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• Personal Growth

April 2005

By Harvey Diamond

Following the body’s natural cycles and making uncooked food a priority can go a long way in relieving pain, says the celebrated co-author of fit for life, in a specially commissioned piece for life positive

If you were strolling along the beach and happened to kick an old bottle from which out popped an honest-to-goodness genie who told you that you had but a few short moments to ask for any two wishes to be granted in your life-what would they be? Wouldn’t it be health and wealth? Aren’t those the two ‘biggies’ that most people desire in their life? To have lots and lots of money and to be healthy enough to enjoy it? Truth be told, what good would a lot of money be if you were too sick to enjoy it? The fact is that health, as the old saying goes, is your greatest wealth. Surely you’ve heard people say things like, ‘When you have your health, you have everything.’ We all wish to live a life free of pain, ill-health, and disease, that just goes without saying. But how many of us actually have the good fortune of doing so? When one looks at the actual statistics of who is living life in uninterrupted, pain-free good health and who is not, the numbers show that those who have some sort of regularly occurring health complaint far outweigh those who do not, and by a huge margin.

Guess what the number one health complaint throughout the world is-by far? It accounts for more doctors’ visits than anything else and nothing else even comes close. More money is spent on this one health problem than anything else. Give up? It’s pain, or what has come to be referred to as either the ‘silent epidemic’ or the ‘hidden epidemic.’ And referring to it as an epidemic is no exaggeration I can assure you. That is because the number of people who have to deal with pain on a regular basis in their life is absolutely staggering. When you examine the statistics associated with pain, it is glaringly obvious that despite all of the often reported advances made in healthcare, pain is increasingly becoming more common, not less so. The numbers are so striking it’s difficult to even grasp the full measure of the problem. Literally hundreds of millions of people are in pain and for many of them it is constant pain every day without letup.

For many of these sufferers, their chronic pain is so severe and debilitating, they feel they can’t function as normal people and sometimes it is so bad they actually want to die! They’ve said this. Huge numbers of people believe that pain is simply a part of getting older; that pain is something you simply have to learn to live with. What about you; what’s your belief system about pain? Are you one of those who have bought into the inevitability of pain? Are you convinced that because it’s so prevalent it’s just a matter of time before something starts to hurt? That certainly as time goes by something has to start to hurt? Or are you one of those who are already in pain and have simply resigned yourself to it?

Having studied this subject intensely for over 35 years, I am convinced beyond any possible doubt that being hounded by pain with increasing frequency and severity as time goes by is not part of life’s grand scheme. Notwithstanding the striking number of people who do have to contend with pain on a regular basis, living pain free is the normal and natural condition of the human body, and is what the living body itself strives for with unwavering resolve; and there is a way to support your body’s efforts and help it keep pain at bay.

Everything to be found regarding how to combat pain revolves around pain management; dealing with, coping with, or in some way learning how to live with pain. Every bit of supposed progress deals with some new and improved means of treatment. That is because with many debilitating problems, such as arthritis, fibromyalgia, lupus, or chronic fatigue syndrome, the medical community declares that ‘there is no known cause.’ There is not a word to be found regarding how one might go about removing the cause of the pain because it has been accepted as fact that the cause is unknown. Let me tell you in no uncertain terms that just because the medical community does not know the cause of your pain that does not mean that no one does. The cause is known, and it can be removed. I have been watching people do so for decades.

The reason why your focus on pain management must be redirected to focus on pain removal is because the number one tool in pain management is drugs; highly toxic, deadly drugs that are injuring and killing huge numbers of people every year. This is no exaggeration designed just to get your attention. As reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association two million people are severely injured and over 100,000 of them die every year in the US alone as a result of taking prescription drugs. That is more than all the deaths attributed to breast cancer, prostate cancer, and AIDS combined! And these injuries and deaths are not because of accidents, but rather as a result of the toxic nature of the drugs taken properly and correctly in every way and according to the directions in which they should be taken that accompany the prescriptions. The study clearly states that if accidents were to be added into the equation the number is doubled to over 200,000 deaths a year.

It is extremely important you understand that drugs do not fix or heal anything. They have one purpose and one purpose only and that is to fight symptoms. They do not affect the underlying cause of pain even to the slightest degree. Whatever factors or habits that are involved in causing pain have to either be changed or removed or the situation will simply continue to deteriorate causing even more pain which in turn requires even more, and stronger drugs. When it comes to the healing or fixing of anything that has to do with the body, it is the body itself that does the healing; not anything done to the body. The body is the healer. Think of a cut finger. The instant the skin is cut the intelligent body instantaneously snaps into action and heals the wound. Although we take this process entirely for granted, it is a truly astonishing bit of handiwork that is awe-inspiring in its efficiency. The entire process is something that the intelligent, self-repairing, self-healing body does for itself. And what you should never lose sight of is the fact that your body is always striving to heal anything that needs fixing, inside the body or not, with the same urgency, effectiveness and efficiency that it applies toward a cut finger. Drugs not only do nothing to help heal or fix anything; even worse, they actually interfere with the body’s own natural healing efforts and give the body more work to do to neutralise the toxic nature of the drugs. And all the while the original problem itself steadily deteriorates.

You have to know there is a better way; a less harmful, less dangerous, less expensive, more sensible, more natural, more logical way to deal with pain that you will never, ever hear about from the pharmaceutical industry. It is a strategy that revolves around a greater understanding, admiration, and reverence for the remarkable living body and its unequalled healing abilities. It is a strategy that revolves around strengthening, supporting, and working in harmony with the living body itself so it can unleash its healing power, not poisoning it with dangerous, toxic drugs that thwart its efforts and do nothing to remove the problem.

If you are dealing with pain on any kind of regular basis, the only way you are going to be able to be painfree, which will remove the need for dangerous drugs, is to understand and acknowledge that pain has a very specific purpose. Once that purpose is understood it is a rather straightforward process to remove the pain and prevent its return. The purpose of pain is not to punish you or make you miserable; in actual fact it has a very specific physiological purpose and that purpose is to alert you and protect you.

Let me explain. All living beings that ingest food produce waste in their body that must be eliminated. This is a totally natural occurrence. The waste is generated from two sources: first, from the billions of cells that die off every day and from the residue of the 70 tons of food eaten and metabolized during our lifetime. These wastes are referred to as toxins; and with very good reason. The word toxin means poison which is exactly what metabolic waste in the body is, and if this waste is not regularly and effectively removed from the body, all manner of problems can occur, not the least of which is pain, as a result of what is termed ‘auto-intoxication.’

Fortunately for us, the exquisitely designed and intelligent living body has a built-in system to prevent just such an occurrence. The system is what is referred to as ‘the body’s garbage collector.’ That’s not how it’s listed in the index of a physiology book, but that’s what it is. In physiology books it is called the lymphatic system, or lymph system, for short. The lymph system is a truly astounding network of glands, nodes, nodules, vessels, and three times more fluid than blood, and its sole job and function is to keep you alive, well, and free of pain by removing wastes from the body.

The only way that the lymph system is prevented from fulfilling its life supporting activities is when it is overburdened with more than it has the capacity to handle. The lymph system is capable of handling a lot, but if more toxins are generated in the body each day than are eliminated, the excess has to be stored somewhere in the body and that is when all the mischief starts. As soon as the balance tilts in the direction of more wastes being produced than removed, that spells trouble and that means pain.

Pain is not some haphazard occurrence that comes and goes for no explainable reason. Pain has purpose. It’s the only means the body has to alert you to the predicament that the lymph system is in, so it makes you hurt, hoping that you will correct the problem. The key to success in overcoming pain revolves around some specific dietary maneuvering that frees up energy for healing. That is because the digestion of food demands more energy than all other uses of energy combined. That’s why people feel so tired after eating. There are specific ways to manipulate what you eat, when you eat, and how you eat-what foods are eaten at what time of day and in what combination-so as to minimize the amount of time food is in your stomach gobbling up the precious energy that will instead be used to maximize the efforts of your lymph system to remove toxins and reduce pain.

The method I am going to offer for your consideration is what I call Mono-Dieting. A Mono-Diet simply means the eating of exclusively living food for a particular length of time, ranging from one day to several months at a time. A Mono-Diet is eating only fresh, raw, uncooked, and unprocessed foods. Those foods are: fruits, vegetables, their juices, and nuts and seeds. That’s it.

For the next six months I’m asking you to go on a one-week Mono-Diet followed by three weeks on your regular diet. During the one-week Mono-Diet, nothing, but nothing, goes into your body that has been cooked, heated, or processed in any way.

The best advice I can give you is to go slowly the first couple of days after a one-week Mono-Diet. Don’t overeat, and don’t have all the favorites you have been craving the very first day.

Occasionally-and I want to emphasize that it doesn’t always happen, but only occasionally-the very symptoms of pain and lethargy that an effort is being made to overcome, first become more intensified. It may be temporarily uncomfortable, but you are witnessing healing in action. It’s a good thing, not a bad thing. It shows, in no uncertain terms, that your journey of recovery has begun.

After you have completed the initial six months, wherein you Mono-Diet at least one week out of each month, it would serve you well to Mono-Diet periodically thereafter. If you Mono-Dieted two, three, or four times a year-meaning a week every few months or so-it would be of immeasurable help to your body in staying on top of things.

Now that you know what Step One is-Mono-Dieting for at least one week each month over the next six months-the most logical next question would have to be, ‘How do I eat during the six months when not Mono-Dieting, and how do I eat after the first six months?’

From the time you awaken in the morning until at least 12 noon, you eat absolutely nothing other than fruit. Not a single bite of toast. Not a teaspoon of cottage cheese. Nothing but fruit, fruit salad, fruit juice, or fruit smoothies. As much as you desire.

Other than fruit, there are two types of food to eat-complex and simple. Complex foods are proteins (meat, chicken, fish, eggs, and dairy) and starches (bread, pasta, potatoes, and all grains). Simple foods are vegetables and salads. The complex foods (proteins and starches) require a great deal more digestive energy than do the simple foods (vegetables and salads). The idea is not to combine at the same meal two different types of complex foods but rather to have one type of complex food, either a protein or a starch, with vegetables and salad, which are the simple foods. That’s it essentially.

Let’s say you want to have a steak. Since steak is a protein, you would not have starches such as potatoes or bread with it at that meal. Instead, you would have the steak with a vegetable or variety of vegetables prepared to your liking, along with a salad.

On the other hand, let’s say that you are craving starches. You could have a nice bowl of pasta primavera, which means it has a lot of grilled vegetables mixed in with the pasta. You could also have garlic bread with it, because both pasta and bread are starches. And of course it should be accompanied by a salad.

Let me share something very personal with you. In 1966 when I was 21 years old and serving in the Air Force, I was sent to Vietnam for a one-year tour of duty. While there I was exposed to Agent Orange and as a result have a condition called Peripheral Neuropathy. Along with extreme, unrelenting pain, this condition also slowly deteriorates muscles until individuals are confined to a wheelchair, unable to move. Most cases are fatal.

That is because Agent Orange, a derivative of Dioxin, is the most toxic, human-made toxin ever formulated. Now although I have been very significantly physically damaged, in that I limp noticeably and I must struggle mightily with both arms and both hands to do even the simplest of tasks that even a small child could easily do with only one hand, in a stunning validation of the principles I advocate, I no longer suffer from any pain, without ever having taken a single drug, and I am one of, if not the, longest known survivors of Agent Orange- induced peripheral neuropathy to still be walking around on my own without assistance.

The reason why I can speak to you with such conviction and certainty about what can be expected for those who properly care for their lymph systems is because in my case, doing so rescued me from pain and saved my life. What’s more powerful than that? Can you see that if my lymph system was successful in overcoming the effects of the most deadly toxin in existence, a totally unnatural concoction brewed up in a laboratory, then your lymph system will surely have an easier time of it in dealing with the normal, everyday toxins naturally produced in your body that are the cause of your pain? All you have to do is take the steps to unleash your body’s own remarkable cleansing and healing capabilities. It is my sincerest wish that you will do so and rescue yourself from pain the same way I did. In either event, I wish you and yours all the best that life has to offer.

Contact: www.fitforlifetime.com