lie down for ten minutes with an eye mask or a piece of dark fabric across your eyes and keep warm. the massage message Self-massage is nothing more than stroking, kneading, pushing and pressing your skin and muscles. Start with your feet. Grasp one foot between thumb and fingers and press in between the tendons, gently at first, then harder and harder, moving from the toes up towards the ankle. Then, using your fingertips and knuckles, go over the soles of your feet. Wherever you find a sore spot, work harder until you feel the discomfort melt beneath your hand. Now do your heel, grasping it between thumb and fingers and working around the area of the Achilles tendon. This is also a good time to make circles with your foot to loosen the ankle joint. Repeat this with the other foot, and then go on to your legs. Lift each leg in turn and deeply stroke the flesh on the back, from the ankle up to the knee. Then go back to the ankle again and repeat the same motions on the side and front of the calf. Keep working and, as you massage a little deeper with each stroke, you will gradually find that any tautness softens. Now go over your thighs with the same movement, and afterwards knead and squeeze around the knee area wherever there are trouble spots, just as you did on the feet. Now knead each thigh and hip. Then go on to your arms. Knead and squeeze every spot you can reach on your shoulders and neck, looking for sore spots and focusing on the areas between joints and muscles. Pay particular attention to the tops of shoulders, where most of us lock away our tension. Grasp this area in your thumb and fingers and insistently ease away any hardness you find there. Finally, go over your ribs, doing each side with its opposite hand. essence alchemy As part of the benevolent bath, choose essential oils not so much for what they can do for your skin as what they can do to expand your consciousness and lift your spirit. Whatever your mental state may be, it has an enchanting antidote from the world of flowers: Negative State Essential Oil Remedy anger: ylang ylang, rose, chamomile resentment: rose sadness: hyssop, marjoram, sandalwood mental fatigue: basil, peppermint, cypress, patchouli worry: lavender feeling jaded: neroli, melissa, camphor feelings of weakness: chamomile, jasmine, melissa irritability: frankincense, marjoram, lavender, chamomile physical exhaustion: jasmine, rosemary, juniper, patchouli anxiety: sage, juniper, basil, jasmine

Nothing produces a holiday high like the right kind of exercise. Exercise is a major detoxifier. It sheds waste and lifts your spirits. And the best kind is the kind you like best. The days of donning pink leg-warmers and busting a gut at the gym because it is supposed to be good for you are over. Exercise is an important key in the detoxification process, as it gets your lungs working and your lymphatic system moving. During atwo-day apple fast you need to take some exercise, but only gentle exercise. Long walks are perfect. You do not want to put extra stress on your body by wearing it out with a stiff workout or long run. If you exercise regularly and are pretty fit, then go for a long brisk walk. If exercise is something you would rather not think about, let alone do, indulge yourself in a couple of long lazy strolls in the park or in the country to get your lungs and lymph working efficiently. Once your apple fast is over, to help your body to remain as free of toxins as possible, you need to take some regular exercise. walk it out Regular aerobic exercise (where your heart is beating firmly and you breathe deeply over a period of 30-45 minutes) is essential. It increases your body’s ability to process oxygen – and a high consumption of oxygen keeps your energy high, and keeps you looking and feeling good. Moreover, exercise can do as much good for your mind as it can your body. And, just in case you think you have to become a marathon runner, you may be surprised to find our how simple real fitness can be. Brisk daily walks can not only be a lot of fun, they can help keep your body clean from inside out. Start slowly if you are not used to exercise and then gradually – over several weeks if necessary – work up your pace to four miles an hour. This means you will be walking a mile in about 15 minutes. Once you can do that easily you will be able to walk, say, three miles a day in 45 minutes and you’ll be getting a very pleasant but effective workout, which will bring you lots of energy and have you feeling great. Of course, there are other alternatives as well – you could swim or jog or skip or row. But each of these requires special equipment and special places or times to do, whereas walking can be done almost anywhere by anyone without any special training and without spending extra money. rebound madness Rebounding – bouncing up and down on a mini-trampoline – is tremendous, childish fun. This is probably reason enough to do it, but it is also excellent exercise to help with detoxification. The unique up-and-down movement of your body on a mini-trampoline subjects it to changes in gravitational force. For a split second at the top of the bounce, gravity or G-force is nonexistent. But at the bottom of each bounce, as you come down upon the elastic platform, the pull of gravity on your cells, muscles and tissues is suddenly increased by two or even three times the usual G-force on the earth. On the way up, gravity closes up the millions of one-way valves which control the flow of lymph. Then when you come down again onto the trampoline the internal pressure changes quickly and dramatically, causing them to open and bringing about a surge of lymph, so you set up an internal massaging motion which shunts lymph along. Rebounding is the perfect solution for anyone who wants to exercise at home, no matter what their fitness level. It’s particularly good for anyone who is embarrassed by the idea of going out in running gear or going to the gym. Unlike many in-the-home exercise options, rebounding has a particularly high continued use success rate, probably because it is so much fun. It gets your mind and body working and seems to raise spirits like nothing else I have ever come across. I often use it for 10 minutes or so when I’m feeling fatigued or stressed. Begin bouncing gently so that your heels barely leave the ground. If you feel unsteady, use the back of a chair to support yourself with one arm as you bounce. You might like to bounce to music or even while watching television. As an alternative to bouncing with both feet together, try jogging from one foot to the other. Begin with 10-15 minutes a day and work up to 30 minutes or so as your strength increases. how much? how long? Regular physical exercise – the kind you get if you do 45 minutes of brisk walking, swimming, running, rebounding or rowing at least four or five times a week – suffuses the skin with blood, enhances lymphatic functioning, and increases the ability of your body to carry oxygen and nutrients to the skin’s cells and to remove waste products from them. Always leave no more than 48 hours between sessions, so that you will continue to benefit from the enhanced metabolic rate. Just in case you think you don’t have time, I can promise you once you start you will create more time for yourself because everything in your life will flow more easily. When you notice the benefits that a sustained exercise routine brings, you will find your body craving for more. But more is not necessarily better. Exercise to help elimination needs to be rhythmical and continuous, to use large muscle groups and to be performed at an intensity and frequency that increases your heart input only to 60 percent of maximum heart rate (MHR) – never more. How do you work out what that means for you? Simple. First take your own pulse. Place three fingers along the artery at the wrist until you feel the steady beat of your heart. Then, using a watch with a second hand, count how many times your heart beats while the second hand records six seconds passing. Multiply the number of times your heart beat in this period and multiply by 10. This gives you how many times per minute your heart is beating. Once you know how to do this it is easy to calculate the rest. To discover your maximum heart rate, subtract your age from 220. Then multiply this figure by 0.6. This will give you your target heart rate. For instance, if you are 40 years old: Maximum heart rate = 220 – 40 = 180 beats per minute. 180 beats per minute X 0.6 = 108 beats per minute. get going Any form of sustained aerobic exercise which gets your heart beating at your target heart rate is ideal for minimizing the build up of wastes in your system, for releasing wastes that are already stored in your tissues, and for burning any excess fat. Begin slowly with only 15-20 minutes of exercise at a time. Remember to check on your heart rate at least twice during every exercise session and adjust your activity accordingly when it goes more than 10 beats above or below your target heart rate. You need to judge how long is right for you by checking on how fatigued you feel one hour after exercising. That is the best indication of whether or not you are working with your body’s own rhythms and needs. If you find yourself fatigued an hour after exercising, then you are overdoing it. So pull back until your body is ready for a higher dose of activity. Exercising too hard or too long can actually produce more waste for your body to get rid of. Choose between dancing freely to any music you like, swimming, rebounding, running, cycling or walking briskly. Walking is the easiest of all since you can do it anywhere. Walk to and from work, climb stairs instead of using the lift – it’s all good exercise and half the time you won’t even notice you are doing it.

Silence. Solitude. These words strike fear into our post-modern hearts—especially at Christmas or New Year. We seem to have forgotten the power of escaping for a time into the depths of our inner being, of listening to our breath, of sensing the earth’s heartbeat. There are too many presents to be bought, phone calls to be made, gatherings to attend, children’s noses to wipe. Yet now, as one year ends and another begins, it’s the best time ever to connect with the divine. And where do we discover it? At the very core of each one of us deep within—in silence and in solitude—no matter what kind of noise or chaos may be taking place in the world around us. Solitude has much to teach us. But it takes courage to become a learner again. It asks that we trust enough in life and in ourselves to drop, even for fifteen minutes at a time, all we know (or think we know) and become quietly receptive to whatever arises from within. It also asks that we respond wholeheartedly to whatever we feel, smell, taste, see and touch: The intense blue of a tiny flower which sears our senses. A wild thought that invites us into a new reality like “maybe I’ll take up scuba diving or write a novel.” Good god, where did that come from? The fragrance of Ceylon cinnamon sprinkled on a cup of dark cocoa. All these splendors, all these blessings go unnoticed unless we create enough quiet time for us to experience them. ALL IS ONE The word ‘alone’ was once treated as two words: all one. To be all one meant to be wholly oneself—all of one piece. This is the great gift of any sanctuary. Practiced daily, silence and solitude heal confusion and mend frazzled nerves. Getting “away from it all” to sit on a rock or at a window, to gaze at the sky or to explore the dance of thoughts in your own mind. These things help us come home to ourselves. They allow the wildness of our intrinsic being to converse with our more rational side. To begin, lay aside fifteen minutes each day during which you enter the sanctuary of your own being to sit or walk in silence. Become aware of how silence acts upon you. Are you comfortable with it? Or is it something that you try to avoid? Do you sense that there is a richness here that you may not have experienced for a long time? NEW REALITIES Throughout human history, the center of the universe—the axis mundi—formed the core of safety for tribal cultures. It gave them access to great spiritual power, at this universal hub. They knew they could rely on the axis mundi. This made them feel safe. Now we live in a new reality, one which is continually evolving, reshaping itself, adjusting, creating and destroying as it unfolds. But here lies the greatest revelation of all. Today’s axis mundi is no longer tribal. It has become a much more individual experience—a rich cosmic void which lives at the core of each one of us, as it does in the cosmos itself. Here, in solitude and silence, we can come face to face with the divine. It is from here that we draw on visions, energy and guidance for what we long to create. Here, where the universal and the personal divinity meet and merge as one—a life-changing experience. ENTERING YOUR STILL POINT BRINGS: A sense of safety. Access to the depths of your own unique truth. An experience that enables your own soul can to align itself with the anima mundi—the soul of the cosmos. The realization that the universe can communicate in a purposeful way with you. A connection with the life you want to create for yourself. A chance to explore your dreams and visions. Once we learn to anchor ourselves within this core, deep within the darkness of our unique essential being, a new expanded reality begins to reveal itself. ANCHOR IN THE DIVINE You can read about the axis mundi in the Old Testament story of Jacob’s Ladder. ‘And he dreamed and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it. And, behold, the Lord stood above it, and said, “I am the Lord God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac: the land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed; and thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and thou shalt spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north and to the south: and in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed…” and Jacob awakened out of this sleep, and he said, “Surely the Lord is in this place!”’ (Genesis 28:10-14, 18-19) You will also find this anchoring experience in the ancient Greek description of omphalos—the navel or hub of the world. They describe it as “the divine body out of which creation emerges.” To the Buddhists it is Mount Meru, center of the created universe. This axis mundi—the cosmic void—is recreated again and again in the magnificent sand paintings of Tibetan Lamas. The Hebrews call it the beth-el which means the dwelling place of the divine. For them it was Jerusalem, as it was for the early Christians—at one and the same time, the place where Jesus died on the cross, and where the tree of life stands at the center of the world. The omphalos is always found at the center of a circle into which spiritual power from all directions is poured, and out of which divinely-created forms are brought to birth. You will even find it in the Chinese symbol for yin and yang, and in the magic circle drawn by children on the playground. Kids know you gather power. You are also protected from attack by the opposing team in any game of hide and seek. ENTER THE COSMIC VOID How do you enter the cosmic void and access the power that lies there? Simple. You just create the conditions that can allow it to happen. Step one is practicing the skill of living in the NOW. Start right now with the most mundane daily task you have to perform. Say you are washing dishes. Decide that, for the next ten minutes, you will be fully present with total awareness of what you are doing. There’s no big deal about this. It doesn’t demand any great effort. It is the easiest thing in the world once you decide to have a go. You’re likely to find it’s also a lot of fun. As Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese Buddhist teacher whose work I admire, says, “You can wash the dishes in order to have clean dishes or you can wash the dishes to wash the dishes.” With every task you carry out—whether it be typing at a keyboard as I am doing right now, combing your hair, opening a door, gazing at a fire—you have the choice of carrying it out mechanically while your mind wanders, or with full attention, which begins to open you to the divine power of the center of your essential being. LIFE IN THE NOW Try addressing whatever you do from a point of view of mindfulness—clear, simple attention without a need to analyze, label or judge anything. Just let yourself be fully present from one moment to the next. When mental rumination, thoughts and feelings arise, take a look at them, then just let them go and bring your attention back to whatever you are doing right here, right now. As you practice remaining fully present, what was once a mundane or boring task can become a source of fascination. This is what is known as “whole body-mind seeing”. When we come to live our lives this way, not only do we forge rich connections with multi-dimensional reality. We move beyond our habitual, limiting ways of thinking, seeing, and being. We begin to touch upon then be fed by the sacred nature of our lives. We live more authentically from our own unique experience of the divine. Try it and see.

There are five main channels for detoxifying your body: the skin, the lungs, the kidneys, the bowels and the lymphatic system. None is less less recognized, nor more important in spring-cleaning the body, than your lymphatic system. Yet the state of its health and functioning is still almost completely ignored. Your lymphatics are not only a major route for absorbing vital nutrients from the digestive system into the tissues to keep skin healthy, youthful and glowing—they are important carriers of immune cells. These protect your body from damage and illness and help prevent degenerative aging. Lymphatics are also your body's metabolic-waste-disposal system. They take away unwanted proteins and large particles of toxic debris which cannot be removed by any other means. This includes toxins—the by-products of fatigue and of stress—dead cells, fatty globules, pathogenic bacteria, heavy metals, infectious viruses and other assorted rubbish cast off by your cells. WASTE DISPOSAL So essential are the waste-eliminating functions of the lymphatic system that without them you would die within 24 hours. Doctors working with natural methods of healing insist that a primary cause of fatigue, disease and cell degeneration, with its accompanying premature aging, is poor circulation of lymph to and from the cells and tissues of the body. The same tradition of natural medicine uses a number of effective techniques designed to stimulate lymphatic functions as a means of healing even quite serious illnesses— ranging from rheumatism or cardiovascular disease to chronic fatigue. These techniques include exercise (done for the joy of it, not as a chore), skin-brushing, special breathing techniques, and infra red saunas. All of these things improve the purity and quality of the lymph—the clear fluid which flows through the lymphatics (lymph vessels). They are little short of revolutionary in what they can do for your good looks and your good health. They have even been known to clear long-standing skin troubles such as acne, improve the look of puffy or aging skin, heighten vitality, banish muscle and joint pain, and aid in the regeneration of the body as a whole. Making use of these techniques is simple. But first you need to know a little about how the lymphatic system functions, and just how important a role its mysterious mechanisms play in promoting health and beauty. WHITE BLOOD MAGIC Your body is more than 75 per cent water. So important is water to the processes of life itself that, according to Nobel Laureate Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, “Life is water dancing to the tune of solids”. A French biologist rather poetically emphasized Szent-Gyorgyi's observation by saying: 'Man is an amphibian. Even the most beautiful woman's body is no more than an aquarium with 50 liters of lukewarm seawater in which trillions of cells live and fight for survival.' Five liters of this 'seawater' are to be found in your blood, five in digestive and other secretions, and almost all the rest is in your lymphatic fluid or lymph—sometimes called 'white blood'. Thanks to the lymph, a ceaseless interchange goes on between your body's trillions of cells and their surrounding interstitial fluids, so that food and oxygen are exchanged and waste products are eliminated from the cells—all through the medium of water. For cells and tissues to be nourished, for them to remain vital, and for your skin and muscles to remain smooth and healthy and firm, this interchange needs to occur without impedance, and the water itself needs to be relatively uncontaminated. BEAUTIFUL FLUID In your body, nutrients and oxygen are transported to the tissues and cells via the bloodstream. Arterial pressure forces the blood through tiny capillaries and out into the cells' interstitial spaces to enable the nutrients and oxygen to be exchanged for the wastes which the cells have produced. Here the water or interstitial fluid, now filled with toxic waste, is gathered by tiny lymphatic tubules and then sent back through the lymph vessels to be detoxified. These lymphatics are a highly organized and elaborate system of ducts and channels which flow all over your body. In fact, almost all the tissues of the body are equipped with lymph channels which drain excess fluid, and the wastes which it contains, from the interstitial spaces. This opalescent liquid carries the wastes and toxic products from these minute channels into larger lymphatic vessels, and on through the lymph nodes, which are located in the groin and under the arm and the neck. The lymph nodes filter the fluid to remove impurities and dead cells; they are also a place where antibodies, which fight infection or toxins, are made. After purification at the nodes, the fluid is returned to the blood. In this way, the lymphatic system works ceaselessly to clear toxicity and to reduce excess mucus and waste. GRAVITY IS YOUR FRIEND The microscopic network of these lymph channels resembles the blood capillaries, except that it is finer. And the lymph system in many ways is rather like the blood system except that, while the blood system is powered by the action of the heart muscles, the lymphatic system has no such prime mover. Instead, its nourishing, water-balancing and eliminative functions are almost entirely dependent upon gravity and the natural pressure of muscles which occurs when you move your body. These muscle contractions and body movements—together with biochemical factors, such as whether or not excessive quantities of protein are present in the fluid—keep the lymph flowing and make it possible for the lymphatics to carry out their important task of bodily cleansing. For good lymphatic functioning—to keep your body free of the buildup of wastes and toxicity—you need to move your muscles vigorously and often. That is why regular brisk exercise, such as taking long walks in comfortable shoes, is so important not only to firm your muscles and strengthen your heart and lungs, but also to encourage the steady and effective elimination of wastes from your cells and tissues.

Within each one of us, thin or fat, there lives a joyous creative spirit. It is the spirit of the child - of life itself - a completely individual nature which is constantly seeking freedom simply to be what it is and to do what it wants to do. The world we live in as we grow up seldom leaves space for that unique spirit to develop fully. Our parents, our education, our culture is continually feeding us with rules about what we should and shouldn't do - should and shouldn't be. It is a little like getting up each morning and having to put on your straightjacket before you begin the day. For many people—both men and women—weight control has become part of that straightjacket. They worry constantly about how or what to eat or not to eat. They agonize over one or two pounds - or fifteen - gained or lost and they treat themselves like naughty children who need controlling lest they get out of hand and eat something they shouldn't. A person in any kind of straightjacket is a person disempowered. It is a person who does not trust himself or herself and who to a greater or lesser degree lives in fear - fear of food, fear of what he or she might do, fear of disapproval from a society impassioned by notions of thinness. I have known that struggle. I have lived it myself and I see evidence of it all around me in women caught in the jaws of bulimia, anorexia or compulsive eating, and in men who overindulge in alcohol or fatty foods, struck down by a heart attack in the prime of life. This has always seemed a terrible waste. POWER TO TRANSFORM Thirty years ago I began to ask questions like: Why do so many people struggle with weight in our society when the vast majority in other cultures never even seem to grow fat? What causes the distortions to our bodies not only in body size and fat deposits, but in the degenerative conditions, from heart disease to rheumatoid arthritis that come in their wake? Is it really weakness of character or lack of willpower that makes us all eat too much and gain weight? And - most important of all - is there a way of eating and living that enables someone who is carrying too much fat around to eat and live so that whatever distortions have already appeared will disappear quite naturally as part of the process of regenerating the body through food and exercise? MY SEARCH FOR ANSWERS So I read many books and papers, listened to dozens of lectures from physicians and scientists and interviewed a number of doctors personally who claimed to have found answers. Some of their answers were useful, but not until I was introduced to the work of ATW Simeons did I come to understand that even the most genuinely helpful discoveries about why we get fat—and why every slimming diet we follow—almost invariably lead sooner or later back to our regaining weight we have lost. Why? Because each and every one of them, no matter how sincere or well meaning, ignored the most important truth of all: Simeons’ work stands alone even amongst the findings of many brilliant and sincere scientists and doctors—from Atkins to Sir Robert McCarrison who have contributed so much to sound dietary practice. What makes Simeons unique is that he alone discovered that overweight, obesity and all the anguish that accompanies them is in no way caused by a lack of willpower or simple greed. Neither can it be permanently cleared by putting people on a slimming regime. These conditions represent a significant metabolic disorder. Until this metabolic disorder is dealt with we will simply go on forever taking diet pills, shedding fat and then regaining it, along with all the inner grief, disappointment and shame we suffer each time this happens. Even better, Simeons discovered where the locus of overweight lay in the body, and how to create a protocol that would give a man or woman’s overweight body a kind of permission to restore normal balanced functioning to that area in the brain, thereby clearing not only unwanted fat but enhancing a person’s overall health in life-changing ways. THIN FOR WHAT? In the Western world we have long been possessed by an obsession with changing the shape of our bodies, especially trying to make it thinner, using one diet after another. Yet making a body thinner is not always the best thing to do - either for its health or its good looks. A thin body is a wimpish body. It is a body depleted of energy and of power. When you are lean you are strong, you have sleek muscles, good tone, and you can feast heartily on wholesome, natural foods in keeping with your body’s unique food needs, enabling you to stay that way. You are also highly resistant to illness and early ageing as the years pass and you feel comfortable and at ease in your body. This is a very different experience from the anxiety over thinness which disempowers so many men and women. Leanness, created by restoring healthy balance and functioning to the body’s fat and appetite control center, brings a sense of power with it - a sense of being in control of your own life which is a far cry from the inadequacy many feel as they continue to battle against weight gain with conventional slimming diets. I believe it is time we forgot about thin and choose instead to go lean from inside out. This calls for revolution. COME THE REVOLUTION - Diets That Work To revolutionize means to change completely and fundamentally - your body and your life. It is not a word chosen lightly but because it most accurately describes the powerful positive transformation that takes place in how you look and feel when you transform your appetite and fat control center so it works again, throw out convenience foods loaded with bad carbs, hidden sugar, junk fats and chemicals, and begin to feed heartily on the kind of foods your individual body loves, drink large quantities of pure water and strengthen your muscle mass through simple exercise that your body loves, be it dancing, yoga, swimming or what-have-you. The word lean means `muscular...containing little or no fat.' Being lean is as different from being thin as Cura Romana is from all the quick fix slimming diets you may have tried over the years which have slowly but inexorably eroded your energy and increased the sense of disenchantment with your body.