What can happen when the “Facts” we have been taught regarding which foods and supplements are good for us and which ones are bad for us are actually wrong and are Not Facts at All?

During the twenty-five plus years that I have been helping people improve their health, I have seen the kinds of extraordinary beneficial changes in patients that their doctors cannot understand or even accept. If you have any condition which medicine lists as irreversible, it is extremely likely that even if your doctor says you no longer have that diagnosis, he or she might be unable to accept that your body has cured the condition. Over and over again, I have patients with whom I have been working for 18 months to possibly four or five years, come in for an appointment with this kind of report. They tell me that their MD ran their routine lab tests which he or she gets a few times a year, but this time they said something must be wrong. Their doctors said that their lab tests no longer show the condition to be present.

It might have been an autoimmune condition, a neurological condition, type II diabetes, or chronic fatty liver disease. It might be someone who was told they would need a liver or kidney transplant whose labs now show that this organ is working correctly. In many cases, it has even been one of my patient’s pets such as their cat or dog. The vet had told them the animal’s kidneys were shutting down and that they should put him or her to sleep, but now the kidney tests are normal. Almost every single time this happens, the MD or the vet (DVM) tells them that their diagnosis or the animal’s previous lab tests must have been wrong since the condition is not reversible. In other words, the doctor is so thoroughly convinced that the condition cannot be cured, that when, with my help, the patient’s or their pet’s body has eliminated the disease, the doctor simply is not able to believe it—their only way out is to say that the original diagnosis must have been wrong. How very arrogant and how very sad.

In order to rebuild animal tissue, protein is required; and yet the physicians and veterinarians will put kidney patients on a super low-protein diet. I change this a bit by using raw or very lightly cooked animal protein so as to supply the required amino acids without overloading the kidneys with cooked, hard to digest protein. Steak tartar, raw egg yolks, ceviche, raw milk, etc. Always pastured, organic or wild caught, and very fresh and clean. I find it both fascinating and disturbing that a very intelligent human being, namely a doctor or veterinarian, has been so indoctrinated by their incorrect schooling as to be unwilling to admit that the body can heal these diseases. Since I do not believe in zombies, the only condition which I believe is not curable under any circumstances is real death. Even this, however, must not be confused, of course, with cardiac arrest which has often been reversed with electroshock to the heart, so as to prevent the final death, not actually to reverse it.

Once, at one of the numerous scientific nutritional medicine conferences I attend annually, one MD lecturer related what he was told during his medical training. He said that when he attended medical school, one of his more progressive professors made a very important statement to the class that he will never forget. “During your years here in medical school, approximately 50% of what we teach you will be totally correct and the other 50% will be either partly or completely wrong. Obviously, we don’t know which is which or we would only teach you the real facts. When you graduate, never stop learning and never be certain that what you were taught was correct.”

To the best of my memory, that is exactly what the physician said from the podium. I would guess that very few medical professors have ever been willing to say that to their students and even fewer students remembered it and believed it, if they ever heard it. In every field of science, college textbooks get changed every few years due to research proving some “fact” in the textbook wrong, requiring them to be changed. Every few years a prescription drug is removed from the market after it has killed hundreds or many thousands of people. With better safety testing and the removal of greed and corruption from our government agencies, these drugs would never have been approved to begin with. If you do not believe that there is a great deal of corruption in science, including in our government “protective” agencies, I suggest that you read Science for Sale by David L. Lewis PhD., Diagnosis: Mercury by Jane M. Hightower, MD, Vaccine Whistleblower by Kevin Barry, Forbidden Archeology by Cremo and Thompson or Inoculated by Kent Heckenlively. These are just four of many dozens of books exposing these crimes and showing why our public and our professionals have been so badly misled in many fields of medicine and other sciences. You should also read the article Death by Medicine. It is not surprising that for the first time in human history life expectancy is decreasing, since chronic disease rates have been increasing for decades.

I’ve said it before, but it is worth saying again, much of what we are taught, IS WRONG! There are many quotes which address this very real problem and they are on my website in the Philosophies and Sayings section. Among fluoride, silver dental fillings, vaccinations, cholesterol, and quite a few others, most of us are almost completely in the dark about the truth. Not knowing something is neither a crime nor necessarily a problem. There are numerous areas in which I have little or no knowledge. What is a problem, is knowing “facts” in important areas which affect our life and our health, but not realizing that what we “know to be factual” is actually wrong.

The purpose of this book is both to teach you ways to improve your health and to dispel some of the myths which too many believe are fact. I strive to be in the less than 1% of the population who learn important facts ten to twenty years before they finally (if ever) become general knowledge. I even put up an area on my website at Naturopath4you.com to help explain this idea to others. It is the area that I call In Search of Unknown Facts and it is where you can send your skeptical friends, relatives, and health professionals. I feel that people need to understand how much greed, ignorance, arrogance, fear, and a far too firm belief that what you know or were taught is still true (or ever was) is preventing forward movement in science and our societal views. What would it take to convince someone who is absolutely sure they are right about something, that in fact they are wrong? The answer is that this is nearly 100% impossible unless they are willing to first admit that it is possible. If you are willing to consider an alternate way of thinking, then you at least have a chance.

Next, you need to understand that asking friends or experts who hold the old dominant belief will get you nowhere. Instead, you must seek out a few properly credentialed experts who have a non-mainstream belief. Experts who have this currently-not-accepted, hard-to-believe set of different but possibly correct facts, and listen to or read what three or four of them have to say. Then you might have sufficient information to possibly make an informed decision as to what you will now choose to believe. This is all covered in a twenty-eight minute recording in the In Search of Unknown Facts area on my website. I’m pleased but no longer surprised every time I get a particular type of email or phone call. It is from a student, a patient or even a relative, and it goes something like this: “David, did you see the article they just published in the New York Times (or in the Wall Street Journal or on the news piece that just aired on NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, etc.) where they just discovered something that you taught us ten or fifteen or more years ago!” This has happened over and over in my twenty-five years of private practice and of teaching my “Attaining Optimal Health” classes, mostly through the Grossmont-Cuyamaca community college district’s adult education program in San Diego, California. I still teach this course but now it is taught through the sixty-six year old Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation. It is indeed very sad how tenaciously some very intelligent people hold onto beliefs that they are 100% certain are factual, without ever being willing to properly investigate the other side’s information and documentation to the contrary.

It is also important to understand that a certain intelligence level appears to make this even more likely. As a longtime member of two high IQ societies, MENSA and Intertel, I know firsthand that having a higher IQ DOES NOT in any way make you more likely to have excellent common sense. I feel that common sense might actually serve most people far better than a high IQ, for when you are very smart, you are even more likely to KNOW FOR A FACT that you are right about something, even when you are not.

This is probably what makes so many physicians so arrogant when they are asked about nutrition. They were taught that drugs are far more important than diet and nutrients and they are darn sure they were taught correctly. They were taught that a person’s genetics is one of the main reasons people get different diseases but they have never investigated the huge field of epigenetics which has proven that this is not true. I am extremely thankful that a small percentage of physicians have been open minded enough to learn how much they do not know. To discover how much diet and lifestyle changes and the use of nutritional supplements can have on their patients’ health, often making drugs unnecessary. I have high praise for open minded physicians, veterinarians and scientists in general and I know what they are up against. Some have lost their right to practice due to using nutrition to treat a disease when the FDA or their local medical board has not approved this as a disease treatment. Even fewer have investigated the field of epigenetics, a science which has been discussed in many wonderful books and lectures by one of its expert scientists, Dr. Bruce Lipton. It is the field which has clearly shown that it is our diet and lifestyle that have the greatest effect on our health and NOT our genetics. His work has shown that our genes can actually be turned on and off, upregulated or downregulated by laughter, sunshine, food choices, environmental poisons, nutrients, etc.

Many years ago, I was deeply inspired by the movie Patch Adams, which depicted a medical student challenging the big shots in his medical school—and winning. I have spoken to Patch a number of times (the real one, not the actor who portrayed him) and I only wish he had been able to open the Gesundheit institute and clinic that he had wanted to create. Going against mainstream is not an easy task. I hope that my book will open some eyes and allow many thousands or hopefully millions of people to improve their health in ways that their physicians could not. More importantly (or of equal importance) I hope that many physicians will want to participate in getting training through my Detox Academy™ which I expect to be starting in 2018, so that we will have many more health practitioners proficient in what I do.

I often learn from my students and patients as well as from other professionals or their books, or lectures at scientific conferences. Recently in my 10-week course, a student asked me if I had heard of Dr. Gundry’s The Plant Paradox book. I replied that I had heard of the author but not of his newest title. The student said he would love my opinion on the book. At the next meeting with my literary agent for this book you are reading, she handed me a copy as a gift and also wanted my opinion. Since I do believe that things often happen for a reason, I began reading the book, buying the audio version so I could listen to it while driving. I was extremely happy to find that Dr. Gundry, a medical doctor, had learned the very forceful ability of foods to either support or destroy human health.

Not too many MD’s have been open minded enough to learn just how much of what they were taught is wrong and that foods can in fact be exceptionally strong in their ability to support or to harm human health. What was most interesting, was that even though his reasons were different, Gundry’s food recommendations are very similar to mine in most areas. Due to their lectin content, he has his patients avoid most of the same foods that I have been teaching people to avoid for twenty-five years.

We get similar results since we both put people on foods that their bodies do far better with. I teach the harmful effects of starches and sugars and so I eliminate fruit except for certain high nutrient berries. Gundry does the same but for different reasons. I take people off winter squash as it is loaded with obesity, cancer, and heart disease- causing starch while Gundry says they contain bad lectins. I take people off of cashews as it is the only high starch nut and Gundry does so due to the lectins he says cashews contain. I have told my patients and students for twenty-five years to shop at the local farmer’s markets so their vegetables will have been ripened on the plant and not gassed to appear ripe as in the stores. This is because all the nutrients which the vegetables receive from the plant as it is ripening are NOT received if it is simply gassed to change its color, while no longer being attached to the plant. Gundry claims that there are lectins in the produce which may cause reactions in some people but that these lectins diminish greatly as the item ripens ON THE PLANT; so again we eliminate the same foods.

This may be why so many people react to green peppers and green limes. I teach my students and patients that these are NEVER RIPE. For 25 years I have been surprising people in my classes when I tell them that there is no such thing as a ripe green pepper. Every single variety of sweet and hot pepper, even the ones which have a green pepper photo on the seed packet, will ripen to red, yellow, orange, purple, brown or almost black, if left on the plant till they are truly meant to be ready to eat. The same is true if you leave limes on the tree till they are ripe. They will turn yellow and look like, but not taste like lemons.

I further love the fact that Gundry, as I have been doing, is educating the reader about the benefits of Grass Fed Beef and Pastured (not free range) chickens and eggs. I want animals, birds, and fish to be eating as closely as possible to what they would be eating if they were feeding themselves in the wild. This makes their fats the healthy fats we need and greatly reduces all the chemicals in them as well. I was happy to learn that Dr. Gundry believes that the lectins in our toxic corn and soybeans, which conventional farm raised animals and poultry are being fed, actually remain in their meat and cause reactions in many of the humans who eat them. This provides yet another reason we should buy the healthier pastured or grass fed animals. I have also been teaching forever, that grass fed beef is more important than organic (unless it is also grass fed). If it is only organic, then it was fed organic corn and soy and the fats in the animal have accumulated in the wrong ratio for promoting human health. They have only one quarter or less of the anti-inflammatory omega 3 fats. Worse yet, many stores such as Whole Foods, sell an organic beef that was grass fed but “grain finished.” This is very confusing to the consumer, but what is means is that for the final sixty to ninety days, the previously grass fed cattle are now put in a finishing lot. There they gain a great deal of weight very rapidly, as they gorge themselves on grains instead of grass and foul up the essential fatty acids ratio of their meat. You want to try to buy grass fed and grass finished which is also referred to as grass fed birth to death. Of course if in addition to grass fed and grass finished, they are certified organic, that would be even better as it means there were no pesticide and herbicide residues on the land or hormone shots being given to the animals.

Another thing I have been teaching forever is that the idea of chicken being better for our health than red meat IS WRONG. The reason is that we cannot buy any chickens or other poultry that have been eating only what they would eat in the wild. Most chickens in the U.S. are fed corn and soy which they would never eat in the wild. It may be organic corn and soy but these are still not a chicken’s natural food. Grass? Insects? Worms? They never even see any of these during their entire life and they may never see fresh air, water, or direct sunlight either! Pastured chickens do get to eat some insects and worms and vegetation, however they won’t grow as fast as the chicken rancher requires unless they are also fed corn and soy in addition. Beef, lamb, and fish on the other hand can indeed be purchased having been raised on their species correct diets. They would simply be called grass fed and grass finished beef and lamb and wild caught fish. The best chicken you can get would be an heirloom variety which has been mostly or totally pasture raised as well as certified organic. Not as good as wild, but it’s the best you can get. See if any of your local farmers or farmer’s markets have such a high quality bird for sale. If Whole Foods continues to carry Mary’s heirloom organic, that is my current first choice and I have spoken to the owner of Mary’s chickens, David Pitman, many times.

Once again, if we want to be healthy and eat the right foods, then the foods we eat must also have been healthy and eating the right foods. Gundry simply adds one additional possible reason to what I have been teaching for years. He writes that the (theoretically) harmful lectins in GMO corn and soybeans seem to transfer into the meats of animals and fish which have consumed them. This means that we are also consuming these lectins and possibly reacting to them, even though we did not directly eat the GMO corn or soybeans ourselves. In addition, since these lectins are in corn and soybeans even if they were organic and not GMO, they get into the meat or the eggs of the organically raised ones and may cause problems to our health.

Since we are all very different, and no research study can possibly apply to everyone, the energetic testing I do in my office helps me identify if an individual would be better off not eating a particular food. Gundry is against consuming nightshade vegetables/fruits. Through energetic testing and then having the patient verify it with symptom provocation, I have found numerous patients who only react to a single nightshade. They might have a problem with only tomatoes or only eggplant and of course only unripe (green) peppers. Once again research can be extremely misleading since it rarely applies to everyone. Those who read research studies already know that some of the study participants had one reaction, some had another, some were mild, some severe and some did not react at all. When an otherwise excellent book like Gundry’s, directs everyone to avoid certain foods, when for many, that food is actually nonreactive, it can simply make following the program more difficult than it needs to be. For some of us eliminating one of his “Just Say No” foods might not be helpful. I would love to conduct an experiment to determine if, with some foods, starch is the issue and with others it is his lectins. In addition, with peanuts for example, I have patients who absolutely cannot eat them unless they are an old heirloom variety called Jungle Peanuts marketed by companies like Sun Foods in California.

Please note for my own legal protection, that if you are massively reactive or anaphylactic to peanuts I am NOT recommending you try the Jungle Peanuts. All in all, Dr. Gundry has written a very interesting book and I will look into more of the research he mentions, to see what I think. I really do not care whose information someone uses to help improve their health as long as it gets you the desired health improvements that you seek. My biggest issues are with the people spouting vegan information which has become almost a cult following, and is not based on any multi-generational research. I have had to help far too many vegans slowly regain their health. Lierre Keith did a great job covering this in her book, The Vegetarian Myth which I recommend to all vegetarians but especially to vegans.

STORY: An excellent example of the issues with a vegan diet was a family who called me many of years ago. Their son was basically being kicked off his beloved soccer team at his school, because he had so little energy that he simply could not compete in the game. It turned out that the family was vegan and ate a pretty good raw vegan diet with lots of vegetables, fruit, beans, grains, nuts, etc. I said that I expected I could help, but that I would not work with them unless they were willing for him to not be vegan for six months while I worked to help him regain his energy. They agreed.

These parents, unlike some I have worked with, were extremely eager to carefully and accurately try anything I recommended as they were suffering over their son’s inability to play the sport he loved. As an example, when I said we needed to bring back some energy building meats, eggs, and milk, they asked if raw would be even better, as they had been eating raw vegan for years. I said that it would be, but was certainly not required. They pushed the issue to get the fastest results and so I had to explain that if we were going to use raw, the quality needed to be very high so as to protect against harmful bacteria. He began eating (all raw) 100% grass fed organic beef and lamb, pastured raw organic eggs, and grass fed organic whole raw milk. Luckily, they lived in California as I do and so raw milk is completely legal and available in many health food stores. I added in my Basic 7 supplements along with B12 which is very deficient in vegan diets.

The boy’s turnaround was phenomenal and rapid. In not much over thirty days, he was back on the team and outperforming the other kids. His coach was a bit astonished and asked the parents what in the heck they had done and what were they feeding him, energy pills? I think they told me (this was many years ago) that the coach freaked out a bit when they said: no energy pills, just raw beef, raw lamb, raw eggs, raw whole milk and a few vitamins.

After his turnaround, the next time the family came in with him, they commented that if this change in their son’s diet produced that much of a benefit, and so rapidly, they had decided that they should switch over to a similar diet from their raw vegan diet, which they did. They also saw a number of improvements and are no longer vegan. These turnarounds, especially in the health of children, but in adults as well, are one of the things I love so much about what I do all year.

A) Breast Cancer, Bras, and Sweating—What Else Are We Not Being Told

This book would not be complete without my addressing these last three important topics more specifically, especially since they appear to be related to one another in addition to being separate topics all on their own. I very briefly mentioned this in Chapter 1 but I feel the need to cover it in more depth, both for the general public and especially for women wishing to reduce their risks of getting breast cancer or of getting it a second or third time.

Millions get and often eventually die of breast cancer or from the side effects of our conventional toxic treatments. According to Breast Cancer (.org):

“In 2017, an estimated 252,710 new cases of invasive breast cancer are expected to be diagnosed in women in the U.S., along with 63,410 new cases of non-invasive (in situ) breast cancer.

About 2,470 new cases of invasive breast cancer are expected to be diagnosed in men in 2017. A man’s lifetime risk of breast cancer is about 1 in 1,000”

With these huge and depressing statistics, what is going on? My belief is that in addition to all of the poisonous carcinogenic chemicals that I have already covered and taught you how to avoid, reduce, or detoxify from, there are some other important issues. Sweating is one of our body’s better defenses against toxic build up. Whenever human sweat has been properly analyzed for the presence of poisonous chemicals, they have been found in abundance. This clearly shows that for those who wish to have less toxic chemicals in their bodies, sweating should be extremely desirable. Ah, but unlike in tribal cultures, in our “advanced” society, sweating has instead become undesirable. So much so, that an entire industry and product line was developed and continues to be promoted forcefully to Prevent Underarm Sweating! Oh my, you wouldn’t want to have a moisture stain visible under your arm on your blouse if you’re a well-dressed woman! For men, this stigma is not as powerful but it is still there. You certainly would not want anyone passing by to be able to detect that your underarms are exhibiting the odor of healthy sweat. You might be shunned as being inappropriate or at the very least inconsiderate and unsanitary. Obviously, my book is not going to change the attitudes of the general public, but the facts remain and I am going to expose them anyway.

For both men and women, if you care about your future health and wish to support your body’s ability to detoxify rather than preventing it from doing so DO NOT use any form or brand of anti-perspirant. Instead, since body odor will get you talked about and shunned in our society, find one of the healthy non-toxic deodorants which does not prevent the wonderful detoxifying benefits of sweating. A few that I have found work very well include Primal Pit Paste in jar or stick, PiperWai in jar or stick and although not quite as strong, I sell a lot of Home Health’s Herbal Magic roll on. An even more fascinating deodorant is Lavilin from Israel. I have been carrying this product for over thirty-five years and I often use it during the summer. For about 95% of people, when it is applied according to directions, no matter how much you sweat and bathe, there is no body odor for seven to ten days per application. Try them all and use whichever you like best but don’t use the crystal or deodorant stone products. These are made from a compound called alum which is an aluminum containing mineral salt. It is not an anti-perspirant and does not contain the anti-perspirant chemical aluminum chlorhydrate, but it does contain plenty of aluminum and therefore should be avoided.

As long as I began this area with the benefits of sweating, let’s move to the healthiest non-exercise sweat promoter which is the far infra-red sauna. These devices, when used properly (not too much or too fast or too hot or too long) are a great way to aid in detoxifying your body. They did wonders for some of the September 11th first responders who were loaded with poisons that had been made airborne by the explosions in the twin towers. My favorite far infrared saunas are the ones made by High Tech Health but I am sure that by now there must be other manufacturers who have also eliminated the toxic woods, adhesives and plastics from their saunas and use low EMF heating elements. Just remember to go slow, If you ever feel more tired the day after you use a sauna, you stayed in it too long or you had it too hot or both. I believe that High Tech helps teach their users how to get the best results from their saunas.

Last but not least are bras and their effects on increasing the likelihood of the wearer/user to develop breast cancer. Never heard about this? Don’t be surprised. The bra industry is a big industry and they do NOT want you to have this information. Restricting the flow of blood and lymphatic fluids in and out of living tissues has the obvious effect of reducing their ability to detoxify. Our bodies want to detox and any time we do something which restricts or prevents their ability to do so, we raise our risks for dozens of chronic and fatal diseases. Anti-perspirants are one excellent example of this and the wearing of a brassiere is another big one. In 1995 two women, Sydney Ross Singer and Soma Grismaijer wrote an excellent book entitled Dressed to Kill: The Link between Breast Cancer and Bras. They show in the book why they believe that there is a 400% greater association between bras and breast cancer than there is between smoking and lung cancer. They also present the actual research studies that they believe prove this association. To me, when I read the book about twenty years ago, it made perfect sense and I began instructing my patients and my students with this information. If you wish to dramatically reduce your risk of getting breast cancer, or of getting it again if you already had it once and survived, read their book. If you don’t like to read, and my book on detox is one of the few books you have read in years, then just make certain that if you choose to or feel the need to wear a bra, that you wear it as much below 12 hours per day as you can. That was the magic number in their research, and it makes sense that if you have no bra on for more than half the day, it would greatly reduce your risks. Bras restrict circulation and lymphatic drainage to and from the breast tissue. When you remove your bra, even a sports bra, you can see the lines from where it pressed into your skin for quite some time. Reducing circulation of blood or lymph reduces the ability of tissues to detox. I make it easy and just say don’t wear one while you are at home and NEVER EVER wear one to bed. That ridiculous idea was promoted to many girls by their mothers. They were told (and some still are) that doing so would help keep their breasts looking good longer. Actually, it does the opposite since there is some muscle tissue in the breast and muscles always do better if they are not restricted and get movement and exercise. I also highly recommend that for women whose breast size does require them to wear a bra (when not at home), look into some of the very few companies making healthier bras which support the breast in a different way. Here are the ones I know of but there could easily be more. TheHealthyBraCompany.com, AhBras.com, and HealthyBraBoutique.com